BlogHer - Study suggests high-achieving students are being left behind in U.S. schools - Comments

Thank you

Leslie Madsen Brooks — Thu, 19 Jun 2008 23:48:38 -0500

Thank you all for your comments and, even more importantly, for sharing your experiences and your stories. Pamela, your story is, I'm afraid, all too typical: administrators who are looking at the "bottom line" of test scores while ignoring the REAL work you are doing in teaching--and in some cases actually raising these children. Kudos to you for keeping up the good work; I'm sorry the school lost such a dedicated teacher.

Leslie

BlogHer Contributing Editor, Research and Academia
Proprietor, The Clutter Museum
I also blog at MuseumBlogging.com

Thanks for the clarification

Laracolvin — Thu, 19 Jun 2008 19:52:45 -0500

I was perceiving your first comment as placing blame on the students. Thanks for clarifying and expounding on your experience!

Notions of Identity

Beautiful. ~MoM

Pamela Sansour — Thu, 19 Jun 2008 19:05:27 -0500

Beautiful. ~MoM

Excellent

Nordette — Thu, 19 Jun 2008 18:20:10 -0500

Thank you, Leslie, for informing us with this post.

As usual, humanity has swung to an extreme while trying to solve a problem, or at least the solution to the problem of helping low-achievers has been relayed to administrators in a way that makes them think high-achieving students can fend for themselves. I suppose this result should have been anticipated since NCLB operates based on threats and tapping into educators' fear of job loss.

Our society continues to struggle with fulfilling the promise of "justice for all." Perhaps we'd do better if we found solutions superior to paint-by-the-number methods and let well-trained teachers to be more creative, to use their intution, and to follow the call of compassion for all students.

Nordette Adams is a Contributing Editor with BlogHer.com whose personal blog is at this link.

Thank You!

Diana — Thu, 19 Jun 2008 17:51:56 -0500

Thank you for blogging this, I can't even say more right now because I'm too choked up. Once I'm able to compose my thoughts I think I'll blog it too!

It's been a long time coming, I am so glad that maybe, just maybe people will finally start paying attention to this phenomenon, one that is anything but new.

More.....

Pamela Sansour — Thu, 19 Jun 2008 14:35:32 -0500

I believe that part of my comment was perceived (rightly so in the a.m.) as my blaming the children. I do not. That was the most difficult part of my deciding to leave. As far as the administration, I wouldn't classify them as unsupportive as much as unaware. They had numbers to fret over. Other than a 5-10 minute "snapshot" once or twice a semester, they were ghostlike. I was "allowed" to be as creative as unhumanly possible, which, I think, actually shielded the students from sensing anything that went on outside my four walls. I taught all of them from the very beginning, including coming early and staying late for those that didn't want to be home, for whatever reason.This included bringing food in on a weekly basis under the guise of reward, when I really knew that most of them would not eat if I didn't. I gave my own lunch away frequently. I have given baby clothes/books/advice to 3-5 pregnant teen girls per semester, who didn't have a mother at home that gave a damn. I forged strong relationships with my students, built on respect, that enabled me to reach those thought unreachable. This was also the reason that administration thought it was okay to load my lowest level classrooms with 30-35 students. My expertise in the content area was always second to my ability to maintain a semblance of order in an overpacked classroom. I craved the picking apart of poetry and novels, all in an effort to teach these kids that I loved deeply to think outside the ABCD box.

The biggest problem that I see, lies with those children "unteachable" simply because they did not get the necessary basics LONG before they came to me in English 9. The building blocks of language are not there, which prevents not just me, but any teacher from being able to perform the tasks they had hoped to complete. How do I teach irony when students can't read or write? How do I teach tone and complex/compound sentences when they can't define a noun or verb? They, in horrifying numbers, are slipping through gigantic cracks, and we are graduating them with our heads turned. Good teachers will find new jobs. How will these children find a new future?

~Pamela

All of them

Laracolvin — Thu, 19 Jun 2008 09:19:22 -0500

Pamela - what a horrid experience for you. And stating I do not know your school or the administration, I'll make the assumption the structure was unsupportive of creativity and of the faculty. While I empathize with you as a fellow educator, my first question would be whether the students sensed this lack of systemic support. I'll bet they did. So my answer to your last question, "you tell me, who should we be teaching?" - remains all of the students. Blaming students who have been passed on to high school in a school system focused solely on test scores is not the answer. It doesn't sound like they were ever given high expectations of academic success (and I'm not talking about a test score) nor given the conditions that would have supported it to begin with. Until we have more than a few random pockets of high achieving schools, teachers who reach and inspire all students, and administrations that demand and support high expectations, I worry we won't be able to positively impact the educational system in our country in any meaningful way.

I certainly don't have the answer, but I'd like to build on the quote in the article about high quality teachers. If we (and I mean colleges, graduate programs, schools) that all teachers entering a classroom are prepared - and expert - in their content areas, we'd be taking a good first step. When I first taught English to 9th graders, I was given a class with many spirited kids simply because the administration felt I developed solid relationships with the kids. That is true - and it is important. But it is only a piece of the puzzle to good teaching. In pedagogy and content, I could have been better prepared. Had I been more prepared, I may have stayed in front of the classroom longer than I did instead of moving to counseling. Who knows.

