Closing the achievement gap is a major challenge

11/23/04 -- Anderson Elementary School in Reno, Nev., has made dramatic progress in transforming itself from a school "in need of improvement" to one designated as "high achieving."

Ninety percent of the school's 500 K-6 students are eligible for free or reduced-price lunches and 60 percent are English language learners. The school's mobility rate is 74 percent.

In 2001-2, only about 24 percent of Anderson's students were proficient in language arts, and 28 percent were proficient in math. The school had failed to make adequate yearly progress (AYP), as required by the No Child Left Behind Act, for the third year in a row.

By 2003-04, 38.6 percent of students were proficient in language arts and more than 56 were proficient in math. Scores for every demographic subgroup rose, and the school not only made AYP, but the state labeled it an "exemplary turnaround school."

Anne Loring, a member of the Washoe County school board, attributes Anderson's success to strong leadership of teachers and staff, a focus on literacy, and a reorganization of the school day. She also says NCLB has helped by "giving motivation to the staff to put in the effort required to make that kind of dramatic improvement."

While Anderson Elementary demonstrates it is possible for schools with a predominantly disadvantaged population to make tremendous gains in student achievement, some education policy experts insist the deck is stacked against such schools and that there is no way that every U.S. student will achieve a high standard of proficiency by 2014, as required by NCLB.

"The goal we set for national educational policy today is impossible to meet," charges Richard Rothstein, a research associate at the Economic Policy Institute and a visiting professor at Teachers College, Columbia University.

At a panel at the Progressive Policy Institute earlier this month, Rothstein said, "No matter how good our schools are we cannot meet the goal" of 100 percent proficiency.

And that's because NCLB does nothing to affect the underlying socioeconomic issues that hamper poor children's ability to achieve at high levels. "The social class of children does affect how much children learn in school," says Rothstein, the author of Class and Schools, published in September by Teachers College Press.

Although there are poor children and poor schools that defeat the odds, on average, children from lower-income households have higher mobility rates. "Children who moved around are not going to do as well as those who are stable," Rothstein says, although "certainly there are some mobile children who achieve at high levels."

Poor children are more likely to have asthma, which is the "greatest cause of absenteeism," he says. "No matter how good the school," if children are absent frequently, "they won't do as well. It's simply a matter of logic."

Poor children also are less prepared when they start school, Rothstein says. Parents employed as professionals speak to their young children much more often and those children have higher vocabularies when they start kindergarten than children from poor, or even working-class, families.

Ross Wiener, director of policy for the Education Trust, who also spoke on the panel, argues that just because poverty hampers learning doesn't mean we should not demand that all schools achieve to high standards.

"Of course we need to acknowledge that racism and poverty negatively impact student achievement," Wiener says. "Of course we have to reduce poverty. But we must also have a specific plan to improve public education to make it more fair."

According to Wiener, we compound the achievement gap by giving schools that predominantly serve poor and minority students fewer resources, less qualified teachers, and fewer advanced courses, and have lower expectations for them.

"On average, the more poor students in a school the lower the test scores," Weiner says. "But when you look at individual schools, there is wide variation."

He points to the Kipp Academy in Washington, D.C., as a school serving a predominantly poor, 100 percent African American enrollment, that has a remarkable record of success. Students were low-performing when they entered the Kipp Academy, but were above the city average a year later and were way ahead after two years.

Rothstein argues that the Kipp Academy is a special case because it is a charter school with unusual requirements and thus cannot be compared to regular inner-city schools.

For example, parents must agree to supervise their children's homework, and parents who choose to send their children to that school are more motivated to have their children succeed than the typical inner-city parent. In addition, troubled students can be sent back to regular public schools.

Rothstein traces Kipp's success to its longer hours, which it is able to provide because it hires young teachers, keeps them for a short time, and pays them less than regular public schools can afford for the same work schedule.

"Kip is a wonderful program but that doesn't mean all schools can be like this," Rothstein says.

According to Wiener the characteristics of high-achieving schools with concentrations of poor students are a sense of leadership for student learning, rigor, high standards, a focus on teachers, and extensive help and support.

At Anderson Elementary, one of the steps taken to improve test scores is a revised schedule with three hours a day on language arts, including guided reading with students grouped by ability, intensive word study, and writing instruction.

The school reduced class sizes, began collecting a massive amount of data on test scores, and built into the schedule collaboration time for teachers. It also encourages teachers to conduct research projects on how to improve student learning and has them share the results with their peers.

Regarding NCLB, Anderson Principal Pete Hall says: "No law or policy is going to change the way education is run. It's up to people. We didn't have a choice [in implementing NCLB], but it did help us get motivated."

"To set up a standard that says all social factors make no difference and to say that the only factors that matter are high standards, a good curriculum, and teachers with high expectations is to set up schools for inevitable failure," Rothstein says. "NCLB is demoralizing many good educators. It labels them as failures despite the good job they're doing."

Smaller classes can make a difference, but NCLB doesn't address class size, Rothstein says. "No matter how high teachers' expectations are, they can't be effective with large classes. Along with improving schools, he says, the nation also needs policies on health care and affordable housing.

"What we are doing now is wrong," Rothstein says. "The fact that we don't have a good alternative doesn't make it right."