Achievement Gap

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Visiting with one of DC's best friends from DCPS, who is AA, I see her friend has an enormous extended family and gets lots of love, attention and support. They have a nice rowhouse in upper NW. Both parents work. But there was literally not one book in the house. No shelf anywhere for children's books. A Wii in the slightly older brother's room but no bookshelf.

Let's not jump to conclusions and judge. My aunt, who was a neat freak, well educated, husband was an attorney, kids all advanced degreed, had tons of books. You never saw them because she literally kept them in drawers so they wouldn't clutter the shelves.

[Anonymous]

To me the Washington Post article was just a spin-off the high rate of child poverty in DC. The problem is all of our education reform has focused only on teacher reform and missed the really important role curriculum plays. My Thinking is that the reason Ward 3 kids are doing better is that the parents are able to help fill in where the gaps are in the current curriculum. Poorer kids just don't have the resources.

The teacher quality conundrum: If they are the problem, why are kids gaining in math?

But there is a flaw in this logic. Recent years have seen surprisingly strong improvements in student achievement brought about by many of the same “bad” teachers who are supposedly our biggest problem.

The National Assessment of Educational Progress (often called the “nation’s report card”) administers the identical test to a representative sample of American kids every few years, to gain a long-term picture of achievement gains for students in grades 4, 8 and 12. Reading scores over the last 20 years have been flat. But in math, scores have increased markedly. A fourth-grader at the 50th percentile in 1990 would score at about the 25th percentile compared to the kids taking the test in 2009. That’s an enormous improvement.

This raises an uncomfortable question for teacher quality advocates: If teachers are so vitally important, why have fourth-grade math scores dramatically improved, but reading scores have flatlined, given that — at least at the elementary level — the same teachers are responsible for each?



Read more: http://www.nydailynews.com/opinion/teacher-quality-conundrum-problem-kids-gaining-math-article-1.986066#ixzz1ftkioLuW

[Anonymous]

I've heard it's because math, unlike language, is taught mainly in schools.

Thus, kids from all kinds of backgrounds are on a more equal footing when it comes to math than they are with language.

Kids whose parents are poorly educated have a very poor vocabulary when they start school, compared to kids whose parents are educated. Those kikds have more words, and a more complex syntax.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:as a middle-class AA parent i find this thread completely ridiculous. no middle-class black parents in DC? this is because you don't know them or aren't friends with them. just because they don't exist for you doesn't mean that they're not here. i see them among my diverse set of friends in the charters and yes even in DCPS. they're parents like natalie hopkinson, who was just in the NYT with this commentary on school choice.

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/12/05/opinion/why-school-choice-fails.html?scp=1&sq=natalie%20hopkinson&st=cse

among AA parents the discussion is about class, not race. if you took out color, many of the lowest-achieving students are low-income. that's why so many charters like KIPP, DC Prep and Achievement Prep Academy started--they wanted to get rid of the low-income factor as an automatic barrier to achievement.

As an aside, Natalie made a real fool of herself with this op Ed. Ok Natalie, lets close all the Charters, you and all your friends will not go to your local school, you will go private or move, neighborhood schools will remain under enrolled, population of dc will plummet again and idiots will remain in charge of DCPS. It will look just like 1998 again. Good idea.

[Anonymous]

Really? I thought Natalie was spot on. The view from 2011 still stinks, despite all the time, money and drama pumped into the present system.

Seems like there are a similar number of "idiots" (your word, not mine) attempting to run charters.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Whites have always been included in the NAEP results -- just as they are in the DC-CAS results. It's not a slow news day at the Post -- it's an embarrassing day for the former and current chancellors who made closing the achievement gap in dc a top priority.

To their credit, history and urban development has been working against them. Whatever gap they may have helped diminish (if they did) was immediately widened again by the added influx of inherently high achieving socioeconomic groups. As reported, DC-CAS data are flawed in that they don't easily allow to draw conclusions in time. They're aggregate and don't actually track particular individuals' results, which is what we'd need here to validly conclude about these or those groups of individuals progressing in divergence or convergence.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Whites have always been included in the NAEP results -- just as they are in the DC-CAS results. It's not a slow news day at the Post -- it's an embarrassing day for the former and current chancellors who made closing the achievement gap in dc a top priority.

