achievement gap

Matthew Lynch published in Diversity, HBCU's, Higher Education

Are Colleges Doing Enough to close the Achievement Gap?

There’s a lot of talk in P-12 learning about how exactly to best close the achievement gap, or the space that separates traditionally advantaged students with those who have historically been at-risk where academics are concerned. By the time students get to college, the emphasis shifts slightly to focus more on the diversity of who is on a university campus and less on outcomes. Without the stringent assessments that are now synonymous with the P-12 process, colleges have an easier time simply making appearances when it comes to the true success of all students on their campuses.

This isn’t to say that there is no accountability – several independent associations and often the colleges themselves release data on graduation rates, post-grad employment rates, and even the amount of debt incurred by students. Yet when it comes to truly closing the achievement gap between students from all life backgrounds, ethnicities and races, P-12 institutions seem to be held to a higher standard than their 13 – 20 counterparts. This is not only a disservice to the students, but to the American population as a whole that then misses out on enjoying the innovation, advancement and prosperity that comes with a more highly educated public.

So how can colleges step up their game when it comes to closing the achievement gap?

What’s working

It’s only been in the last decade or so that colleges have begun to recognize that different students need different guidance to reach that graduation podium. It’s why a crop of programs designed for first-generation and minority college students are flourishing across the country. These initiatives run the gamut – from recruiting these students, to providing intense mentorship programs, to partnering with community businesses for job placement. Targeting the guidance of students based on their backgrounds is vital to getting them their degrees and all of this conscientious hard work by universities is certainly making a dent when it comes to higher achievement from traditionally at-risk college students.

Overall colleges are doing a better job in recent years of providing a full career arc before students set foot on campus. This gives them an idea of what to expect when it comes to the courses they will take, the mentorship programs available, the potential for internships, and the job placement initiatives. For students who are putting their working lives on hold to obtain a college degree, a greater understanding of what that means in long-term financial terms is necessary to convince them the leap to college life is a good one.

What needs work

For all of the strides college recruiting programs have made, there is still an overarching theme that recruiting new students is an isolated process. Get the kids on campus, then move on to the next batch. In reality, recruiting should be a very small part of a larger strategy that not only brings students of varied backgrounds to campus, but sustains them until graduation. Some schools are improving in this regard, but there’s still a lot of work needed to flip this mentality from one of solitude to solidarity with other student help groups.

The need for an affordable college education is mentioned so often that it seems that we are all becoming desensitized to it. The reality is that having affordable college, not just providing loans to students, will go a long way towards helping close the achievement gap. Initiatives like providing the first two years of community college for free to qualifying students, and even student loan forgiveness programs for high-demand jobs, are a few ways that the dream of a college degree can become more accessible to minority, first-generation and other at-risk students.

 

There’s a reason so much attention is paid to closing the achievement gap in P-12 classrooms: a better educated public means a stronger economy, greater industry competition on a global scale, and an overall better quality of life for all citizens. It is high time colleges stepped back from their diversity plans long enough to question whether those efforts are truly doing enough to close the country’s achievement gap for life. Continued targeted guidance throughout the college process, improved recruiting, and a bigger push for affordable college are a few ways that the U.S. college and university landscape can step up its efforts for equality in higher education achievement.

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Matthew Lynch published in Diversity, Equity

Wearing a suit equals success? It just might to these kids

Photo via Timefrozen Photography

Work hard, get good grades in school, and you’ll eventually find some semblance of the American dream in life.

It’s what all kids are taught as they matriculate through grade school. It’s why we so often hear the saying that one should “dress for success.”

It’s also why 100 men of color wearing suits greeted elementary school students on their first day of school last week.

An attempt to present a varying image to kids of color of what men of color may actually turn out to be: successful.

Statistics state that black male “students in grade K-12 were nearly 2 1/2 times as likely to be suspended from school in 2000 as white students” and that most of the nearly 2.5 million people in prisons and jails “are people of color…and people with low levels of educational attainment.”

From pictures to videos, so many kids of color see men of color as effigies of what not to become. The criminal on the news is likely a man of color and so is the high school drop-out.

Seeing a roaring crowd of black men cheering on young students from kindergarten to fifth and sixth grades was not only heart warming, it was inspiring.

A suit represents so much more than just a tailored look. It’s success; it’s happiness; it’s an ability to overcome; it’s positive; it’s anti-everything we’ve been feed to believe that’s negative about black men.

For each kid seeing that image, it’s eternal.

I applaud this action and know it will have even more of a long term impact than it did initially.

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Matthew Lynch published in EdTech & Innovation, Equity

Digital Early Learning Program in Napa County sees strong results

Submitted by Dr. Barbara Nemko, Napa County Superintendent of Schools

 “The children love [the program] and in fact they ask daily, ‘Is it my turn on the iPad today?’ Also … we as teachers are learning too.” – Marianne Stegman, Site Supervisor, St. Helena Child Development Center

Tackling Achievement Gap Before Kindergarten

Research has shown that children from low-income families come to school typically lagging two years behind their more privileged peers on standardized language tests. This achievement gap, which has been called a 30 million word gap (Hart and Risley, 2004), affects their ability to learn to read, and persists throughout their school careers. Identified as equally important in learning to read by researchers is access to books in the home. Again, children from low income families frequently have few or no books at home, and enter kindergarten not knowing that books in English are read from left to right, or being able to identify the letters of the alphabet.

