Last Sunday morning, John Henrehan saw me to say he couldn’t be here this morning because he would be out of town. (I got that same message from quite a few others, so I am especially grateful to those of you who stayed home this Labor Day weekend just so you could be here.)
When I thanked John for his expression of interest, he asked if I was going to talk about the No Child Left Behind law. I said that would be part of it, but the topic is broader and very complicated. He replied that as far as he’s concerned, there’s no question about the federal law; its purpose, he said, is to make public schools look bad and undermine support for public education. His comment reminded me that last January the Virginia House of Delegates condemned the law by a vote of 98 to 1. House Education Committee chairman Dillard said, “The Damn law is ludicrous.” I wondered how often it is that John Henrehan agrees with the Virginia legislature!
As one who was adamantly opposed to the law when it was passed, I must admit to some smug satisfaction when I heard that the Republican-dominated Virginia legislature and the chairman of the State Board of Education had complained to the Republican-dominated Congress and U. S. Department of Education. I was critical of the Virginia Standards of Learning program, known as SOL, that preceded NCLB, so it was kind of fun to see state leaders getting a taste of their own medicine.
But as I told John, I don’t agree that the law is a plot to make public schools look bad. I suppose that some of the people who voted for it may have had that as their objective, but I think most of them honestly thought they were trying to do something about a long-standing national embarrassment. And maybe it’s working; I don’t really know. That’s why I put a question mark in the title of my presentation. The question mark is meant to recognize that many well-meaning people at local, state, and national levels are honestly committed to closing the achievement gap. It remains to be seen whether they will succeed.
Of course, there isn’t just one gap. Members of several groups, including Native Americans and Hispanics, tend to do less well in school than the white majority. But when people talk about the achievement gap, they are usually referring to the difference between whites and African American students, and for good reason. Wherever you look, whether it’s scores on state tests like the SOLs in Virginia, SAT scores, results on the National Assessment of Educational Progress (known as NAEP), or dropout rates, black students as a group do much worse than white students as a group. On the 2000 NAEP test in mathematics, for example, 25 percent of white 12th grade students scored “below basic” but 70 percent of blacks scored that low. The Pittsburgh Public Schools announced recently that while 54 per cent of that city’s white students had met expectations in math, only 23 per cent of black students had. When Indiana gave its new high school exit exam this last year, there was a gap of more than 40 percentage points between the pass rates of white and black students. A recent study conducted by researchers at Harvard University found that the dropout figures reported by most states and school systems are highly inaccurate. They estimated that in reality, more than half of all African American students leave school without graduating.
When numbers like these are made public, civil rights leaders understandably demand that something be done. In June, for example, the Jacksonville, Florida branch of the NAACP called upon their superintendent of schools to take personal responsibility for the district’s worst performing schools. In July, a lawsuit filed earlier in Pinellas County, Florida, was made a class-action suit. According to the St. Petersburg Times, “the district has failed to narrow a yawning achievement gap between black and white students, in violation of the equal protection clause in the state constitution.” School districts throughout the country, including Fairfax County and Montgomery County, Maryland, have responded to community group pressures by creating task forces and special programs to improve minority achievement.
Black parents and community members aren’t the only ones concerned about the gap; it’s also a source of frustration for educators. In July, the retiring superintendent of the Minneapolis public schools, where I was director of staff development 35 years ago, said, “What haunts me most is the achievement gap. We have not successfully moved the needle on closing the gap. We just have not.”
Some of the reasons for the gap are obvious; some less so. Nationally, a major reason is that, in general, the quality of education provided to African American students is much lower than the education provided to white students. The vast majority of students in big city school systems are black. And it’s common knowledge that, for example, the public schools in Washington, DC are generally poorer than the schools in Fairfax County. The buildings in suburban districts are newer and much better maintained. The curriculum and learning materials are much better. In fact, a group of experts from the Council of Great City Schools that visited Washington, DC last winter concluded that the district doesn’t really have a curriculum at all. City school systems have a much higher proportion of under-qualified and inexperienced teachers than suburban districts. That’s because, naturally, teachers prefer to teach in schools where working conditions are better, the pay is better, there’s better parent support, and so on.