To their credit, history and urban development has been working against them. Whatever gap they may have helped diminish (if they did) was immediately widened again by the added influx of inherently high achieving socioeconomic groups. As reported, DC-CAS data are flawed in that they don't easily allow to draw conclusions in time. They're aggregate and don't actually track particular individuals' results, which is what we'd need here to validly conclude about these or those groups of individuals progressing in divergence or convergence.

the income gap has not changed since Michelle Rhee, it changed in the 50's and 60's when middle class white and blacks moved to the suburbs, leaving higher percentages of low income blacks and high-income whites in the city.

Rhee and Henderson knew very well what the income gap was, but fully intended to close the achievement gap by hiring better teachers and paying them more. This hasn't happened.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Really? I thought Natalie was spot on. The view from 2011 still stinks, despite all the time, money and drama pumped into the present system.

Seems like there are a similar number of "idiots" (your word, not mine) attempting to run charters.

ITA

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:as a middle-class AA parent i find this thread completely ridiculous. no middle-class black parents in DC? this is because you don't know them or aren't friends with them. just because they don't exist for you doesn't mean that they're not here. i see them among my diverse set of friends in the charters and yes even in DCPS. they're parents like natalie hopkinson, who was just in the NYT with this commentary on school choice.

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/12/05/opinion/why-school-choice-fails.html?scp=1&sq=natalie%20hopkinson&st=cse

among AA parents the discussion is about class, not race. if you took out color, many of the lowest-achieving students are low-income. that's why so many charters like KIPP, DC Prep and Achievement Prep Academy started--they wanted to get rid of the low-income factor as an automatic barrier to achievement.

We are an AA family living in NE DC, HHI of $350K a year. We applied at private, but selected a charter school. I consider our family to be an educated, middle-class AA family, and we could not be happier with our decision. By the way, we tested our child at Kumon, and she tested above average in both Reading and Math, and scored 90+ on the WPPSI. Our home is loaded with books! My point here is that I agree that the achievement gap is not a racial issue, but a socio-economic issue.

If you want to make it about race, then test kids from different races, but on equal socio-economic levels.

[Anonymous]

We are an AA family living in NE DC, HHI of $350K a year. We applied at private, but selected a charter school. I consider our family to be an educated, middle-class AA family, and we could not be happier with our decision. By the way, we tested our child at Kumon, and she tested above average in both Reading and Math, and scored 90+ on the WPPSI. Our home is loaded with books! My point here is that I agree that the achievement gap is not a racial issue, but a socio-economic issue.

If you want to make it about race, then test kids from different races, but on equal socio-economic levels.


I'm sorry, but $350k per year does not equal middle class. You are upper class. I agree with everything you say!

[Anonymous]

http://www.washingtonpost.com/local/income-gap-stays-wide-in-district-narrows-in-suburbs/2011/12/07/gIQAoda8dO_story.html

[Anonymous]

$350K PP, how is the charter meeting your expectations? I thought most in that income bracket would go private.

[Anonymous]

$350K is middle class? I guess my family is poor since we only make about 1/3 of that.

[Anonymous]

I am here to burst your bubble as the income rhetoric is soooooooo not important. Example, AA family the average income combined is about 185k with 5 children and three requiring after-care. Yet, son went to a DCPS high-school all four years/graduated and was accepted into Harvard and is doing marvelously well.

The parents owe it to their child's beginning foundation at the elementary school level. His middle-school years were trying times for the parents but the parent's high-school choice was spot on. By the way the high-school has not made AYP in 5 years.

[Anonymous]

Here's some data that just amazes me:

12% of black kids are proficient in math
85% of white kids are proficient in math

33% of white kids are advanced in math
1% of black kids are advanced in math

THE data is similar for reading.