Reply to Achievement gap

Forum Index » Montgomery County Public Schools (MCPS)

Reply to "Achievement gap - evidence"

Subject:

Emoticons





More smilies

Text Color: Font: Close Marks

[quote=Anonymous]Recent integration / achievement gap experiment in Missouri.

In 2013, a failing school district in St Louis called Normandy lost accreditation with the state because it was failing.  The students received a state-mandated right to bus to a school district 30 miles away, called Frances Howell.  Of note, Frances Howell had a negligible number of URM students prior to the integration.

The story of the initial integration was covered in depth by a journalist called Nikole Hannah-Jones, with the summary available on This American Life.  The previous thread had suggested listening to Part 1 starting at minute 23 to see how the parents felt about the integration:

https://www.thisamericanlife.org/562/the-problem-we-all-live-with-part-one

So I decided to follow-up on this experiment, to see what happened to the achievement gap.  The state-mandated busing persisted through 2018, when the Normandy district reclaimed its accreditation.  I decided to look at all 4 middle schools in Frances Howell since that is what Nikole Hannah-Jones focused on.  By this time, all URM's in the 4 middle schools will have come from Normandy, and gone there for the entire time.

So let's look at the achievement gap results in 4 schools:

Frances - Howell Middle School  
GS rating 8/10
https://www.greatschools.org/missouri/st-charles/1938-Francis-Howell-Middle-School/
All students: 10/10	
White (86% of students): 10/10	
Black (6% of students ): 4/10	
Hispanic (3% of students ): 9/10

Saeger Middle School
GS rating 8/10
https://www.greatschools.org/missouri/st-charles/1947-Saeger-Middle-School/
All students:  9/10	
White (84% of students): 9/10	
Black (7% of students): 6/10

Hollenbeck Middle school
GS rating 7/10
https://www.greatschools.org/missouri/st-charles/1941-Hollenbeck-Middle-School/
All students: 9/10	
White (83% of students): 9/10	
Black (8% of students ): 3/10	
Hispanic (4% of students ): 4/10

Bryan Middle School
GS rating 7/10
https://www.greatschools.org/missouri/st-charles/1957-Bryan-Middle-School/
All students 9/10	
White (83% of students): 9/10	
Black (9% of students): 4/10	
Asian or Pacific Islander (3% of students): 9/10

Can we say that moving the students to Frances Howell district had no impact on them?  I think that would be wrong.  Not everything is measured in test scores; in fact, most things are not.  Also, I looked up Normandy Middle School.  Its GS rating is 1/10, so 4/10 is an improvement.  On the other hand, the students who chose to commute 30 miles on the highway self-selected.  There was also a much better funding structure in the Frances Howell schools, so several variables in play.

However, can you say that integration fixed the achievement gap in Missouri?  You find, at best, marginal improvement, maybe a difference between HS drop-out and graduation, but not much more than that.  There are probably a few select students that really benefited.

Also, with all the schools hitting the sweet spot of 15%-20% FARMS students, the achievement of the original student body, at least as measured through standardized testing, did not suffer.[/quote]

Options

	Disable HTML in this message
	Disable BB Code in this message
	Disable smilies in this message

Review message

Search Recent Topics Hottest Topics