Closing the gap: How do we even go about it?

Disclaimer: This is an educational piece about a gap in education which is correlated to the importance of giving students an equitable opportunity to schooling and a post secondary degree. Opinions will be backed up by reliable sources as well as personal experiences. This article is written by Kimberly Guevara, CEO and founder of FIL Learning.

As mentioned in my previous blog, I attended many schools during my K-8 experience. Every time I transferred schools, I felt as though I was either not learning to the extent I could have been, or my family needed to transfer for proximity. Four out of the five schools were a ten to fifteen minute drive from my home, but one year I attended a school that was half an hour away in hopes to obtain a better education. I lived in a developing area, Northeast Denver, and I received what I believed to be a fun and adventurous education. After some time, I also realized there were less and less white faces in my classroom. In my graduating class, there was not one white student. I lived around many white people, but none of their children attended schools near me. When I asked where these students went to school, many of them replied that they drove a half hour every morning to attend schools in areas like Cherry Creek, Englewood, and Central Denver. I even had a friend who drove an hour every morning to attend a school in Highlands Ranch. I did not understand why, when my parents tried to have me attend a school in those areas, the schools said I was not allowed to attend because we lived outside of their boundaries. On the other hand, students who were white went to these schools without issue, even though we lived in the same area. This translated into the opportunity to learn, and I knew that I was not learning to the extent that I could have been because I was at a higher lexile than what my school had to offer, but it was also the school that knew what I could achieve and helped me get there.

Opportunity Gap

What I experienced is the opportunity gap. "'Opportunity gap' refers to the fact that the arbitrary circumstances in which people are born—such as their race, ethnicity, ZIP code, and socioeconomic status—determine their opportunities in life, rather than all people having the chance to achieve to the best of their potential'' (TeachforAmerica, 2018). Thus, students of low income do not have the same opportunities in their educational career as more affluent students. There are various reasons for the opportunity gap. Board member, Madeleine Osmun presents an informational about some in depth examples of what the opportunity gap really means. In health care, students may be very sick and lack the proper focus needed to learn the curriculum because of their illness, and this can cause them to fall behind in school. In areas where there is a high domestic violence risk, students who experience domestic violence can fall behind in school because they cannot focus on learning to read and do math when at home, they are afraid of being abused. Further, students who are in extreme poverty, who experience homelessness cannot obtain an education because they do not have access to a school, much less an opportunity to attend one. These are just a few reasons why students will not have the same opportunity as their wealthier counterparts. All of these examples correlate with poor mental health which can lead to poor nutrition, making it hard to be attentive during class time for those who have that availability to attend. The opportunity gap will affect every low income student, and it will also affect a student of color, even if they have a wealthy parent, and teachers and education based companies around the US, even the world are aiming to combat it.

In Context

To put this into context, my current employment is a seasonal position as a camp director, and this camp is through a company where a week's worth of camp can vary from a few hundred dollars a week up to a thousand. This camp is an STEM and liberal arts intensive camp that mostly only affluent families can afford. There are very few faces of color, and the student who attends a public school is rare. Though this camp's mission is amazing, I would have hoped to teach students more about cool STEM projects at an early age. Since students lose about two to three months worth of growth over the course of the summer, it is important to have students in programs where they are allowed to learn and bridge the gap, so they are ready for the new school year, but with an opportunity gap where affluent students have more access to camps like these, students of low income can be forgotten about.

Lack of Funding

Another factor into the opportunity gap is within the funding in school, or in this case, the lack of it. In her TedTalk, Kandice Summer, a public school teacher, focuses on just that, the gap between affluent and low income students. She focuses on how her school did not have the resources to purchase new books for the students, so she bought books by herself from as many second hand stores as she could. Furthering this process, she was excited to have her students read, but they did not return the same excitement. After hearing how some teachers create wish lists on Amazon for her classroom, and those wishlists get fulfilled by anonymous donors, she went out on a limb and created one in hopes that she could get new books for her students. As books started arriving, brand new books, her students began running to read when she would call out "It is time to read!" Her students had a new found love for reading after feeling heard, after knowing that there was someone out there who cared about their education, who knew that the students were worth brand new books.

Though this is a beautiful success story, there are many many more stories of students who do not have educators who can afford to even buy second hand books because their salary is so low, and this makes it exponentially more difficult for students to obtain an education, be excited to read, and have the want to learn. It highlights the need students of low income have for a quality education. In a video titled "This is Equity" by Californians Dedicated to Education Foundation. "Oftentimes, the adults in the system are blaming the kids for their failures" (Boyd, 2019). Students have big goals and dreams, but there are factors, not controlled by students, that are holding them back. This is a systematic occurrence that is widely known, but with this gap widening every year more and more, less students of color will obtain a four year college degree, less students will graduate high school, and unfortunately less students will reach their dreams. FIL Learning aims to bridge that gap, and even though we will not close this gap, we strive to show students just how much their education is worth, how important it is, and how much they can love it.

It takes extreme care and determination to ensure that students who want to be lawyers, medical workers, dare I say teachers, enter their field because students will learn to overcome every stereotype, negative comment, and wrong perception about them and their education. Once students overcome the effects of the opportunity gap, they will have to overcome the achievement gap, which will be the topic of our next blog.