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Commentary on “What is “learning” in the case of marginalized populations in low-income countries”
Piper, B. L. (2018). Commentary on “What is “learning” in the case of marginalized populations in low-income countries”. In D. Wagner, S. Wolf, & R. Boruch (Eds.), Learning at the bottom of the pyramid: Science, measurement and policy in low-income countries (pp. 24-26). IIEP-UNESCO. http://unesdoc.unesco.org/images/0026/002655/265581E.pdf
Achievement gaps in developing countries are an under-researched phenomenon. In the United States, on the other hand, funding for research and interventions has been targeted at identifying the contours of the country’s gap (i.e. ethnicity, wealth, and location). Moreover, in pre-service courses and practica, colleges of education routinely train teachers to consider methods that narrow the gap. The result has been a modest decline in the magnitude of racial achievement gaps in US results on the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) (McFarland et al., 2017). That such costly interventions have resulted in only a limited contraction of the gaps is disconcerting, given the widening achievement gaps across ethnicity, wealth, and location identified in Latin America via the 2006 Second Regional and Comparative Explanatory Study (Segundo Estudio Regional Comparativo y Explicativo, or SERCE), as well as those in sub-Saharan Africa revealed by the Southern and Eastern Africa Consortium for Monitoring Educational Quality (SACMEQ).