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Re: Please purge "Achievement Gap"

As with many people, Art, you are confusing LEVEL of achievement with GAINS in achievement. Level is highly associated with family and community factors, gain much less so. But I think the only people who believe those particular results are Bill Sanders and his colleagues. In addition, the increases are for off-the-shelf items from the CTBS. Whoopee. In addition, the definition of "effectiveness" is circular--effective teachers are those who raise test scores. So it's hardly surprising that a student with such teachers for three years has his test scores rise. Finally, Sanders' identification of effective teachers has never been corroborated by other types of evidence.

JB

----- Original Message ----- From: <aburke5054@aol.com>
To: <arn-l@interversity.org>
Sent: Sunday, December 09, 2007 2:05 PM
Subject: Re: [arn-l] Please purge "Achievement Gap"


Distilled down, Monty is saying that that there is an achievement gap,
that schools can't do anything about it, and that schools can and must
do something about it How fun it that?

Still, it is true, as Monty claims, that many studies have found that
"non-school factors overwhelm what schools can do" (#6 below).
However, there is interesting and important research the shows that
schools, more specifically, teachers, can and do have an effect that
overwhelms non-school factors.

W.L. Sanders and J.C. Rivers, Cumulative and Residual Effects of
Teachers on Future Student Academic Achievement, University of
Tennessee Value-Added Research and Assessment Center, 1996.

Kevin Carey explains why it's important ...

"... they found that teacher effectiveness varies tremendously—some are
much more effective than others. Some of the earliest and best analysis
has been done in Tennessee, where researchers found that all else being
equal, students assigned to the most effective teachers for three years
in a row performed 50 percentile points higher—that’s on a 100-point
scale—than comparable students assigned to the least effective teachers
for three years in a row.

So large was the impact of teachers on student learning that it
exceeded any one thing about the students themselves. The authors of
the study concluded that teacher effectiveness is the "the single
biggest factor influencing gains in achievement," an influence bigger
than race, poverty, parent’s education, or any of the other factors
that are often thought to doom children to failure."

Source for Kevin's quote:

http://www2.edtrust.org/NR/rdonlyres/5704CBA6-CE12-46D0-A852-D2E2B4638885/0/Spring04.pdf

p. 4

Art

-----Original Message-----
From: monty@fairtest.org
To: arn-l@interversity.org
Sent: Sat, 8 Dec 2007 11:01 am
Subject: Re: [arn-l] Please purge "Achievement Gap"


In practice, "achievement gap" refers almost entirely to test score
differences. Sometimes there is reference to group differences in
graduation rates or college attendance, but almost all the discourse
actually focuses on group differences in test scores. So what's the
problem?


1) Test scores measure limited slices of what students reasonably ought
to learn (given reasonable significant individual variation based on
interests, aptitudes etc. as to what they should learn). By only
reporting test scores, real learning outcomes are often distorted or
masked. Further, by focusing pretty much entirely on test scores,
scores become the working definition of what it means to be educated.
This justifies the narrowing of curriculum and instruction to focus on
tested subjects, and in the tested subjects for curriculum and
instruction to resemble the tests. Thus, we have the reduction of
schooling, especially for low-income students, to test prep. In sum,
the use of 'achievement gap' in its actual political use contributes
toward thinking about education in terms of test results and thereby
contributes to narrowing and dumbing down education. That said, there
is little doubt that learning outcomes vary greatly across groups, and
that these variances are a serious problem deserving a serious
response.


2) Focusing on achievement gap and thus on outcomes has the effect of
ignoring inputs and processes. Defenders of this approach argue - with
some justification - that too little attention had been paid to
outcomes (independent of how we describe, measure, evaluate outcomes).
They also claimed that attention to outcomes would lead people to then
focus on necessary inputs and processes so as to improve outcomes. One
problem is the very narrow specification of outcomes as test scores.
Another is that in practice attention to inputs and processes has been
seriously inadequate. The other day I was reading a claim by John
Merrow (in a Commentary in this week's ed week) that schools found to
be 'in need of improvement' will get extra resources. But they don't.
In fact, with transport and supplemental services, the funds available
to most of the kids in a 'failing' school are reduced.


3) When the 'standards' approach gained sway in the 1990s, at least
there was a view that there also needed to be input and delivery
standards. A very weak version of that appeared in Clinton's ed reform
bill, but the Gingrich gang promptly gutted even that when they took
over Congress. Such standards have not existed. The consequence is no
functional standards and no real accountability for providing resources
schools need, while schools are excoriated and attacked when they fail
to accomplish what they have not been given the resources to
accomplish. When teachers and principals, etc., try to meet the
irrational demands of NCLB (and parallel state requirements) by
focusing more intensely on the tests, they are then attacked for
teaching to the test (read Ed Trust on that).


4)Gloria Ladsen-Billings refers to the educational debt owed in
particular by the nation to African Americans. If the debt were paid,
the consequences of unequal and inadequate education could be
addressed. If one does not talk about the educational debt and the
educational input 'gaps' in a serious way, talk about the achievement
gap is mostly illusion or deliberate distortion, because it is the debt
that primarily causes the results.


