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Fast facts on achievement

January 21, 2010 By

The Education Equality Project’s Fast Facts are based on the idea that what gets measured gets done.

For far too long we have lacked the necessary data to track and understand the breadth, depth, and complexity of the education achievement gap. Luckily, that is changing. Today we have more information about success and failure in public education than ever before, helping us to better understand and solve the achievement gap.

Under good teachers, for example:

Research suggests that a good teacher is the single most important factor in boosting achievement, more important than class size, the dollars spent per student, or the quality of textbooks and materials.

On average, Fast Facts says, low-income students are two years behind middle-class students.

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Gender gap

January 16, 2010 By

Schools aren’t well suited to boys, says Richard Whitmire, author of Why Boys Fail, in Gender Gap, an Education Next interview.  Gender roles still limit girls, especially in math and science, responds Susan McGee Bailey of the Wellesley Centers for Women, principal author of the 1992 AAUW report How Schools Shortchange Girls.

Dropout and graduation rates, grades, and many test scores show boys are lagging, says Whitmire.

(Males) go to college at lower rates and then graduate at lower rates. . . . As of fall 2007 (in Minnesota), degrees earned by gender were bachelor’s: 58 percent female; master’s: 69 percent female; PhD: 53 percent female. Nationally, 58 percent of those earning bachelor’s degrees and 62 percent of those earning associate’s degrees are female.

Both Whitmire and Bailey agree that male and female students do best in schools that provide extra help immediately when students slip behind, instead of assuming that they’ll catch up later.

The research is clear, Bailey says.

Schools that set high standards for all, involve parents, provide firm discipline and an orderly, encouraging environment, and where teachers are respected and engaged are more successful. Such schools do not as easily fall into the black hole of differential expectations for girls and boys, or one racial or ethnic group over another.

Women earn less than men at every educational level, Baily points out.

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Keep the good school promise

November 30, 2009 By

Those who want to dump standards and testing are abandoning the good school promise, writes Tom Vander Ark, ex-Gatesman, on his blog.

The primary reason we have a federal law like NCLB is that school boards (and state boards) allowed generations of chronic failure. They cut bad employment deals and asked for more money when things didn’t go well. Teachers that could went to the suburbs. Most low income and minority kids were getting left behind. Anyone committed to equity could see things had to change.

NCLB reflected a consensus that 1) measurement and transparency would help us understand the problem, 2) that a basic template for school accountability would ensure that things would get better for underserved students, and 3) the federal government should play a bigger role in ensuring equity and excellence.

There were a bunch of technical problems with the bill in 2001 and they never got fixed. But the biggest problem is that 8 years later states and school boards have continued to allow chronic failure—they basically ignored the federal demands to intervene.

If we throw out NCLB, we’re giving up on equity, Vander Ark writes.

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Discipline quotas

November 11, 2009 By

Tucson has adopted racial/ethnic quotas for discipline, writes Heather Mac Donald on City Journal.

Schools that suspend or expel Hispanic and black students at higher rates than white students will now get a visit from a district “Equity Team” and will be expected to remedy those disparities by reducing their minority discipline rates.

Administrators say suspended students “lose valuable learning time,”  widening the ethnic academic achievement gap.

Such thinking ignores the students who are not disrupting class or threatening teachers and who also lose valuable learning time when unruly or violent students remain in the classroom.

Mac Donald offers help for Tucson principals told to examine the “root causes” of disparate rates of suspension: “The root cause of disparate rates of suspension is disparate rates of bad behavior.”

What’s the root cause of bad behavior? Cherchez the absent father, Mac Donald suggests.

Filed Under: Education, Parenting Tagged With: , , ,
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