When high is low
My pals at the EdTrust have come out with another excellent study, this one entitled "Gaining Traction, Gaining Ground," comparing characteristics of high-impact high schools serving disadvantaged populations versus average-impact high schools. I've long held that disadvantaged schools are not inherently consigned to be bad, so what's more interesting to me is a tangential question -- namely, where even the high-impact schools (and it should be noted that high-impact is a qualified, relative term) fall short.
The report focused on 7 public high schools and found that, with regards to instruction:
What raises my eyebrows are the high bounds numbers. Less than 60% of students in the high-impact schools being taught application of math skills on grade level. No more than 75% reading books in English class, and the same number participating in class discussions.
There is a reason why most of our students are sputtering out the door of high school; a reason why our graduation rates are so abysmally low; a reason why a third of college freshman have to take at least one remedial course, and why we lose nearly a half of every overall college freshman class. Truly, if the best instruction is this skewed, what hope do the multitude of students in mediocre and poor schools have?
It's incredibly hard to get an honest picture of what's actually going on in classrooms across the country. The EdTrust findings back up the TIMSS video study and NAEP teacher/student surveys with regards to how far we are from universally rigorous, engaging, mastery-oriented instruction. I know all the excuses -- it's hard, the kids can't do it, the teachers aren't good enough -- but those are simply excuses, challenges to be overcome. If strategies can move high-impact schools from the 50 and 60 percent range to the 70 to 80 percent range, surely better strategies can move us into the 90s, and surely better strategies can improve the efficacy of that instruction.
We talk and talk and talk about maintaining high standards and aligning our curricula to them. I'd like to see us take as our charge the standard of producing a generation of thinkers, and I'd like to see us align our curricula to that.
The continued dominance of traditional lectures, less than half of English classes regularly using group discussions and a fourth in some of our best schools not regularly assigning books, a fourth of students not even speaking when those rare discussions occur, more than half of our average 8th grade math classes spent reviewing, a majority of 17-year-olds unable to answer a simple constructed response question on irregular rectangles, 50% of minority students graduating, low-income students with a 9% chance of getting a bachelor's by age 25.... in truth, the raging debate over standardized testing is like arguing about a traffic ticket while a meteor comes crashing down on your house.
It's time to look up.
The report focused on 7 public high schools and found that, with regards to instruction:
While methods of instruction were similar across all schools – we observed very traditional lectures in most classes – we found significant differences in the content of assignments given to students.
An analysis of math assignments shows that the math skills taught and required in high-impact schools were on grade level about 74 percent ofthe time, while in average-impact schools this was true only 50 percent of the time. Similarly, the math content in math courses at high-impact schools was on grade level about 57 percent of the time, but only 23 percent of the time for average-impact schools. We defined math skills as the knowledge of algorithms and math content as the application of algorithms to model real-world situations.
Another big difference is in attention to reading. Roughly three in four students at high-impact schools report reading books in their English classes, while only 62.2 percent of students in average-impact schools reported doing so. We also found that below-grade level students in high-impact schools spent more instructional time in reading-heavy courses. Surveys of the teachers themselves showed a similar pattern. Nearly 71 percent of English teachers at high-impact high schools reported that they assigned students to read every day. That compares to roughly 59 percent of English teachers at average-impact schools.
The extent of classroom discussion as an instructional tool also differed. Nearly three in four students surveyed at high-impact high schools say they participate in class discussions, compared to about half of students in average-impact schools...
What raises my eyebrows are the high bounds numbers. Less than 60% of students in the high-impact schools being taught application of math skills on grade level. No more than 75% reading books in English class, and the same number participating in class discussions.
There is a reason why most of our students are sputtering out the door of high school; a reason why our graduation rates are so abysmally low; a reason why a third of college freshman have to take at least one remedial course, and why we lose nearly a half of every overall college freshman class. Truly, if the best instruction is this skewed, what hope do the multitude of students in mediocre and poor schools have?
It's incredibly hard to get an honest picture of what's actually going on in classrooms across the country. The EdTrust findings back up the TIMSS video study and NAEP teacher/student surveys with regards to how far we are from universally rigorous, engaging, mastery-oriented instruction. I know all the excuses -- it's hard, the kids can't do it, the teachers aren't good enough -- but those are simply excuses, challenges to be overcome. If strategies can move high-impact schools from the 50 and 60 percent range to the 70 to 80 percent range, surely better strategies can move us into the 90s, and surely better strategies can improve the efficacy of that instruction.
We talk and talk and talk about maintaining high standards and aligning our curricula to them. I'd like to see us take as our charge the standard of producing a generation of thinkers, and I'd like to see us align our curricula to that.
The continued dominance of traditional lectures, less than half of English classes regularly using group discussions and a fourth in some of our best schools not regularly assigning books, a fourth of students not even speaking when those rare discussions occur, more than half of our average 8th grade math classes spent reviewing, a majority of 17-year-olds unable to answer a simple constructed response question on irregular rectangles, 50% of minority students graduating, low-income students with a 9% chance of getting a bachelor's by age 25.... in truth, the raging debate over standardized testing is like arguing about a traffic ticket while a meteor comes crashing down on your house.
It's time to look up.
This entry was posted
on Wednesday, December 07, 2005 at 4:51 PM.
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