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October 29, 2011

Ignoring the Achievement Gap

Andrew Rotherham:

Ah, the achievement gap. So much trouble to fix, so why bother trying? That seems to be the attitude in Washington, where pundits have spent the last several months ripping the current focus on improving the low end of student performance in our nation's schools. In September the Obama Administration put forward a plan to offer waivers to states that want more flexibility -- i.e., less ambitious targets -- under the No Child Left Behind (NCLB) Act. Last week the bottom really fell out when the Senate committee that handles education passed a rewrite of the No Child law basically leaving it to states to figure out how (and probably, in practice, even whether) to close the gaps. In other words, a decade after an overwhelmingly bipartisan effort to get serious about school accountability, it's open season on a strong federal role in education. How did we get here?

Let's start with the pundits. Leading the charge is the American Enterprise Institute's Rick Hess, who, in the fall issue of National Affairs, launched a contrarian broadside against NCLB's focus on low-achieving students. "The relentless focus on gap-closing has transformed school reform into little more than a less objectionable rehash of the failed Great Society playbook," Hess wrote. Next came a September report from the Thomas B. Fordham Foundation, another conservative think tank, claiming that the current focus is shortchanging high-achievers. Yet the data in the Fordham report didn't support its alarmist conclusions that high-achievers were being hurt by today's policies. The truth is, according to Fordham's own data, that high-performers didn't fare that badly overall. Other evidence bears this out. None of that slowed down the pundits.

Posted by Jim Zellmer at October 29, 2011 4:31 AM
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Comments

Rotherman's column was on target but he missed a couple of stunning stats. About 80% of prison inmates are high school dropouts. Of those who do get a diploma and go on to two year colleges, less than 12% graduate even after three years and with remedial classes. This and other stunning statistics are covered in my forthcoming book, School Pushouts: A Plague of Hopelessness Perpetrated by Zombie Schools. I would be glad to send you a list of quotes from my book that really summarize its contents. I don't think I can do it in this comment section.

http://www.schoolinfosystem.org/archives/2011/11/everything_you_.php

Posted by: Dr. Armand A. Fusco at November 2, 2011 10:18 AM
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