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December 1997/January 1998 | Volume 55 | Number 4
Marge Scherer
Table of Contents
Robert E. Slavin
The equity gap in the United States—far more than in other industrialized countries—is seen in both opportunity to learn and in outcomes of children from both lower-income families and from minority groups. Though some closing of the gap has been observed in test results, such as scores on the National Assessment of Educational Progress and the Scholastic Assessment Tests, most gains were made in the 1970s; and the gap is widening again. Citizens of the United States do not have to tolerate such inequities; we know ways to support the achievement of all students, including those placed at risk of failure by their family circumstances. Students in many U.S. schools have achieved unparalleled success through research-based programs like Success for All, Reading Recovery, and the Abecedarian Project. If we address funding inequities and failure of will, the equity gap does not have to exist.
John O'Neil
Despite the efforts of educators, students still frequently segregate themselves by race or ethnic group. Beverly Daniel Tatum, author of Why Are All the Black Kids Sitting Together in the Cafeteria? and Other Conversations About Race explores some of the reasons in this interview. By sketching out some of the issues of racial identity development, Tatum underscores the complex dynamics at work when students choose to meet with or form friendships with students from their own or other racial and ethnic groups. She presents examples of how teachers skillfully deal with issues of race and racism in their classes. Tatum also address such issues as tracking, multicultural education, and the importance of battling institutional racism.
Stephen Krashen
Too many of our students, particularly those in high-poverty schools, struggle to become fluent readers. Yet a simple solution to this serious issue could be just a shelf away. To develop literacy, students need access to many interesting reading materials. Unfortunately, schools often neglect this obvious option. Books are necessary for the free voluntary reading through which we develop much of our literacy. Free reading profoundly improves our reading and writing ability, spelling, grammar, and vocabulary. And free reading appears to work for everyone. We now have evidence that free reading programs in school are effective worldwide for students of all ages, for both first and second language development. Simply providing access is the first and most important step in encouraging literacy development. Children get a substantial percentage of their reading material from libraries, and better libraries are related to better reading. The school library can make a profound difference. Unfortunately, while students in low-poverty schools usually have relatively open access to school libraries, children in high-poverty schools often face severely restricted access to the few services their school libraries do offer.
Wayne P. Thomas and Virginia P. Collier
Among the underachieving youth in U.S. schools, students with no proficiency in English must overcome enormous equity gaps. Clear achievement data now point to the most powerful models of effective schooling for English learners. What is astounding is that these same programs are also dynamic models for school reform for all students. When native and nonnative speakers of English learn together in dual language programs, they help each other acquire both languages proficiently. In successful two-way bilingual programs, educators carefully plan appropriate percentages of instruction in each language, and the languages are used separately. After five to six years in such programs, students are able to demonstrate deep knowledge on tests in either language. Indeed, research evidence is overwhelmingly clear that proficient bilingual outperform monolinguals on school tests. Beyond high academic achievement, dual language programs enable students to develop multiple ways of solving problems, multilingualism that will enhance their professional lives, and cross-cultural respect and collaboration.
David Reinstein
From poverty to affluence, a teacher shares the startling realities of teaching on both sides of the economic chasm. Although the Academy for Scholastic Achievement (ASA) on Chicago's West Side and New Trier High School in the wealthy North Shore suburbs have a few things in common, the schools are also diametric opposites. From the incidence of violence to professional support for educators, Reinstein contrasts the two schools. Although Reinstein met excellent parents in both communities, ASA students do not enjoy the educational resources or community expectations their peers at New Trier do. Reinstein notes that until policymakers narrow the school funding gap, poorer schools in Illinois will continue to face greater problems with few dollars.
Bonnell B. Goycochea
Most large urban districts have a flagship school at one end of the performance spectrum—a highly rated school with an affluent student body—and a bottom-of-the-barrel school at the other end—a low ranking school in a low-income area. The flaw in these rankings, Goycochea argues, is that they are based on final outcomes rather than student growth. Thus she calls for a value-added approach to student assessment, where the key measure of instructional excellence is how far students have come academically. This approach should benefit students at both types of schools. Goycochea tells the story of a poor school that makes a concentrated effort to improve its students' writing. Students do improve greatly, but when compared to rich schools, the scores still lag behind. If one looks only at numbers, the school may look like a failure. But the students and teachers know otherwise!
