Closing the achievement gap
A new study charts the way.
Originally published in the Moultrie News.
How can schools close the achievement gap?
The achievement gap refers to measurable differences in academic performance between groups of students, usually tracked through test scores and graduation rates. It’s one of the most pressing issues in education policy today.
But before we talk solutions, we need to ask which achievement gap? Education is full of them. People usually mean the gap between white students and minorities, but there are also gaps between rich and poor, East Asians and non-East Asians, and girls and boys.
The truth is, I don’t know how to make an entire demographic group — boys, minorities, or anyone else — suddenly achieve at a higher level. What I do know is how individuals from any group can boost their odds of success: show up to school, pay attention, and do the work.
That formula works for everyone. If there are good reasons why some groups of kids can’t do those things, I’ve never met anyone who can reasonably articulate them.
However, a recent 2025 study from the National Marriage Project at the University of Virginia and the National Center for Black Family Life at Hampton University, a historically black college, highlights a more decisive factor: Fathers. Specifically, their research shows that students consistently fall behind when fathers are absent or disengaged from their children’s lives.
For Virginia students, the report revealed that children with involved dads:
Earn higher grades
Have fewer behavior and learning problems
Are less likely to be depressed
By contrast, kids from father-absent homes are only half as likely to get good grades, twice as likely to be depressed, and nearly three times more likely to have problems in school.
The data make clear what most teachers have known all along: When you compare students from intact families, the racial achievement gap disappears. Black and Hispanic students with present fathers actually outperformed white peers in making A’s and B’s or better. More than 85% of students from intact families — regardless of race — earned honor-roll level grades. But in father-absent homes, grades dropped sharply, with black students hit hardest compared to whites and Hispanics.
Why such a dramatic effect? The report highlights three key ways fathers shape success:
Play — Fathers’ style of energetic, unpredictable play fosters resilience and confidence from an early age.
Risk-taking — Dads push kids to face challenges, like defying a bully or embracing tough training for sports.
Discipline — Fathers tend to be firmer with rules and more effective in enforcing them, providing order and accountability.
Even imperfect dads make a difference, because raising kids is too big a job for one parent alone. Together, however, it’s much easier to make kids show up to school, pay attention, and do the work.
This explains nearly every major educational divide:
The Affluence Gap: Over 25% of Virginia kids in single-mother homes live below the poverty line, compared with just 6% in intact families.
The Race Gap: It vanishes in intact families but widens dramatically in fatherless ones.
The Gender Gap: The report explains that boys are more affected by father absence than girls. Both, however, benefit from intact families, with 84% of boys and 90% of girls earning A’s and B’s.
The East Asian Gap: Over 90% of Asian children grow up in two-parent homes, compared with 75% of whites, 65% of Hispanics, and 40% of blacks.
The report proposes policies that get to the heart of the problem: promoting a positive culture of fatherhood, hiring more male teachers, teaching the “Success Sequence” (graduate, work, marry, then have kids), and limiting access to pornography. Unlike so many tired curricular and grading tweaks that water down the quality of education, these reforms actually strike at the root of the division.
Yes, the study focuses on Virginia, but the lesson applies nationwide: parents have far greater influence over student outcomes than teachers or schools ever could.
Barack Obama once observed, “Too many fathers are missing — missing from too many lives and too many homes.” In truth, the “achievement gap” is really a parent gap. Until we take that seriously, education’s spinning wheels will only deepen the already perilous divides.
Jody Stallings has been an award-winning teacher in Charleston since 1992 and is director of the Charleston Teacher Alliance. To submit a question, order his books, or follow him on social media, please visit JodyStallings.com.
Thank you for this information. I will be sure to pass it on to others who have the same concern.