The purpose of the Eliminating the Achievement Gap is to provide a resource for scholars and students into many of the most salient issues, trends, and factors that are most effective in reducing the achievement gap. Eliminating the Achievement Gap is particularly unique because it will: 1) utilize a meta-analysis to determine what factors contribute the most to reducing the achievement gap and 2) examine potential achievement gap reducing variables from across disciplines. These disciplines include education, sociology, economics, family science, psychology, public policy, and educational psychology. The second emphasis is largely based on the meta-analysis, because the results of the meta-analysis indicate that the best way to completely eliminate the achievement gap is to initiate a multidisciplinary approach to the achievement gap. It is the intention of this book to make scholars, educators, policymakers, parents, and the general public more aware of the factors that best bridge the achievement gap, so that they can take major steps to implementing comprehensive and multidisciplinary efforts. The more such efforts are inaugurated, the more the achievement gap will be reduced. The nine chapters of this book are therefore divided into four parts to reflect this extent of this comprehensive approach.
Acknowledgments Introduction Part I: The Research- and Historically- Based Foundations for Addressing the Achievement Gap Chapter 1: History of Attempts to Reduce the Achievement Gap Chapter 2: A Meta-Analysis on the Factors that Best Reduce the Achievement Gap Chapter 3: The Significance of the Results of the Meta-Analysis in Historical Context Part II: Factors Reducing that Gap that Require Broad Changes in Public Policy Chapter 4: The Need for an Inner City Renaissance: The Interaction of Health, Education, and Welfare Part III: Factors Reducing that Gap that Require a Cultural and School-Based Effort Chapter 5: The Role of the Family and Parental Involvement in Reducing the Achievement Gap Chapter 6: Broadening the Concept of Gaps, Why They Exist, and What Can Be Done to Alleviate Them Chapter 7: Cultural and School Resources that Can Reduce the Achievement Gap Chapter 8: How Various School Initiatives of the Past Half-Century Have Either Exacerbated or Reduced the Achievement Gap Chapter 9: Future Hope and the Achievement Gap Bibliography Index About the Author