To prepare these at-risk students for kindergarten, The Napa County Office of Education (NCOE) began collaborating with local non-profit NapaLearns to launch the first countywide offering in the nation of a digital early-literacy program. The program primarily uses the Footsteps2Brilliance “app” on tablets and other devices, and is provided at no cost to preschools and to parents of preschool age children in the county, including those not enrolled in a preschool program.  The digital early literacy tools include libraries of books that are engaging, animated, and capable of reading themselves to children in either English or Spanish.  These books teach the 1,000 most important Dolch words, as well as phonics and comprehension skills, through stories and games that motivate children to want to read the stories again and again.  Once downloaded onto a device these books can be opened with or without wifi.  For those families who cannot afford a device, NCOE has partnered with NapaLearns to offer a rent-to-buy HD Kindle for children.

The Results are Immediate and Impressive

NCOE’s Digital Early Learning program was piloted in 2011 as a 4-week summer boot camp for four-year old English language learners.  Impressive results in language use led us to administer the Peabody Picture Vocabulary Test, pre- and post, to kindergarten students the following year, producing statistically significant results in both expressive and receptive language.  The countywide launch for all preschool students came in February 2014, and Napa County preschoolers were challenged by me to read one million words by June 30.  Instead, they topped five million, and have continued their astonishing rate of growth. A kindergarten teacher recently administered the DIBELS test and discovered that the children who scored the highest were those who spent the most time reading their digital books at home. There are currently over 1,200 children enrolled who have been exposed to  over 12 million words, and have correctly answered the comprehension questions on their  first try 67% of the time. These children are using the program at home 55% of the time.

The Family that Reads Together…

The staff working on our Digital Early Learning initiative have conducted extensive bilingual and multicultural community outreach, and opportunities for parent training, to ensure the widespread participation in this free program.  In one year we have provided more than 30 parent workshops, as well as workshops for preschool and kindergarten teachers.  Outside of Napa, we were invited to the White House Summit on Early Literacy to share about the positive impact of digital early learning in our county.  Moving forward, we are excited to begin an ongoing five-year longitudinal study, to determine if children who use our digital early literacy in preschool are more proficient readers at the end of third grade than children who do not.

For more information on this program, contact Seana Wagner, Public Information Officer at [email protected] or 707-265-2351.

 

Read all of our posts about EdTech and Innovation by clicking here. 

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Matthew Lynch published in Equity, Policy & Reform

With harsher disciplinary measures, school systems fail black kids

**The Edvocate is pleased to publish guest posts as way to fuel important conversations surrounding P-20 education in America. The opinions contained within guest posts are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the official opinion of The Edvocate or Dr. Matthew Lynch.**

Esther Canty-Barnes, Rutgers University Newark

Although it has been over 60 years since the Brown v Board of Education decision, black students are still more likely to receive out-of-school suspensions for minor violations of the code of conduct. As a result, they are more likely to drop out of school or enter the juvenile justice system.

Black students constituted 32%-42% of those suspended during the 2011-12 school year, even though they represented 16% of the student population.

As racial tensions resurface in the aftermath of the conflicts and riots in Ferguson and Baltimore, we need to consider whether some of these issues have their origins in the manner in which children of color are treated in our schools.

As a clinical professor of law at the Rutgers University Law School’s Education and Health Law Clinic, I provide legal representation to parents and their children in cases where they are being denied an appropriate education or are suspended from school.

This includes filing legal complaints, attending meetings and assessing the appropriateness of a student’s educational program. At the clinic, my colleagues and I have seen firsthand the disparities in the treatment and resources provided by schools. And often, I have seen that suspension of young black students begins as early as kindergarten.

Educational inequities for black kids

Our educational system continues to fail children of color.

Research shows that black males are disproportionately more likely to be placed in special education and classified as mentally retarded and emotionally disturbed.

They are also more likely to be placed in segregated placements, more likely to be educated in poorly performing schools and more likely to be referred to the juvenile justice system for infractions that occur in school.

They are also the least likely to be provided the positive supports and the assistance that they need in order to succeed.

None of this is new.

Children of color have historically been subjected to educational inequities. After the landmark decision of Brown v Board of Education in 1954, where the Supreme Court held that it was unconstitutional to maintain segregated schools, practices and policies were developed to maintain segregated settings.

States in the South refused to comply with Brown, while other parts of the country developed practices such as IQ testing and tracking students into specific programs that often kept children of color in different classes from their white counterparts.

The Children’s Defense Fund (CDF), headed by Marian Wright Edelman, was one of the first organizations to look at the disparities in access to education. In its groundbreaking report in 1975, “School Suspensions: Are They Helping Children?,” the CDF analyzed the reports submitted to the Office of Civil Rights.

Although black students accounted for 27.1% of the students enrolled in the school districts reporting to the Office of Civil Rights in the 1972-73 school year, the report found that they made up 42.3% of the racially identified suspensions.

At the high school level, black students were suspended at more than three times the rate of white students: 12.5% versus 4.1%.

Persistent patterns of suspensions

These inequities in suspensions and removal from school continue to persist.

In recent times, the term “school-to-prison pipeline” is often used to describe systemic practices that ultimately lead students of color into the criminal justice system. These policies often cause the suspension or removal and sometimes the arrest of students from school for nonviolent or minor violations.

Arrested students fall behind the class, thus perpetuating the cycle of poverty.
Meg Stewart, CC BY-SA

The vast majority of suspensions are not for serious or violent offenses. Most are for minor infractions such as tardiness, dress code violations or disruptive behavior.

