Three (and counting) solutions to the schools crisis

Today, Ali and Rothstein propose solutions. Previously, they debated devoting resources to closing the achievement gap, the No Child Left Behind Act, reasons for lagging minority performance and ways to educate students who aren’t fluent in English.

Preschool, healthcare, after-school programs
By Richard Rothstein

My theme this week has been that there is not one or two or three new policies that alone will bring disadvantaged students’ achievement up to acceptable levels. We waste too much time these days searching for a magic solution to this very complex problem. From year to year, the fads change — from better curricula to lower class size to more qualified teachers to more adequate funding to pre-kindergarten to more choice to tighter accountability, etc. And when the achievement gap persists, we move on to the next cure-all.

The reality is that all of these, and much more, must be done simultaneously. The achievement gap does not have a single cause, and it will not have a single solution.

I agree that the changes that you, Russlynn, have advocated the last few days are important. They should be done. But again, I want to challenge you to abandon your claim that school reform alone is sufficient. The claim is not even consistent with your own views.

On Wednesday, you wrote, “Exactly, Richard: It’s not an either-or choice. Our nation can and must address the outrageous conditions under which too many of our children are growing up and simultaneously work to ensure that they have the intellectual tools they need to contribute to and benefit from our economic, social and cultural mainstream.�

But then you contradicted yourself by saying that you know “to a certainty that low-income kids absolutely can achieve at high levels — levels just as high as their more affluent peers,� if only schools were improved.

If you would stick to your first claim, that all these things must be done simultaneously, we would have little to argue about. And policymakers then would no longer be able to take encouragement from your words to conclude that they can ignore our vast social and economic inequalities while holding teachers and schools exclusively accountable for closing the achievement gap.

Whenever I speak or write about the social and economic policy changes we need, I am careful to insist that we cannot substantially narrow the achievement gap without better schools, that school improvements of the kind you advocate are also essential, and that no teacher or school should use the nation’s social and economic policy failures as an excuse for poor performance. I emphasized this in my presentation to the California Education Summit in Sacramento, at which I spoke two weeks ago (and which led to this online debate), and indeed, my book, “Class and Schools,� has as its subtitle “Using Social, Economic, and Educational Reform to Close the Black-White Achievement Gap� [Italics added]. Can you add to your writings and presentations a parallel insistence that we cannot substantially narrow the achievement gap without greater social and economic equality, and that no policymaker should be permitted to pose as a defender of minority children by demanding school improvement without also working to ensure that such children have adequate healthcare, housing and economic security? We could then be a team!

In addition to better access to quality curricula for all students, more qualified teachers, and more adequate school funding, here are three places we could suggest these policymakers start, to make it possible for disadvantaged children to take full advantage of the school improvements you advocate:

• Because the pre-literacy gap at age 3 is as great as the achievement gap many years later in school, let’s make sure that all children have access to high-quality early childhood care, beginning in infancy when their mothers return to work. Early childhood programs will prepare disadvantaged children by requiring highly trained teachers with strong vocabulary and language skills, high adult-to-child ratios and adequate physical space for children to play games that prepare them to succeed later. (Did you know that the most important predictor of third- and fourth-grade reading and math scores is kindergartners’ fine motor skills, developed in such play?) A mother working a minimum-wage job has few options better than placing her young children in low-quality day-care settings, parked in front of television sets. We must transform the quality of disadvantaged children’s early childhood experiences, extending high quality into pre-kindergarten and kindergarten.
• Let’s make sure that all children (and their parents) have adequate healthcare. Earlier this week, I described how health differences make an achievement gap inevitable. Reduced to its simplest level, children can’t benefit from high-quality instruction if they are absent from school because of illness. Universal health insurance alone will not be not enough because parents working by the hour at low-wage jobs cannot get time off from work to take their children to pediatricians, dentists and optometrists for routine and preventive care. There is an easy solution to this problem — place health clinics in schools serving low-income children, so these children can get middle-class-style healthcare without their parents’ having to take time off from work. Such a reform would be pretty inexpensive for schools or community agencies — Medicaid would reimburse most of the costs. Do this, and you’ll see test scores go up.
• Let’s make sure that disadvantaged children have stimulating after-school and summer programs. Middle- class children don’t succeed because they get better drills in math and reading. They succeed, in part, because when they are out of school, they can apply their basic skills in free reading, access well-stocked public libraries (rare in California’s disadvantaged communities) and broaden their interests (and a desire to read about them) in dance, music, sports and clubs.

These three program areas, added to better curricula and teachers (and adequate school financing to pay for them) would be a good start toward substantially narrowing the achievement gap. Can we work together in advocating for them?

