Narrowing the Gap between Hispanic and White Students: A Case Study of One School District in South Texas

The purpose of this qualitative single site case study was to gain an understanding of the successful educational and leadership practices utilized at various levels of the school district that resulted in a narrowing of the achievement gap between Hispanic and White students. This research provides practitioners with an understanding that the achievement gap can be addressed, and a roadmap of best practices. This case study consisted of interviewing the superintendent, executive director of academics, and the high school principal in order to understand from their perspective what attributed to the atypical results they are achieving. Interview questions were derived from Leithwood's linking leadership to learning theoretical framework, and Yosso's community cultural wealth theoretical framework. From those interviews, in conjunction with supporting documents, codes were developed, and themes emerged. In addition to the themes, each theme had three sub-themes. As a result of the interviews, several best practices emerged and a conceptual model was developed. This conceptual model takes the aspects of both theoretical frameworks and merges them together to achieve a narrowing of the achievement gap in Embers ISD. This finding suggest that the achievement gap is multi-faceted and must be addressed that way. Hoping for a narrowing of the achievement gap by focusing only on leadership will not work nor will focusing only on community cultural wealth. However, when using a combination of the two, this case study suggest that the achievement gap can be narrowed.