The Power of Challenging the Black Achievement Gap

An accomplished researcher, scholar, and advocate for equity in education, Dr. Ivory Toldson believes parents of Black K-12 students should no longer fall victim to the B.S. education narrative. But he’s not referring to the two words you may think of. On his website, Toldson names Bad Statistics as data that reinforces negative stereotypes about why Black children may score lower on standardized tests. However, Toldson wants people to acknowledge two more words related to bad statistics that may be even worse: achievement gap. 

“A lot of people who use the term don’t even know what they’re saying,” Toldson tells Word In Black. Educators and policymakers have used it for decades, he says, as a “catch-all phrase to describe a persistent differential between the scores of Black and white children on standardized tests.”

The problem, he says, is it frames white students as the default standard, defines Black students as inferior, and doesn’t account for what “achievement” actually means.

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“They say, ‘We need to close the achievement gap,’” Toldson says. “But when you ask them what specific test they’re referring to — what subjects, what grade levels — they can’t answer. If you can’t define the gap, then all you’re doing is perpetuating a narrative.” 

That’s why Toldson wants to toss the phrase into the trash heap of history. And he has company.

Deconstructing the Achievement Gap

“‘Achievement Gap’ puts the onus on the student’s ability; perpetuating bias and harmful false superiority that helped create this racism in grading work in the first place,” Hats Taylor, a diversity, equity, and inclusion specialist, wrote in an essay on LinkedIn last month. 

“Though it’s often called the ‘achievement gap,’ we intentionally use the term ‘opportunity gap,’” according to Close the Gap Foundation, a nonprofit dedicated to equity in K-12 education. The phrase “implies that this disparity exists because some individuals don’t work as hard as others to achieve their goals. We’d like to bring awareness to the ways in which that assumption is a myth.”

The achievement gap phrase has been used for decades to describe disparities in academic performance between white students and students of color, particularly Black students. It first gained prominence after the 1966 Equality of Educational Opportunity report, widely known as the Coleman Report, highlighted significant differences in educational outcomes.

Recent data from the American Educational Research Association backs up these concerns. In 2020, their study found that discourse centered on the “achievement gap” often perpetuates negative stereotypes of Black students and sets them as less competent than white students. As a result, a growing movement has emerged to adopt alternative terms and concepts that accurately reflect the root causes of educational disparities Black students often face.

Because if the achievement gap term is inherently racist—why is it still being used?

Toldson, who is professor of counseling psychology at Howard University and editor of The Journal of Negro Education, has been a leading voice in challenging the way Black student achievement is framed. He says achievement is a social construct — one that is often ‘narrowly defined’ and fails to capture the full range of Black students’ successes.

“If you ask me about my children’s achievements, I wouldn’t list test scores — I’d talk about their leadership, creativity, and personal growth,” he says. “That’s the problem with this phrase. It reduces achievement to a single measure and then compares Black students to white students instead of evaluating them as individuals with unique strengths.”

While achievement itself is a positive goal, attaching “gap” to it reinforces a deficit mindset that suggests that Black students are inherently behind.

“There’s no circumstance where I’d use the term,” he says. “What we should be focusing on instead are the real systemic issues that directly impact student success.”

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Deficit-Based Narrative

Toldson argues that standardized testing plays a huge role in the flawed term in a way that disproportionately harms Black students.

A Black student in a high-performing public school can have low test scores and still thrive academically, Toldson explains. But in schools labeled as “underperforming” due to test scores, entire communities are treated as failures. This creates a cycle where test prep replaces real instruction, funding is tied to performance, and students are unfairly labeled as deficient—not because they lack ability, but because they lack access to resources.

Rather than relying on the achievement gap as a catch-all phrase, Toldson urges educators, journalists, and policymakers to use specific, solution-oriented language that identifies the real inequities at play. “Equity gaps. Opportunity gaps. Funding gaps. These terms point to what’s actually missing,” he says. “The problem with ‘achievement gap’ is that it tries to lump all of these things under one misleading label.”

“Achievement isn’t the problem,” he says. “The way we define and measure it is.”

Moving Beyond the Gap

The movement to retire the achievement gap isn’t just about ignoring disparities; — it’s about accurately naming them to address them effectively, Toldson says.  Instead of comparing Black and white students, achievement should be evaluated relative to an individual’s growth, not as a static, one-size-fits-all metric.

“Achievement isn’t static—it’s dynamic. It’s also relative, not comparative,” he says. “We shouldn’t be measuring Black students against white students. Instead, we should look at where that student was last year and where they are now.”

To Black students who feel discouraged by the achievement gap narrative, Toldson’s message is clear: “You have to define yourself for yourself,” he says. “Don’t let anyone else determine your value. Just like a house can be appraised at a certain number but hold much greater meaning to the people living there, your worth isn’t defined by how others measure you. Only those who truly know you can define your real value.”

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