Why suspension matters

Students who are suspended for substantial periods lose valuable instruction time and fall behind in school.

The unfairness of these practices increases gaps in learning and eventually makes it difficult for black kids to keep up in school. Researchers have found that the use of harsh punishment for minor offenses has a negative impact on children, including increasing the chances of dropping out of school.

The US Department of Education Office of Civil Rights in its 2014 Civil Rights Data Collection (CRDC) on discipline provides a stark example of how the educational system continues to fail children of color.

For the 2011-12 school year, for out-of-school suspensions by race/ethnicity and gender, black students on average were suspended or expelled at a rate three times greater than white students.

At the preschool level, although black children represented 18% of enrolled students, they represented 48% of the students suspended more than once.

Although black students represented 16% of the student population, they accounted for 27% of the students who were referred to law enforcement and 31% of the students who were arrested.

Prejudices against students with disabilities

Students of color with disabilities are also disproportionately suspended from school compared to their white counterparts. They are twice as likely to be suspended than their non-disabled peers. And they are referred to law enforcement at greater rates.

Although students in special education represent 12% of enrollment, they constitute one-quarter of students arrested and charged with juvenile offenses.

The Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA) outlines specific protections for parents and their disabled children and requires that school districts provide an appropriate education and services such as counseling, social skills and other supports to meet their unique needs. However, the needs of these children are often not met.

Moreover, there are many protections that apply before a disabled student could be considered for suspension or removal for substantial periods of time. Often, these protections are ignored, and the services that should be provided are not.

Change is needed

Suspension of students for minor infractions is certainly not the solution. We don’t have to look far to see the consequences of policies that take students out of school and place them in vulnerable, nonproductive settings.

The cost – a life of poverty or incarceration – further continues to perpetuate a cycle of failure.

Myriad systems have worked against poor children of color to deprive them of the educational opportunities that their white counterparts have taken for granted. Poverty, violence, inadequate housing and other systemic inequities place these children in a pipeline for failure. Most of us would not be able to endure the burden, if placed in their small shoes.

A great deal of change is needed to combat these pervasive educational inequities. The US Departments Of Education and Justice have begun to take some important steps by issuing guidelines to school districts to reduce the numbers of students who are being removed or suspended from school and encouraging schools to find alternatives to suspensions.

These are important steps, but much work remains to be done.

______The Conversation

Esther Canty-Barnes is Clinical Professor of Law and Director of the Education and Health Law Clinic at Rutgers University Newark .

This article was originally published on The Conversation.

Read the original article.

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Matthew Lynch published in Education Leadership, Matthew Lynch

Grading Obama’s Education Policy

A couple of weeks ago, a friend and I were discussing President Obama’s performance in the area of education — more specifically P-20 education, which begins in preschool and ends with graduate school. As is usually the case when we debate matters of education politics, the debate became quite contentious and in the end we had to agree to disagree. In response to that debate, I decided to write an opinion piece, assessing Obama’s education record. Toward the end of the article, I will issue a letter grade (A-F) denoting my assessment of the president’s level of performance in education policy.

Let me begin by saying that throughout Obama’s political career, he has continually preached the need for America to invest in education. To put it in his own words, “Countries that out-educate us today will out-compete us tomorrow.” The core of his plans for education has been to provide all students with the same opportunity to reach high levels of proficiency. In the past, disadvantaged students were not provided the same educational pathways as other students. They were not held to the same high standards as their classmates; their lower achievement outcomes were readily accepted.

The president has continually invested in and supported early childhood education. Why? Because he knows that it lays the foundation for future academic success. In a 2007 speech in Manchester, New Hampshire, Obama said, “For every $1 we invest in these programs, we get $10 back in reduced welfare rolls, fewer health care costs, and less crime.” When he became president, he put his money where his mouth was, figuratively speaking.

The American Recovery Act allocated $5 billion for early childhood programs, and $77 billion for reforms to support elementary and secondary education. On top of this, his administration provided $500 million for the Race to the Top-Early Learning Challenge. It is unprecedented for a president to show such passion and commitment towards early childhood education, while simultaneously articulating such a profound understanding of its importance.

In 2010, President Obama established Promise Neighborhood Grants to support plans that implement cradle-to-career services that are intended to improve the educational attainment and healthy development of children. The program endeavors to provide youth in Promise Neighborhoods with effective schools and well-built networks of parental and community support that will prepare them to receive an exceptional education and effectively transition to college and a career. Patterned after Geoffrey Canada’s Harlem Children’s Zone, Promise Neighborhoods are a “promising” reinvention of an existing educational innovation.

Obama’s education reform magnum opus, Race to the Top, sustains successful teachers and principals in school districts across the nation, and has led to the adoption of common K-12 teaching standards. In this competition, states receive points for fulfilling certain criteria, such as performance-based standards for teachers and principals, showing fidelity to nationwide standards, encouraging charter schools, etc. Critics argue that high-stakes testing is untrustworthy, and I am inclined to agree. If there was a component that required contestants to create alternative assessments or value added systems to replace high stakes testing, “Race to the Top” would be as advertised.

In terms of outreach to the Hispanic community, the president’s actions have been unprecedented. President Obama did an excellent job of ensuring that the Hispanic community was included in attempts to advance educational opportunities for the entire nation. In addition, he restructured the White House Initiative on Educational Excellence for Hispanics to advance educational opportunities at the P-20 level. Also, President Obama is dedicated to giving students who aren’t yet American citizens an opportunity to gain their citizenship.