Of course, schools aren’t the only influence affecting the lives of poor children. Children living in depressed neighborhoods suffer from dilapidated housing, family disorganization, alcoholism and drug abuse, inadequate health services, and violence. In fact, for many inner city children, the public schools are a haven: the cleanest, warmest, safest places in their communities. Still, huge numbers of black children live in poverty, and school achievement is directly correlated with socio-economic differences.
What is less well understood is that, even when social class differences are accounted for, African American students do less well than white students. That’s especially troubling to educators and community groups that set out to change the situation. Their goal is to close the gap, not just narrow it.
For example, in 1999 15 school districts that are not located in inner cities and are not strapped for money or qualified teachers formed the Minority Achievement Network. These are school systems like Cambridge, Massachusetts; Ann Arbor, Michigan; Evanston Township High School in Illinois, and Arlington in Virginia. Their approach is to, first, openly acknowledge the facts; second, vow to do better; and third, exchange information about what practices are effective.
Working together, these school systems have compiled a long list of factors they think contribute to the problem, including, obviously, the lingering effects from centuries of slavery and racism. They are doing everything from pushing Advanced Placement classes to providing staff development to teachers to talking frankly with student groups. They’ve also sponsored research studies with interesting results. For example, they’ve found that all students claim they want to do well, contrary to the contention that some black students don’t want to be seen as “acting white.” (Remember that these districts are in largely middle class communities; it’s possible that students in some urban schools may feel differently.) All students also say they respond when teachers work especially hard at getting them to learn. But in surveys conducted by researcher Ronald Ferguson, white students said they do their best work when challenged by demanding teachers, while black students said they respond better to teachers who show a personal interest in them. So the Minority Achievement Network has been putting a lot of emphasis on teacher-student relationships.
Let’s turn for a moment to what else educators have been doing to improve achievement in schools serving low-income neighborhoods. The most common strategies fall roughly into two approaches. Both are characterized by strong leadership and high expectations, but otherwise they are somewhat different. The first is typically led by a determined principal or superintendent. He or she sets goals, demands results, and insists on careful monitoring of what students are and are not learning. Districts where this has been done successfully, such as Brazosport, Texas, and Norfolk, Virginia are publicized at education conferences and sometimes in newspaper articles. In his acceptance speech Thursday night at the Republican convention, President Bush spoke proudly of a school in Florida that has undoubtedly used this approach.
In what is known as “curriculum alignment,” teachers are expected to focus closely on the material to be learned, which these days is described in terms of “content standards.” Sometimes teachers must follow “pacing guides” to make sure they stay on schedule and cover all the required material. Some school systems go so far as to reduce the amount of time spent on subjects that are not tested and concentrate only on what they expect to be on state tests. Some schools have eliminated recess, and officials at a school in Montgomery County announced that they are emphasizing the teaching of reading skills instead of having students read social studies and science books. Schools determined to raise test scores usually spend some time teaching students how to take tests, and hold motivational pep rallies. Researchers have found that some schools even serve especially nutritious breakfasts and lunches on test days (but that may be just a coincidence).
Some of these practices may seem a bit extreme, but they at least show that educators are taking seriously the importance of raising achievement – although in this case achievement is defined rather narrowly in terms of scores on multiple-choice tests. The second approach I’ll mention is often the work of one or more determined, charismatic teachers. We’ve all heard of Jaime Escalante and his calculus classes. Sometimes these people are members of the established teaching profession but often they are dedicated amateurs. Whatever their background or experience, these mavericks are somehow able to get students to perform amazingly well on relatively sophisticated academic tasks.
A good example of this approach is the chain of schools known as KIPP, for Knowledge Is Power Program. The KIPP schools and the two young men who founded them were profiled in a recent article in the Washington Post, and were praised in a book published last year called No Excuses. Students in these schools read difficult literature and solve demanding mathematics problems. They are expected to memorize facts, dates, and definitions, and write papers on academic subjects. As you might expect, KIPP schools are schools of choice. Students and their parents must agree to adhere to the school’s requirements as a condition of being allowed to attend.
