Report Shows Narrowing Achievement Gap Between Different Student Groups
Finally, some good news when it comes to the educational prowess of America's public school students: The results of a recently released national study assert that the achievement gap—or the difference in achievement levels between various subgroups of students—is narrowing between advantaged and disadvantaged students on state reading and math tests.
The findings published in the study, which was conducted by the Washington-based Center on Education Policy, show that achievement gaps for minority and low-income students have narrowed across all grade levels and subjects in 74 percent of cases between 2002 and 2008.
On the whole, the report says disparities are narrowing because of accelerated achievement of lower-performing groups, rather than slower progress by high-achieving groups. For instance, the percentage of students who were "proficient" grew at a faster rate for African-American students than for whites in 142 of the 153 trend lines studied. Overall, gaps narrowed more often for African-American and Latino subgroups than for American Indian or low-income ones.
To perform the analysis, the CEP collected data about student performance on the No Child Left Behind-required assessments in all 50 states. But some experts say that because some states set a low bar for determining "proficiency" on state standardized tests—often in an effort to avoid sanctions under NCLB—that might weaken the group's findings.
"Part of the progress on the percent-proficient measure is because the proficiency bar is set so low," said Bruce Fuller, a professor of education and public policy at the University of California-Berkeley, in an interview with Education Week. He also contends that state test results might be more responsive to improvements on relatively low-level skills, thus exaggerating any apparent narrowing of gaps. And providing more concrete contradictory information, data from the most recent administration of the National Assessment of Educational Progress, known as the "nation's report card," did not reveal any closing of gaps between 2004 and 2008.
Jack Jennings, president and CEO of the CEP, admits that schools are still far from the finish line. "Now is not the time to let up," he said. "But as a nation, if we ask schools to narrow the achievement gap and that's what the schools are doing, we should give them credit for it."
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Tags: high school | public schools | standardized tests | education | No Child Left Behind
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Reader Comments
Gap
After reading these comments, I now know why American schools have failed. We have racist people that have spent years relegating minorities to terrible neighborhoods, with underfunded and decrepit schools with the worst teachers. Of course, we all pay for this evil in the end. We do not produce enough engineers(40,000 per year) and consequently import two hundred thousand from China and India each year. Most Americans are ignorant of math.Even our brightest come out last on international test. As they say, ignorance is bliss. I hope you fools sleep well at night.
C. Norman slappy: It is apparent you never attended a real college. Your critical thinking skills are very low!
agree w/Faye
You hit the "nail" on the head with a lot of your comments. The bar that the state and the federal government has is "irrelevant". Before long more than the students will be "left behind". I believe national vouchers may solve some of the "ills" of the broken public educational system.
Narrowing the Acheivement Gap
I am an experienced educator as well as an adminstrator in a public elementary school of almost 700 students. The bar that the state and or federal government has set is irrelevant to the achievment of students. The achievement of students should only be measured by what is taught and not what the federal government has decided that children need to know.
It begans with socialization of children, experiences, and backgrounds that childen of poverty and children of color come to the table with. NCLB intent is good in theory, however in reality it is an injustice to the public schools. It is not that one race of children are more smarter than another; it is simply that different sets of children have had more pre-school prepraration. Poor parents and parents of color must be educated in how to prepare their children for school. Educated parents have more verbal exchange with their children. As well, they are constantly preparing them for the school social process. While familes of poverty are busy trying to get through the day. I have made visits to children's home where the living room is the student's bedroom. These homes are not conducive to homework or home support.
I also believe that teachers have the potential to hava a greater impact on children than their environment. Even with that they are swimming against the tied to excellerate the academic process to prepare their students for a standardized test, regardless if it is normed nationally or not. What we find is that students become parrots and can recite what they have heard however it is catergorized in psychological terms as dicontextualized learning. More simply put they have no life experience to attach new learning to. Simply put they can say a word but have no idea what it is, what it looks like and cannot make relevant connections to the topic, word, or meaning. Therefore when you ask these students to tell what the authors purpose is or what the main idea is or even what the story is about you get blank stares or answers that are incorrect. Children of poverty have to be taught to answer questions and think. Research has shown that children of color and of poverty are rarely if ever asked questions in their home that they do not know the answers to. Therefore they are never required to think or process information.
However, I know the acheivement gap is closing. We have more teachers that are getting better professional development into reading and what it takes for children to become readers. Unfortuantely, real estate agents have made a living at selling property based on this fallous of good and bad schools. There are so many great things happening in schools everyday in America. But, the media systematically seek the negative. The media in my opinion has contributed in conjuntion with real estate agents to this so called acheivement gap. If you studied schools around the world due to advances in knowledge are all undergong their own challenge
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