On the achievement gap
This is an absolute must-read article highlighting how the huge disparities of class influence education, but also missing a huge piece of the puzzle:
There's no mention of the funding gap in schools, the gap that shows nationally in 2002, schools in districts with the least poverty recieved on average $1,348 more per student than districts with the most poverty. There's no mention of the fact that poor students are vastly more likely to get teachers who have less experience, are less likely to have a major in their subject, are less likely to have done well on their SATs and are overall less likely to be effective. There's no mention that it's not only the parents of the poor children who don't have many books, it's their schools, too (I know of teachers in disadvantaged schools who had to dig into their own pockets just to provide their classes with ratty, used individual copies of books).
Class matters. Home life matters. It's impossible to deny that poverty presents inherent obstacles which wealth evades. But putting the entire burden of the achievement gap on society at large excuses a tangible area where we can work to close it: Schools. The schools our poor kids attend -- the kids who, as this article poignantly shows, face the gravest challenges of all segments of the population and need the most support and opportunities -- the schools our poor kids attend are especially abysmal.
And here's the key, and it deserves its own paragraph: we know that good schools can allow kids to conquer all the other challenges.
It's the one chance we get to let the kids break the cycle of generational poverty, to reach their potential which is behind so many hurdles. Schools can do it, we've seen it happen; I can show you. How cruel, then, that we so disadvantage the disadvantaged and then blame their disadvantages for their failures. If you want to trace the achievement gap, start by looking at the institution that should be instilling the ability to achieve.
When the opening-day bell rang for kindergarten this year, most of teacher Sally Schwab's students weren't around to hear it.The problem with this article, which beautifully demonstrates the issue of class, is that also prepetuates a common myth: the myth that the achievement gap can be found entirely in the homes of poor kids versus the homes of affluent kids.
Almost two-thirds didn't show up for their first day of classes at Morse School, one of the lowest-scoring public schools in the city. Some had never spent a day in preschool. A few held their books upside down.
But seven miles northwest, at Beaubien School, one of the city's highest-scoring neighborhood schools, attendance in Maureen Bryers' kindergarten class was nearly perfect. More than twice as many kids arrived with two years of preschool under their belts. All were familiar with books; some even owned hundreds of them.
These two sets of children approached the starting gate of school -- kindergarten -- quite differently. One set arrived loaded down by disadvantage, the other buoyed by past opportunities.
Their differences, research indicates, reflect the beginning of an achievement gap that could grow wider with time.
"It's a tale of two classrooms,'' said economist W. Steven Barnett, director of the National Institute for Early Education Research at Rutgers University. "One school is just rolling the rocks downhill, and the other is slowly rolling them uphill.''
Two worlds
For five days over the first two weeks of school last month, Chicago Sun-Times reporters visited kindergarten classrooms in one of the 10 lowest-scoring and one of the 10 highest-scoring neighborhood schools in Chicago.
The assignment opened a window into two worlds -- one, in West Humboldt Park, occupied by poor kids; the other, in Jefferson Park, filled mostly with kids whose parents paid for preschool.
One disparity between the two groups was so great -- the number of books in kids' homes -- Chicago Public Schools CEO Arne Duncan said it has made him want to find a way to give every teenage mom of a Chicago newborn a "welcome home'' basket of up to 100 books.
"I'd like to figure out a way we could become the first city in the country to think about these things,'' Duncan said. "You found a huge disparity. It's more than four to one [difference in books]. And that's not fair.''
There's no mention of the funding gap in schools, the gap that shows nationally in 2002, schools in districts with the least poverty recieved on average $1,348 more per student than districts with the most poverty. There's no mention of the fact that poor students are vastly more likely to get teachers who have less experience, are less likely to have a major in their subject, are less likely to have done well on their SATs and are overall less likely to be effective. There's no mention that it's not only the parents of the poor children who don't have many books, it's their schools, too (I know of teachers in disadvantaged schools who had to dig into their own pockets just to provide their classes with ratty, used individual copies of books).
Class matters. Home life matters. It's impossible to deny that poverty presents inherent obstacles which wealth evades. But putting the entire burden of the achievement gap on society at large excuses a tangible area where we can work to close it: Schools. The schools our poor kids attend -- the kids who, as this article poignantly shows, face the gravest challenges of all segments of the population and need the most support and opportunities -- the schools our poor kids attend are especially abysmal.
And here's the key, and it deserves its own paragraph: we know that good schools can allow kids to conquer all the other challenges.
It's the one chance we get to let the kids break the cycle of generational poverty, to reach their potential which is behind so many hurdles. Schools can do it, we've seen it happen; I can show you. How cruel, then, that we so disadvantage the disadvantaged and then blame their disadvantages for their failures. If you want to trace the achievement gap, start by looking at the institution that should be instilling the ability to achieve.
This entry was posted
on Sunday, October 16, 2005 at 8:06 PM.
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