Can achievement gap be closed with extra tutoring?

[Anonymous]

There's no single solution for closing the achievement gap. You need to think of it like a public health crisis. Experts learned years ago (primarily through the work of the WHO and doctors like Paul Farmer -- there's an excellent book about his work to treat infectious diseases in Haiti called Mountains Beyond Mountains) that public health crises need comprehensive solutions.

The achievement gap is a manifestation of poverty, which is a public health issue. We have to pursue a comprehensive solution, which is exceedingly difficult. Poor kids need safe, clean housing/neighborhoods, parents with jobs that allow them to put healthy food on the table and take sick leave and vacation (that means instituting a Federal Jobs Guarantee), high quality schools with engaged teachers, access to affordable health care, etc. etc. etc.

You also need to fight racism. Black people still earn less than white people, even when they earn professional degrees.

Anyway, my point is that this is a multi-faceted problem that requires a comprehensive, multi-faceted solution.

[Anonymous]

I think what this thread is highlighting is that it is really difficult for the average MCPS teacher to fully realize the potential of every child in the school system if they are coming in without a rich vocabulary and a deep knowledge base. The children who have these two attributes are more likely to come from middle class families with parents who might have gone to college and so understand the importance of reading to and conversing with their children (and no, plonking a child in front of Sesame Street is not a good substitute to actually talking to your children). I started reading to my child when he was a couple of months old. We did not have a lot of money at that time so I used the public library, bought used books etc. I took him to free museums. We did not have a lot of money but I had time (since I stayed at home with him) and I knew what to do (read to him, interact with him, expose him to new and enriching experiences and I knew how to find out about resources.
There are a couple of things the County could try. One is more parenting classes. Another is to include a module about early childhood learning in the Health class all MCPS high school students are required to take (they are going to parent future MCPS students).
The other is full day universal PreK. It is super expensive but it might be the best way of ensuring that all children enter Kindergarten with a decent vocabulary and a decent knowledge base.
I would agree with the two teachers who posted that the problem isn't that some children speak a different language from English at home. A child who has a rich Spanish/Vietnamese/Bengali/Aramaic vocabulary and has basic knowledge about the world around them (preK level geography, preK level science) in their language is going to quickly learn English and thrive in MCPS

[Anonymous]

I too think motivation is an issue here. Kids in this country are very fortunate, they have everything they need, but they are not motivated enough to use these facilities. Good school, free transport to school, free meals, free book, free tuition (homework help/ summer school). I have seen kids more busy with thinking what to wear to school daily, really will an uniform help here, or are the uniforms not mandatory for the profit of some companies? I have seen the basic TV programs , but none of them are motivating education, especially the teen programs are all about " friends". At the age where they are supposed to study, kids are busy with maintaining looks because of the peer pressure, making boyfriend/ girlfriends. I do understand everything is important in life, but if the priority of the child in his/ her life is different, why do we blame others? It will helps kids if they are motivated from right age.

[Anonymous]

I agree about the motivation part. My grandfather hosted some executives from India a few years ago. After dinner where they were discussing poverty, they asked my grandfather to take them through the poorest area of Baltimore (he lives in Baltimore). He drove them through Sandtown-Winchester which is the area where Freddie Gray grew up. The Indian executives asked about services, etc for the people living in this area and other poor areas of the city. They were shocked that so many services were available. They said that in India, people live in slums with no access to sanitation, food, clean water, etc. People dug through the dumps looking for food and items to sell. They were hungry to get out of poverty. There are plenty of services available especially in cities to help people. But if you have somewhere to live, food to eat, water to drink and a cell phone, etc, what motivation is there to get the hell out of there?

[Anonymous]

Before solving a problem, we need to understand what the problem is.

What does it mean by "achievement gap" and "closing achievement gap"? Between what groups do the gaps exist? What are the causes?

My understanding is, the goal is not to close the achievement differences between race/ethnicity groups, but to help the low achieving students to meet the standard.

In my opinion, having the students motivated to learn is the best solution. Of course, the parents need to be motivated as well.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I agree about the motivation part. My grandfather hosted some executives from India a few years ago. After dinner where they were discussing poverty, they asked my grandfather to take them through the poorest area of Baltimore (he lives in Baltimore). He drove them through Sandtown-Winchester which is the area where Freddie Gray grew up. The Indian executives asked about services, etc for the people living in this area and other poor areas of the city. They were shocked that so many services were available. They said that in India, people live in slums with no access to sanitation, food, clean water, etc. People dug through the dumps looking for food and items to sell. They were hungry to get out of poverty. There are plenty of services available especially in cities to help people. But if you have somewhere to live, food to eat, water to drink and a cell phone, etc, what motivation is there to get the hell out of there?

