Dayton Daily News education reporter Scott Elliott writes about schools, kids, teaching and learning.
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Do schools even matter?
(Teacher Jessica Chilbert with first graders on the first day of school last year at Orville Wright Elementary School, one of Dayton’s many high poverty schools)
I’ll tell you my answer to the question in the headline right now — yes, schools matter. Anyone who believes otherwise (I honestly don’t think there are many) should not be involved in education, or writing about it for that matter.
There is big edusphere buzz about this topic, fueled by Diana Jean Schemo’s thought-provoking On Education column in the New York Times this week called “It Takes More than Schools to Close Achievement Gap.” (Alexander Russo at This Week in Education has a decent round-up of some of the blogging commentary on the column.)
Here’s a taste from Schemo’s piece:
“In 1966, Prof. James S. Coleman published a Congressionally mandated study on why schoolchildren in minority neighborhoods performed at far lower levels than children in white areas. To the surprise of many, his landmark study concluded that although the quality of schools in minority neighborhoods mattered, the main cause of the achievement gap was in the backgrounds and resources of families. For years, education researchers have argued over his findings. Conservatives used them to say that the quality of schools did not matter, so why bother offering more than the bare necessities? Others, including some educators, used them essentially to write off children who were harder to educate.”
The whole topic made many edubloggers uneasy. If there was one barrier NCLB indisputably crossed it was to force the idea that the nation, or at least the federal government, believed schools could make a difference and expected them to do so.
Even so, Schemo, who covered education in Washington, D.C., for the Times, raises an interesting topic that deserves discussion. Few dispute that the background and resources of the family correlate to some degree with how well a child scores on standardized tests. My recent study of this question using Miami Valley school districts even offers supporting evidence of a fairly strong correlation between median income and school district success on state report cards.
But by now there is certainly evidence out there that a good school can educate poor kids well despite their challenges and even make a difference in standardized test scores. (A couple of my favorite examples are the SEED charter school in D.C., a public boarding school, and Dayton’s own Dayton Early College Academy, an the campus of the University of Dayton. Both are successful, if expensive, examples of schools educating kids from challenging backgrounds.)
The bigger question in education right now is which strategies employed by successful schools can best be replicated on a wide scale, not whether we should even bother to try. I’d love to hear your thoughts on family background and its impact on test scores or good schools and how they can make a difference for poor kids.
(Image credit: Bill Reinke, DDN)
Permalink | Comments (8) | Categories: Teaching and Learning
Comments
By Rachael
August 14, 2006 11:48 AM | Link to this
What percentage of 2nd year DECA students took the OGT last year?By Terri
August 12, 2006 9:42 PM | Link to this
Of course most, if not all, of the students from DECA that took the OGT passed it. If all schools could select the students they allow to take it, they would have near 100% pass rates too.By Mary
August 11, 2006 9:35 PM | Link to this
Regarding old prof’s points about upward mobility of a poor versus prosperous student with the same education, I think I have read some commentary in recent years that claims the same thing. I think it quoted some studies from The Economist, or something like that. Education was apparently more strongly tied to upward mobility in other countries as opposed to ours. In our country, we are apparently more influenced by existing economic status for jobs and upward mobility is somewhat stifled. I think it happens a lot in the job search - networking for jobs and who you know helps.By Oldprof
August 11, 2006 11:29 AM | Link to this
Another aspect: Ohio Board of Regents performance reports show that if a student from a poor family earns the same degree as a student from a prosperous family, the one from the prosperous family winds up making a far greater salary, on average. The influence of family and community extend far beyond education itself. The good news is that the student from the poor family winds up earning about twice as much in the course of working life as s/he would have without the higher education—thus moving the next generation of that family from poverty to middle-class status and thus increasing their odds of academic, career, and life success.By Scott Elliott
August 10, 2006 6:13 PM | Link to this
Terri, I would disagree that you can’t consider DECA’s OGT scores. I think what you are arguing is that its passing rate is not comparable to other good schools, like Stivers School for the Arts (another excellent example I should have mentioned) because they do not require all 10th graders to take the OGT in 10th grade. That’s a fair point. But the kids that do take the OGT, even if their numbers are smaller, nearly all pass and often on the first try. These are largely typical DPS kids who at comprehensive high schools in the city generally do not pass, especially the first time. You might be able to argue they are not learning as efficiently as other great schools, but that’s another issue. BTW, attendance was 96 and 99 pct the last two years, best in the city. I don’t have teacher turnover stats. I hear turnover is fairly brisk, but performance has not appeared to have suffered. I don’t have current dropout/transfer out numbers, but again last I checked there was a pretty fair number who left. School officials say that worries them some, but say a new, radical school is not for everyone and particularly the first two classes many students did not know what to expect. Thus, some discovered they weren’t a good fit. Anecdotally, I’ve been told transfers have calmed somewhat.By Terri
August 10, 2006 4:35 PM | Link to this
Scott, you mention DECA as “a good school [that] can educate poor kids well despite their challenges and even make a difference in standardized test scores.” On what are you basing this assessment? OGT scores need to be taken with a grain of salt since only students that DECA officials feel are ready for the test take it, rather than all second year students. A graduation rate has yet to be established since this is the first year they have fourth-year students. What is the attendance rate at DECA? How many students have left DECA and returned to a regular school? How many dropouts? What is the staff turn-over rate?By Mary
August 10, 2006 4:11 PM | Link to this
I think some of the problems described for poverty students also affect middle class students - including environmental toxins, hearing and sight problems. I think some students in poverty districts probably have better access to medical care than some middle class students. So why do school districts contract and pay for things like medical trainers for sports teams instead of providing some affordable eyesight and hearing and other medical screening for all students that directly affect their classroom learning abilities. Schools matter for all kids, in good and bad ways.By Doug
August 10, 2006 11:58 AM | Link to this
This NY Times column is dead on Scott. You would see the most improvement in academic achievement in America if we as a society attacked and put a sizeable dent in poverty. Teachers have been saying this for years but no one listens to us. (I’ve been saying the same thing on my blog for a year now whenever NCLB comes up as a topic.) We live in a society where everyone thinks they know about education but no one listens to the people who are doing it. Politicians see they can be popular by legilsating tough standards but when teachers say these are not the right standards, no one listens. It is eaiser for society to say the teachers are wrong instead of asking the tough questions about how to eliminate poverty Politicians don’t have the guts nor the vision to work on eliminating poverty. The only thing they want to do is keep medling in education becuase polls show that is one way to get re-elected. But the data is quite clear, micromanaging schools will never be as effective as improving the economic conditions of the poor. This revelation can’t surprise anyone can it?