In terms of college access and loans, President Obama has made higher education more affordable by doubling financial support for Pell Grants, growing the number of recipients from 6 million to 9 million since 2008. How did he do it? Obama accomplished this mostly by cutting out the intermediary from the college-loan program, which in turn freed billions of taxpayer dollars.

Beginning in 2014, first-time borrowers will only have to pay 10 percent or less of their disposable income towards loan repayments. The law also stipulates that after 20 years, any remaining loans will be forgiven. If they make their payments on time, public servants (teachers, police officers, servicemen, etc.) will have their student loans forgiven after 10 years. Also, the president increased funding for land-grant colleges. The aforementioned measures constituted the largest reform of student aid in 40 years.

Solely on his P-20 record, I will have to give President Obama a B+. The Obama administration’s education agenda began in the midst of one of the worst economic downturns since the Great Depression. Since his inauguration, President Obama and Arne Duncan aggressively tackled education reform in P-20 education. What President Obama and Arne Duncan have been able to accomplish in less than four years is nothing short of amazing.

There is room for improvement, especially when students are still tested using antiquated assessment measures. More importantly than this, NCLB still exists in its original state and has not been amended. However, I decided to stick with my B+, because these issues cannot be laid at the president’s doorstep. Throughout his first term, President Obama has entreated Congress to amend NCLB, and he has been met with opposition and hostility.

Under Obama’s watch, the U. S. education system is experiencing something that it hasn’t experienced in ages — genuine progress. Although we have many more miles to go, we have to remember that Rome was not built in a day. The issues that continuously plague our public education system took decades to get that way and will probably take several more decades to fix. If President Obama is to engender true school reform in America, he has to bear in mind that school reform is a unicorn of sorts — an imaginary, magical creature conjured up by our subconscious desire to make sense of things. The truth of the matter is that school reform, as most people envision it, does not exist.

President Obama knows that you do not need to wait for something to be broken in order to fix it. That’s why our president always looks for opportunities to improve upon current processes, making things incrementally better as time passes. He has brilliantly applied the process of continuous improvement to our educational system; constantly striving to make things better, reevaluating how he does things, looking at the results he achieves, and taking steps to improve things incrementally. He has earned his B+.

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Matthew Lynch published in Equity, Matthew Lynch, Policy & Reform

Superstar Teachers – The Super Cure for Closing the Achievement Gap?

As I wrote on Wednesday, I’ve spent some time lately combing through the pages of Diane Ravitch’s book The Death and Life of the Great American School. As a public school reformer myself, I appreciate her informed, unique look at the state of the P-12 system in the U.S. Considered a liberal early in her career, she was initially a supporter of reform issues considered “conservative” today like the No Child Left Behind Act and the establishment of public charter schools. She has since returned to her roots, at least enough to call herself an Independent, and attacked some of the most popular theories for reform.

I talked about the way that schools of all types (traditional public, private and charters) game the system when it comes to accountability standards in my last post – a myth that on the surface may look like learning is truly being achieved based on predetermined standards and practices like teaching to the test. Today I want to look at another myth of the contemporary P-12 system that Ravitch also dispels in her book: the myth of the Superstar Teacher.

You are probably familiar with the concept, particularly since it is perpetuated in popular culture through movies like the classic Edward James Olmos film “Stand and Deliver” and 2012’s “Won’t Back Down.” The idea is that with the right teacher – a committed, bright, in-tune, talented teacher – P-12 problems like the achievement gap and high dropout rates will cease to exist. If only every student had a standout teacher like the ones portrayed in these shows, the very P-12 system as we know it would be transformed for the better.

I do believe in the power of teachers, both positive and negative, on their students. I train educators for a living and have written books about following “the calling” to become a teacher. I do think that teachers make a difference – but like Ravitch, I cannot put all of my faith in these “superstar teachers” to reform the education system the way that is truly needed.

For one thing, the schools that desperately need some sort of superstar saviors are often unable to attract them. In a study on urban schools and poverty released by the National Center for Education Statistics, urban administrators said that they had difficulty attracting and retaining high-quality teachers. This observation, coupled with the fact that schools with higher percentages of students living in poverty had less resources available for teaching, is a recipe for disaster when it comes to counting on these “superstars” to close the achievement gap, lift standardized test scores and increase graduation rates. These urban schools are the very places that need all of those factors to happen to improve student achievement and the long-term overall quality of life in those communities. So if the answer falls solely on strong teachers, these places are in a lot of trouble.

I also think it is unfair to count on, or to blame, teachers solely for the performance of their students. Yes, they play a role in shaping the young minds in their classrooms and yes, they should be held accountable for that. It seems to me that the root of issues in classrooms that tend to cause the most problems for students (like poverty and ill-equipped or uninvolved parents) should be the target of any true reform. Teachers come and go, moving from school to school or on to different careers. Strong programs that address equality in education and focus on social issues at the root of learning challenges are what will truly make an impact on what students learn and retain, and whether those students succeed.

What are your thoughts on the roles of teachers? Are there enough “superstars” to transform the system?

Click here to read all our posts concerning the Achievement Gap.

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Matthew Lynch published in Policy & Reform

Why music education needs to incorporate more diversity

Jacqueline Kelly-McHale, DePaul University

As presidential candidate Donald Trump continues to insist upon banning Muslims from entering the U.S. and espousing a need for a wall along the Mexican border, heating up anti-immigration and racist rhetoric, it’s essential we consider this: one in four students under the age of eight in the U.S. has an immigrant parent.