In fact, I shouldn’t leave this topic without saying that some influential people believe that choice is itself part of the solution to the achievement gap. Abigail and Stephan Thernstrom, the wife-and-husband authors of No Excuses, wrote their book about the achievement gap partly because they believe that the existing system will not and can not close it. Instead, they support charter schools and vouchers. They write:
“The American educational system is a recipe for mediocrity. Many good people work in schools and in school administration. But the teaching profession does not reward imaginative, ambitious, competitive innovators. Nor does it reward dedication or (for the most part) student results. … Doing a good job, doing what’s necessary to get ahead, requires playing by the rules and staying out of trouble….Without incentives for excellence and innovation, and the discretionary power to meet the needs of students, no wonder so many schools are so disappointing.”
Howard Fuller, former superintendent of the Milwaukee Public Schools and now head of the Black Alliance for Educational Options, has reached the same conclusions. He says:
“We support means-tested vouchers, home schooling, charter schools, contract schools, black independent schools, and other public and private choices. We do not support the destruction of public education. One of the reasons that people continue to run that bogus line is that they do not make a distinction between public education, which is a concept, and the system that delivers public education. …What makes public education public is that it serves the public interest. …A school district that continues to push children out, that continues for whatever reason to be unable to teach our children to read and write … is not in the public’s interest.”
There’s much more to be said about charter schools, choice, vouchers, and so on – but let’s move on to accountability: what the states and, more recently, the federal government have been doing to close the gap. The basic idea at both levels is simple and direct: require students to take state tests based on official definition of what students in that state are supposed to learn, and use results of the tests to try to force improvement in schools doing the worst job.
One obvious problem with this, as I’ve said, is that it’s not accurate or fair to say that schools with the lowest scores are necessarily doing a poor job. In almost every case, the schools with the lowest scores are those that serve children in low-income depressed areas. As everybody knows, the families in these neighborhoods have enormous problems associated with poverty and neglect: poor health and nutrition, lack of meaningful employment, drugs and crime, family discord and violence, frequent moves from one school to another. Obviously these factors affect students learning. Critics of the public schools recognize this, but they point out that some educators are more successful teaching these children then others, so they call for less complaining and more results.
The Thernstroms, whose book I mentioned earlier, put it this way:
“Excellent schools deliver a clear message to their students: No Excuses. No excuses for failing to do your homework, failing to work hard in general, no excuses for fighting with other students, running in the hallways, dressing inappropriately, and so forth. Americans need to say to their schools as well: No Excuses.”
That quote is a pretty good summary of the point of view represented by the so-called No Child Left Behind law. NCLB is actually not new legislation but the most recent version of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act, first adopted in 1965 under President Lyndon Johnson. Over almost 40 years Congress has appropriated billions and billions of dollars for what is known as Title I of that legislation, which was specifically supposed to improve the lot of poor children. With research studies reporting year after year that the achievement gap was still there, Congress made requirements more stringent each time the law was reauthorized, trying to find a way to make sure that the money was being well spent. With the election of President George W. Bush, who had made school reform a prime issue in his campaign, liberals like Senator Ted Kennedy of Massachusetts and Congressman George Miller of California joined conservatives to pass a law that makes unprecedented demands on local schools, school systems, and state departments of education.
I won’t try to explain details of NCLB, which has many provisions and consolidates at least 40 federal education programs, including Reading First, which is Congress and the Bush Administration’s effort to get educators to teach reading using scientifically-based evidence of what works. Several parts of the law, including the reading part and the part requiring that all teachers be “highly qualified,” are controversial. But the most controversial is the requirement that all schools make Adequate Yearly Progress (AYP) toward the goal of having all students “proficient” by 2014, the school year that was 12 years away when the law was passed.
I’ll mention just a few of the most flagrant problems with Adequate Yearly Progress. It is based on a perfectly sound idea, first publicized by an African-American educator named Ronald Edmonds, that schools must go beyond looking at test scores of all its students by trying to determine how various categories of students are doing. Edmonds called this “disaggregating the data,” and that term has now caught on, so everybody talks these days about “disaggregating.”
Good schools and school systems had been examining the scores of various groups for years, but NCLB requires all of them to do it, and for an extensive list of particular groups, including English learners and students classified as disabled in some way. (This is the major difference between NCLB and many state systems, including Virginia’s. The different way of treating the data is a source of great confusion to parents and the public because schools may meet state standards but still not make AYP.)
