Growing an Achievement Gap
Posted July 15, 2007 09:01 PM (EST)
Gerald Bracey
The Bush administration has claimed lately that rising test scores and a narrowing black-white test score gap reflect the success of No Child Left Behind. Even if this is true — and it is not at all clear that it is–the achievement gap, broadly conceived, is growing. Let me explain.
I recently visited an elementary school in Fairfax County, Virginia. Although Fairfax is generally affluent, the homes in this neighborhood are modest. The parents are workers — in food, in dry cleaning, in construction, in lawn care. The school contains students from 40 nations and its ethnic makeup is 39 percent Hispanic, 32 percent Asian, 6 percent black, 18 percent white, 5 percent other. More than half don’t speak English well, half qualify for free or reduced price meals and the mobility rate is double that of the district as a whole.
Yet, because it manages decent scores on the Virginia Standards of Learning Tests, the school is fully state accredited and has met the No Child Left Behind law’s requirements for Adequate Yearly Progress.
But all the above doesn’t really give you a feel for how the school operates or its successes.
The school burbles. It’s a sound that emanates from kids who are content to be where they are. Student artwork covers the hall walls. Classrooms walls are richly decorated. Some students are painting a huge cafeteria mural showing the Taj Mahal, the Pyramids at Giza and other wonders of the world. In a hall, I meet a group returning from “butterfly release day.” They had watched as caterpillars transformed themselves into butterflies and had just gone outside to set them free. Science from the real world not from a book. Students sometimes worked in small groups, sometimes alone and sometimes listened to the teacher talk to the whole class. Questions were plentiful.
It’s as if the school lives under a shield. As if being part of an affluent district, though not affluent itself, offers cover, a Strategic Defense Initiative, from state and federal dictates.
Unfortunately, in many impoverished districts, no such armor protects the children or the teachers. In such districts children endure an endless diet of math and reading test-prep worksheets. Bubble-kids — those perceived to be on the threshold of passing the test — get extra time in reading and math, sometimes in gym class. “Sure things” and “hopeless cases” get identified and ignored. Science, if it happens at all, will happen in the two dimensions of a book. Thinking about those butterflies, I was reminded of a California superintendent’s retort on being asked why her district wouldn’t be making any more whale watching field trips: “Kids are not tested on whale watching, so they’re not going whale watching.” Music? Art? Social studies? Plays? Chess club?
Here is the full article.
Is the program “No Child Left Behind” working? What is your take? I am a big proponent for introducing chess to every child. Unless students are taught critical skills such as logical thinking, patience, diligence, focus, etc., some of them will have problems. I truly believe that chess will greatly assist programs like “No Child Left Behind” and others.
It’s not working. I agree that we need to use chess to help the kids succeed.
No, it’s only working in some schools, not all. Chess will definitely help.
I’ve a few rather harsh thoughts on this, so I apologize in advance.
I’ve grown up in the very sink-or-swim darwinistic (only the fit will survive!!!) educational system in India and I’ve observed that critical thinking skills can be hammered in by a bitter-sweet combination of brute-force repetitive learning, parental pressure or the ever present social fear of shame for not being good at math or sciences.
It’s all about conditioning … being challenged … not about having an easy quiz in school because a tough one would fail people who apparently “need” special treatment.
Getting good at anything starts by being at the edge of one’s comfort zone … Chess is a very complex game that helps people find out where their limits are so it could certainly be one place where such “conditioning” could start.
This type of argumentation is common. Something must not be true because somebody visited an individual place and had an experience. That’s that the argument boils down too: the substitution of a single piece of anecdotal information over a study that looked at a nationwide trend.
No Child Left Behind is having mixed success because of overwhelming opposition by teachers’ unions. They don’t want to “teach to the test”, but let me ask you, “were parents happy with how they WERE teaching prior to NCLB?” NO!!
In response to “come up with something better than NCLB”, the unions only response is “we need more money!” This despite the fact that Federal spending on K-12 education per pupil has dramatically outpaced inflation in recent years. NCLB is not perfect but at least it’s an attempt to improve things. Let’s face it, accountability and consequences changes behavior. Don’t forget how terrible the educational system was BEFORE NCLB!
The biggest problem with American public education is the teachers’ unions. The vast majority of individual teachers are hardworking and well-meaning, but the administrations, unions, and their outdated and harmful policies (e.g. very difficult to fire ineffective teachers with a lot of seniority) are damaging our next generation.
That’s why parents are voting with their feet and moving to homeschooling, parochial schools, and private secular schools. Even charter schools, which public, have had some success because of freedom from a lot of bureaucratic shackles and overhead.
As for chess? Yes, by all means, more chess in schools!
Chess and education are a good mix but the more important is how to mix them up?
Ho Math and Chess Learning center has created a workbook by truly integrating chess into math and thus children can work on math problems using chess knowledge. It not only trains a child’s computation ability, it also provides mental entertainment for them.
Every problem is like a mini-puzzle and children get to create a problem after following direction in chess symbols, it is an incredible and amazing workbook.
More details, visit http://www.mathandchess.cm.