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Why School
Achievement Isn't Reaching the Poor
Derrick Z. Jackson, Boston Globe, November 30, 2005
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https://www.bridges4kids.org.
We are at the
point where any study that shows how low-income schools can
reach the heights of academic performance is also an indictment
of how the nation has no commitment to lifting all schools.
For instance, the California education think tank EdSource
recently published a survey of 5,500 teachers and 257 principals
in elementary schools in the state to see what factors correlate
the most with high achievement. A median sample school was one
in which 78 percent of students participated in free and
reduced-price meal programs, 40 percent did not speak English as
a first language, and 32 percent had parents who did not
graduate from high school. Just 11 percent of students had
parents who graduated from college.
The top factors for a higher-achieving school were lofty
expectations for all students; clear, measurable goals; a
consistent curriculum; and a staff that pores over data to see
where teachers and students can improve. Such schools have
teachers who are not only willing to push students but come
armed with up-to-date textbooks and other modern resources.
The survey made some news for finding that parent involvement,
while important, is not as influential a factor in a school as
the ones above. Higher-achieving schools have a ''shared
culture" that allows them to function in a sense as if there
were no parents at all. In a Washington Post story on the
survey, a parent said a principal told her: ''We don't have an
expectation of the home. We don't blame the home. We can't teach
parents. We don't worry about whose responsibility it should be.
We just consider it ours."
Such stoicism is admirable. But we keep getting reminders that
the nation does not share that principal's sense of
responsibility. A classic example is teacher quality. It has
long been known that students in low-income schools are less
likely to have a teacher qualified to teach a particular subject
than students in higher-income schools.
According to the Education Trust, the education reform think
tank, 34 percent of classes in high-poverty schools are taught
by ''out-of-field" teachers, compared with 19 percent of classes
in low-poverty schools. The problem is particularly pronounced
in math, where 70 percent of middle school classes in
high-poverty and high African-American and Latino schools are
taught by a teacher lacking even a college minor in math or a
field related to math.
The problem worsened under President Clinton. President Bush has
dragged his feet on teacher quality with his chronic
underfunding of No Child Left Behind. Under that program, the
states are supposed to staff all core classes with qualified
teachers.
Defining a ''qualified teacher" is state-by-state roulette where
college credentials and state certifications that satisfy No
Child Left Behind requirements do not necessarily equate with
credibility and connectivity with students. Education and
psychology professor Robert Pianta of the University of
Virginia, whose research involves observations of nearly 3,000
classrooms, estimates that only 25 percent of the nation's
first- through fifth-graders receive high-level instruction in
what he calls ''gap-closing classrooms."
The gap in gap-closing teachers is monumental. The Education
Trust reported this year that California's largest districts
generally spend far less on teachers serving in high-poverty
schools and schools with the highest percentages of
African-American and Latino students. By the time a student at a
high school that is mostly Latin American and Latino graduates,
her district will have spent $173,000 less on her teachers than
is spent on teachers in schools with few African-American and
Latino students.
Other research in places like Dallas and Houston that show how
high-poverty students are so much more likely to receive
ineffective teachers repeatedly confirm how the nation's school
children suffer from a ''crushing impact of maldistribution" of
teachers, according to the Education Trust. In Capitol Hill
testimony two months ago, Education Trust director Kati Haycock
asked, ''What's happened with all the new money and all the new
focus on teacher quality? No one knows. . . . What we are left
with is a bold policy initiative from Congress that has never
seen the light of day." She said many states ''have yet to even
acknowledge the disparities in access, let alone craft a plan to
address the problems."
This, by the way, is from an advocate who praised No Child Left
Behind in general in the same testimony for its ''dramatically
positive impact on American education." The studies keep coming
that show that schools can raise student achievement with stoic
principals and dedicated teachers who toil in a ''shared
culture" against all odds. It will be a great day when every
child has a chance to share in the culture.
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