True. You can't drag someone out of poverty, unless he wants to leave there.

I was definitely in poverty 30 years ago using today's standards. Change clothes and take shower only once a week; wear the same shoes as long as they still fit; commute to school 30 minutes away by bike; only eat meat and seafood occasionally; use the same bag (not even a backpack) as long as the hole at the bottom is smaller than books; no after school activities (but play with kids in my neighborhood); bring lunch from home for 12 years which tastes yucky after being reheated (worse than MCPS lunch)...

Class size is over 50. But luckily the teachers were super responsible. They worked with both the GT kids and the low performing kids in the same classroom. I just don't see poverty itself is the hurdle to successful education. Something else is wrong in the current system. Going to tutoring is called cheaters and shame. Hard work is not honored any more.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I agree about the motivation part. My grandfather hosted some executives from India a few years ago. After dinner where they were discussing poverty, they asked my grandfather to take them through the poorest area of Baltimore (he lives in Baltimore). He drove them through Sandtown-Winchester which is the area where Freddie Gray grew up. The Indian executives asked about services, etc for the people living in this area and other poor areas of the city. They were shocked that so many services were available. They said that in India, people live in slums with no access to sanitation, food, clean water, etc. People dug through the dumps looking for food and items to sell. They were hungry to get out of poverty. There are plenty of services available especially in cities to help people. But if you have somewhere to live, food to eat, water to drink and a cell phone, etc, what motivation is there to get the hell out of there?

None. It is more expensive to go to any form of trade, technical school or college, than it is to collect unlimited welfare. There are also more corrupt doctors, pharmacists, and lawyers in this country to get you the reasons needed to keep you in this capacity.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I agree about the motivation part. My grandfather hosted some executives from India a few years ago. After dinner where they were discussing poverty, they asked my grandfather to take them through the poorest area of Baltimore (he lives in Baltimore). He drove them through Sandtown-Winchester which is the area where Freddie Gray grew up. The Indian executives asked about services, etc for the people living in this area and other poor areas of the city. They were shocked that so many services were available. They said that in India, people live in slums with no access to sanitation, food, clean water, etc. People dug through the dumps looking for food and items to sell. They were hungry to get out of poverty. There are plenty of services available especially in cities to help people. But if you have somewhere to live, food to eat, water to drink and a cell phone, etc, what motivation is there to get the hell out of there?

The secure comforts of life in Sandtown-Winchester? Really? I mean, really?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I agree about the motivation part. My grandfather hosted some executives from India a few years ago. After dinner where they were discussing poverty, they asked my grandfather to take them through the poorest area of Baltimore (he lives in Baltimore). He drove them through Sandtown-Winchester which is the area where Freddie Gray grew up. The Indian executives asked about services, etc for the people living in this area and other poor areas of the city. They were shocked that so many services were available. They said that in India, people live in slums with no access to sanitation, food, clean water, etc. People dug through the dumps looking for food and items to sell. They were hungry to get out of poverty. There are plenty of services available especially in cities to help people. But if you have somewhere to live, food to eat, water to drink and a cell phone, etc, what motivation is there to get the hell out of there?

True. You can't drag someone out of poverty, unless he wants to leave there.

I was definitely in poverty 30 years ago using today's standards. Change clothes and take shower only once a week; wear the same shoes as long as they still fit; commute to school 30 minutes away by bike; only eat meat and seafood occasionally; use the same bag (not even a backpack) as long as the hole at the bottom is smaller than books; no after school activities (but play with kids in my neighborhood); bring lunch from home for 12 years which tastes yucky after being reheated (worse than MCPS lunch)...

Class size is over 50. But luckily the teachers were super responsible. They worked with both the GT kids and the low performing kids in the same classroom. I just don't see poverty itself is the hurdle to successful education. Something else is wrong in the current system. Going to tutoring is called cheaters and shame. Hard work is not honored any more.