There are many other necessary steps, but it seems that quality preparation is one that is more tangible than some of the others - and one that may make the question of which students do we teach unnecessary.

Notions of Identity

Who Are We Teaching?

Pamela Sansour — Thu, 19 Jun 2008 06:25:06 -0500

I just left my job in the public school sector partially for this very reason you address. There is so much attention given to those students who don't give a damn themselves that other, higher achieving students are left to their own devices. After voicing (numerous times) my frustration over mixed classrooms, consisting of average or above average first timers in the subject area and 2-4 time repeaters with various emotional and behavioral issues, I was told that the higher achievers would do fine with, or without me. I'm sorry. I thought it was my job to take them to the next level, possibly getting them to college!? I spent a semester following the guidelines set by "the bosses". I focused on getting them ready for the EOC test (don't get me started). I was given expensive workbooks that dealt only with teaching kids how to choose between A, B, C, or D. Add this to the fact that 2/3's of them were taking this class for the 2nd or 3rd time, exactly as they had taken it before, as there is no specialized/alternative class for students who didn't pass it initially. They were bored from day one, consequently making the life of whatever unfortunate teacher had to babysit them for 90 minutes, HELL. The worst part of this was the outcome for the 5 students I had who truly WANTED to pass, and worked their butts off, usually unaided. So much time, energy and instruction was heaped upon the larger group, that they barely got the essentials. Some days not even that. They would stare at me silently, with a look made of pity and frustration, as I waited for administration to once again make it to my classroom to remove gang members locked in battle, or a kid that decided to tell me to "shut the f@#k up," when my instruction didn't please him. I never got to finish a novel. THEY never got to finish a novel. So focused on the test, I was told to "show the movie", it won't be on the EOC anyway. I was instructed, never forced mind you, wink wink, to hurry through poetry. They were phasing it out of the curriculum.....HUH!? I gave the test 2 weeks ago. Those students that would make it without me? They didn't . Neither did the 12 others that didn't care to begin with. It took them approximately 45 minutes to take a 100 question test that would determine whether they moved up the educational ladder. They had 4 hours. Most of them went to sleep or read sports magazines afterwards. You tell me, who should we be teaching?

Study suggests high-achieving students are being left behind in U.S. schools

Leslie Madsen Brooks — Thu, 19 Jun 2008 00:19:07 -0500

The Fordham Institute today released a report on two fascinating studies about the state of high-achieving students under the Bush Administration's No Child Left Behind (NCLB) initiative. The studies indicate that while the lowest-achieving (10th percentile or below) students have indeed made gains as measured by standardized tests since (but not necessarily because of) the institution of NCLB, the highest-achieving students are languishing, making almost no improvement and in many cases not receiving the same amount of attention and opportunity as the lowest-achieving students.

Among the report's findings:

Teachers are much more likely to indicate that struggling students, not advanced students, are their top priority.
Low-achieving students receive dramatically more attention from teachers.

What's wrong with that, you ask? Shouldn't we be putting our resources where they're most needed?

Teachers don't think so. Even though their schools are devoting the majority of their resources to struggling students, 86 percent of teachers in the study indicated that schools should focus equally on all students, and not focus so heavily on those who are in the lowest percentile.

Another interesting tidbit from the study: Low-income, black, and Hispanic high achievers on the eighth-grade standardized math test were more likely than their struggling peers to be taught by experienced teachers. These students also were as likely as their higher-income peers to have teachers who majored or minored in math.

The Fordham Institute explains the implications of its studies:

Neither of these studies sought a causal link between the No Child Left Behind Act and the performance of high-achieving students. We cannot say that NCLB "caused" the performance of the nation's top students to stagnate any more than it "caused" the achievement of our lowest-performing pupils to rise dramatically. All we know is that the acceleration in achievement gains by low-performing students is associated with the introduction of NCLB (and, earlier, with state accountability systems). Neither can we be sure from these data that teacher quality explains why some low-income, African-American, and Hispanic students were able to score in the top 10 percent on the 2005 eighth-grade math NAEP, though there does appear to be a relationship between the experience and education of math teachers and their students' performance.

The national survey findings show that most teachers, at this point in our nation's history, feel pressure to focus on their lowest-achieving students. Whether that's because of NCLB we do not know (though teachers are certainly willing to blame the federal law). What's perhaps most interesting about the teachers' responses, however, is how committed they are to the principle that all students (regardless of performance level) deserve their fair share of attention and challenges. Were Congress to accept teachers' views about what it means to create a "just" education system--i.e., one that challenges all students to fulfill their potential, rather than just focus on raising the performance of students who have been "left behind"--then the next version of NCLB would be dramatically different than today's.

The authors of the report write that this unintended consequence--the lack of progress of high-performing students--is "worrisome for America's future competitiveness."

What says the blogosphere? Plenty, even though the report was just released today.

