This essay addresses the racial consequence of framing research about educational inequities with a deficit model, focusing on the history and implications of the term “achievement gap.” It suggests that a better alternative is working from asset-based or systems-level approaches that center students who are historically and currently marginalized.

This study tested whether student-perceived at-home parental support for learning is associated to students' personal goal orientations and persistence in mathematics in the classroom. Self-report questionnaire data was collected from 1,534 grade-nine students attending three ethnically-diverse high schools in the southeastern United States. Results of a full structural equation model indicated that students' perception of at-home parental support for learning is strongly associated with students' personal mastery and performance approach goal orientations. All variables, in turn, accounted for 64% of the sample variance in self-reported persistence in mathematics in the classroom. These findings indicate that at-home parental support for learning is significantly positively associated with students' academic motivation and persistence for mathematics in the classroom, which, in the long run, may improve high school students' mathematics achievement.

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