Achievement Gap

At last, ceaseless Wire-blogging leads to an actual policy issue as Zachary Norris recalls his days in the Baltimore City school system: "I had no formal teaching experience and no real qualifications other than a college degree and a strong desire to 'close the achievement gap.' I joined the Teach For America program and ended up teaching in Baltimore for three years. The experience was humbling."

But what would it mean -- what could it mean -- to close the achievement gap between high- and low-SES students in American schools? For a whole variety of reasons, this just doesn't seem like it's going to be possible. At the outer limit, more prosperous parents are always going to be able to re-open the gap by investing even more resources in their kids' education. An education and child development arms race to the top might not be a bad thing, but it wouldn't close any socioeconomic gaps. To do that, you actually need to tackle inequality itself. In the context of a reasonably egalitarian society, a well-functioning school system shouldn't exhibit massive achievement gaps, but in the context of a wildly inegalitarian one there's no way the school system can singlehandedly set everything back to zero. See also super-intern Conor Clarke's thought on the latest homework "debate."

Comments

But what would it mean -- what could it mean -- to close the achievement gap between high- and low-SES students in American schools? For a whole variety of reasons, this just doesn't seem like it's going to be possible. At the outer limit, more prosperous parents are always going to be able to re-open the gap by investing even more resources in their kids' education.

Presumably, one sees diminishing returns to increasing investments into education. Is the achievement gap between rich students and middle class students anywhere as great as the gap between middle class and poor students?

However, I agree with you when you say "there's no way the school system can singlehandedly set everything back to zero".
There's a level of economic and social deprevation below which investments into education cease to have meaningful effect.

Posted by WillieStyle | September 19, 2006 10:30 AM

We can't all agree that ghetto kids are doomed and wait for social equality. It's fair enough to own up to our past failures, but to paraphrase the Reverend Al Sharpton, we can't drop these kids like we do a bowel movement. Computers are not good teaching tools, but they should be good socializing ones. With the internet, communication is possible outside the poor home environment--as is motivation.

Another piece in the puzzle is the elimination of drugs. This mainline villain separates today's poor from the historically rags to riches stories of 100 years ago. It sets up the marriage of money (respect) and crime that has always been the province of the poor. But it also cripples the children, and the parenting skills of the mothers and grandmothers. So many men are in jail as to make them sadly irrelevant to this discussion.

Government needs the will and the bucks to set these kids free. Yet I see no national politician addressing this problem, no candidate with the death wish of raising taxes. This is the Reagan legacy--government is bad and costly, instead of government is the solution. With all their religious talk, it is ironic that is the Republicans that took Christ's teaching out of public policy.

Posted by Mal | September 19, 2006 3:16 PM

Your post reminds me of something Christopher Jencks wrote in one of his previous lives:

"As long as egalitarians assume that public policy cannot contribute to economic equality directly but must proceed by ingenious manipulations of marginal institutions like schools, progress will remain glacial. If we want to move beyond this tradition, we will have to establish political control over the economic institutions that shape our society."

Nice to see that some people are getting the message again after several decades of amnesia.

Posted by Tom Geraghty | September 19, 2006 4:11 PM

Tom: what's the source on your quote; I'd be interested in reading it. (Just to make clear, I'm not questioning you; I'm really interested in reading it--my primary acquaintence with Jencks' work is in his pro-voucher efforts.)

Posted by flippantangel | September 19, 2006 9:00 PM

"As long as egalitarians assume that public policy cannot contribute to economic equality directly but must proceed by ingenious manipulations of marginal institutions like schools, progress will remain glacial."

Saying that there's no point in trying to make the education system work better until we make fundamental social reforms is a recipe for neer trying to do anything to make the education system work.

Just another chorus of,"There will be pie in the sky, by and by . . ."

Posted by rea | September 20, 2006 7:20 AM

But what would it mean -- what could it mean -- to close the achievement gap between high- and low-SES students in American schools?

Why not actually go to the NCLB statute and find out? See the analysis of the statute here. The skinny is that "narrowing the achievement gap" merely means getting as many students as possible over a set "proficiency" cut-score. The natural result of which reduces the gap between the higher-performing groups and the lower-performing groups.

To do that, you actually need to tackle inequality itself. In the context of a reasonably egalitarian society, a well-functioning school system shouldn't exhibit massive achievement gaps

Really? As long as there are IQ gaps between groups there will be a real achievement gap. Those IQ gaps prepsently exist. Moreover, IQ is relatively immutable and resistant to environmental effects aimed to increase it. So Rothsteinian and Kozolesque arguments in favor of eliminating inequality have almost no evidence of success and are unlikely to function as intended. Achievement gaps will exist as long as IQ gaps exist. The only way we know to narrow the achievement gap is by teaching better and increasing achievement across the board, thus masking the achievement gap. Under NCLB it is accaeptable to mreely make all students proficient, even though some students will be more proficient than others.

