Race to Close the Gap
Jeffrey J. Palladino
Baruch College
Race to Close the Gap
The narrowing of the achievement gap is possibly the most controversial topic in education today. There are many issues in education policy today that are divisive; class size, school budgets, student vouchers, charter schools and standardized testing are all issues that are complex and polarizing. However, I believe that if the black-white achievement gap was smaller or non-existent many of the controversial issues in education policy could be diminished or extinguished. The black-white achievement gap is an issue that has impact on most education policy. When referring to the achievement gap, the National Governors’ Association (2005) states “This is one of the most pressing education policy challenges that states currently face.” If our education systems did a better job a narrowing black-white achievement, I believe there might be less lengthy political debates about school vouchers, class size and charter schools. Unfortunately, there are no simplistic formulas to eradicate the black-white achievement gap. This complex issue has education policy experts with very different opinions and ideas debating what is the cause of the achievement gap and how schools can close it. “Common Sense School Reform” by Frederick M. Hess, recommends a no nonsense “commonsense” approach to schools to make “no excuses” for the causes of the achievement gap and to adopt practices that inspire school competition, teacher accountability and an influx of new school leaders from outside the education mainstream. In Richard Rothstein’s “Class and Schools: using Social, Economic and Educational Reform to Close the Black-White Achievement Gap” the numerous causes that could impact the academic achievement of students are analyzed to demonstrate the effect on student achievement. Rothstein also provides a comprehensive list of costly educational policies that he believes would improve the socio-economic lives of students to impact the achievement gap. Both of these authors have extremely different beliefs in the impact of socio-economic factors on academic achievement and how to remedy the issue with education policy. There are valid points to both of the policies that are supported by Hess and Rothstein, but there are also some problems with some of their suggestions and considerations. A combination of some of their suggestions and other additional policies would be a more realistic and thoughtful approach to improving the black-white achievement gap and our entire education system.
What is Commonsense?
In Commonsense School Reform, Hess (2004) outlines major reforms for closing the achievement gap into five categories: tough-minded accountability, competition, teaching force, leadership and reinvention. Reforming these categories into basic commonsense school reform is the ticket to closing the achievement gap and transforming school systems. Hess believes that schools have significant impact on student progress and that education is the solution to closing the achievement gap and socio-economic disparity. In order to improve schools and close the black-white achievement gap schools must be more accountable to results. School systems and education policy experts must not ask for money to fund reforms. Commonsense school reform requires flexibility of educators and accountability to performance results for systematic change.
The Systematic Issues of Class and Schools.
Rothstein’s (2004) fundamental belief is that the black-white achievement gap exists because of the socio-economic disparity in the black & white communities. Rothstein believes that poverty is the major factor in black student’s low performance on standardized exams, difficulty with cognitive abilities and poor non-cognitive skills. The results of poverty are so damaging to black students that schools are unable to make significant progress on academic gains with them because of the extreme differences in the social classes. Rothstein’s reform for closing the black-white achievement gap is to increase spending for high poverty children to provide resources that are available in most middle class families. Rothstein believes this would narrow the achievement gap, though it is not financially possible. Rothstein (2004) “While an additional $156 billion annually to make a significant dent in the black-white achievement gap is not politically realistic, it is important to consider it because, in the absence of such spending, talk of closing the achievement gap is unrealistic, perhaps even irresponsible.”
Commonsense Reform’s Strengths and Weaknesses
Hess believes that school systems need to adopt tough-minded accountability around standards, student performance and assessments. In commonsense reform, competition is healthy for both schools and students. Charter schools, school vouchers and private schools give families the opportunity to leave schools that are not performing to attend schools that are achieving. This competition will improve failing schools or force them to be closed and create innovation in schools to keep up with the demand from students and families. According to Hess (2004), “This “creative destruction” supports a steady shift of people and resources from weaker organizations to stronger ones while creating room for new and more effective schools and practitioners.” Competition can be a good thing for students and schools. It would be a benefit for students to have choice and for failing schools to be closed down if they were not performing. However, Hess overlooks that fact that the process of evaluating, closing and transferring schools would need a tremendous amount of oversight and would need significant funding to execute. This is in direct opposition to his policy of additional funding to schools and financial accountability. The belief that competition will increase innovation is optimistic but schools will still be accountability to standardized exam results to remain open. School systems may shun innovative practices for safe, traditional test preparation practices that would be more likely to produce positive results on standardized exams. The pressure to perform on standardized exams could be a factor in the recent extensive cheating scandals in Atlanta and Philadelphia. “We are in a period now where I believe the results of state testing systems around the country are coming under scrutiny,” Merryl H. Tisch, the commissioner of the State Board of Regents, said in an interview, adding that the state was acting to shore up public trust in its tests (Otterman, 2011). An increase in funding would be needed to oversee testing results and that would be an unintended consequence to commonsense reform and not aligned to Hess’ belief of manageable school budgets that are accountable. There is also evidence that a school voucher program that provides families with school choice has not had a significant impact on student progress. Milwaukee Public Schools has one of the first voucher programs in the country and recent results have not demonstrated an increase in test scores. Richards and Hetzner (2011) reported that students in Milwaukee's school choice program performed worse than or about the same as students in Milwaukee Public Schools in math and reading on the latest statewide test.
