Can achievement gap be closed with extra tutoring?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

"technology" is part of the problem for low income kids. They are plopped in front of the TV 24/7 from birth. Sesame Street has nothing on what their better off peers are getting. Middle class and UC kids are being taken to the zoo, libraries, farms, field trips, playgrounds and educational vacations from birth. They (parents or the nanny) speak to and sing to their kids. They read 5+ books a day to their kids from birth. They delight in their kids and enjoy teaching and learning with them. They constantly read parenting books to better their skills and learn how to manage different ages.

Could we please stop with the "poor people ignore and neglect their children" thing?

You politically correct fools will never understand the "Achievement Gap" if you are this overly sensitive. Of course not all poor people ignore and neglect their children. Just like I can say "Of course not all poor children do poorly in school". But, I can tell you with almost certainty that poor children whose parents ignore and neglect them will struggle in school. We can even remove the word "poor" from that sentence. Neglect is a strong word (and I think you used it improperly to try and prove some point).

Sure. And affluent children whose parents ignore and neglect them will also struggle in school. As you say.

Yes m, under parented children struggle in school. In different ways.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Why is extra tutoring and intervention not being made available to groups that are falling behind?

If extra tutoring that is provided by companies like Sylvan Learning Center, C2, Huntington, Kumon, Kaplan, Dr. Li, APlus etc can help the Asian-American and White kids do well academically, should we not allow poor HI and AA students to have access to such tutoring? Maybe all FARMS eligible students also get this opportunity.

Has MCPS thought about providing tutoring and coaching services (for free or at subsidized costs) to the lowest performers or students who want to get accelerated instruction? Perhaps this tutoring can happen during weekends and during summer and other breaks. If they can also provide transportation and snacks, many parents and students can benefit.

Obviously, MCPS by itself is not able to bridge the achievement gap, but, how long will they not do anything for these students?

Because most kids doing poorly come from families that do not value education. They won’t go after the better programs no matter how many you throw their way. Poor Asian families can still bypass most kids. It is not about SES, it is about family values. Some families forego many things for a quality education, even if they aren’t educated themselves. Sadly most do not. Workbooks, prodigy, xtra math, khan academy, etc... are all free or super cheap. Borrowing books and using computers are the library are free. No one needs one on one expensive tutoring, they need basic skills early on to stay ahead.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Affluent families hire tutors to navigate MCPS's crappy curriculum. Of course, children whose families don't have the resources would benefit from the same type of tutoring!

So cool that everyone at great old MCPS home schools or tutors their kids on the side because the curriculum and teaching is so bad.

That is really all you need to know about MCPS. It’s ineffective.

+1

Track kids starting in K and bring the kids in need up to speed as soon as possible. Even if that class has only 15 and the kids on level or higher are at 25. This crappy mixed classrooms is killing all levels.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

"technology" is part of the problem for low income kids. They are plopped in front of the TV 24/7 from birth. Sesame Street has nothing on what their better off peers are getting. Middle class and UC kids are being taken to the zoo, libraries, farms, field trips, playgrounds and educational vacations from birth. They (parents or the nanny) speak to and sing to their kids. They read 5+ books a day to their kids from birth. They delight in their kids and enjoy teaching and learning with them. They constantly read parenting books to better their skills and learn how to manage different ages.

Could we please stop with the "poor people ignore and neglect their children" thing?

PP here. I'm not necessarily blaming poor people. Many are working multiple jobs and can't afford real daycares. Yes, there is a lot of benign neglect going on.

And lots are working NO job, so yes, some poor people ignore and neglect their children.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Or we could stop measuring everyone's worth by their PARCC and SAT scores.

Somewhere I imagine Hispanic parents sitting around asking themselves what's wrong with all these UMC white parents. Why can't they clean their own houses and do their own home renovations? Why do they make their kids spend so much time on travel sports and so little time at church? And when will they learn Spanish already?

Are you freaking kidding me? My Hispanic husband is insisting that we move because he's not happy with our home schools' GS ratings.

I don't think you are the demographic for Saturday School, then. We have plenty of highly-educated Hispanic families in our part of west Bethesda. And, they do plenty of enrichment and ECs with their kids. You would fit right in.

The question of who cleans our houses and mows our lawns and renos our homes, is a big one. The schools are not responsible for that.

I agree SAT scores should not mean much, if you do not intend to go to college. But, our schools don't have a vocational track, do they?

NP

There is no vocational "track," but there is Thomas Edison for anyone who wants to pick up trade skills while completing their HS degree.
Saturday school is not for any demographic, anyone can use it for reasonably priced tutoring typically by MCPS certified teachers.
SAT scores have limited meaning even for the college bound--sure you need the correct threshold to even be considered at a given school but there isn't a number on a scrap of paper that guarantees anyone anything, tie-breaker at best.

This program is totally inadequate. First, there are too few spaces. Next, they place many academic requirements on the programs, so kids that are functionally illiterate like some of our new immigrants (and unfortunately some long time MCPS students) cannot get into the programs. There is an effort to have "21st century vocations" but if you have a kid who is a poor reader and cannot do higher level math, they will not go to college and they are not accepted into Thomas Edison. MCPS turns them out of the system with preparation for NOTHING. It is frightening for them and for society.

[Anonymous]

Tutoring won't help much if there is no enforcement on getting all the assignments done correctly. If the school can somehow force the students to spend more time on studing, students will do better. Make the summer school a requirement, not an option for low performing students. Extend title I school hours and provide kids with snacks and homework assistance. If no tiger mom at home, tiger school will do.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:My kid gets $20-25/hour for general and subject tutoring (mostly to get the grades up). He tried to volunteer for the free tutoring that was organized by local community. He went there several times. 20 volunteers and 2 students at most. The program died. Tutoring would not solve the problems.

