Beginning Reading Instruction in Urban Schools: the curriculum Gap Ensures a Continuing Achievement Gap by Teale, Paciga, and Hoffman discusses our society's concern about the achievement gap, curriculum gap and factors that influence these issues. The achievement gap is more commonly used in the education world than the curriculum gap. The achievement gap in America refers to the children in poverty scoring significantly lower in reading and writing scores than children of middle and high income families. This "gap" can also be applied to the difference between minorities (African-American and Latino) and their Caucasian peers. This achievement gap issue is particularly prevalent in urban school districts.
In order to solve these problems, reform programs have come into play such as: No child left behind and reading first. Of course, we are all familiar with NCLB. Reading First (RF) direction is to improve reading instruction, through the "big five" foundational pillars: phonological awareness, phonics, vocabulary, fluency, and comprehension. Unfortunately, the attempt to fix the achievement gap through these programs has caused another gap: the curriculum gap. Since the main focus has leered towards reading instruction and development, educators have been lacking attention towards curriculum elements, that many believe, to be critical for success in reading and writing development. The three dimensions of the curriculum gap , as pinpointed in the article, are as follows: comprehension instruction, writing instruction, and general knowledge of the world and core concepts.
The article explains why there is little-to-no attention paid to comprehension instruction. Teachers tend to believe that reading words accurately and fluently is the key to comprehension, when, in reality, just because a student is reading without difficulty does not mean that he is grasping the concepts of the text. The majority of teachers also use grade-level text to practice over and over and over again and expect that to develop fluent word recognition, when really students need to work with a variety of grade-level text depending on their development and advancement. In addition, teachers often believe that K-3 grade-level texts are simple, but for struggling students they are not. Many teachers are simply just concerned with teaching word recognition skills, and expect for comprehension to take its natural course on its own without helping their students understand how to comprehend a text. This idea that comprehension does not need to be taught, maybe not even until the later grades is an issue for literacy, especially in urban schools.The reason why this is an issue for urban schools is because, first, children in primary-grade levels have a tendency to not grasp two foundational skills of reading: phonics and fluency. However, during these primary grades it is also essential for these students to be learning comprehension skills; focusing on fluency and phonics neglects the fact that content is more important.
All these issues touch close to my heart since I have a passion for urban school districts; I have aspirations of teaching children who are in need of higher education and opportunity. To think that it is not only about materials and financial issues that these children face when it comes to their education is unfortunate. These children are imprisoned by statistics of the achievement gap, are placed in a box and assumed to be lower-level learners. When really, they have the potential to be higher achievers. They should have the same opportunities as other students in high-income areas; they have the right to educational equality.
It is so nice to hear that you aspire to teach children in urban school districts. These urban districts especially need teachers with passion and who love what they do. It is really sad to hear the statistics about the gaps in achievement across areas. There is no reason for achievement gaps between nationalities and this needs to be fixed. More often, children of certain nationalities or from certain areas are labeled and these labels unfortunately stick with them over the years. If a child in a low-income area constantly overhears people saying that they will never get out of poverty, why would the child have any ambition to do so. These children need to be shown that they are equal to every other child in the world and can achieve just as much as children in areas with higher incomes.
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