A Critical Race Analysis of the Achievement Gap in the United States: Politics, Reality, and Hope

Abstract

Federal educational legislation in the United States has focused increased attention on the racial achievement gap between minority and majority students. The No Child Left Behind (NCLB) legislation has forced high-stakes accountability in public schools, with the assumption that these policies will create performance pressures on schools to improve achievement. Yet, there is considerable evidence that performance pressures alone are unlikely to reverse long-standing racialized policies and practices that remain neither well understood nor easily reversed. This article analyzes the racial achievement gap and NCLB utilizing a form of oppositional scholarship called Critical Race Theory (CRT) to uncover inequity and social injustice in U.S. schools.

Notes

Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, Kansas, 347 U.S. 483 (1954)

Plessy v. Ferguson, 163 U.S. 537 (1896)