Missteps on the Road to Justice: When "Achievement Gap" Discourse Blocks Culturally Sustaining Pedagogy

• In Event: 14.044 - Roundtable Session 2
  In Roundtable Session: 14.044-7 - Instructional Factors in Equitable Education

Abstract

In suburban, elite Pioneer City, a series of initiatives I refer to as “the transformation” aimed to eliminate the racial “achievement gap” through simultaneous efforts to redistribute students from a racially and economically isolated elementary school and to train all district staff in a particular brand of culturally relevant pedagogy/culturally sustaining pedagogy (CRP/CSP). The purpose of this paper is to capture aspects of what happened in a particular local context when our nation’s long and painful history of racial relations came to the forefront in public debates over schooling. This story calls out broader questions asking what stands to be lost when two discourses collide: in this case, the popularized “achievement gap” discourse and the potentially transformative discourses of CRP/CSP.

Author

• Ann Mogush Mason, University of Minnesota - Twin Cities