Tutoring only works if students are motivated to learn and if their families are willing to support them by getting them to Saturday school etc

Tutoring only works if lack of tutoring is the problem. Similarly, tutoring programs only work if they meet the needs of their intended users.

If I offered you something that you didn't want or think you needed, and I then explained to you that

1. I know better about what you need than you do
2. you do need it, only you're too foolish/deluded/set-in-your-ways to know what you need,

how would you feel about this?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Np No sorry. There is American English and British English. We do have grammar rules too. the rest are all accents

There isn't even "British English".

http://www.slate.com/blogs/lexicon_valley/2014/08/05/despite_disputes_over_whether_scots_is_separate_language_or_dialect_of_english.html

There is because their spellings and words are different. Your slate article doesn't sway me

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:My kid gets $20-25/hour for general and subject tutoring (mostly to get the grades up). He tried to volunteer for the free tutoring that was organized by local community. He went there several times. 20 volunteers and 2 students at most. The program died. Tutoring would not solve the problems.

Tutoring only works if students are motivated to learn and if their families are willing to support them by getting them to Saturday school etc

Tutoring only works if lack of tutoring is the problem. Similarly, tutoring programs only work if they meet the needs of their intended users.

If I offered you something that you didn't want or think you needed, and I then explained to you that

1. I know better about what you need than you do
2. you do need it, only you're too foolish/deluded/set-in-your-ways to know what you need,

how would you feel about this?

I don't understand your post. Are you saying that it is patronizing to assume that children who are not doing well at school would want to do better? These are not mandatory programs. If I was not doing well in school and was offered free or very low cost (Saturday school costs $40 for an entire year of services for a student who is eligible for FARMS) tutoring I would take advantage of it. We get phone calls all the time in English and in Spanish about the Saturday school http://www.saturdayschool.org/programs/
There are twelve locations in the county located in high schools in the DCC, NEC and upcounty.
There are school bus routes for 7 of the centers and parents are welcome to ride with the kids

[Anonymous]

Don't forget free after school homework clubs with activity busses afterwards as well as HS honor society students available for free at lunch time for older students.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:My kid gets $20-25/hour for general and subject tutoring (mostly to get the grades up). He tried to volunteer for the free tutoring that was organized by local community. He went there several times. 20 volunteers and 2 students at most. The program died. Tutoring would not solve the problems.

Tutoring only works if students are motivated to learn and if their families are willing to support them by getting them to Saturday school etc

Tutoring only works if lack of tutoring is the problem. Similarly, tutoring programs only work if they meet the needs of their intended users.

If I offered you something that you didn't want or think you needed, and I then explained to you that

1. I know better about what you need than you do
2. you do need it, only you're too foolish/deluded/set-in-your-ways to know what you need,

how would you feel about this?

I don't understand your post. Are you saying that it is patronizing to assume that children who are not doing well at school would want to do better? These are not mandatory programs. If I was not doing well in school and was offered free or very low cost (Saturday school costs $40 for an entire year of services for a student who is eligible for FARMS) tutoring I would take advantage of it. We get phone calls all the time in English and in Spanish about the Saturday school http://www.saturdayschool.org/programs/
There are twelve locations in the county located in high schools in the DCC, NEC and upcounty.
There are school bus routes for 7 of the centers and parents are welcome to ride with the kids

I'm saying that it's patronizing to assume that any right-minded person would want what you're offering, and therefore, if somebody doesn't want it, that shows that they're not right-minded.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

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

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:My kid gets $20-25/hour for general and subject tutoring (mostly to get the grades up). He tried to volunteer for the free tutoring that was organized by local community. He went there several times. 20 volunteers and 2 students at most. The program died. Tutoring would not solve the problems.

Tutoring only works if students are motivated to learn and if their families are willing to support them by getting them to Saturday school etc

Tutoring only works if lack of tutoring is the problem. Similarly, tutoring programs only work if they meet the needs of their intended users.

If I offered you something that you didn't want or think you needed, and I then explained to you that

1. I know better about what you need than you do
2. you do need it, only you're too foolish/deluded/set-in-your-ways to know what you need,

how would you feel about this?

I don't understand your post. Are you saying that it is patronizing to assume that children who are not doing well at school would want to do better? These are not mandatory programs. If I was not doing well in school and was offered free or very low cost (Saturday school costs $40 for an entire year of services for a student who is eligible for FARMS) tutoring I would take advantage of it. We get phone calls all the time in English and in Spanish about the Saturday school http://www.saturdayschool.org/programs/
There are twelve locations in the county located in high schools in the DCC, NEC and upcounty.
There are school bus routes for 7 of the centers and parents are welcome to ride with the kids

I'm saying that it's patronizing to assume that any right-minded person would want what you're offering, and therefore, if somebody doesn't want it, that shows that they're not right-minded.

I would never assume that any child who is doing poorly in school would want to do better (they might have non academic interests and ambitions) BUT if they are not doing well AND they want to improve their grades then yes I think they should seriously consider low cost and free tutoring services. I see kids (very often with their parents) at Blair on Saturdays and I am always impressed by their motivation.

[Anonymous]

Not from MCPS but this Saturday School is an amazing resource! I would send my son there for extra math help. It's so affordable!

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

I'm saying that it's patronizing to assume that any right-minded person would want what you're offering, and therefore, if somebody doesn't want it, that shows that they're not right-minded.

I would never assume that any child who is doing poorly in school would want to do better (they might have non academic interests and ambitions) BUT if they are not doing well AND they want to improve their grades then yes I think they should seriously consider low cost and free tutoring services. I see kids (very often with their parents) at Blair on Saturdays and I am always impressed by their motivation.

PP you're responding to, and I agree that it's great that kids who want tutoring are able to get tutoring.