Why are the top elementary schools in NW better?

[Anonymous]

OP,
Interesting that you use the word curriculum. DCPS used standards and doesn't really have a genuine curriculum as I experienced it.

[Anonymous]

Oops. DCPS uses standards - present tense -- is what I meant to say.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:
Every school tracks test scores by race and schools (thought NCLB) are judged on their ability to close this gap. This gap exists EVERYWHERE, it exists in every socio-economic level, across the country. No one understands it and no one know how to fix it.

Slightly off topic, but I just wanted to throw my 2 cent sin to this comment. I disagree that no one knows what causes the gap -- it's mostly a socioeconomic one, not purely race. And for language arts/reading anyhow, the gap is very much a vocabulary gap. Kids from poorer families just don't hear anything like as many words by the time they are even three years old, as do kids from higher socioeconomic statuses.

Take a look at some of the research and findings on this topic here in this PPT if you are interested:

http://www.k12.wa.us/Curriculuminstruct/reading/readingfirst/presentations/Anita%20Archer-PrimaryVocabWA.ppt

Thanks for posting this. But it does not account for the fact that the achievement gap still exists even when you hold socioeconomic factors constant. In schools where black/latino and white students basically have the same social standing and are from middle-class and educated families, the achievement gap still persists - this is well documented in studies looking at the achievement gap in suburban (wealthier) school districts. And no one understands why.

[Anonymous]

racism is probably why. they are probably receiving inferior instruction, discouraging cultural messaging. perhaps the tools used to asses are also biased.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:racism is probably why. they are probably receiving inferior instruction, discouraging cultural messaging. perhaps the tools used to asses are also biased.

I would not use the term "racism" becasue it implies some malicious intent which I do not think is the case in schools. However, I do think that there are inherent cultural/language biases in most formal education settings. BTW, I would love the see a study on the acheivement gap when you are comparing white american born students vs. foreign born english speaking black students.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:
Every school tracks test scores by race and schools (thought NCLB) are judged on their ability to close this gap. This gap exists EVERYWHERE, it exists in every socio-economic level, across the country. No one understands it and no one know how to fix it.

Slightly off topic, but I just wanted to throw my 2 cent sin to this comment. I disagree that no one knows what causes the gap -- it's mostly a socioeconomic one, not purely race. And for language arts/reading anyhow, the gap is very much a vocabulary gap. Kids from poorer families just don't hear anything like as many words by the time they are even three years old, as do kids from higher socioeconomic statuses.

Take a look at some of the research and findings on this topic here in this PPT if you are interested:

http://www.k12.wa.us/Curriculuminstruct/reading/readingfirst/presentations/Anita%20Archer-PrimaryVocabWA.ppt

You are exactly right. Dividing people by races is out dated and has no place in our society today. Especially now as we have so many more people that can't be pigeonholed into one category. Because it's al about what you look like and identify as not what you actually are so I don't put any stock into it at all. Racial categories in the US are so 1960. It's time to move on.

[Anonymous]

The gap is puzzling. I am black and my kids went to one of the sought after upper NW schools. They did extremely well, and had no problem in getting into private school, where they are also doing well. We are upper middle class, I suppose. This was the same experience for almost all our black friends (many of whom are lawyers and doctors and executives) whose kids went the same route. Now I realize my experience is anectdotal, but I would be very interested in seeing the breakdown for studies that controlled for socioeconomic status.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:
Every school tracks test scores by race and schools (thought NCLB) are judged on their ability to close this gap. This gap exists EVERYWHERE, it exists in every socio-economic level, across the country. No one understands it and no one know how to fix it.

Slightly off topic, but I just wanted to throw my 2 cent sin to this comment. I disagree that no one knows what causes the gap -- it's mostly a socioeconomic one, not purely race. And for language arts/reading anyhow, the gap is very much a vocabulary gap. Kids from poorer families just don't hear anything like as many words by the time they are even three years old, as do kids from higher socioeconomic statuses.

Take a look at some of the research and findings on this topic here in this PPT if you are interested:

http://www.k12.wa.us/Curriculuminstruct/reading/readingfirst/presentations/Anita%20Archer-PrimaryVocabWA.ppt

Thanks for posting this. But it does not account for the fact that the achievement gap still exists even when you hold socioeconomic factors constant. In schools where black/latino and white students basically have the same social standing and are from middle-class and educated families, the achievement gap still persists - this is well documented in studies looking at the achievement gap in suburban (wealthier) school districts. And no one understands why.

Do you have a link for this data in which you reference?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:The gap is puzzling. I am black and my kids went to one of the sought after upper NW schools. They did extremely well, and had no problem in getting into private school, where they are also doing well. We are upper middle class, I suppose. This was the same experience for almost all our black friends (many of whom are lawyers and doctors and executives) whose kids went the same route. Now I realize my experience is anectdotal, but I would be very interested in seeing the breakdown for studies that controlled for socioeconomic status.

