Corporatism, KIPP, and Cultural Eugenics

In a 2009 report entitled Parsing the Achievement Gap II, researchers1 recalibrated the achievement gaps2 that Barton had fi rst documented in Parsing the Achievement Gap: Baselines for Tracking Progress.3 The updated report once again examined sixteen factors, or “correlates of achievement,” that researchers have identifi ed as affecting the academic achievement of children: curriculum rigor, teacher preparation, teacher experience, teacher attendance and turnover, class size, availability of instructional technology, fear and safety at school, parent participation, birth weight, exposure to lead and mercury, hunger and nutrition, talking and reading to babies and young children, excessive television watching, parent-pupil ratio, frequent changing of schools, and summer achievement gain/loss.4 Many of these factors are the same ones that other researchers5 have identifi ed as contributing to the achievement gap, or “education debt,” as Gloria LadsonBillings6 has labeled the canyon of inequity between rich and poor.