On the Fordham's blog, Flypaper, Mike Petrilli explains how schools might better measure their accountability to students under a revised version of NCLB:

Everyone’s right that policymakers can tweak No Child Left Behind to create incentives for schools to pay attention to the top students and the bottom students (and everyone in between). A new version of the law could, for example, expect schools to help all of their students make progress over the course of the year (not just the ones below “proficiency”). It could give schools credit for helping more students reach the “advanced” level on state tests (though these still not be high enough). And it could allow out-of-year testing so that assessments could accurately measure how far above grade level bright students are—and could then determine whether or not they are staying well above grade level over time.

Eduwonkette writes about the liability of models of accountability that, like NCLB, are based on proficiency rather than growth. Systems that focus on a proficiency goal ask lower-achieving students (and their schools) to make larger gains than higher-achieving students, who likely have already met or exceeded the proficiency target. Accordingly, the high-achieving child grows less than does her struggling peer. This model doesn't take into account students' initial levels of achievement.

At the Core Knowledge blog, Robert Pondiscio writes about his frustration with schools' relative lack of attention to the highest-achieving students:

These are the students I refer to as “Not Your Problem” kids. As a teacher, when I raised concerns that my brighter student[s] were bored and neglected, and expressed frustration at my inability to sufficiently differentiate instruction to challenge them, I was dismissed by an assistant principal who pointedly said “those kids are not your problem.” She meant I was to focus on getting my low-achieving students to proficiency; the high achievers were already there and could be left to their own devices.

I’m positively giddy to see this issue getting attention. It was my No. 1 concern as a classroom teacher.

Melissa Westbrook provides a nice roundup of this study and another one that came out this week about the efficacy of the SAT on predicting college success. She's glad to see low achievers making progress--after all, she points out, "If it had been high achievers moving forward 16 points and lower achievers moving ahead 3 points, there would have been howls." Her conclusion? "We need to work for all students across the board."

Corey Bunje Bower doesn't see a problem with the study's findings, especially when one looks at the problem from an international perspective:

Given that the low-performing students in the U.S. lag behind low-performers in other countries while high-performing students hold their own against other high-performers (previous post), it's hard for me to see this as anything but a good thing.

Brigitte D. Knudson has a long, thoughtful post on the commodification of education. An excerpt:

Beyond the implications for college, No Child Left Behind and the standardized testing movement have fueled an entire industry. In Michigan, where I teach, the Michigan Department of Education is required under No Child Left Behind legislation to provide Supplemental Education Service Providers -- tutors -- to students whose schools or school districts fail under the act. Interestingly, this has allowed tuturing centers, like Sylvan, to prosper (Sylvan Learning Centers represent the largest block of SES Providers on MDE's 7-page list, with 25 of the 112 available choices for parents in the state, no doubt partly because of their corporate identity and slick marketing provided to franchise owners).

[...]

Education is now big business -- for-profit in many cases. There are even seminars aimed at prospective small-business owners to suck them into the "Education Industry," because education, like everything else in the United States, is not about our children, it's about making a dollar. Yes, folks, the business model applied to education -- the commodification of education. They even have a website: EducationIndustry.org. Don't let the sweet little pictures of parents and children fool you -- it's not about parents and children, it's about entepreneurs making money. Even if your kid isn't at a failing school and you need a tutor, these places can work to get you LOANS! One Sylvan Learning Center touts that it will work with "SLM Financial, a subsidiary of Sallie Mae, to ensure children get the tutoring help they need.

[...]

Testing to improve our students? How about testing to exploit a new economy? SAT. ACT. Tutoring Centers. Remedial tuition dollars. Banking and loans. Anyone smell a skunk? How about No Child Left Unscammed?

Personally, I don't have a problem with entrepreneurs entering the educational field--after all, there are some truly excellent educational consulting and publishing companies out there. However, like Knudson, I do have a problem with businesses taking advantage of parents--particularly low- and middle-income parents--because of a government mandate that students perform at a particular level on a standardized test.

Over at Eduwonk, Andrew Rotherham elaborates on the tough choices highlighted by the Fordham Institute's report.

Choices do have to be made. It doesn't mean that we throw different groups of student under the bus, but any accountability system that holds people accountable for everything holds them accountable for nothing. So choices have to be made about emphasis. And considering the yawning achievement gaps, graduation rate gaps, and outcome gaps that separate poor and minority students from other students, that's where I'd argue the emphasis should be placed. And, within those groups of students on the wrong end of the achievement gap are plenty who with better schools would also be recognized as gifted.

There are certainly steps that policymakers can take to help lessen the zero-sum nature of these choices. They can, for instance, also reward schools that do a great job with high achieving students as well as closing gaps (something they can do under No Child Left Behind now but few do in a meaningful way). Or, we can think about various non-regulatory accountability strategies, for instance giving parents more choices within the public system, to create some countervailing forces. And of course, states and localities should invest in programs for gifted kids and ways to stretch them.

Leslie Madsen-Brooks helps university faculty improve their teaching. She blogs at The Clutter Museum, Museum Blogging, and The Multicultural Toy Box.

What are your thoughts?