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August 09, 2006
Underprivileged students
The big article of the minute in the edusphere right now is this NYT column. The opening paragraphs pretty much sum it up:
WHEN the federal Education Department recently reported that children in private schools generally did no better than comparable students at public schools on national tests of math and reading, the findings were embraced by teachers’ unions and liberals, and dismissed by supporters of school voucher programs.
But for many educators and policy makers, the findings raised a haunting question: What if the impediments to learning run so deep that they cannot be addressed by any particular kind of school or any set of in-school reforms? What if schools are not the answer?
First off, I don't disagree that kids who come from low-income and/or broken families can face significant obstacles, but that hardly means schools can do little or nothing to overcome them, as Jay Greene and Greg Forster recently demonstrated. If it were really true that schools can't help underprivileged student succeed, we should expect schools dealing with such students to pretty much exist in the same range in terms of student achievement, which Greene and Forster illustrated just isn't the case.
Secondly, I would argue that this shows that factors that have proven to matter--particularly teacher quality--matter even more with underprivileged children. As Matt Ladner just pointed out today:
Teacher quality matters, enormously. Dr. William Sanders, the leading researcher in the field of value-added assessment, explains, "Race, socioeconomic level, class size, and classroom heterogeneity are poor predictors of student academic growth. Rather, the effectiveness of the teacher is the major determinant of student academic progress."
In other words, some teachers really do make all the difference. Dr. Sanders finds evidence that racial achievement gaps are strongly influenced by the distribution of effective teachers, writing, "African American students and white students with the same level of prior achievement make comparable academic progress when they are assigned to teachers of comparable effectiveness. However, at least in the system studied, black students were disproportionately assigned to the least effective teachers."
Believe it or not, these findings are actually cause for optimism. If they stand the test of time, it will provide further proof that there is nothing inevitable about achievement gaps, just something terribly wrong with the distribution of effective teachers.
As Ken De Rosa has said a number of times, there are certain kids who will do well no matter who teaches them. But when it comes to kids who bring baggage with them into the classroom, this kind of sums it up:
There are many external factors that can be blamed for academic failure, not just ones where the parent is culpable. Once schools start looking to external factors to excuse academic failure, the result is inevitably the same--educators stop examining what occurs in the schools to explain why children have not been successful.
One last point. What particularly troubles me about this article is this quote from Richard Rothstein:
“I would never say public schools can’t do better,” Mr. Rothstein said. “I’d say they can’t do much better,” unless lawmakers address the social ills caused by poverty.
I hope he's not suggesting that education reform is a waste of time. Sorry, but that's a notion I flatly reject.
Oh, by the way...thanks, Julie, for showing your true colors.
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Comments
If, as Sanders points out, that teacher quality is the number one determinant of student success, no matter what their "baggage" is, then comes the next logical questions. How do we define teacher quality? Once we have a definition, how can we take that definition, apply it to teacher education and produce more effective and quality teachers?
I reject the notion that teachers are born, not made. Granted some people have some innate ability to teach, but if one truly loves teaching and lacks that innate ability, surely their passion and desire can be harnessed and they can be taught how to be a quality teacher.
I have rarely seen any research that says teachers don't matter, but I have never seen any reliable research that defines a "teacher of quality" that can make the necessary impacts.
Posted by: Matt Johnston | August 11, 2006 01:01 PM
Matt-
You've asked the $64 million question. Right now we seem to know more about what is not related to being a high quality teacher (certification and small class size) than what is related to it.
Sanders defines quality by value added results, which seems fair to me. I'd love to see more detailed research that delves into the characteristics of the high performing teacher.
Posted by: Matthew Ladner | August 15, 2006 08:54 AM