6) Study after study going back to the Coleman Report has made it clear
that non-school factors overwhelm what schools can do. The most recent
is one by ETS. Mike Winerip summed it up in his column in the NYTimes
(welcome back, Mike, we missed you). Just 4 family factors explains
most of the difference in outcomes. A decade or so ago a study of NAEP
similarly found a handful of factors explained most of the state
differences in NAEP results. So the educational debt is compounded by
the housing debt (recall racial covenants that ensured African
Americans could not move to the suburbas after world war II), the
medical care debt (unequal access to medical care by race and class is
pervasive), the employment debt (by the measure of wages, African
Americans remain about 3/5 of a person, while income inequality grows
rapidly) and on and on. The language of 'achievement gap' essentially
obscures that discussion. We need a language that enables us to talk
honestly about what is going on.


7) We should not hide problems in schools. Some schools suffer from
racism and class bias among those who work in them. Some teachers don't
know or care enough. In this, they are like workers and professionals
in every field (have we all not encountered or know of incompetent or
uncaring doctors or lawyers?) We should pay attention to schools doing
the best they can for all their students what they have. And on that
basis, having accountability expectations - provided they use
indicators that fairly and adequately represent reasonable expectations
for learning given the actual circumstances of schools - also makes
sense. Accountabilty should enable those locally involved to consider
processes as well as outcomes. Then assistance should be provided where
assistance is needed. Greater equalization within school systems is
very important -- inequality in many districts is nearly as bad as
inequality within most states, as well as across states. Etc.


8) So I don't agree with those who at least seem to say that any
conversation about ways to improve schools (e.g., about professional
development or improved assessment) should not occur so long as input
and opportunity inequalities are so powerful. I cannot think of a
responsible teacher who would not try to learn more and do better, and
the same should be true for collectivities of educators (schools). But
resources too matter in these expectations - it takes time to do
assessment well or for teachers to engage in collaborative learning,
and that time should not be expected to be donated free by teachers.
Thus, any 'accountability' expectations must be placed in the larger
contexts of social and educational inequality. We must therefore reject
the fraudulent political discourse about 'achievement gaps,' and our
concepts, language and proposals for change must likewise address the
issues of opportunity to learn and learn what in a comprehensive and
balanced way.


9) It'll take time to change the discourse. Example: the Joint
Organizational Statement on NCLB (now with 141 education, civil rights,
religious, disability, parent, labor and civic groups signed on) calls
for major changes in federal law. If implemented, the law would be
remarkably different in content and effect. But the Statement also uses
the language of "achievement gaps" and thus accepts some inadequate and
misleading framing of deep issues. To move to the next level of
thinking about changing the approach to school improvement will require
a discussion among the groups supporting the Statement (and among many
others as well). Part of the story is that with the increasing
discrediting of NCLB, the times and options have changed - despite
continuing efforts of NCLB supporters to claim that critics of this
disastrous law want to leave children behind, a claim intended to
silence discussion. Meanwhile, civil rights groups justifiably will not
support changes to the law they read as abandoning at least the nominal
support for equity found in NCLB - unless there is something better.
Those of us seeking education that is progressive and equitable must be
able to propose specific changes to state and federal policies that
will move education in directions we want. That is partly a matter of
language, more importantly a matter of deeper concepts, understandings,
approaches, demands, expectations, and proposed polcies and law. A new
federal law must address the educational and social debts, provide
schools what they need, then ask for reasonable improvements in
processes and outcomes that indicate the education of the whole child
is becoming available to every child.


10) I will leave aside for now the questions of who should do the
'holding accountable' and in what ways. That's a very important
conversation as we have factors from parents to schools to districts to
states to the feds involved.


Monty


Quoting Diane Aoki <dkeikoa@hawaii.rr.com>:


I understand about the Nation at Risk, but I must have missed the

conversation about the use of "Achievement Gap" in the same way. Do
you

have an article written about that that explains where you are coming
from?

Diane





On 12/8/07 2:55 AM, "Csubstance@aol.com" <Csubstance@aol.com> wrote:





In a message dated 12/7/07 7:19:19 AM, taunar@plateautel.net writes:



<< No doubt that achievement gap's gonna close for real this time.



There never was an "achievement gap." I wish people here would stop using the

ruling class's language to describe the impacts of viciously >>
segregated class

society on what happens inside schools.



As long as we let Ed Trust and the rest of those pigs and hogs
define the

terms we use to discuss these problems, the further we are from real

solutions.



Can we at least make two New Year's resolutions?



1. We'll never trace anything except THE BIG LIE back to "A Nation
at Risk"

and



2. We'll stop using the phrase THE ACHIEVEMENT GAP.



Just think of those two usages (the dating of history from "A >>
Nation at Risk"

and the defining of the problem with public education as "overcoming
the

'Achivement Gap') as the equivalent of using words like "Nigger" to
refer to

black

and brown people or "Cunt" to refer to female people.



"A Nation at Risk" and "Achievement Gap" are almost as obscene --
and

certainly as dangerous to clear thinking -- as those two terms were when they

had

more power than they do today.



If we can do that after all the years of New Age rethink, maybe we
can stop

using the Boss's words to divert us from the real problems we have to struggle

to solve.



George N. Schmidt

Editor,
Substance<BR><BR><BR>**************************************<BR>Check

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