Policy & Reform

The achievement gap in our schools is one of the most glaring elements of our struggling educational system. With multiple policies, practices, and reforms in place that hinder its improvement, it can be difficult to see how it can be fixed. Here are a few possibilities that schools and cities can pursue.

Establish a Task Force or Committee

Create a task force or committee specifically for closing the achievement gap. This task force will be responsible for creating and executing tangible plans and carrying out impartial funding procedures. They will keep schools accountable for properly gathering and reporting data on achievement gaps.

These committees should be comprised of superintendents, city officials, community figures, and most importantly, the mayor. These groups, says the Harvard Graduate School of Education can be established at both the city and district levels, with the mayor at the helm. These people should be heavily connected and involved in the city, therefore, possessing the influence to push initiatives through and sustain them.

Adopt Year-Round Schooling

Although it may seem like an enormous task, year-round schooling may be one of the most creative ways to close the achievement gap. Year-round schooling has the potential to address the gap in multiple ways.

Improve student performance:

Students will be in school, in their learning environment, more consistently with the year-round system. Students spend more time in the classroom, with the curriculum, and with their teachers. Without such a large break in between, students are more likely to retain what they learn.

Here, the relationship between teachers and their students can become more developed. This would especially be beneficial for English language learners and students from lower-income families. Having the opportunity to form more of a bond with their teachers will encourage students and motivate them to improve. Longer terms also mean that when students miss school, they will have more time to catch up with their peers.

Developing well-rounded students:

Year-round schooling would allow students to pursue other courses such as music or the arts in addition to their standard curriculum. Students would have the opportunity to explore their interests consistently in a stable learning environment while building up their confidence and sense of self. Given the chance, students may be able to tap into skill or passion that they would not have discovered before and have ample time to cultivate it.

Lessen teacher stress and absences:

As previously mentioned, longer terms will allow for teachers to delve into the curriculum more deeply with students. With the extended time spent with the curriculum, teachers will not feel pressured to cram and rush through the material. This will garner more chances for teachers to get to know their students, enforcing teacher-student relationships. Teachers will feel more connected to students and more involved in school life.

Additionally, teachers will have shorter but more frequent breaks to regroup and refresh. With this system, teachers will feel less inclined to be absent or take personal days in order to reset, reducing teacher burnout.

Technology

Technology in schools is offering alternative learning approaches for students who struggle with traditional teaching and learning methods. More resources are being developed through technology to make the learning experience more individualized and personal, enabling students to catch up through online courses or to take their education completely online. The versatility of technology has the capacity to reach a wider range of learners, with the potential to keep students in the running (and in control of their education) as much as possible. There is a lot of potential for students with disabilities, specifically through alternative input devices and sensory enhancers, as well.

Diversify Teaching Staff

Bringing more minorities into the classroom as teachers could also assist in closing the achievement gap. For example, Massachusetts prioritized diversity by creating a task force specifically for diversifying the school workforce. This task force was also responsible for decreasing the number of students of color who were suspended or expelled by pursuing options other than out of school suspensions. In Delaware, high school students rallied to bring more African American teachers to their schools, while in South Carolina, the Call Me MISTER program is currently working to recruit male minority teachers. There is proof that students will feel more inclined to go to school and, potentially stay in school, if there were more teachers who looked like them in the classroom.

Execute Definitive Programs

Work must be done to create and execute programs that can address the other possible causes for achievement gaps such as food, housing, and cultural sensitivity. In Washington, cultural competence training for teachers, staff, and administrators was enacted in an attempt to make their education system more culturally inclusive. In Connecticut, the state worked to provide affordable housing for low-income families, specifically near transit. The state had breakfast delivered to schools to help start students’ day and pushed for more family involvement in summer meal programs. Academically, the states also targeted at-risk schools with specialized programs, such as K-3 reading intervention programs.

There are numerous ways and definitive examples of how the achievement gap can be addressed. The success of closing the achievement gap lies with the district, city, and school and their ability to create a plan that will suit their students inside and outside the classroom.

In the sea of bureaucracy in the educational system, reform has consistently served as a point of contention for politicians and educators across the board. Reform seems to be a breeding ground for dishonest practices, specifically in the form of cheating. Standardized testing is at the center of the vices of the educational system, as voiced by novice teachers. Testing can be considered a double-edged sword where the numbers are used to simultaneously measure the educational system’s performance and force it into turmoil.

Prince George’s County, Maryland

J. Brian Charles breaks down the cheating epidemic down the most succinctly in his overview of what occurred in Prince George’s County, Maryland. In 2010, under the tutelage of newly elected county executive Rushern Baker, the once suffering district of Prince George’s County began to turn itself around, and in a big way. Test scores, enrollment, and graduation rates shot up. Prince George’s County seemed to be improving. However, upon further investigation a few years later, it was found that Baker had methodically rigged the system.  