Posted by KDeRoas | September 20, 2006 11:36 AM

An education and child development arms race to the top might not be a bad thing, but it wouldn't close any socioeconomic gaps. To do that, you actually need to tackle inequality itself.

This is putting the chicken before the egg. Inequality is determined by education (and IQ as KDeRosa posted). I dont know if you can eliminate inequality, but you can certain reduce poverty, but the only way to do this, it to improve education. See KDeRosa's blog for details. Years of social helping hand policies have barely made a dent, to truly reduce poverty you must first fix our schools. Of course it will take a generation to see any results.

Posted by parentalcation | September 20, 2006 11:58 AM

flippantangel: the Jencks quote comes from his book Inequality, published in 1973.

rea: You're missing the point, which is not to "do nothing" about schools. Just don't expect to reduce inequality too much via the education system.

Posted by Tom Geraghty | September 20, 2006 2:58 PM

But haven't you heard?

No Child Left Behind mandates that every school must reach 100% proficiency by 2014. States have some leeway to define proficiency, but whatever it is, schools, and any identifiable subgroups in each school, have to make steady "Adequate Yearly Progress" or AYP, ramping up their proficiency towards 100%. Any school that fails for five years in a row, the federal government can fire all of the staff, take them over and run them, or reopen them as charter schools!

Here in Massachusetts where the MCAS is the primary factor in proficiency, what this means is that by 2014, every school is mandated to have better test scores than the best districts in the state have now! Rejoice and Hallelujah!

Only small problem; in practice, the state is sending our a press release each year about this time listing the new schools that have joined the ranks of the failing, dutifully reported by newspapers across the state. We're up around 20% of schools now that are labelled as failures by the state.

By the time they're done, I suspect all the parents and teachers with any mobility will have left the failing public school system for greener, more private pastures.

Posted by TwentyOne | September 20, 2006 11:05 PM

Explain to me again how forcing kids to stay in a failing school helps kids.

And while it's true that 100% of the students taking the state's assessment must be proficient, currently 1% of students are permitted to take an alternate assessment (those with legitmate cognitive disabilities) and up to 5% can be excused for absences on test day.

For NCLB to work as intended, schools need to actually improve themselves in the 14 years the statute has alloted. It's not magic, it requires effort. That effort has not yet been forthcoming.

Which brings me back to my first point, why are we so upset that underperforming schools that are either unwilling or incapable of improving might get sanctioned or shuttered under NCLB?

Posted by KDeRosa | September 21, 2006 12:58 PM

KDeRosa, the math behind NCLB doesn't add up.

In Massachusetts, a grand total of seven subgroup/school sets out of about 5000 hit the 100% proficiency goal mandated by the statute for 2014.

It is simply not possible that every subgroup of kids in every school across the state will exceed the test score results of ten of the highest scoring districts around the nation by 2014. And along the way, a lot of perfectly good schools get listed in the state's press release each year naming the new schools that have entered the ranks of the "failing". If one school out of twenty can hit those numbers, that would be a miracle.

So why turn over the other 19 schools out of 20, many considered fine by the people who moved to particular towns so they could attend particular schools under local control, to be run by the state and federal government as ideologues see fit?

Posted by TwentyOne | September 22, 2006 9:08 PM

TwentyOne,

Which kids do you want to leave behind? Let me guess. The black and brown ones? The girls? How about the poor ones? The ones The special ones?

Isn't that why we have a public education system? To guarantee that these kids, in particular, are educated so they can lead productive lives and paerticipate in our democratic republic?

My definition of "perfectly good" doesn't include schools that are failing large percentages of these kids, like most of the schools you are so enamored with.

As long as we allow to Feds to have a role in education, they can demand that the states spend their money accountably.

Posted by KDeRosa | September 22, 2006 9:56 PM

KD, if the goals were reasonable, and the reports weren't issued as a press release of "failed schools", and the consequences of failing weren't so politically driven by ideologues on a mission that has little to do with education, you'd have some ground to stand on.

Mandating that every one of Springfield's public schools has to perform at the same level as Boston Latin is hardly a way to inspire good teachers to try to teach in Springfield, particularly given that the state will be authorized to fire them all in a few years when they inevitably will fail to improve at the mandated annual rate and fall under harsher and harsher sanctions.

The mandate sets goals that are unachievable and punishes schools that fail to reach the goal. There may be a few schools that can turn that absurd setup to their advantage, but for most schools, it is simply a bureaucratic shift of control away from localities to the state and federal government, and in 95 out of 100 cases, local control leads to better education.

Posted by TwentyOne | September 23, 2006 4:54 PM