Now, if you look at test results group by group, you then have to decide whether each group is doing OK or should be doing better, and if so, how much better. It’s standard practice in many schools and schools systems to set yearly improvement goals. But in this case, Congress had to decide what goals would be acceptable. So the politicians, urged on by advocacy groups like the Education Trust, decided that in each school and school district, the scores of students in each of these groups would have to improve year-by-year at a rate calculated to result in 100% proficiency by 2014. If students in any group fail to make such progress, the school is described as “needing improvement” because of not making AYP, which you’ll remember means Adequate Yearly Progress.
There are lots of technical issues in all this that I find fascinating but you may not, so I’ll try not to go too deeply into most of them. One such issue is that the regulations developed by the U. S. Department of Education require that states give grade level tests and compare the scores from one year to the next. If you’re classified as fifth grade, you take the fifth grade test. And progress is measured by how well this year’s fifth graders do against last year’s. This is clearly a very rough measure of progress, and as critics point out, does absolutely nothing to insure that any particular child is not “left behind.” A far better method, which is used by some jurisdictions but not permitted under this law, is to test for growth: how much each student has learned since the last time he or she was tested. This method, sometimes called “value-added,” is technically more sophisticated, but it can be done – and in my opinion definitely should be permitted where feasible.
Another semi-technical issue is the way AYP is calculated. Researchers have found, not surprisingly, that schools that have the most subgroups are the ones most likely to not make AYP. After all, there are 37 ways to fail AYP and only one way to make it: the entire school population and all the subgroups must improve their scores in reading and mathematics by a given percentage every year. So in a society that professes to value diversity, the schools that are most diverse are most in danger of being judged inadequate.
A more basic issue, that some people worry about a lot and others see as relatively unimportant, is the fact that the tests being used for accountability purposes are almost entirely multiple-choice, or what testing experts call “selected response.” The person being tested doesn’t produce anything; he or she just chooses among possible answers. There’s no question that this is the most efficient way to go about it, but you can only assess certain things that way, so many of the other important things we expect schools to be doing are not being evaluated by these systems in any way – such practical things as the ability to speak before a group or more abstract aims like being able to work cooperatively with others. The point is that the testing systems are limited in what they can measure. The more emphasis placed on such test results, the greater the distortion of the broader goals we should also be concerned about.
Regardless of that, the provisions of NCLB have begun to take effect across the country. Newspapers are reporting the number and names of schools that haven’t made AYP, including those that haven’t made it for the second or third year, at which points they must offer parents an opportunity to transfer to other schools or provide tutoring, described as “supplementary services.” In Virginia, 28 per cent, about a fourth of all schools, failed to make AYP this year. This was a temporary improvement over 42 percent the previous year, but that was because of sensible changes in the regulations made by the U. S. Department of Education. The results in Fairfax County were similar, with 23 percent of schools not making AYP. Most of these schools, here and across the country, failed to make AYP not because of the racial gap I’ve been talking about this morning but because of low scores of students with disabilities and English language learners.
A related issue that may be resolved somewhat over time is that NCLB requires states to set their own standards, devise their own tests, and determine what students must do to be “proficient.” For a number of reasons, some good and some maybe not, the meaning of proficient currently varies enormously from one state to another. Some have set the barrier very high, some much lower. That is one reason that at this point some states have many more schools not making AYP than others. This will continue to be a source of confusion for some years, but interestingly, psychometricians say it will be less of a problem as we near 2014 because by that time, unless the whole idea of reaching higher and higher standards has been abandoned, nearly all schools will not be making AYP regardless of how they define “proficient.”
Of course advocates of the law as written, including Rod Paige, the U. S. Secretary of Education, say that prophecies of universal failure to make AYP are based on current trends, whereas the purpose of this law is to change current practices and force schools to close the achievement gap. I believe that Rod Paige and his allies are sincere when they say this. But as you probably know, the poverty rate in our country continues to grow worse every year. About 45 million people in this country, many of them children, have no health insurance, and so on. My view is that schools clearly do have a role to play in educating all children, and a responsibility to do whatever they can to reduce gaps in achievement. But so long as the rest of society is set up in such a way as to accept and even perpetuate inequality, it’s unrealistic and unfair to expect schools by themselves to eliminate it.