Grades were adjusted past due dates. Student absence policies were not being followed by some schools, which allowed graduates to receive their diplomas despite outstanding absences. Graduation rates and scores from proficiency tests in reading and math did not add up and cheating on a large scale was the culprit.

Participation in the fraud trickled down all the way to school administrators, guidance counselors, and teachers. Teachers reported how it became a numbers game in their schools, stating they were punished if they did not pass students. School funding reportedly started filling administrator pockets through increases in their pay. But Prince George’s County wasn’t the only one to be found cheating. Districts were being brought to court, most notably in those of Washington D.C., Brooklyn, and Atlanta.

Why Cheat?

How did cheating become so widespread and normalized in our schools? Through “applied anxiety.” “Applied anxiety” is the idea that in order to appease parents, politicians, and policymakers, testing scores had to be high or show a trend of improvement in order to prove that the district was doing its job. For the past two decades numbers have been used to assess the educational system, its principals, administrators, and teachers. Standardized testing has brought unfair critique and judgment on these groups.

This numbers game meant that educators’ jobs hinged on whether or not they were determined to be scoring effectively. Money, unsurprisingly, is another motivator for cheating. In the past, policies such as the No Child Left Behind Act, has used an increase in wages to motivate principals to demonstrate upheaval and improvement in their school. If students did not show improvement, funding would be lessened or taken away completely. Numbers and ranking systems are meant to illustrate to students, parents, and the community the quality of the school in their neighborhood. Principals, in particular, are the ones at risk in this case, as these numbers can determine whether or not their contracts can be renewed, leading them to pressure their schools to paint a prettier picture.

No Child Left Behind created competition between schools, with scores being publicized and struggling schools being shoved into the spotlight. In order to compete, it seems, you have to cheat.

What Now?

Currently, there are no staff or agencies focused on identifying, investigating, and eradicating cheating in our schools. Schools have to take it upon themselves to be diligent about spotting cheating. However, it has become systemic, with those at the top making choices to dismiss faulty or questionable data. Unless the culture surrounding scores changes, unfortunately, cheating is sure to continue.

Schools are being watched more closely than ever and are being held more accountable for the education of their students. But, what does this accountability mean and who is responsible?

In America, every child has the right to attend school from kindergarten through high school. American children are supposed to have access to quality education, but this is not always the case. Who should be responsible for the shortcomings of the education system: teachers? Administrators? State education departments? Or is it the federal education department? In some facet, each one owns responsibility for the educational career of its students and children.

Federal Mandates

Federal mandates attempt to bring quality education to all children in America and level the playing field, yet falls short with addressing major issues such as internet access, school budgets, and socioeconomic situations of different regions of the country. The government continues to find ways to address the concerns of student growth and school success, but there has yet to be a plan that fully addresses all issues.

No Child Left Behind Act: A Step In the Right Direction

Under the No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB), there was a push for schools to have high proficiency rates on standardized tests and reach a mark that deemed students’ learning as adequate, yet many other factors that affect a child’s education were not considered. There are methods that students can learn to pass a test. However, these methods do not teach the student to retain and understand information. The methods model how to eliminate incorrect answers and determine a relationship between the question and the correct answer. Being able to use this methodology does not mean students truly understand the ideas and concepts that were put forth that particular year and years prior.

Every Student Succeeds Act: Still Falls Short

In more recent years, the Every Student Succeeds Act has replaced NCLB by taking into account more factors than just proficiency testing. The shortfall here has been the squeezing out of creative outlets that foster student growth and development. These courses include the arts, music, physical education, and many other “elective type” classes. Immersive opportunities are also being cut and take away from firsthand experiences students were afforded in the past. A drastic decrease in the number of time students engage in non-tested subjects such as History and Science also takes away from students’ education. However, other factors, such as student absenteeism, are taken into account when assessing the school.

Responsibility In Our Local Schools

Teachers and administrators should be held accountable for their students’ education because promotion and retention depend on the skills children learn every year. Many prominent psychologists have completed research on the development of children and on the ability of the human brain to retain information. Many times the window to learn a skill is very small, and specific skills need to be acquired before the window closes. If the skills, such as speech, are not acquired by a specific age, they cannot be learned later on. Famous, and unfortunate, cases such as Genie Wiley, the feral child, gave doctors and psychologists grounding evidence that language and skill acquisition are fragile skills that have a very short timeframe in which they can be developed. If teachers and administrators are not held accountable for these skills and overall student development, students can lose a year of progress, if not more.

