Abigail Thernstrom writes in the Portland Tribune about some new ideas that can help close the minority achievement gap:
Our failure to provide first-class education for black and Hispanic students is the central civil rights issue of our time. This is not a story about lower IQs. It is a story of kids who have the ability to learn, but who have been tragically -- and needlessly -- left behind. Some argue that this is not primarily a story about race, but about social class. Parental income, education and place of residence do make some difference in school achievement. However, my research and that of others finds that these factors account for only about one-third of the gap in racial achievement.
In other words, it's not just SES that determines a kid's rank on the test score scale, or on the grade scale. There is a correlation, but that doesn't explain everything.
Some think test scores are unimportant. But studies clearly demonstrate that students -- whatever their color -- who have equal skills and knowledge, as measured by reliable tests, will have roughly equal earnings later in life.
Improving test scores requires better teachers. But the literature shows that neither graduate degrees in education nor years of experience in the classroom have a significant impact on student achievement. The best teachers have strong academic skills, as demonstrated on standardized tests.
Thus, her suggestions are to allow several routes into the teaching profession (thus bypassing the stranglehold of overwhelmingly-test-negative education programs) and to pay more money to those teachers with good skills in desperately-needed areas like math and science.
She also suggests schools should ensure a safe learning environment, not in the prison sense but in the discipline-and-respect sense. The KIPP schools are mentioned as prime examples of how to make schools work.
And speaking of KIPPs schools, a co-founder of a KIPP school in the Bronx is featured in a New York Post editorial as an example of what NYC needs:
HERE'S hoping Gov. Pataki's Commission on Education Reform uses its two-week extension to listen to David Levin. Levin, one of the panel's 22 members, is the co-founder of the Knowledge Is Power Program Academy charter school in the South Bronx, the borough's highest-performing middle school for six years running.
The governor set up the commission last fall to deal with the DeGrasse ruling - a state judge's diktat to send more money to New York City's public schools. The panel was due to release its report today, but asked for two more weeks.
The liberal interest group behind the lawsuit, the Campaign for Fiscal Equity, argues that the state has to cough up an extra $7 billion in education funding to ensure that Empire State public school students get a "sound basic education." (The Manhattan Institute's E.J. McMahon warns that this could force a 26 percent jump in the state income tax.)
Levin doesn't buy the claim that money is the schools' top problem. He should know: KIPP runs with less money than a traditional public school, but outpaces the pack with a combination of longer hours, stricter discipline and higher expectations for its students.
New York City spends $11,300 per student. That's more than enough for other, successful school districts - yet here two-thirds of eighth-graders fail standardized math and English exams...
Levin also says principals need complete authority to hire and fire teachers. Public-school principals now have almost no say here: The teachers-union contract dictates hiring teachers based on seniority and virtually forbids the firing of even the most incompetent.
[But] Levin notes that greater autonomy for principals must come with greater responsibility. KIPP has its own rigorous system for holding principals accountable. An outside inspection agency, which reports to the national organization, inspects each KIPP school for a week each at the start and end of its second year of operation. Each principal gets evaluated on the basis of those inspections, plus student test scores and parent surveys.
Accountability from the very top down. I like it.
Posted by kswygert at March 2, 2004 01:33 PM