Some refreshing honesty about high-achieving students
I’ve been enjoying the print media’s and blogosphere’s reactions to our new report, High-Achieving Students in the Era of NCLB. Most of the commentary is entirely predictable. For instance, the Education Trust expresses discomfort with us even raising the issue. From this morning’s New York Times story:
Amy Wilkins, a vice president at Education Trust, which lobbies for policies to help close the achievement gap, said the gains by low achievers should be applauded. “My concern is that this report makes it seem like we have to choose between seeking equity and excellence,” she said. “We need to strive for both.”
Susan Traiman, the Business Roundtable’s education policy director, goes a bit further:
We’re producing progress at the bottom, and we need to maintain that,” Ms. Traiman said, “but we need to ratchet up the performance of students at every achievement level if we’re going to be competitive.”
That’s exactly right. But the award for truth-telling goes to Eduwonk Andy, who acknowledges that educators, at least, have to make difficult choices about how to allocate their time and attention.
There is also a belief that schools can do everything at once: That they can close achievement gaps, raise overall achievement, stretch high performing students and help struggling ones all at the same time. As Rick Hess and I wrote in PDK in 2007 all of these pressures create an untenable situation for educators.
We put this directly to the teachers by asking them, when deciding how they spend their one-on-one time, which students they pick. Overwhelmingly, it’s the low achievers:
Everyone’s right that policymakers can tweak No Child Left Behind to create incentives for schools to pay attention to the top students and the bottom students (and everyone in between). A new version of the law could, for example, expect schools to help all of their students make progress over the course of the year (not just the ones below “proficiency”). It could give schools credit for helping more students reach the “advanced” level on state tests (though these still not be high enough). And it could allow out-of-year testing so that assessments could accurately measure how far above grade level bright students are—and could then determine whether or not they are staying well above grade level over time.
But teachers will still have to decide how to spend their time and attention. Right now, they are choosing to spend it on the low achievers, which is fine with Andy. I’d vote for a more “equitable” use of teachers’ time—giving it equally to all students, regardless of prior achievement. (And grouping students by ability, instead of age, would help a lot, and teachers think so too, according to our survey.) And the Education Trust would rather us shut up about this whole debate, because they know it will make parents angry to know that their children might be getting ignored due to NCLB’s incentives. But it’s a debate we should have, out in the open, rather than pretending that an obsession with closing the achievement gap comes without any costs.
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June 18th, 2008 at 8:34 pm
I agree that ability grouping is a good idea. It helps teachers focus more closely on each student’s needs because they will be on or around the same level. When I taught fourth grade, one year I had two students who could barely read, four gifted students, and everything in between. It is difficult to manage; as a teacher you want each of your students to reach their full potential. All too often, the high students end up being paired with low students (peer help). This really does them a disservice. It doesn’t help the struggling students either. They have fewer opportunities to answer questions, take leadership roles in the classroom, etc.
June 18th, 2008 at 11:16 pm
Terrific piece of work, and I applaud you for it. It’s always gratifying to see research prove that what I experienced first hand in my classroom, in my school, and in my grad students’ schools. But if my experience was anything to go on, I didn’t “choose” to spend time on my lowest achievers. I was to all intents and purposes directed to do so.
Differentiated instruction, the supposed answer to this problem, is not an answer. Tracking and ability grouping are a start. But above all, let’s not lie to ourselves that we are educating high-acheiving kids because they pull high scores on dumbed-down tests. We’re neglecting such kids as a de facto policy.
June 20th, 2008 at 9:59 am
This is an issue parents in our school district took head on after years of seeing bright children languish from academic neglect. While the high schools in our district offer a wealth of options and challenge levels, younger students tend to get a one-size-fits-all education with some special resources and services sprinkled in after school for the achievement gappers.
It is not clear if the cause of this was NCLB, the lack of teacher training, or, some surmise, teacher disdain of advanced students. What was clear was that it wasn’t going to change without someone from the “outside” stepping in with the win-win solution teachers and administrators did not have the time to develop.
After some admittedly defensive and difficult moments, some of our schools have begun to embrace the changes promoted by this group, mostly in elementary math, which include pre-assessment tests to determine what students know and don’t know, block scheduling which will allow teachers to divide similar ability students into flexible ability groupings across classrooms in a grade (flexible is the key and is what differentiates this from tracking), and web-based subscription computer programs which assess and challenge students.
Whether it will be a success depends on how seriously teachers implement these changes in their classrooms. But if done right and with conviction, teachers will be less taxed each day because they will prep for and teach to a narrower group of students. All students (including gappers and gifted) will benefit because they will receive instruction at the level they need for the full instruction hour.