Gap-gazing: Abandon Ship?

Like Leslie, “gap-gazing” for me was a completely novel term albeit an interesting one. Gutierrez’ article does well to outline the dangers of maintaining an achievement-gap focus. She describes that gap analyses and statistics, more than often, paints a static picture of inequalities and can also perpetuate narrow definitions of learning and equity (pg. 357). Gutierrez advocates that we move away from gap-focused analyses towards more “accessible” and contextualized research.

As the world of science and technology advance, society in turn has come to value efficiency and productivity. In turn, studies of efficiency and productive have come to depend on scientific methods and statistical research. Case in point – Media and Ad campaigns have used familiar tags such as “scientifically proven” or “scientifically tested” in order to market and sell products (capitalism served on a plate). With this view in mind, it is not surprising that educational institutions have standardized evaluations – afterall, aren’t schools the “factories” that generate the workers of tomorrow? If so, then why not measure their efficiency? Before we condemn the achievement gap analyses, let us stop and think. Many of us are here because we are math educators or at least value math education. Aren’t some of us math experts that pride numeracy and the power of statistical analyses? If we are to abandon research that documents gap analyses like Gutierrez suggests, then aren’t we being hypocritical?

The problem here is that we have learned to take gap analyses literally. Correlation does not mean causality. The way I see it, gap analyses simply displays variance, nothing more. A number itself does not have meaning. By simply placing equality on the notion of how “similar” EQAO results are ultimately does not do justice. At the same time, I do not think it is suffice to simply abandon research on gap analyses. We must not forget some of the positive outcomes of gap analyses (i.e. more funding for schooling, credit recovery programs, and elementary and secondary mathematics initiatives).

Before we abandon ship, let’s work to fix it.