District Systems to Support Equitable and High-Quality Teaching and Learning
Category: Policy, Politics, and Governance
Racial equity in education is often framed around “closing the achievement gap,” but many scholars argue this frame perpetuates deficit mindsets. The “opportunity gap” (OG) frame has been offered as an alternative to focus attention on structural injustices. In a preregistered survey experiment, I estimate the effects of framing racial equity in education around “achievement gaps” (AGs) vs OGs. I find US adult respondents on MTurk gave higher priority to “closing the racial opportunity gap” versus “closing the racial achievement gap” (ES = .11 SD). When randomly assigned to read an OG frame before being asked to explain the Black/White “achievement gap,” respondents were less likely to endorse cultural or individual-level explanations, compared with respondents only shown AG statistics (ES = -.10 SD). I find no evidence the OG frame affected respondents’ racial stereotypes or policy preferences.
Keywords
"opportunity gap" "achievement gap" "framing effects" "racial equity"
Education level
Document Object Identifier (DOI)
10.26300/kmk0-hc83