While intentions are in the right place to hold schools accountable, the education system does not address accountability appropriately and misses a few targets. There should be no shortage of quality teachers, unattainable goals for educators to reach, or new teachers are thrown into classrooms with the most vulnerable students. There needs to be continued work on different legislation and said legislation should be fluid. Just as school districts, teachers, and administrators need to evolve with new trends and breakthroughs in education, accountability, in and of itself, should evolve.

There is a troubling narrative that is circulating concerning teachers and education reform. This narrative asserts that a vast majority of teachers across the U.S. are opposed to education reform. This could not be further from the truth. We welcome well thought out reforms that help us to educate our students better.

When it comes to initiatives like Common Core and Next Generation Science Standards, most teachers don’t oppose them, they just want to see them implemented in a way that supports the teaching and learning process at an optimal level.

Listen, I spent almost a decade as a public-school teacher, and I can personally attest that teachers discuss education reform a lot, and even formulate ideas for how genuine reform can be enacted. However, we were disgusted by changes that were just forced down our throats, by politicians, corporate interests, and education administrators who are out of touch with reality.

For example, we would return from a summer break and learn that reforms had been enacted by the school board and school superintendent without any input from the district’s teachers. 95% of the time, these initiatives failed, even though we tried our best to show fidelity towards the new way of doing things.

When the NCLB (No Child Left Behind) was enacted, we didn’t rebel because we hated the idea of being held accountable, we rebelled because we knew that the law was dangerous and that it would force us to teach to the test to keep our jobs. We hated the fact that the bill went against common sense and set goals that were unattainable.

When Common Core was introduced, many teachers didn’t oppose it simply because it was attached to the Obama Administration. We fought it because as it was initially constructed, it had some glaring flaws that had the potential to harm kids. We saw better than anyone that its issues were beneath the surface, and were indicative of America’s obsession with testing.

Common Core does not take into account that no two students are the same, and will not learn at the same pace or in the same way as other students. When you add in things like individual, environmental, and socioeconomic differences, there is no way that any one curriculum system or set of assessments can work for an entire nation of K-12 learners.

So the next time you hear someone say that teachers are opposed to education reform, make sure you set the record straight.

The days of corporal punishment in U.S. schools are over, but new discipline trends have school districts rethinking their policies, especially regarding exclusionary discipline. According to the U.S. Department of Education, the number of secondary school students suspended or expelled from school during the course of a school year has risen by forty percent over the last 40 years. This causes many to wonder: have kids simply become more badly behaved? At first, such an explanation may seem plausible. But a closer look at the data reveals that is not the case.

Differences in school discipline policies

A Civil Rights Data collection study is truly eye-opening: Recently, South Carolina school districts suspended 12.7% of students, while North Dakota school districts suspended only 2.2% of students. It’s difficult to conjure that students in North Dakota are simply better behaved. Rather, these differences can be accounted for in school policies and teacher training. 

Not only are certain school districts more likely to use exclusionary discipline on their students relative to the rest of the country, but teachers themselves are more likely to suspend and expel African American students and students with disabilities. In fact, African American students were almost four times as likely to be expelled than their white peers during the 2017-2018 school year. 

Across the country, more than 300 school districts suspend at least 25 percent of their students with disabilities, while over 600 school districts in the country suspend less than 3 percent of their students with disabilities.

Chronic absenteeism

Not even considering the ethical and moral implications of such racial and ability disparities in the exclusionary discipline data, the consequences of so much of the student population missing so many days of school are dire for the future of our nation’s youth. 

In a Rhode Island study, only 11 percent of chronically absent high school students completed their first year of college later in life. To make matters worse, students that are most often suspended or expelled are the same at-risk students that many school districts fail to support properly. 

When students are chronically absent, which oftentimes is a result of exclusionary discipline, they not only miss class instructional time but also opportunities to receive extra help for behavioral and academic issues that may otherwise persist through the rest of their lives.

Exclusionary discipline must be used as a last resort

Many school districts cite safety as a reason to rely on their use of exclusionary punishment. But, according to the U.S. Department of Education, 95% of suspensions nationwide are for nonviolent misbehaviors such as being disrespectful or not following the dress code. 

School suspensions are too often used as a crutch for inexperienced educators, when in fact they should be used as a last resort. Some school districts are attempting to exchange these bad habits for more restorative practices. During the 2015-2016 school year, 23 of the 100 largest U.S. school districts had implemented policies to limit the number and length of suspensions. 

One example is Hampstead Hill Academy in Baltimore. This school has begun the practice of restorative justice in which teachers, students, and administrators are required to talk through disciplinary issues with each other at least three times per week in individual classrooms, and as a whole school. This particular practice may not work for every school, but it will take every school district working towards a more holistic discipline system to shift America’s school discipline culture from one of exclusion to one of restoration.