Mary Anne Raywid
This synthesis of the research on the benefits of small schools or schools-within-schools responds to three questions: What do we know about small schools? What is there to recommend them? And Can we explain their track record? The author cites a number of large-scale local, state, and national studies that now supplement earlier case studies. The findings are strikingly consistent, Raywid concludes, in terms of the positive effects of small schools on such things as student achievement, attendance, involvement, behavior, and college admission, with benefits particularly notable for disadvantaged and minority students. Small schools have provided models of effective secondary education, including programs for students who do not speak English. Raywid reports that research links the success of small schools to three key ingredients: small size; unconventional organizational structure; and a communitylike, rather than a bureaucratic, setting. She explains how the overarching characteristic of small size accommodates many of the changes recommended by the research on effective schools, and concludes by endoring small schools as "perhaps our most promising single strategy" for realizing a number of the goals of education reform.
Charles M. Achilles, Jeremy D. Finn and Helen P. Bain
Three interrelated concerns—quality, equality, and equity—play a major role in current education debates, and reduced class size can positively affect all three, according to the authors. Citing data from Tennessee's Project STAR and other studies, they assert that primary-grade classes with an average of 15 students result in higher student outcomes—particularly for minority children, thereby reducing the equity gap. Why, then, are small classes uncommon? The authors present several arguments that detractors use to block moves toward smaller classes, including some that involve confusion over the terms "class size" and "pupil-teacher ratio." After countering these arguments, they urge educators to "begin systemic change at the foundation of schooling. With small classes at the primary level, schools can reduce the myriad of projects that later attempt to repair education failures."
Dennis D. Munk and William D. Bursuck
Although there is not yet much research on the topic, the practice of making exceptions or substitutions for grading criteria is relatively common. In fact, as many as 50 percent of general education teachers use grading adaptations for their students. The most common of these are grading on improvement, giving multiple grades (for example, grading for tests and for effort), and weighting grades for specific assignments. Many teachers, however, believe grading adaptations can be unfair, especially when they are applied to someÄbut not allÄstudents. They say that limiting adaptations discriminates against students who don't meet qualifications for special education and ignores individual differences among students. Students say such limitations can create a disincentive for taking harder classes and provide those who receive adaptations with an unfair advantage. The authors recommend policies for grading to schools interested in fairer systems.
Yvonne Rafferty
This examination of homeless children and education describes the factors that lead to increased rates of academic failure within this group, including emergency shelter policies that bounce kids from one school to another and school policies that effectively bar access for many students. The author points out that although the McKinney Homeless Assistance Act of 1987 has improved the situation in some respects, serious implementation problems persist. Rafferty suggests several steps that educators can take to mitigate the harmful effects of homelessness on students, such as facilitating continuity of schooling, minimizing enrollment delays, ensuring timely access to appropriate educational services and in-school support services, and providing family support services. The author discusses the larger social issues of homelessness and concludes that until policymakers confront realities of homeless children, "educators can and must play a vital role."
Catherine E. Matthews, Wendy Binkley, Amanda Crisp and Kimberly Gregg
Three preservice educators and their professor, in a senior research project, used an interactive CD-ROM and written case studies with a class of 5th graders to teach them to recognize and remedy gender inequities. Initially, the children didn't understand why gender bias might be a concern in their classroom. By the end of the study, they were quick to point out incidents of inequitable treatment in their class and to offer possible solutions. Students' comments about gender bias and their suggestions for ways that teachers can be fair offer fresh insight into a subject that some overlook as a challenge for elementary schools.