The teaching force in Hess’ commonsense reform would require an extensive overhaul. Teachers would need to be recruited and trained from other sources than traditional teacher training programs and in a more efficient manner. This would enable getting better candidates in the classroom in a less complicated process. Teachers would also have less job security and a pay scale that reflected student achievement and not years in the system and teacher credits. Hess (2004) states “Moving to a more flexible system of hiring, firing, and paying teachers is part and parcel of moving to an emphasis on accountability and competition.” Reforms that improve teacher quality and makes the process of getting rid of ineffective teaching would have a big impact on school systems and the achievement gap. School leaders should be able to have more flexibility with school staff to keep teachers that they believe are making a positive impact and to get rid of teachers that are not contributing enough to student progress. The challenge of Hess’ suggestions would be to create a systematic, fair way to value teacher quality. If the only indicator of teacher quality is standardized test scores, then the pressure for teachers to rely mostly on test preparation to be judged proficient could increase. Other positive factors of good teachers could not be assessed by standardized exams results and could result in excellent educators being dismissed.
Rothstein’s Class and Schools
Rothstein’s evaluation of the black-white achievement gap is an incredible comprehensive evaluation of the socioeconomic factors that impact students in school. Rothstein argues that schools cannot overcome the incredible socioeconomic disparity that low-income students face. There is much “commonsense” to this argument. Students from low socioeconomic communities start their school years already significantly behind their higher income peers. The hectic, traumatic lives of the lower socioeconomic students make it nearly impossible for them to catch their high performing peers. Rothstein declares that vision, hearing, dental and medical issues impact students by causing disruption to learning and frequent absenteeism. This analysis makes sense, how can students that come to school already behind and then have their academic progress delayed often by chronic health and social issues that they do not control, maintain or surpass the progress of the their middle class peers? Rothstein’s comprehensive view of the purpose of schools and education also leads him to evaluate not only the cognitive ability of students that are displayed in standardized test results but he also does an evaluation of how behind low socioeconomic black students are in non-cognitive skills. This is an important aspect of the research, in order for education policy to make progress with students and schools it has to consider the complete goal of schools, learning and education. When discussing the importance of assessing students for non-cognitive variables, Sedlacek (in Press) states, “We do not need to ignore our current tests, we need to add some new measures that expand the potential we can derive from assessment.
The issues with Rothstein’s evaluation and suggestions are that almost every difficulty that low socioeconomic families face is used as a barrier to student achievement. This approach is not using an asset based approach to solve problems and can be defeating to families, schools, communities, funders and policy makers that are trying to make an impact on the achievement gap. Additionally, Rothstein’s solution to reduce the achievement gap is unrealistic. Increasing annual national spending by over $150 billion to close the achievement gap is impracticable and improbable and does not drive the agenda of improving our education system forward.
Finish Line
In order to improve K-12 education in our country and close the achievement gap, I would enact a three-point plan:
1) Creation of comprehensive performance assessment for teachers. Judging the value of teachers is a complex situation and value-added results on standardized test exams do not reveal the true value of teachers. I would use a rating system similar to the NYC School report card. A weighted system that evaluates: Student performance on standardized exams, value added on standardized exams, student/parent surveys, principal evaluation and peer review. Each category would count for 20% of the total grade. Obviously negotiations with unions would have to occur and a fair evaluation system would have to be negotiated to move unions and teachers to the professional status that they deserve. Merrow (2011) declared that one change that must happen if public education is to survive: unions must become professional, not trade, organizations.
2) Remove teacher tenure if grades on assessments are not proficient. Protecting bad teachers not only hurts students, families and communities, but it hurts teachers. “The dance of the lemons” must end to increase professionalism and quality control. Unfortunately, some in the teaching profession take advantage of the security of tenure. However, many teachers truly care about their students, schools and professional commitment. However, when there are teachers that should not be in a school community, school leaders need to be able to get rid of them in a timely manner.
3) Increase the school year for schools that have over 40% of their students eligible for free/reduced lunch by one month. This sounds like an expensive proposal that Rothstein would like. However, there are a certain percentage of schools that account for the majority of the students being left behind. The numbers might have to be adjusted for the free/reduced lunch percentage but I believe if you create a list of the schools most in need, similar to NYC DOE’s impact schools for schools with the most persistent crimes, you could create flexible staffing at schools throughout the school year and not have a tremendous financial increase. Money for local after-school, community centers that have summer programs could be redirected to schools. School teaching staffs could select flexible assignments throughout the school year, so the month of July would be fully staffed for the students with the most needs.
References
Hess, Frederick M. Common Sense School Reform. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2004. Print.
Merrow, John. (2011, Aug 3). "The ‘Alien Structure’ of Education, and Other Thoughts. Retrieved from http://takingnote.learningmatters.tv/?p=5221
National Governors’ Association. (2005). Closing the achievement gap. Retrieved August 1, 2011 from http://www.subnet.nga.org/educlear/achievement/
Otterman, Sharon. (2011, Aug 1) Review Aims to Avert Cheating on State Tests. New York Times. Retrieved from http://www.nytimes.com/2011/08/02/nyregion/new-york-reviews-ways-to-avoid-school-cheating-scandals.html?ref=education
Richards, Erin, and Amy Hetzner. (2011, March 29) Choice Schools Not Outperforming MPS. Milwaukee Journal Sentinel. Retrieved from http://www.jsonline.com/news/education/118820339.html
Rothstein, Richard. Class and Schools: Using Social, Economic, and Educational Reform to Close the Black-white Achievement Gap. [New York, N.Y.]: Teachers College, Columbia University, 2004. Print.
Sedlacek, W.E. (in Press). Noncognitive Measures for Higher Education Admissions. In B. Mcgaw, E. Baker, & P. L. Peterson (Eds.). International Encyclopedia of Education, Third Edition. Amsterdam, The Netherlands. Elsevier.