My understanding was that there was NOT an achievement gap between affluent whites and affluent blacks. A poster here is suggesting there is indeed a gap, even among racial groups with the same educational background and socioeconomic status. I'd be very curious to see that research -- it has not been my understanding or, indeed, my experience.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:The gap is puzzling. I am black and my kids went to one of the sought after upper NW schools. They did extremely well, and had no problem in getting into private school, where they are also doing well. We are upper middle class, I suppose. This was the same experience for almost all our black friends (many of whom are lawyers and doctors and executives) whose kids went the same route. Now I realize my experience is anectdotal, but I would be very interested in seeing the breakdown for studies that controlled for socioeconomic status.

My understanding was that there was NOT an achievement gap between affluent whites and affluent blacks. A poster here is suggesting there is indeed a gap, even among racial groups with the same educational background and socioeconomic status. I'd be very curious to see that research -- it has not been my understanding or, indeed, my experience.

Even when parents' income and wealth is comparable, African Americans, Native Americans, Latinos, and immigrants for whom English is not a first language lag behind English-speaking, native-born, white students. The evidence for the gap has been documented repeatedly by the usual measures. These include drop-out rates, relative numbers of students who take the advanced placement examination, who are enrolled in the top academic and "gifted" classes and/or admitted to higher-status secondary schools, colleges, graduate, and professional programs. And last but not least, are the discrepancies in scores on standardized tests of academic achievement, on which teachers' and students' fate so heavily depend.

http://www.rethinkingschools.org/archive/15_04/Race154.shtml

[Anonymous]

You posted some researchers summary, but I'm not seeing citations for the actual studies he is referencing.

I'm very interested to see if there are any studies showing that, say, 3rd grade AA children from a high scoio-economic status perform less well than similarly edicated 3rd grade White kids.

Meanwhile, at some point he says this:

What standardized achievement tests appear to predict best are parents' wealth and scores on other similarly constructed tests.

Yup, exactly.

In addition, if I'm understanding his correctly, the main point of the author of the article you cited is that there is a black/ white achievement gap, but it is fairly small.

[Anonymous]

I don't have a dog in this fight. I just googled "achievement gap" and picked one of the more interesting looking links. Make of it what you will, or do your own search. Google is free.

[Anonymous]

It has been a couple of years, but I believe in Freakonomics, the economist author actually did a very extensive review of student achievement in the chicago area and when he controlled for socioeconomic background he found no difference between black and white student achievement.

[Anonymous]

Here are some sources - and sorry this completely off the topic of this thread but here is some quick Google research:

Closing the Achievement Gap: Two Views from Current Research. ERIC Digest
http://www.ericdigests.org/2004-3/gap.html

The Academic Achievement Gap
http://www.thewilliamsinstitute.org/Portals/10/Education/Academic%20Achievement%20Gap.pdf
Bottom of Page 3, Top of page 4: However, the minority achievement gap is not present only in underfunded urban schools. Rather, minorities in suburban schools, which are presumably well funded, perform at lower levels than nonminorities in reading proficiency exams taken by 13-year-olds (Levine & Eubanks, 1990). The gap was even present when parents’ college attendance was held constant, which suggests a more multifaceted relationship.

UNDERSTANDING THE BLACK-WHITE TEST SCORE GAP
IN THE FIRST TWO YEARS OF SCHOOL
http://faculty.smu.edu/millimet/classes/eco7321/papers/fryer%20levitt.pdf
From page 2:
The Coleman report (Coleman et al., 1966) was the first national study to describe ethnic differences in academic achievement among children at various stages of schooling. It documented that substantial differences in educational achievement between blacks and whites not only existed at every grade level, but increased with student age. Since then, substantial effort has been devoted to understanding what variables account for the gap, as well as how and why the magnitude of the gap has changed over time. A number of stylized facts have emerged. Socioeconomic status and the effects of poverty are important factors in explaining racialdifferences in educational achievement (Brooks-Gunn & Duncan, 1997; Mayer, 1997; Brooks-Gunn et al., 1994, 1995, 2000). Even after controlling for socioeconomic status in conventional regression analysis, a substantial gap still remains. That gap has generally been declining over time, although for high school students today, it is slightly larger thanit was in the late 1980s (Grissmer, Flanagan, and Williamson, 1998; Hedges & Nowell, 1998; Humphreys, 1988).

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:It has been a couple of years, but I believe in Freakonomics, the economist author actually did a very extensive review of student achievement in the chicago area and when he controlled for socioeconomic background he found no difference between black and white student achievement.

I read Freakonomics, it's on my shelf. Your belief is incorrect. The achievement gap exists, the author(s) were proposing theories to account for it.