Classrooms are getting more diverse as the percentage of minority students increases. In the fall of 2014 there were more minority students in the the public education system. According to a report from the Pew Research Center, 50.3 percent of students in 2014 were minority, whereas 49.7 percent of all students were white. By 2022, 45.3 percent are projected to be white, and 54.7 percent are projected to be minority.

How can classrooms become more culturally responsive in their teaching practices in classrooms and foster respectful behavior?

As a music educator and music teacher educator focused on culturally responsive teaching, I believe a music classroom is an ideal place to begin. Music is an experience found across all cultures, and music classrooms are a logical place where difference and respect can be recognized, practiced and celebrated.

Music programs lack diversity

Music education programs in the high school setting typically bring to mind the images and sounds of bands, orchestras and choirs. In the elementary context, general music classes are viewed as places where children sing, dance, and play the recorder and other classroom instruments.

Each of these experiences is rooted in either a Western view of music that is focused on placement of Western classical music as the highest form of musical experience, or on methods of teaching that grew out of European music education practices.

In my research, I found that the reliance on a method of general music instruction within a classroom where the majority of the students were the children of Mexican immigrants resulted in a the creation of an inherent bias against the students’ culture and a sense of isolation for the students. This bias was the result of the the teacher’s views, which created an environment that did not support the integration of cultural, linguistic and popular music experiences.

This finding was supported by music education professor Regina Carlow, who found that when the cultural identity of students in a high school choir setting was not respected or even acknowledged, students developed a sense of isolation.

This isolation can result in an unfair learning environment.

Teachers lack diversity

So why don’t classrooms engage students in musical practices that are rooted in their cultural and musical backgrounds? The answer can be found in the traditions of American music education.

In 2011, music education researchers Carlos Abril and Kenneth Elpus found that 65.7 percent of music ensemble students were white and middle class; only 15.2 percent were black and 10.2 percent were Hispanic. These data demonstrate that white students are overrepresented in high school music ensembles. Students for whom English was not their native language accounted for only 9.6 percent of ensemble members.

The majority of teachers are white and middle-class.
Andy Bullock, CC BY

Additionally, Elpus found that the majority of music teachers – 86.02 percent – entering the profession were white and middle-class.

Adding to this reality is the fact that the process of becoming a music teacher is rooted in the Western classical tradition. Though the National Association of Schools of Music (NASM) does not stipulate a classical performance audition, it is required in a majority of cases.

Based on my experience as a music education professor, aspiring music teachers must pass a Western classical performance audition with an orchestral instrument, classical voice or classical guitar in order to even begin down the path of becoming a music educator, even though no school explicitly states that.

Given this, music education programs not only primarily reflect Western European classical music, but they also create a self-perpetuating cycle.

Start with understanding music

In fact, music curriculum can be an ideal place to start culturally responsive teaching. Music crosses cultures and is an experience that can be considered universal.

Education researcher Geneva Gay describes culturally responsive teaching as a practice that supports learning through and about other cultures.

This includes cultural values, traditions, communication, learning styles, contributions and how people relate. It is not just taking a week or month to study the folk music of Mexico. It is about building a curriculum that enables students to experience, discuss, and perform music that is culturally and socially relevant.

This happens when teachers draw on musical styles and genres that are varied. For example, learning to sing the folk song “Frog Went a Courtin’” based on its American variant, then comparing and contrasting it to the Flat Duo Jets’ rock version of the song.

In this regard, music education researcher Chee-Hoo Lum recommends that music teachers start with the students’ cultural and musical background in order to get them to better understand and interact with different musical experiences.

The cultural values and contributions of diverse musicians and genres provide the perfect avenue to explore and learn about the “other” in a classroom environment. Additionally, the chance to sing, play and listen to the music of other cultures creates an understanding that transcends personal experience, and creates a more global perspective.

Reimagine and reconfigure

This is not to say that we should forgo the current practices. Band, orchestra, and choir programs provide wonderful educational experiences for students throughout the country.

And these programs should continue.

However, there are other music programs that focus on guitar as a popular and folk instrument. Such as this one:

And there are programs that run rock bands within the school day. Then, there are programs where students learn to write songs, sample and compose. In addition, there are music education blogs that celebrate the many “other” ways that students learn about music, outside of band, orchestra and choir.

These programs can help us reimagine and reconfigure.

Building walls and excluding groups do not engender respect and democratic growth in our classrooms or in our political arenas. Rather, they foster fear and prevent equality and opportunity. Music classrooms can and should become the places where diversity is embraced and integrated.

The Conversation

Jacqueline Kelly-McHale, Associate Professor of Music Education, DePaul University

This article was originally published on The Conversation. Read the original article.

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Matthew Lynch published in EdTech & Innovation, Teaching Strategies, Tactics, and Methods

Many low-income students use only their phone to get online. What are they missing?

Crystle Martin, University of California, Irvine

For many of us, access to the Internet through a variety of means is a given. I can access the Internet through two laptops, a tablet, a smartphone and even both of my game systems, from the comfort of my living room.

However, this access is unequally distributed. Although nine out of 10 low-income families have Internet access at home, most are underconnected: that is, they have “mobile-only” access – they are able to connect to the Internet only through a smart device, such as a tablet or a smartphone.

A recent report, “Opportunity for all? Technology and learning in low income families,” shows that one-quarter of those earning below the median income and one-third of those living below poverty level accessed the Internet only through their mobile devices.

