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ERIC Number: EJ1473864
Record Type: Journal
Publication Date: 2025-Jul
Pages: 32
Abstractor: As Provided
ISBN: N/A
ISSN: ISSN-0042-0859
EISSN: EISSN-1552-8340
Available Date: 0000-00-00
Gaps in Achievement or Opportunity? How Achievement Gap Discourse Affects Teachers' Beliefs and Priorities
Urban Education, v60 n7 p2121-2152 2025
Education scholars argue that the term "achievement gap" promotes deficit orientations toward certain students of color, focuses the field on individualistic rather than structural sources of inequality, and narrows viable policy solutions for equity concerns. Using a randomized survey, I examine whether the term "racial opportunity gap" mitigates critiques of the achievement gap term. I find that teachers responding to this language less strongly attributed the gap to individual characteristics--student motivation, student effort, and parenting--and more strongly prioritized incorporating students' racial/ethnic and cultural identities into instruction to address the gap than teachers responding to "racial achievement gap" language.
SAGE Publications. 2455 Teller Road, Thousand Oaks, CA 91320. Tel: 800-818-7243; Tel: 805-499-9774; Fax: 800-583-2665; e-mail: journals@sagepub.com; Web site: https://sagepub.com
Publication Type: Journal Articles; Reports - Research
Education Level: Elementary Secondary Education
Audience: N/A
Language: English
Sponsor: Institute of Education Sciences (ED)
Authoring Institution: N/A
IES Funded: Yes
Grant or Contract Numbers: R305B200035
Department of Education Funded: Yes
Author Affiliations: 1Department of Teaching and Learning, Policy and Leadership, University of Maryland, College Park, College Park, USA