Editorial - November 2007 - Volume 107 (7)

The Achievement Gap-Do We Need a New Strategy?

Gerald Kulm, Texas A&M University

One of the most intractable problems in American education has been the disparity in achievement between white and minority students on major assessment of mathematics learning such as the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP). The recent NAEP report indicated that overall achievement in mathematics continues to improve at a slow and steady rate. Although it is encouraging that NAEP math scores continue to rise gradually, the serious gap between white and minority achievement remains unchanged. Although they have increased, minority achievement levels have only now reached the levels that whites had attained 20 years ago. In the current age of rapid advances in mathematics, science, and technology it is unacceptable that a large portion of the population remains a generation behind their white peers in mathematics achievement.

The advances in our understanding of how students learn mathematics, and to a lesser extent, how to teach effectively have been only marginally been reflected in classrooms. Most people would probably argue that the educational system is massive and complex, consisting of more than 15,000 independent school districts which makes change difficult. While this is certainly true, it is also the case that hundreds of millions of dollars and countless days have been devoted to research, professional development, and policy efforts during the past couple of decades. The result of this massive and often unorganized effort is minor gains that are almost imperceptible on an individual school basis, let alone on individual student outcomes. Gains that are made one year in a particular school are likely to be reversed the next year due to changing student demographics, teacher or dministrator turnover, or budgetary issues.

Clearly, the strategy for addressing disparity in mathematics achievement of minority students is not working. The reform strategies of providing higher standards and more testing have not produced a noticeable effect in narrowing the achievement gap. The standards-based curriculum and student-centered teaching strategies have either not been implemented widely enough to work for minority students, or they are not a sufficiently powerful means to close the gap. Popular wisdom would say that the former is the problem. Not enough money and effort has been spent to implement reform-based strategies. The diffuse and complex educational system makes it too difficult to achieve reform except in those schools where enlightened administrators have sufficient resources. Unfortunately, those kinds of schools are not where most minority students are likely to be found. With some exceptions, minority students are likely to attend schools with fewer resources and with teachers and administrators whose priorities are to keep kids safe and attending school. Effective implementation of reform-based mathematics curriculum may be much lower on the agenda.

If it is too difficult to implement mathematics reforms for most minority students, or if the mathematics reform is not effective for all students, what can we do? Two important questions should be addressed: what strategies actually work in improving minority achievement, and how can these successful strategies be implemented on a wide-spread basis? For a possible answer to the first question, a reasonable place to look is the schools that have been successful in closing the achievement gap. One example is the federal Blue Ribbon Schools program. Schools receive an award if they have at least 40 percent of their students from disadvantaged backgrounds and who dramatically improve student achievement on state assessments. Schools that score in the top 10 percent in their state assessment also receive awards. Research to identify common strategies that Blue Ribbon schools use does not appear to be readily available. Also, since the award recognizes one year's dramatic improvement, it is not clear whether the achievement is sustained. Another example is the work of Reeves (2003), who identified successful strategies used by so-called 90/90/90 schools. These are schools where “90% or more of the students were eligible for free and reduced lunch, 90% or more of the students were members of ethnic minority groups, and 90% or more of the students met the district or state academic standards in reading and other areas” (p. 1). Five common practices that accounted for their success were identified in these schools: focus on academic achievement, clear curriculum choices, frequent assessment of student progress with many chances for improvement, an emphasis on writing, and collaborative scoring of student products. These ideas offer a starting point for implementing replicable and realistic approaches that work.

A new strategy for reform would build on the successful practices that are already known or could be found from further research on schools such as the Blue Ribbon or 90/90/90 schools. Specific ideas for mathematics or science may be discovered within the more general successful practices already identified. The new reform strategy would differ from the past ideas of presenting and encouraging standards, providing professional development, implementing high stakes testing, and hoping that something good would happen when schools and teachers are left to do implementation on their own. A new strategy would avoid the unfortunate side effects that occur when teachers and schools focus primarily on efforts to improve student test scores. Instead, the culture and expectations of schools would be changed.

Teams with expertise and practical experience in mathematics curriculum, teaching, and leadership would be recruited and trained by teachers and administrators from successful schools. As part of the team, university-based researchers would collect data to provide feedback and to further document strategies that were successful in particular contexts or with particular students. These teams would focus their work on closing the achievement gap in a small group of schools within a district. Provided with the necessary financial support and resources, team members would teach and consult side-by-side with teachers, curriculum supervisors, and administrators to build and implement a small and clearly articulated set of specific strategies. The teams would work to build capacity and provide long-term help and support. As the strategies began to work, the expert teams would play a more secondary role, stepping in when needed, but remaining as a resource and support system. As the schools began to show success in closing achievement gaps, the team would move on to other schools, perhaps leaving some members in place, or adding members from newly successful schools. Over time, a national network of expertise would be developed and available, reflecting a new culture of technical support, research-based practices, and partnerships with schools.

References

Reeves, R. B. (2003). High performance in high poverty schools: 90/90/90 and beyond. Harvard Graduate School of Education, Center for Performance Assessment. Retrieved October 18, 2007 from http://www.sabine.k12.la.us/online/leadershipacademy/high%20performance%2090%2090%2090%20and%20beyond.pdf