[Mb-civic] Why school achievement isn't reaching the poor - Derrick Z. Jackson - Boston Globe Op-Ed

[William Swiggard]

  Why school achievement isn't reaching the poor

By Derrick Z. Jackson, Globe Columnist  |  November 30, 2005

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.

http://www.boston.com/news/globe/editorial_opinion/oped/articles/2005/11/30/why_school_achievement_isnt_reaching_the_poor/
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