The term “achievement gap” refers to a significant difference in outcomes between groups os students based on demographics or group membership. In the United States, there has been a persistent disparity in educational outcomes for Black children, Hispanic children, and children from low-income environments. Achievement gaps are often present in early childhood education, and they often grow as children move through school. But it does not have to be this way!

Achievement gaps are an indication that all children are not benefiting from education in the same way. Gaps can be seen in student performance on standardized assessments as well as in other areas such as graduation rates, educational attainment, and access to special opportunities such as gifted and dual credit programs. They can be caused by out-of-school factors and in-school factors. Educators and leaders can improve outcomes and shrink achievement gaps for all children.

Poverty has been shown to contribute to achievement gaps for a variety of reasons. However, low economic status does not preclude strong academic performance. Rather, low socioeconomic status often gets in the way of high achievement by limiting a child’s, family’s, and community’s access to knowledge, experiences, resources, and supports that benefit student learning.

Although poverty is correlated to achievement gaps, other factors such as race/ethnicity and language status are also correlated to achievement gaps.

Even schools that do not have a lot of racial, ethnic, or socio-economic diversity can have achievement gaps. For example, in some schools, boys experience more struggles in Reading than girls. In other cases, children from a particular neighborhood or group underperform other children in the school. Achievement gaps show the ways in which the needs of different groups of students are not being met.

Dr. Hill works with leaders and educators to examine the achievement gaps in their schools and systems. She then helps them to identify the sources and perpetuators of the gaps in their schools. Dr. Hill guides leadership teams through the process of creating an action plan to improve student outcomes and close achievement gaps. She provides guidance and support for leaders, professional development for teachers and support staff, and consulting services for system leaders and school boards.