The Achievement Gap is the difference in test scores between students from high income families and students from low income families. Sadly, many articles about the Achievement Gap falsely claim it is about racism – with black students performing less well than white students. In fact, black students from wealthy families or black students that have the benefit of attending schools with small class sizes perform as well as white students. So student achievement has nothing to do with the color of a child’s skin. It has everything to do with family income and lower class sizes.

One measure of lower family income is the percent of free and reduced price lunch in any given school or school district. This is called the FRPL Achievement Gap. As about half of all students qualify for free lunch, this compares the upper half of all students by income to the lower half. Other studies have found that the Achievement Gap is much higher when comparing students in the 80^th or 90^th percentile of income to the the 20^th or 10^th percentile of income.

Whatever measure is used, the Achievement Gap has existed for more than 70 years. During this 70 years, nearly all politicians have claimed that reducing or eliminating the Achievement Gap is one of their top priorities. Like Snake Oil Salesmen, they claim to have a Magic Bullet solution. In fact, only one study has actually resulted in eliminating it. This was the Tennessee STAR study done in the 1990s. This study reduced class sizes in Grades K through 3 so that low income struggling students could get the help they need to “catch up” to students from higher income families. This study found that years later, these lower income students test scores and graduation rates were nearly identical to the test scores and graduation rates of students from higher income families.

Sadly, in Washington state, since 2003, when we began to give away billions in tax breaks to wealthy corporations like Microsoft and Boeing, we have subjected our students to among the highest class sizes in the nation. We therefore have had, since 2003, one of the largest Achievement Gaps in the nation. In this report, we will take a closer look at the Achievement Gap in Washington state using recent national and state test results.

At a candidate forum on May 20, 2024, Chris Reykdal’s two opponents for State Superintendent both claimed that Washington students have suffered huge declines on national tests. At the same forum, Chris Reykdal claimed that only two states in the nation were performing better than our students.

Chris Reykdal stated: “Let's talk about Washington state on reading. In fourth grade, there are only six states in the country that are statistically outperforming us. By eighth grade, there are only two states that are statistically outperforming us.”

Adding fuel to the fire, on September 17, 2023, the Seattle Times claimed that Reykdal was a “cheer leader for mediocrity.” https://www.seattletimes.com/opinion/editorials/cheerleading-mediocrity-is-not-good-enough-for-was-education-department/

Here are a couple of quotes from this Seattle Times editorial:

“To call Washington’s most recent education results lackluster would be putting it politely. Just 30% of 10th graders tested last spring were at grade level in math… In 2020-21, one-third of 8th graders were at grade level in math. Two years later, when the same group of students were in 10th grade, only 29.9% met that benchmark.”

“OSPI... appears to be aimed primarily at cheer leading mediocrity.”

In this article, we will review both national test results (the National Assessment of Education Progress or NAEP test) as well as state test scores to assess the performance of Washington state students. We will show that the situation is even worse than the Seattle Times article. Since Chris Reykdal took office in January 2017, Washington students have suffered record learning losses. These learning losses began even before the 2020 school closures.