Charles Rop
As part of a study of secondary students' values, beliefs, and attitudes, Rop interviewed veteran chemistry teachers. In this article, he relates one teacher's observations and her suggestions for giving girls more positive experiences in the physical sciences than she had as a student. She urges teachers to create a supportive classroom culture—for example, by modeling ways to take intellectual risks. She suggests ways of encouraging science careers. She also calls for a new pedagogy, one that is less abstract and that shows how science concepts fit together. She advises teachers, for example, to show "how chemistry and the products of chemical research are alive and well in students' daily lives" and to integrate the history, social context, and social implications of scientific discoveries into the curriculum.
Marcia Delany, Laura Toburen, Becky Hooton and Ann Dozier
Teachers' concerns led the way for a district in Georgia to plan new class schedules to allow for miniclasses and enrichment labs—for all students in two elementary schools. Teams of teachers sent part of their classes to an enrichment lab—open to both high- and low-achieving students at the same time—for instruction in an integrated curriculum. Other students received individualized instruction in small groups. The next day, these students would get their turn in the lab. A master "parallel block schedule" enabled teams of teachers to coordinate groups of students as they rotated in and out of the enrichment lab. The result? Higher student achievement, better student behavior, and happier teachers.
Barry Joel Aidman
In Austin, Texas, a big urban school district launched an intensive summer school program to help hundreds of elementary school students catch up with their peers. The program features six weeks of individualized instruction in reading and math—four hours a day, five days a week. Teams of summer school teachers, principals, and curriculum administrators developed the curriculum guides. Children are assigned to classes based not only on their age and grade but also on their learning needs. This groups, together with small classes, "encourages students to take risks, ask questions, and participate," one teacher observed. Teachers, too, were more willing to take risks and try out new teaching strategies.
Katy Roberson
Children who come from poverty find their world enlarged and their success in school enhanced by their experiences in a high-quality public preschool program. Secrets of success of this school include parent involvement, administrative support, highly qualified staff, and community support. The South Bay Union School District in Imperial Beach, California, which includes families from the lowest socioeconomic status in the state, established the VIP Village, a preschool campus for 525 children and their families. In long-term studies, students completing the program have outscored two comparison groups and, in many cases, have doubled the scores of Title I students—and their academic success has followed them through their elementary school careers.
Carolyn R. Pool
Providing comprehensive, neighborhood-based services to young children at risk and their families is the mission of the Alexandria (Virginia) Community Network Preschools. In providing a high-quality early childhood curriculum, accredited by the National Association for the Education for Young Children, the four preschools in the network aim to remove the barriers that children in poverty face when they enter public school and to teach their parents sound parenting and coping skills. Parents are partners in the school, where they can also take classes in English, receive employment training, and work as paid aides and day-care providers. This private, nonprofit school serves about 125 children at no cost to the parents. It is supported by many community members, including private donors, businesses, foundations, and city agencies.
Christine A. Johnston
Understanding the learning process and how people differ in their approach to learning can help both teachers and students succeed. The Interactive Learning Model conceptualizes learning as having three components: cognition (the processing of information), conation (the performance of learning tasks), and affect (the development of a sense of self when engaged in learning). The model further identifies four learning patterns—sequential, precise, technical, and confluent (unconventional)—that every learner displays in varying degrees to create a distinctive "learning combination." Using an instrument called the Learning Combination Inventory (LCI), teachers can determine a student's learning combination and thereby understand how the student learns. The next step—the Let Me Learn Process—puts the results of the LCI into the student's hands so that student and teacher can work together to devise strategies for more effective learning. Johnston concludes: "We have the tools to understand how children learn; all we need to do is use them."
Roger John Callan
Most schools serve "morning people" best, even though most adolescents are sharpest in mid-afternoon. Should school systems synchronize their clocks? For more than a century, research has revealed that our thinking and general functioning ebbs and flows with our circadian rhythms, or internal timing mechanisms. Research has also confirmed that some people reach their temperature peak before noon, some in the afternoon, and some in the evening. Students understand material better and do better on tests at their preferred time of day. The author asserts that, ideally, school districts set up parallel schools to accommodate student time preferences, with the majority of students attending classes in the late morning through afternoon.
Andrew S. Latham
Copyright © 2012 by ASCD
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