This leads to limited access: A third of families with mobile-only access quickly hit the data limits on their mobile phone plans and about a quarter have their phone service cut off for lack of payment.

So, what impact does this type of access have on youth learning?

What changes with a computer connection

My research has explored underserved youth’s use of technology to discover and participate in content related to their interests. Having access only through their mobile devices means that low-income families and youth do not have the same access to the Internet as those with other Internet connections.

One-fifth of families who access the Internet only through their mobile devices say too many family members have to share one device. This means that the amount of time each individual has to access the Internet is limited.

This can be a barrier to learning for young people. It can limit their access to resources to complete their homework, as well as create barriers for other learning. Thirty-five percent of youth who have mobile-only access look online for information about things they are interested in. But this goes up to 52 percent when young people have access to an Internet-connected computer.

When young people have access to an Internet-supported computer, it facilitates their learning.
leah, CC BY-NC-ND

When young people have their own access to the Internet, they have an opportunity to engage in connected learning – learning that is based on interest, is supported by peers and has the potential to offer better opportunities for the future.

A 2014 paper on the use of digital media as a learning tool highlights how learning around interests can be supported through online resources.

The paper tells the story of Amy, a participant in an online knitting community, Hogwarts at Ravelry, which combines both interest in knitting and the Harry Potter series. Amy finds inspiration in the vast knitting pattern library of the group and receiving support from others in the community. She begins to develop, design and write patterns of her own. And, as a teenager, she begins selling her patterns online.

Amy’s access to a stable Internet connection and her own dedication allowed her to dive deep into the activities of the community. Over time, it allowed her to become more active and engaged in knitting.

Another example of what youth can accomplish online comes from my 2014 research on a professional wrestling fan community, a set of forums where professional wrestling fans get together virtually to discuss the many facets of professional wrestling.

Maria, a professional wrestling fan, seeks out an online community because she lacks local support for her interest. Through her participation, she realizes her deep enjoyment of writing. She carries this back into her English class and the school newspaper. This eventually leads her to take creative writing as a second degree in college.

Maria spent hours on her computer carefully crafting her narratives while participating on the forum. With a mobile-only access, she would not have had the amount of time online, or the amount of bandwidth, required for this work. This is supported by the fact that only 31 percent of children with mobile-only access go online daily as compared to 51 percent of those with other Internet access.

How low-income youth get left behind

Mobile-only access to the Internet can create serious barriers for youth who want to access content and educational supports.

As part of my research, I have been conducting workshops in libraries located in low-income communities, using an online coding program that is not yet available on mobile devices. In one of the workshops, students needed to work on projects outside of the sessions.

Because of the limited technology access at home, the librarian held additional open hours so the youth participating in the workshop could work on their projects outside of the workshop hours. A few youth had access to their own computers, but the majority had only mobile access.

Young people who have computer access create may better projects.
Jeff Werner, CC BY-NC-SA

The youth with computer access at home created more complex projects. This was partly because they had more time to develop, modify and problem-solve their projects. But it was also because the coding program was available to only those with computer access. These youth also seemed to develop a deeper interest in coding potentially due to this greater level of exposure.

Need for better understanding

What becomes evident from the data from “Opportunity for all? Technology and learning in low income families” and from the examples from research is that having access to the Internet only through a phone can have an impact on young people’s access to learning opportunities.

Designers, educators and researchers need to be aware and continually create more equity through mindful decision-making.

Amanda Ochsner, a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Southern California who studies how underrepresented groups of young people engage with games and digital media, argues that when designers and developers take the time to understand young people’s digital lives, they are ultimately able to make better tools. As she said to me:

In offices where the most recent models of laptops, tablets, and iPhones are abundant, it’s far too easy for those of us who develop educational tools and technologies to misjudge the technological realities of the young people the education tools and technologies are designing for.

Just how young people access online, in other words, matters – a lot.

Read all of our posts about EdTech and Innovation by clicking here. 

The Conversation

Crystle Martin, Postdoctoral Researcher , University of California, Irvine

This article was originally published on The Conversation. Read the original article.

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Matthew Lynch published in Diversity, Equity

Epidemic of rights abuse fails black kids across the US

**The Edvocate is pleased to publish guest posts as way to fuel important conversations surrounding P-20 education in America. The opinions contained within guest posts are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the official opinion of The Edvocate or Dr. Matthew Lynch.**

Noelle Witherspoon Arnold, University of Missouri-Columbia

As the world grapples with the containment of diseases such as Ebola, there is another epidemic that demands attentive responses, policies, and actions. It is one of grave proportions regarding the violation of basic civil and human rights in black communities across the United States. These violations end all too often in abuse, incarceration, and death.

Recent events in Ferguson after the death on August 9 of 18-year-old Michael Brown at the hands of white police officer Darren Wilson in the suburb of St Louis, Missouri, have brought this crisis into sharp focus.

There is no way to discuss what has happened in Ferguson without addressing systemic structural and institutional racism. This includes the politics of poverty that presents the poor as complicit in their own deaths, missed educational opportunities, and economic ceilings.

In Brown’s case, insinuation and innuendo suggested he had stolen goods from a store and was a “thug”. At the same time, a narrative regarding education developed that labelled Brown as yet another black, unmotivated student.

In fact, he managed to graduate from a high school with one of the highest rates of poverty, unequal resources, and violence in Missouri – all of which contribute to low student achievement, little social mobility and economic stagnation. Often these conditions reproduce cycles of generational poverty that are felt in Ferguson and other poor communities of colour. Despite this, Brown’s family indicated he was headed to college with aspirations of starting his own business.