In our society, you will be hard-pressed to find a person who believes the U.S. public school system is successful. Whether a Republican or Democrat, a man or woman, dwelling in the city or living a simple life on the farm, American’s agree that public education is failing and has been for decades. While we all agree there is a problem, it doesn’t seem anyone has much of a solution. So, the question remains: How can we start to transform public education?

The concept of public schooling has not evolved with the country’s changing economy, our growing diversity, or our ever-developing technology. Despite the teacher trainings, the tablets, the state testing, public schooling is still, at its core, designed for white, multi-generational, American male students with a middle-class, stable home life. Even still, this model didn’t work in 1900, but in 1900, less than 10% of students actually earned a diploma. Now, all of us must have at least a diploma to be successful, but the system was not designed for that.

Now that we have identified the issue, what can we do to change? Firstly, we must re-think education to fit our changing economy. We have seen high schools with college and career focuses crop up over recent years, which is a wonderful start. However, many trade-centered programs are concentrated in low-SES areas, while strong college-centered programs are concentrated in wealthier districts.

I believe making all programs available to all students, regardless of their family’s income, is how we can ensure all students are exposed to opportunities that they are passionate about. It is equally important that students begin learning about the real-life application of their education at a much younger age than high school. What if, for instance, during that fossil lesson in elementary school, a career in archeology was actually explained in depth to you? Or if while studying the history of the automotive industry, you were presented with career opportunities to work with cars?

Secondly, we must seamlessly blend education with the high-tech lives we have. Most classrooms across the U.S. have limited access to textbooks or literature, let alone computers! Additionally, students that do have access to technology are usually not being taught how to use computers in a practical way. Our kids must know how to leverage social media to advance their careers, type up a quality resume, do research in their field, and so much more.

Lastly, and most importantly, schools and educators must serve all of the students in the room. I have witnessed firsthand administrators treating at-risk youth like criminals at just 13 years old – sentenced to solitary in school suspension for minor dress code violations, being sent straight back to class after a physical altercation, forced to take, and fail, exams in English, a language they have only been exposed to for a few weeks. Imagine a world where students and staff ate breakfast together before starting classes and students were assigned coursework to learn coping mechanisms and relaxation techniques. What a positive, productive environment that would be.

If we want our kids to grow into happy, fulfilled adults with a real opportunity to make that happen, then something has to give, and it has to happen quick.

Historically, alternative schooling has been used interchangeably with terms like “reformatory school.” However, alternative schooling is painted to seem like the best option for students who do not work well in a traditional school setting.

Students who have consistent behavior issues, such as aggression, talking back to teachers or criminal history, are typically sent to alternative schools. However, a new trend has begun to occur where low-performing students in public schools are being sent to alternative schools, regardless of their past behaviors.

Some people see this as a good thing, separating the higher performing students from the lower performing students. However, others say that this practice hides the problems in the education system by making public schools seem to have higher standards than they really do, because of the lower performing students leaving.

The Benefits of Alternative Schooling

Alternative schooling, for many people, seems like a punishment for low-performing or students with behavioral issues. However, for students who do not fit well into a traditional school setting, the benefits of being in an alternative school can be huge. The NEA hosted a discussion board examining the community’s response to alternative schooling, and the results were hugely positive.

Both teachers and members of the general community saw the benefits of alternative schools for students who came from difficult situations or did not seem likely to graduate. However, this study also uncovered some of the faults currently facing alternative schools (read the full article here).

Hidden Faults

Some school districts are accused of sending any low-performing students, regardless of issues or behavior, to alternative schools to keep the high ratings of comparable local, main public schools. ProPublica, an independent and non-profit news organization, investigated several different public schools and alternative schools to see if this accusation rang true (read the full article here).

They found that many alternative schools offered far less extracurricular activities than other schools and structured their classes in a way that did not promote independent or critical learning. ProPublica also gathered reports of students without behavior or criminal issues being sent to alternative schools with little to no say in their education.

A Call for Resolution

In 2014, the Obama administration sent a letter to public school districts nationwide, urging them to reconsider their discipline practices and treatment of behavioral issues. This letter said not to discriminate against students based on “race, color or natural origin,” and prompted districts to use alternative schools only as a last resort (read the full letter here).

ProPublica learned that since the change in administration, there will be no changes enforced by the current bureaucracy. Many teachers and school districts are calling for reform within their individual state legislations, as seen by the Oklahoma teachers rallies in 2018. Without proper funding, these school districts will likely not be able to focus on changing their behavior and alternative schooling policies, and these issues will continue to fester.

Final Thoughts

Without the support of the school districts, and federal and state legislature, it seems unlikely that the current policies of sending low-ranking students in major public schools to underfunded alternative schools will change.