Mind The Gap
Kevin Carey responds to my skepticism about the possibility of "closing the achievement gap" in public education by saying "it's all a matter of how you define 'close the achievement gap.'" And so it is. Carey says under one definition ("erase all academic differences between students of different economic backgrounds") this is impossible, whereas under a different definition ("bring all students, including low-income students, up to defined minimum levels of proficiency") it's realistic. I suppose I agree with that.
On some level then, this is perhaps a meaningless semantic controversy. Nevertheless, it certainly seems to me that the phrase "close the achievement gap" strongly implies a desire to narrow or eliminate (i.e., "close") the differential achievement level (i.e., "gap") between high-SES and low-SES rather than a desire to bring low-SES students up to a minimum level of achievement. That latter goal doesn't seem to have any particular relationship to the concept of a "gap" that ought to be "closed." Which returns me to what I think I was saying initially, namely that our education system could serve low-SES students better, and we ought to endeavor to do so. Doing better on this score would have a variety of benefits, but a significant reduction in inequality, even inequality in educational achievement, isn't likely going to be among those benefits.
Andrew Rotherham wants to note that in policy terms No Child Left Behind is in fact geared toward Carey's goals. That is an important point, and I think NCLB was a pretty good bill. To me, though, the "close the achievement gap" rhetoric lies somewhere between pernicious and misleading. As Rotherham emphasizes, there's no measures a liberal society can take to prevent socioeconomic inequalities becoming educational inequalities through the mechanism of higher levels of high-SES parental investment in education. So insofar as you care about educational inequities, you really need to tackle broader socioeconomic inequities.
Comments
> That is an important point, and I think
> NCLB was a pretty good bill.
Really? Personally I think NCLB was a 20-year Norquistian plan to de-legitimize and de-fund even the best and most well-run public school districts, be they urban or suburban. And also to cut off at the knees any successful magnet or voluntary desegration plan [1].
Cranky
[1] Our high-quality public district is failing NCLB standards due to our inability to bring our voluntary desegration students up 3 grade levels per year, so the most likely result will be to eliminate the program. Real progress for everyone!
I kind of wonder, to what extent would addressing inequality address the achievement gap in the sense that you mean it?
The assumption is that since academic performance is linked to SES, closing the gap in SES will close the gap in academice performance. But what if SES is an indicator for some other variable and its the underlying variable influencing academic performance? Granted, there are specific ways that spending money on a child can improve their academic performance. But I would imagine that the majority of the influence from parents on children's academic performance comes through factors that do not depend directly on financial means. I imagine my upbringing dramatically influence my academic performance for the better and my parents spent very little on my education through high school.
So say you decide to shift the tax burden to wealthier families. Will their kids suddenly start doing more poorly in school? I doubt it. If you're going to justify addressing SES inequality from the standpoint of academic performance, I think you need to be more careful about examining the manner in which SES interacts with academic performance. But maybe people have looked at this question- I'm not an expert in the field or anything.
"THE WIRE" SPOILER ALERT
I think NCLB is at best window dressing. It guarantees mediocrity - while it may create some accountability for bad teachers it handcuffs good teachers and makes them irrelevant. From the reviews I've read it sounds like "The Wire" is going to attack NCLB pretty harshly in upcoming episodes. That should make for fun discussion.
I'm afraid Cranky is probably right. For two reasons, on a posteriori, one a priori.
First, I can tell you that in my area the result of NCLB has been that nearly all of the public schools resources are devoted to the bottom 20% of the class. There's a huge penalty for having those kids fail, and no particular reward for having your better kids do better.
The result has been that students who are competent are neglected by the schools. The result of that, in turn, is that any parents who have an option are opting out, esp. the parents of students who are competent--esp. esp. the parents of gifted kids (who are official pariahs under NCLB).
In other words, NCLB has accelerated the flight from public schools. That's been our experience in our area of the country.