What to tell the kids

Even though President Barack Obama gave a stirring speech on race in 2008, America still cannot talk about it. Having a black president has made race more visible, but no less difficult to discuss, particularly with our children and students. This failure has created a new generation of victims and violators.

In new research about educational inequity at Ferguson, University of Pennsylvania researcher Shaun Harper notes:

As is typical in moments of racial eruption in the US, there will be an inclination to swiftly move on – to treat Ferguson as an isolated, unfortunate event that came and went. I suspect that few P-12 [school] teachers there or elsewhere across our nation even know how to talk with children about what happened in the St Louis suburb and the larger implications of this tragedy.

In fact, one school district in Illinois has banned talk of the issues in Ferguson even though research has shown that black students personalise racism even when it is not personally happening to them. This stands in contrast to encouragement by teachers and politicians to discuss other tragedies such as 9/11, which spawned whole curricula on the subject. Students and educators deserve the truth.

In the case of the Ferguson-Florissant school district and others like it, Harper says that: “Ferguson had structural problems that systematically disadvantage black families and youth long before a white police officer killed an unarmed black teenager.”

Rebalancing inequalities in schools

Even as educational scholarship explores issues of social justice, there is little movement by those who create education policy in ameliorating inequities for those who have not been well served in schools. There must first be racial and cultural sensitivity, relevance, and awareness of institutionalised racist practices in schools.

Second, teachers must be trained with a commitment to understanding and creating diversity, inclusive practice in schools, and a fostering of social relations across cultures. In addition, there must be continual dialogue and supportive, safe spaces in which youth and communities can process what happened.

The “wronged” parties – in this case black communities – should be involved in school curricula and policy. Although the concept of social justice remains a somewhat inchoate idea, the black community has a long history built around the constructs of advocacy, justice, and social change in schools and communities.

A history of abuse

Ferguson is only the newest failure of the larger society to substantially address these issues. Growing up in Birmingham, Alabama, I know something about the impact of race and racism that manifests as a right to protest, demonstrate and protect oneself from harm. I recall an eerily familiar scene of 1960s: water hoses, now juxtaposed against current images of bullets and tear gas. These were crimes against humanity in heavy-handed shows of militarised force against those who dare to be wounded, fatigued, angered, and have the audacity to shine a spotlight on violence.

Brown’s funeral on August 25 drew a crowd of more than 4,000 to not only say goodbye, but also to show solidarity amid cries and tears for justice and restoration. Similarly, thousands attended the funeral of 14-year-old Emmett Till, who was lynched in 1955 Mississippi. Brown’s tale also has overtones of another St Louis period of unrest in 1968 at the unjust killing of another black man, Dr Martin Luther King.

And in this latest experience of déjà vu, the results are the same: the stripping of worth and humanity, the devaluation of the black life, and the criminalisation of youth of colour.

More than anything, Brown’s death has dispelled the myth of a post-racial world and revealed just how real racism is. It seems that “democracy requires hard work that we seem less and less willing to do”, a point argued by Yale law professor Stephen Carter his book Civility. Some would rather dehumanise and shame the victim of colour through misrepresentations, half-truths and outright lies than get down to that hard work.

__________

Noelle Witherspoon Arnold is the associate Professor, PK-12 Leadership & Policy at University of Missouri-Columbia

This article was originally published on The Conversation.

Read the original article.

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Matthew Lynch published in Policy & Reform, Teachers

Well, What Do You Know? A Discriminating Look at the No Child Left Behind Act

By David Moscinski

The prime expectation of the No Child Left Behind Act is that all students become proficient in Reading and Mathematics. It mandates annual student testing, along with a comparison of the results obtained by majority and minority students. This mandated comparison has revealed the existence of an “achievement gap” between and among student sub-groups. This article looks at what we “know” about this gap and how our knowledge may unintentionally support it.

What is the relationship between knowledge and expectation? Does what we know determine what we expect? The obvious answer is “Of course it does.” Pragmatically speaking, isn’t that the purpose of knowledge – to tell us what to expect? Let’s take a closer look at this relationship.

In 1686 Sir Isaac postulated the Laws of Motion, the third of which is “For every action there is an equal and opposite reaction.” Nearly three hundred years later knowledge of this law and what to expect because of it ultimately put an astronaut on the moon. Feeling safe in expectations based on this knowledge, people will enter long cylindrical tubes that propel them six miles into the sky at speeds in excess of five hundred an hour to destinations thousands of miles away, usually without hesitation. Expectation based on knowledge is deeply ingrained in our psyche.

It may not even be unusual for expectation to take on a life of its own. The ancient Roman poet Ovid in his work Metamorphosis records the tale of the Greek sculptor, Pygmalion who fell in love with a beautiful statue he had sculpted. He petitioned the gods to give him a spouse as lovely and as perfect as his statue of ivory and according to the legend they did. Pygmalion’s man-made expectation thus became reality.

