Ah, the “achievement gap.” Few subjects are dearer to the hearts of educators in Connecticut, and their political hangers-on, than the chasm between the best and the worst student performers on standardized tests — a canyon perceived to be even wider than the salary gap between publishers and columnists.
Like so many “problems” in public education, our achievement gap is not unusual, in the context of real life; nor is it necessary a “crisis” that requires spending untold millions of unaccountable dollars on murky solutions that at the end of the day won’t really work.
“Gaps” exist everywhere in life. A great leveling suggests that future generations would be created from test tubes in mysterious laboratories, where mad scientists will strip us of our variations.
The only successful effort to achieve that goal has come from Singapore Air, the top-rated airline in which every single flight attendant is a babe: pretty, competent, self-assured, with the look and personality that could only have come from a test tube.
Other less esoteric experiments have been unsuccessful. There was a time when certain factory towns, New Britain and Waterbury among them, had some of the most narrow salary gaps in the nation. When everyone works in the same cluster of factories, and belongs to the same unions, negotiating similar or identical contracts, the great leveling will occur — until the whole thing collapses and everyone moves to North Carolina, or flies to Asia on Singapore Air.
Connecticut has long reveled in the size and scope of its public education achievement gap. It tends to be among the broadest in the nation — which at least puts Connecticut on the top of some list other than the one that reports on the worst places in America to operate a business.
While the public reaction among officials to our achievement gap is clucking and promising to reduce it, in secret shelters, far below the surface of the Earth, those same officials will shrug and say, among themselves, “well, what the Hell do you expect?”
Beyond the usual achievement-gap culprits, such as racial discrimination and lack of competitive zeal in the hideous urban schools, the Connecticut gap also reflects some good trends — or at least some trends that can’t be blamed on Satan.
When the rich kids at Wesleyan and Trinity and Yale all marry each other and get jobs selling municipal bonds to the dads’ wealthy friends and move to a nice house in Greenwich or New Canaan or Simsbury or Westport, they tend to promise Connecticut not only a promising cash flow for the income tax — but also a guarantee that the achievement gap will likely continue for another generation.
This is not to say that the education of those with lower test scores can’t be improved — but the “gap” is due, in some (or in large) part to a significant cluster of wealthy, sophisticated folks in Connecticut whose children will never be “left behind.”
The latest in an inevitable string of reports showing “progress” in reducing the gap in Connecticut was issued last month — but all manner of professional educator and social-service types were quick to point out how “awful” the results still were.
The kids at the top of the pack? The high scorers, the top achievers? Not a word about them. Although they are largely responsible for the gap, they remain invisible. No one is suggesting out loud that we encourage them to do a bit worse, for the sake of the gap.
Laurence D. Cohen is a freelance writer.