A priori argument: this policy was crafted by the **Bush** administration. (That's the only premise needed).
What were the odds, ex ante, that it would be anything other than a catastrophic debacle that would leave even its good-faith advocates shaking their heads in despair over its unintended outcomes? What were the odds that *this* initiative would falsify Daniel Davies theorem, when every other policy initiative of this regime has conformed to it?
I thought this was about Barnett & Kaplan. I dunno nothing bout schooling. Outa here.
How much time and money are we wasting to teach kids how to do what a $5 calculator can do for them?
How much time and money are we wasting teaching them to write cursive...I haven't written anything in cursive in 5 years except a few signatures on permission forms and pizza checks.
How about spelling? Spell checker, anyone? Free.
NCLB has kids spending 12 years learning skills that are worth about $10 total in the real world...
The idea that NCLB established a floor that allows students to rise above is a little after-the-fact justification, I'm afraid. At the time, the rhetoric was that all students would reach high standards. And even though there is grumbling now that some states have set the bar for "proficiency" rather low, the fact remains that large numbers of students still have not reached it, and it will take quite a stretch for them to do so.
To me, the best possible outcome would be to eliminate the correlation betweemn race (and class) and achievement. That is, there might still be differences in achievement among students, but it would not necessarily be the case that the average performance of white students would be substantially higher than the average for black students.
"The only sure way to close the achievement gap would be to hit high-achieving students over the head with a ballpeen hammer." -- Greg Cochran
Kid blitzer's point is well taken. Barring reform of NCLB, it is only a matter of time before many school districts have to literally take from the achievement rich and give to the achievement poor to comply with the statute's mandated test score levels. And, these school districts are exactly the ones struggling with diversity and that deserve our support. All-rich suburban districts and all-poor urban districts do not face this dilemma; certainly, not to the same extent.
Another resource allocation impact of NCLB is to make districts take money away from social studies, art, music and other non-tested subjects and redirect it to the tested subjects of language arts, math and, soon, science. This is already happening in many school districts. The effect of this forced re-allocation of resources is to drive middle class families out of the public schools -- exactly what the right-wing architects of NCLB want.
mert,
Federal education spending is only about $1 billion per state per year.
If a few states opted out of the NCLB freakshow and refused federal money...it would go away very fast.
I think it's important to differentiate between the alleged aims of NCLB and what it actually does to achieve those aims. As I understand it, the aim is to get all students in all categories to achieve more. I think that's entirely laudable. As for what it does to bring students closer to these goals, as far I can tell it does absolutely nothing. The requirements of NCLB appear to be so draconian that the true intent of the bill is to cut off funding to as many school districts as possible.
And this is what the goal really is. Wealthy Republicans don't want to fund public education, so they've cooked up a wide to defund it in the most politically palatable way possible.
I think it's imperative to be honest about the motivations of the people involved in the education debate if any real progress to public education is to be made.
> And this is what the goal really is. Wealthy
> Republicans don't want to fund public education,
> so they've cooked up a wide to defund it in the
> most politically palatable way possible.
>
> I think it's imperative to be honest about the
> motivations of the people involved in the
> education debate if any real progress to public
> education is to be made.
The problem that the Democrats, liberals, the left, even mushy moderates have is that the Radicals set 20-year goals /and carry them out/. Reality-based people just don't believe this, and so they get blindsided time and again as the 20-year periods go by and the long-term effects of the Radical slow poisons hit home.
It is no secret that the Radicals would like to dismantle ALL public eduction, whether it be "failed" urban districts or happy friendly leafy suburban districts. They want all public schools closed, all children in private schools, and everyone using "vouchers". Lot of reasons why they want that, but they have said time and again that that is their goal. In so many words.
So what do the Dems do? Why, Teddy Kennedy lines up to sign for NCLB! Gee, what you think the long-term effects of this bill, written by Norquist's staff, are going to be?
It is getting to where is isn't even slighly amusing to watch the process.
Cranky
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