Take that, demographic determinists
I've never for an instant believed that poverty is an unbreakable shackle for students, merely a heady, thorny challenge to be overcome. While there are many districts one might point to as proof, here's yet another one:
I'm naturally suspicious of using standardized test scores as finely tuned metrics, but a jump of that magnitude is significant by any measure. It just goes to show, never underestimate the power of schools. If you want to find plenty of similar examples, check out EdTrust's Dispelling the Myth databank.
As high poverty and high minority schools continue to struggle to close the achievement gap, one Title I district in Pueblo , Colorado has achieved unprecedented results. Over the past eight years, Pueblo School District 60 (PSD60) and Lindamood-Bell Learning Processes have proven that low socio-economic status is not a social liability. PSD60 is a 65 percent free and reduced lunch and minority district. Findings from a new study published in the spring issue of the prestigious American Education Research Journal confirm that PSD60's district-wide literacy reform model has significantly closed the student achievement gap. In 1998, results on the state achievement test ranked near the bottom in Colorado . Representative of this effort from 1998 to 2005, PSD60's third-grade students have improved 16 percentage points, to 83 percent proficient or above reading proficiently, while the state (35 percent free and reduced lunch and 37 percent minority) has only improved 5 percentage points, to 71 percentage proficient or above.
I'm naturally suspicious of using standardized test scores as finely tuned metrics, but a jump of that magnitude is significant by any measure. It just goes to show, never underestimate the power of schools. If you want to find plenty of similar examples, check out EdTrust's Dispelling the Myth databank.
This entry was posted
on Saturday, March 18, 2006 at 12:51 PM.
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