Richard Rothstein is a research associate of the Economic Policy Institute in Washington and author of “Class and Schools: Using Social, Economic, and Educational Reform to Close the Black-White Achievement Gap.� He was formerly the national education columnist for the New York Times.

Good teachers, solid curricula, more money
By Russlynn Ali

Richard, we both agree that inequities in our society have an appalling impact on poor children and children of color throughout America. We also agree that the responsibility to help make our country better belongs to every one of us. Indeed, as Martin Luther King Jr. wrote from the Birmingham city jail, “injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.�

Let me share one of the biggest injustices we’ve witnessed, because it happened to involve that very same “Letter from Birmingham Jail.� Picture a classroom of low-income, African American 10th graders. Think about how powerful a lesson could be taught around that letter. Then consider what a teacher actually did. “Read the letter,� she said. “When you’re done draw a picture. And remember, neatness counts.�

That was it. Read, then color.

I was convinced on that day that the work of reforming our public schools was the biggest lever in the civil rights movement of our time. I wondered how on Earth the students ever could learn about the eloquence of King or comprehend the complexity of his movement if all that was expected of them was to draw a picture of yet another black man in jail. How will they ever know that King’s movement is their movement if we don’t teach them even basic reading and comprehension skills? How will their teacher ever know if they could read his words?

Low-level assignments are by no means the only problem. We take the kids who come to school with less and give them less of everything that makes a difference in school. Indeed, our entire education system is organized to give certain kids less. We spend less on their schools. We assign them to the teachers with the least experience and training. We put them in low-level courses.

But I challenge anyone to tell me that assignments like this are the exception. My colleagues and I spend a lot of time in schools, and we are constantly struck by how little is expected of poor children. When students spend more time in class coloring or doing collages than they do on writing and math, they are doomed to lives on the margins of our society.

So I’ll take you up on your offer to team up to eradicate poverty in America. You can focus on dental clinics and health policy and housing agencies, and I’ll focus on what I know can be fixed in our schools. I’ll do everything I can to inspire educators to embrace what they can do and showcase lessons about the good stuff other schools do — schools educating poor and minority children — to raise achievement to the highest levels.

I never dismiss the impact of poverty and racism in America, but I also never dismiss my obligation to help show educators what they can do to help. And we’ll continue to advocate for policy changes that make sure high-performing schools become the rule rather than the exception.

Richard, you’re right that there exists not one, two or three silver bullets that can change everything that’s wrong in our schools. But there are a few hugely important issues that, once made priorities, certainly can accelerate improvement.

First, state and local policymakers can’t claim to be serious about closing the achievement gap while letting the fundamental inequities in our public schools persist. Most damaging of all is the gap in teacher quality. (PDF) Decades of research show that strong teachers are the most important influence on student achievement. Yet low-income students and students of color are far more likely than others to be taught by under-prepared teachers. This is true no matter how we measure teacher quality. Eighty-five percent of intern teachers in California work in schools serving mostly Latino and African American students. Children attending these schools are four times more likely than other students to be taught by an under-prepared teacher. Moreover, this happens not just once, but year after year throughout their educational experience. We need to close the teacher quality gap — and not just the gap in teacher experience or credentials. If they are to reach their potential, poor kids and kids of color need more teachers who are the most effective at producing gains in student achievement.

Second, all students should have the same opportunity to acquire the knowledge and skills they need for college and the workplace. We must raise the rigor of all of our high schools — ZIP Codes should not determine whether some students learn geometry and chemistry and others never get access to laboratory science. Our world is constantly changing, and our children have to know more than we did, even if they will be performing some of the same jobs we perform now because the demands of those jobs are constantly increasing. The research is clear: In this economy, ready for college and ready for careers means the very same thing. (PDF) But many of California’s Latino and African American ninth-graders don’t even have access to the courses they need to prepare for the future, much less the quality of instruction that they need to succeed.

Third, we need to provide more instruction for the students who enter school already behind, and that’s going to cost more. Most Americans agree that students who come to school learning English or from low-income households need more support in schools to help them catch up. Yet our public schools spend less on them as a matter of course. (PDF) Sadly, then, when they don’t learn as much, we blame the children and their families. We need to flip this around and start investing more. Instead of spending less money on their teachers, we need to start spending more. They and their teachers need more interventions and supports, all of which will cost more money.

So, Richard, while you get back to the injustices outside of our public schools, I’ll continue working in the injustices within them. There’s certainly enough work for both of us.

Russlynn Ali is the executive director of The Education Trust-West, an Oakland-based think tank focused on closing the achievement gaps separating low-income students and students of color from other young Californians.