I see poverty like depression. I haven't been in poverty, but I have been depressed. Married, 2 kids, good life, and wanted every day to feel better. You start and then you slump. It is embarrassing and agonizing. Homeless people? The bottom of the barrel. Not many bounce back. Our social services is run by the government. Isn't it ironic that we are all here talking about the achievement gap. How about we start monitoring social services. Grade them based on how many they get back on their feet, do they have programs for free college, free tech school, offer financial courses, have health management updates, etc... I know there are people out there abusing system, but there are more that just need a jump start. Not having money, skills, or health care is a recipe for disaster. It is a viscous cycle.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I agree about the motivation part. My grandfather hosted some executives from India a few years ago. After dinner where they were discussing poverty, they asked my grandfather to take them through the poorest area of Baltimore (he lives in Baltimore). He drove them through Sandtown-Winchester which is the area where Freddie Gray grew up. The Indian executives asked about services, etc for the people living in this area and other poor areas of the city. They were shocked that so many services were available. They said that in India, people live in slums with no access to sanitation, food, clean water, etc. People dug through the dumps looking for food and items to sell. They were hungry to get out of poverty. There are plenty of services available especially in cities to help people. But if you have somewhere to live, food to eat, water to drink and a cell phone, etc, what motivation is there to get the hell out of there?

The secure comforts of life in Sandtown-Winchester? Really? I mean, really?

not the person you are responding to but yes, to a person living in a 3rd world country with NO services available, yes that area is comfort. The only safety issue in that area is each other. Killing each other.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

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Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Well, the achievement gap starts very, very early in life:

https://www.brookings.edu/blog/brown-center-chalkboard/2017/07/10/the-word-gap-and-one-citys-plan-to-close-it/

"Two decades ago, researchers Betty Hart and Todd Risley revealed a particularly stark difference in the experiences of toddlers with different income levels.
As Hart and Risley described it, low-income infants hear many fewer words per day than their middle- and high-income peers, totaling to a 30-million-word difference by age three. They coined this discrepancy “the word gap.” Hart and Risley also found that students who had heard fewer words as toddlers correlated with worse performance on tests of vocabulary and language development years later.

More recent studies have similarly identified a word gap, albeit not to the tune of 30 million words, and shown that spoken word counts
predicted vocabulary and language understanding months later even when controlling for previous vocabulary levels and maternal education. A separate study showed that, by age two,
toddlers from lower socio-economic backgrounds can be six months behind their wealthier peers in vocabulary. Despite widespread acknowledgement of the scale of the problem, including
a push from former President Barack Obama on the issue, progress toward closing the word gap has been slow."

This. I work in a school with a high FARMS population and the lack of background knowledge is a huge problem. You can’t build on what they don’t already know, and what they don’t know would astound you. The curriculum assumes they have a certain amount of background knowledge and there’s no time to fill in the gaps because it’s all about exposing them to materials with rich language and if you go back to remediate you’re told you have low expectations for students. The reality is that they don’t know A LOT.

The foundational building blocks of learning occur BEFORE students come to school. If that foundation hasn’t been built, then it’s very difficult to catch up. People want to blame ESOL and second language learning, but I’ve had students who’ve come speaking and understanding zero English but exit ESOL in a year. That’s because they have background knowledge and a strong vocabulary in their native language. They only need to transfer their knowledge from one language to the other instead of learning the content and the new language at the same time. In fact, my students who move here from other countries are generally more academically successful than my students who were born here who also have a second language. This is painting with a broad brush, but the data supports it.

From my experience, the achievement gap is more related to SES than anything else. No amount of tutoring after a certain point will fix it. Parents need to talk to and with their kids when they’re little. Expand their language by talking about anything and everything. Take them to the grocery store and point out that apples are red and round and cucumbers are green and long. It doesn’t need to be rocket science and it doesn’t even need to be in English. But lower SES parents (there are exceptions, of course) either are unaware of how important this is, or just don’t do it for whatever reason and the deficit of language really impacts the kids when they start school.

Wow! Did I write this? We got a new teacher at my Title 1 school last year. She came from a UMC county school and was in shock that her students didn't know anything. She spent days teaching them the prerequisites for each lesson. She would come into my classroom shaking her head everyday. "They don't know directions! North, south, east, west. How can I teach lessons about regions of the county when they don't know that? They don't know where the U.S. is on a world map. They don't know that there are different time zones in the world." Needless to say, she was constantly under fire from admin because she was so far behind because she was trying to fill in the huge gaps. Some teachers just teach the lessons and ph well if the kids don't get it. They are under a lot of pressure to keep up with the pacing guides. I don't know if DCUMs readers can comprehend some of the students we encounter. Kindergarteners who don't know the right way to hold a book or that the story comes from the words on the page, not the illustrations. Native English speakers who enter our preschool at age 3 program regularly test at an 18 month old level for vocabulary. I have a kindergartener this year who had not only never seen her own name in print before, it took her over a month to really realize that what she was copying off her name tag onto all of her work was really her name. The light bulb moment came near Halloween. "Oh! This says, 'Elizabeth?' Oh!" This really doesn't have anything to do with the English language either. Native English speakers would absolutely be eligible for ESOL services at my school. I'd estimate half of them would test as LEP (Limited English Proficient) on the placement test I give to non-native English speakers.

