The educational gap in student achievement is steadily broadening among the various disaggregatedgroups throughout our nation’s public schools. School administrators, teachers, politicians, and otherstakeholders are scampering about trying to find a solution to this ever-growing problem. Unfortunately,they are looking for the answer in all the wrong places. In fact, the answer to this crisis in America’spublic school system lies in a series of questions. School administrators and teachers need only toaddress the following in order to effectively provide students with a quality education: What do raceand ethnicity have to do with students’ ability to read and write? How does gender factor into studentsacademic potential? How can an interest in the same-sex prevent a student from learning? What isthe educational relevance of labeling students as economically disadvantaged? With the advancementin technology and a plethora of available resources, how is it possible to allow language barriers tostifle student achievement? Does such categorization cast these students into the proverbial corner oflow achievers before they have a chance to prove otherwise? Instead of allowing pre-assessmentsand diagnostic exams to inform them of students’ academic strengths and weaknesses, principals andteachers have allowed these biases to cripple the learning process in America’s public school system.In essence, one can succinctly summarize the aforementioned questions into one answer: Is it diversitythat adversely impacts student achievement or the discriminatory beliefs of school administrators andteachers that serve as monumental stumbling blocks to the right of every American student to beafforded a quality, public education that is culturally, mentally, emotionally, socially, and physicallyinclusive?

Pamela Scott

Sharing Responsibility for the Learning of Students: A Case Study

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