Re: Bracey - "Growing an Achievement Gap"

[aburke5054@aol.com]

Jerry may be correct in that it is plausible that schools in advantaged districts might enjoy a kind of halo that boosts their teaching, even if they serve large numbers of less advantaged students.? However, it does not follow that there is more creative teaching in rich districts than in poor districts because poor districts are bound by state and federal mandates, while advantaged districts are hotbeds of innovation and creativity because the state and the feds leave them alone.? More local forces are at work.? For starters, well-off districts are more likely to have more experienced and skilled teachers.? And when teaching goes bad in well-off schools, the phones of the principal, the superintendent, and the board members ring right quick and sophisticated and high-powered parents don't settle for the run-around.? But still not all children in those advantaged districts prosper - there are plenty of achievement gaps there as well.? 

Beyond all this, you can't have it both ways.? You can't say that state and federal governments should do more for schools and at the same time say that schools need to be protected from state and federal governments.? We have to come down to earth here.? NCLB is certainly not the cure for all that ails less advantaged districts, but it is not the cause of their distress either.


 
Art


 

-----Original Message-----
From: Monty Neill <monty@fairtest.org>
To: ndsgroup@yahoogroups.com; RScriticalteach <RScriticalteach@lists.execpc.com>; ARN-L <arn-l@interversity.org>; arn2-strategy <arn2-strategy@yahoogroups.com>
Sent: Fri, 7 Sep 2007 2:35 pm
Subject: [arn-l] Bracey - "Growing an Achievement Gap"










Jerry's short commentary in this week's Ed Week focuses on a major NCLB problem: 
its demand of boosting test scores reduces educational quality provided 
low-income children - by narrowing curriculum and turning what remains into test 
prep - and thereby worsens the achievement gap. Rises in test scores, including 
NAEP, will mask this growing divide. 
Thanks, Jerry.

Monty 

Education Week

Published Online: September 4, 2007
Published in Print: September 5, 2007

Commentary

Growing an Achievement Gap
By Gerald W. Bracey 


     


The Bush administration has claimed lately that rising test scores and a 
narrowing black-white test-score gap reflect the success of the federal No Child 
Left Behind Act. Even if this is true-and it is not at all clear that it is-the 
achievement gap, broadly conceived, is growing. Let me explain.

I recently visited an elementary school in Fairfax County, Va. Although Fairfax 
County is generally affluent, the homes in this neighborhood are modest by any 
standard. The parents are workers-in food services, in dry cleaning, in 
construction, in lawn care. The school contains students from 40 nations, and 
its ethnic makeup is 39 percent Hispanic, 32 percent Asian, 6 percent black, 18 
percent white, and 5 percent "other." More than half don't speak English well, 
half qualify for free or reduced-price meals, and the school's mobility rate is 
double that of the district as a whole.

Yet, because it manages decent scores on the Virginia Standards of Learning 
tests, the school is fully accredited by the state and has met the No Child Left 
Behind law's requirements for adequate yearly progress.

But all the above doesn't really give you a feel for how the school operates or 
its successes.

In some schools today, principals patrol the halls listening to make sure that 
the teachers are all following the exact sequence laid out by the scripted 
reading programs. 
The school burbles. It's a sound that emanates from kids who are content to be 
where they are. Student artwork covers the hallway walls. Classroom walls are 
richly decorated. Some students are painting a huge cafeteria mural showing the 
Taj Mahal, the Pyramids at Giza, and other wonders of the world. In one hall, I 
meet a group returning from "butterfly-release day." They had watched as 
caterpillars transformed themselves into butterflies, and they had just gone 
outside to set them free. Science from the real world, not from a book. Students 
sometimes worked in small groups, sometimes worked alone, and sometimes listened 
to the teacher talk to the whole class. Questions were plentiful.

It's as if the school lives under a shield. As if being part of an affluent 
district, though not affluent itself, offers cover, a kind of Strategic Defense 
Initiative, protecting it from state and federal dictates.

Unfortunately, in many impoverished districts, no such armor protects the 
children or the teachers. In such districts, children endure an endless diet of 
math and reading test-prep worksheets. "Bubble-kids"-those perceived to be on 
the threshold of passing the test-get extra time in reading and math, sometimes 
in gym class. "Sure things" and "hopeless cases" get identified and ignored. 
Science, if it happens at all, happens in the two dimensions of a book. Thinking 
about those butterflies, I was reminded of a California superintendent's retort 
on being asked why her district wouldn't be making any more whale-watching field 
trips: "Kids are not tested on whale watching, so they're not going whale 
watching." Music? Art? Social studies? Plays? Chess club?

In some such schools today, principals patrol the halls listening to make sure 
that the teachers are all following the exact sequence laid out by the scripted 
reading programs. One teacher who gave a creative answer to a question while 
using the highly programmed Open Court reading series was severely reprimanded 
by her principal. "But it was a teachable moment," she said.To which he replied, 
"There are no teachable moments in Open Court!" Some principals have contracts 
specifying that test scores must rise by a certain amount each year. They 
administer copious "formative evaluations," which are merely mini-tests to see 
if the kids are making progress toward the big tests at the end of the year.

The outcome of this gun-barrel focus is the gap I mentioned at the outset. It 
was described well recently by the president of the Thomas B. Fordham 
Foundation, Chester E. Finn Jr., a longtime public school critic, and initially 
a supporter of the No Child Left Behind law. "It's increasingly clear," he said 
recently in an online newsletter, "that making schools and teachers focus 
narrowly on test results, especially in basic skills, squeezes a lot of the 
juice out of the curriculum and out of the educational experience itself. ... 
America's true competitive edge doesn't come from producing more engineers than 
India. It arises from the creativity, rebelliousness, and drive that result from 
a broad liberal education and the values and convictions that accompany such 
teaching and learning."

Kids facing an infinite series of phonics exercises are not enjoying that broad 
liberal education. They're not growing butterflies or watching whales. If the 
reading and math scores in the drilled schools rise, some people will claim 
success. Others will say, "At least they're getting more of an education than 
they used to." Somehow, I don't think so.

Gerald W. Bracey is an independent researcher, policy analyst, and writer in 
Alexandria, Va., and a fellow of the Education Policy Studies Laboratory at 
Arizona State University, in Tempe, Ariz. His most recent book is Reading 
Educational Research: How to Avoid Getting Statistically Snookered (Heinemann, 
2006).

Vol. 27, Issue 2, Page 26

Monty Neill, Ed.D.
Co-Executive Director
FairTest
342 Broadway
Cambridge, MA 02139
617-864-4810    fax 617-497-2224
monty@fairtest.org
http://www.fairtest.org
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