This is heartbreaking

I’m the first teacher who posted and it’s absolutely reality. The examples PP gives happen all the time in my school as well. And it’s not just the ESOL students, it’s the native English speakers as well.

Universal preschool could be beneficial for these children.
There is a 2017 OLO report on the costs and benefits of such a program. The benefits are massive but the costs are also really high
(full day PreK for 10,000 students in the county would cost around $120 million). Right now only 3300 get county funded preK, mostly in half day programs.
see page iii of the report
https://www.montgomerycountymd.gov/OLO/Resources/Files/2017%20Reports/OLOReport2017_7PreKinMontgomeryCountyandinOtherJurisdictions.pdf

And the studies show those 3300 kids do no better than those who do not have it. This should not be based on the school budget. There is no room, there is no time to make more room, there is no busses to get these kids. So that $120 million is a small number in the total costs to even start a program that high and there is no legit study that shows that one year is a difference. We used to have part time K and not it is full time and the numbers are worse. Why is that?

Learning starts at home. It always has. And I hate to say this but when woman decided they needed to be in the workforce and not at home raising their kids, the economics of this country went crazy. Unemployment went up, home values soared, cost of college skyrocketed, and more. We are now a 2 income society to even survive for the most part. Add technological advances that have taken away normal work hours and you have parents that are completely disengaged with their children. Kids as young as 6 weeks being raised by strangers for 10 hours and both family members are working 10 hours minimum with commute, and then even more on their home computer and phone. Single parent families is now almost automatic poverty. Impossible to live in a world on your own when 2 income is the majority. The kids that are thriving in school either have a parent at home full or part time, or have enough money to place them in a well regarded preschool at a young age. The rest of the kids in low income daycare or at home with random neighbors, family, or sometimes on their own, have no shot. Their parents or parent are exhausted after working 2 measly jobs in one day and no way out. They sure as heck can't afford college. Parents need to have options. Not just rich parents.

Other countries have incredible maternity and paternity leave issued by the government, but they don't have the level of poverty and teen pregnancy we do. So people who complain about how great Sweden is with their year maternity leave, have no clue. Finland has wonderful daycare/preschool options paid by the government, but again - they don't have millions of illegal immigrants or poor uneducated families. The sheer number makes it impossible. Trying to work on a state level is possible, but is it fair?

There has to be a way to start moving in a better direction for our kids in this country. Hogan signing free college was a great start, but we need to do more in the ages of 0-5yrs old. That is where it counts. Also, the amount of immigrants, legal and illegal in this country makes it very hard to help these kids in the early years. The language and cultural barrier is extreme. There need to be programs in place that assist LEGAL immigrants with assimilating as well as their children.

[Anonymous]

Which is it, PP? Either preschool is ineffective, or it isn't. Or are you saying that preschool is effective for non-poor kids but ineffective for poor kids?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Which is it, PP? Either preschool is ineffective, or it isn't. Or are you saying that preschool is effective for non-poor kids but ineffective for poor kids?

No schooling works unless parents are teaching at home too. That is how I understand it. I mean if it did, then kids going to school full time all day, would be doing great. And they aren't.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Forget achievement gap. Are all MCPS students ready for going to college or vocational school with enough math and literacy education to be successful citizens?

I think it is wrong to suggest that any student should not get the acceleration and enrichment they need just because there are kids who are at the bottom of achievement gap

Holding back high performing students in schools have done nothing more than created more gaps for low income families of all races.

It is no different than people making $75K to rarely get a raise while we are looking at paying people to flip burgers $15 dollars an hour.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Which is it, PP? Either preschool is ineffective, or it isn't. Or are you saying that preschool is effective for non-poor kids but ineffective for poor kids?

Funny thing is that I just read this article today and completely agree with it. K teachers need kids with self-regulation and the ability to learn. I don't think preschool has as much to do with it as it just gets the kids socializing and learning behaviors at an earlier age. Play based preschool is best for under performing with frazzled parents, as well as high performing kids from tiger parents.

http://www.lovewhatmatters.com/why-free-play-is-the-best-summer-school/