Eliza Doolittle and Learning Expectations

A wonderful artistic example of expectation comes from the words of Eliza Doolittle, the Cockney speaking flower girl in the 1964 Learner and Lowe musical “My Fair Lady.” In the musical, based on the novel Pygmalion by George Bernard Shaw, a prominent elocutionist, Professor Henry Higgins places a bet with his friend, Colonel Pickering. He wages the Colonel that with three months of his training he can expect a lowly flower girl, played by Audrey Hepburn, to become a society accepted lady. Professor Higgins does succeed and wins his wager, but not for the reason he believes. In a poignant scene Eliza states the real reason behind her transformation:

I should never have known how ladies and gentlemen really behaved, if it hadn’t been for Colonel Pickering. He always showed what he thought and felt about me as if I were something better than a common flower girl. You see, Mr. Higgins, apart from the things one can pick up, the difference between a lady and a flower girl is not how she behaves, but how she is treated. I shall always be a common flower girl to Professor Higgins, because he always treats me like a common flower girl, and always will. But I know that I shall always be a lady to Colonel Pickering, because he always treats me like a lady, and always will.

In education, the work of Rosenthal and Jacobsen in the 1960’s established the relationship between expectation, whether real or perceived, and student performance. In their book Pygmalion In The Classroom published in 1968, Rosenthal and Jacobsen described the results of an experiment in which children were pre-tested with I.Q. tests before the start of the school year. Teachers were then given the names of 20% of students who had tested as being “latently gifted.” The teachers were told these students could be expected to “blossom” in the coming school year.

Unknown to the teachers however, the students had been not been selected based on test results, but rather had been assigned at random. When post-tested at the end of the year, students who had been expected to blossom scored significantly higher on the I.Q. test. Rosenthal termed this the Pygmalion Effect. It occurred because in his words :“When we expect certain behaviors of others, we are likely to act in ways that make the expected behavior more likely to occur.”

The Iowa Lighthouse Study, conducted by the Iowa Association of School Boards and published in September of 2000, further supported the importance of knowing what to expect, this time at the school board level. The purpose of the study was to determine what influence, if any, school boards could have on student achievement. For the study test districts were matched on as many variables as possible, then divided into “high” and “low” achieving districts based on their students’ test performance on annually administered state tests.

The study found that board members in high-achieving districts had significantly different knowledge and expectations than those that existed among board members in low-achieving districts.This knowledge and expectation set the tone for the district’s culture. Board members in high-achieving districts:

Consistently expressed the belief that all students can learn and that the school could teach all students. This “no excuses” belief system resulted in high standards for students and an on-going dedication to improvement. In low-achieving districts, board members had limited expectations and often focused on factors that they believed kept students from learning, such as poverty, lack of parental support or societal factors.

Looked at another way, board members in high achieving districts became The Little Engines That Could that pulled all the girls and boys of their district over any potential “gaps” in their learning.

A final thought on the subject of expectation comes from the recently published book The Social Conquest of Earth by biologist Edward O. Wilson. In his book Wilson states:

Experiments conducted over many years by social psychologists have revealed how swiftly and decisively people divide into groups and then discriminate in favor of the one to which they belong. Even when the experimenters created the groups arbitrarily, prejudice quickly established itself. Whether groups played for pennies or were divided by their preference for some abstract painter over another, the participants always ranked the out-group below the in-group. They judged their “opponents” to be less likable, less fair, less trustworthy, less competent. The prejudices asserted themselves even when the subjects were told the in-groups and out-groups had been chosen arbitrarily.

How does all this relate to the NCLB and closing the “achievement gap”?

If we “know” that minority students do not test as well as their counterparts in the majority, does this imply anything about our expectations for them? Like Pygmalion does our knowledge sculpt what we come to expect? Does our knowledge form our expectation? If it does, how does this help eliminate the “achievement gap”? Would education be better off simply expecting that all children can lean regardless of any cultural, ethnic, racial, income or any other quantifiable variable? Does saying that that all children are created equal, but then sub-dividing them according prescribed variables result in treatment like Eliza Doolittle received, as the instructional equivalents of Cockney flower girls? Or, are they treated like the majority students, as respected members of society?

Based on the results of Rosenthal’s study, what are the instructional behaviors likely to produce results which close the gap or even prevent it from forming? The Iowa Lighthouse Study suggests closing or preventing the gap starts at the top with the Board of Education and the firm belief that all children can learn and can be taught in their schools, regardless of circumstances. These school board members and their instructional staff have expectations for all students and excuses for none. Led by this attitude of expectation for all, they get what they expect.

And what about Edward Wilson’s findings described in The Social Conquest of Earth?

Experiments conducted over many years by social psychologists have revealed how swiftly and decisively people divide into groups and then discriminate in favor of the one to which they belong.

This is perhaps the greatest caveat concerning NCLB, the required disaggregation of data by minority groups with the resulting “achievement gap.” Taken together, do they form a self-fulfilling prophesy that is the basis for a new, but subtle form of discrimination? If we truly believe that all are created equal and that all children can learn, let’s begin by examining our expectations based on these beliefs.

_____________

David Moscinski is the District Administrator for the School District of Stockbridge in Stockbridge, Wisconsin. Stockbridge Middle School has been identified as “Exemplary” by the Association of Wisconsin School Administrators for five years. Student proficiency results there have been in the upper 10% of all middle schools in the state. In 2014 Newsweek named Stockbridge High School to its “America’s Top High Schools 2014” list as well as to its “Beating the Odds: America’s Top High Schools for Low Income Students.”

Mr. Moscinski has also had articles published in the “American School Board Journal,” the American Association of School Administrators “School Administrator” and the Wisconsin School News. His article “Proficiency For All?” was selected for inclusion in the 09-10 McGraw Hill Annual Editions – Education.

 

Click here to read all our posts concerning the Achievement Gap.

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