Academic achievement gap is a symptom of a problem.

 People refer to an “academic achievement gap” in public schools as if it is something with physical properties like a gulch or steep hill blocking the path to knowledge. Instead, it is an abstract term someone invented to explain how race, ethnicity and class affect American students’ school experience. Another term like the “barrier to equal academic opportunity” describes this experience as well or better.

“Academic achievement gap” suggests the problem is a characteristic of students’ intellectual capacity and of their racial culture, but not in school or social policy.  This presumption misdirects the resources needed to correct the problem. On the other hand, it helps camouflages the lack of a plan to solve it. 

Comments California State Superintendent of Public Instruction Jack O’Connell made show the confusion about this issue.  O'Connell said he believes that widespread cultural ignorance within the California school system is responsible for many black and Latino students’ low academic achievement. He reported that he and top California Department of Education officials received racial sensitivity training that he intends to give to California schoolteachers and administrators throughout the state

O’Connell gave an example of the awareness he developed from his racial sensitivity training. He reported that black children learn that it is good to clap, speak loudly and be a bit raucous in black churches. However, they get in trouble for the same conduct in school where 72 percent of teachers are white and may be unfamiliar with such customs.

His example includes so many racial stereotypes I question how an intelligent, supposedly open-minded person believes them. First, he views people as stereotypes when he believes one black person, his racial sensitivity trainer, can explain all black people’s thinking and conduct. The second stereotype he suggested was that all black people worship alike. Third, he suggested that church services that include demonstrative rituals do so without a protocol.  My observations show the church is the most disciplined environment children experience no matter their race, ethnicity or religious ritual.  

The most troubling feature in O’Connell’s example was his conclusion that black students learned one standard of behavior that they apply all the time. This suggests they have limited intelligence and they cannot adapt to different situations. That he believes this is obvious. He faulted white teachers for not being sensitive to this alleged racial cultural dysfunction, but not for failing to apply uniform academic and discipline standards to all students.

The idea that white-labeled teachers must become racially sensitive and adjust to black-labeled students’ behavior includes the most troubling presumption about the cause of public schools’ problems. This presumption suggests that white-labeled teachers have the intellectual ability and flexibility to change, but that black students cannot think outside their alleged culture. 

If this presumption is true, those black and those Latino students cannot learn information and ideas outside their alleged racial culture no matter culturally sensitive schoolteachers teach them. If it is not true, then schools do not need to design special culturally sensitive race-based instruction for black-labeled and Latino-labeled students.  O’Connell’s statewide cure for the academic achievement gap will cause more harm than good with all the racial stereotypes it includes.

The “academic achievement gap” describes the symptom of a national problem and not the problem. No doubt cultural dysfunction hinders academic achievement in public schools. The primary dysfunction is a society that claims no national culture students can center on, but claims multiculturalism.

This society does not teach students one unifying national history. Instead, it claims distinct racial and ethnic histories. America is a nation without a national language, but supposedly values any language that some group claims. This society does not even center on its founding democratic principles of equality. Instead, it teaches students lessons that glorify the opposite monarchic system of royal birth and human inequality.

Culture is a code of behavior that serves as an unifying tool for the survival and success of a society and for citizens in that society. It degenerated into something else in America to become a confederation of competing racial, ethnic, class, and religious groups’ practices. 

It should surprise nobody that many young students confuse culture to their harm.  Usually, they have the intelligence to learn school lessons, but they lack the desire from a confused sense of loyalty to a group culture. Family dysfunction adds to the problem.

America can reduce “academic achievement gap” symptoms by curing the problem of educational inequality. It must discard presumptions about racial intelligence and cancel race-based instruction. Federal and state officials should mandate that schools teach an American cultural curriculum. They should teach students according to their individual needs and not to a racial profile.

Contact Kenneth Brooks at P.O. Box 882, Vallejo, CA 94590.  kenbrooks@ethicalego.com