Achievement Gap

Social science, climate change, shutdowns and achievement gaps

Matthew Ladner October 8, 2020

As a young graduate student, I participated in an exercise that should be routinely practiced in social science training.

Our statistical methods professor gave us an article published in a top political science journal and provided the same data used by the authors.

Our assignment was to replicate the results. The authors described the methods they used in the article, we despite having the same data, try as we might, none of us could replicate the results.

Our professor had taught us an important lesson about social “science” without having to say it out loud: caveat emptor.

All kinds of things can go wrong in social science research, some errors more innocent than others, so an informed consumer will be looking for results across multiple studies using higher quality methods and from scholars willing to share their data for others to examine. In situations where data is not shared and methods are complex and opaque, the opportunities for mischief multiply rapidly.

Having a press that tends to breathlessly report on studies that confirm pre-existing political narratives is not helpful, as these invariably travel around the world well before there has been time for replication or scrutiny.

This all came to mind recently when I read the following about research claiming to demonstrate that warm weather negatively impacts the academic achievement of students – but only Black and Hispanic students:

In a paper published Monday in the journal Nature Human Behavior, researchers found that students performed worse on standardized tests for every additional day of 80 degrees Fahrenheit or higher, even after controlling for other factors. Those effects held across 58 countries, suggesting a fundamental link between heat exposure and reduced learning.

But when the researchers looked specifically at the United States, using more granular data to break down the effect on test scores by race, they found something surprising: The detrimental impact of heat seemed to affect only Black and Hispanic students.

So, could there be a correlation between climate and student learning?

There could be, and there should be more research performed. Do we have reasons to be skeptical? I would say we do. Florida, for instance, gets plenty of days of 80 degree plus weather, but here are the academic trends for White, Black and Hispanic students on NAEP:

That looks a lot like across-the-board improvement to these eyes. The percentage of Florida Black students scoring “Basic or Better” more than doubling between 1992 and 2019 in balmy Florida does not mean there is no role for climate, but it does seem it’s possible to overcome whatever that role may be.

I happen to live in a desert in a state (Arizona) which has a large majority of the state’s students living in Maricopa County, the greater Phoenix area, which is a desert – and a hot one to boot. Stanford University recently compiled data that allows us to compare academic growth rates by county. Maricopa County Hispanic students had an academic growth rate 16% above the national average during the period covered by the Stanford data (2009 to 2016) and Maricopa County Black students were 11% above the national average.

Delightfully, Arizona kids did not get the climate memo either.

Currently, approximately half of white students have access to in-person learning compared to only one-quarter of Black and Hispanic students. A recent analysis of district reopening decisions found politics and teacher union strength to be more influential than COVID-19 trends. The same analysis found that districts with more Catholic schools were more likely to reopen for in-person education.

Luckily for them, in my opinion.

This study, of course, deserves the same sort of scrutiny that the previous one discussed. I fear, however, that we have far more immediate concerns regarding growing achievement gaps than climate change.

October 8, 2020 0 comment

Achievement Gap Commentary and Opinion Education Choice Education Equity Featured Parental Choice School Choice

Education choice gives Black students a way out of ‘achievement gaps’ – and the systems that cause them

Keith Jacobs September 1, 2020

Keith Jacobs

A recent article on The 74 noted the controversy over using the term “achievement gap” to describe learning disparities between Black and white students, with critics arguing that the education reform movement’s focus on “widespread, high-stakes standardized testing” heightens racial stereotypes.

This is like blaming a thermometer for a fever while ignoring the virus that caused it – in this case, systemic racism and inequity in education. Giving families in underserved populations more choice in how and where to educate their children must be part of the cure.

Standardized testing can be a blunt instrument that fails to capture the individual circumstances of the learner or the inequity in the system, and too often emphasizes failure rather than student gains. However, we must have a standard by which we can measure learning across all spectrums.

While the article focuses on standardized testing as a measure that propagates racial bias, it barely mentions how few Black and low-income students graduate high school and the fact they get accepted to colleges at lower rates than their white peers.

However we define this “gap” in educational achievement, it remains that many of our nation’s children leave school without high school diplomas and basic reading, writing and math skills. The failures of the schools are not evenly distributed. They fall disproportionately on students of color and low-income families.

It permeates a mainstream school system that was never designed for these populations. Martin Luther King Jr. highlighted these inequities in 1967 when he said, “In elementary schools, Negroes lag one to three years behind whites, and their segregated schools received substantially less money per student than do the white schools.”

If we focus on the instrument that measures this disparity or on what we name it, but not on the inherent inequities in the system, we will continue to fall short of a real solution.

We can call it an achievement gap, or an opportunity gap as referenced in the article, but the results will remain the same.

We can debate whether it is based on race or income, but minority and low-income populations will still be prisoners of their ZIP codes.

We can talk about de jure segregation in the 1960s or de facto segregation today, but Black students will still experience systemic racism and inequity in education.

Income and racial disparities often are interconnected. In 2018, Black and Hispanic families made up 38% of families living in poverty compared to 18% of white and Asian families. Rather than blaming standardized testing and the use of the achievement gap as the reason why whites view Blacks as being inferior, we must decipher the root cause of why these inequities exist and how implicit biases permeate mainstream education.

Education choice is key to exposing and breaking those biases and inequities and helping students actualize their full potential. According to a 2019 Urban Institute study, the low-income students who received the Florida Tax Credit Scholarship were up to 20% more likely than public school students to earn bachelor’s degrees. Annual evaluations of the scholarship by the Florida Learning Systems Institute have consistently found that Florida’s most disadvantaged students have the same annual learning gains as all students of all income levels nationally.

Choice can have a positive impact on public schools, too. A study released earlier this year from the National Bureau of Economic Research found that benefits of the FTC scholarship went beyond students utilizing it. Researchers found that as the program expanded over the years, not only did lower-income, Black and Hispanic students benefit, but public schools most impacted by private school competition had higher test scores, fewer suspensions, and reduced absenteeism.

In The 74 article, Shavar Jeffries, head of the group Democrats for Education Reform, discussed his experience as a first-generation college graduate who received a full scholarship to Duke University. He lamented that he had to consistently inform people that he was on an academic scholarship, not an athletic scholarship. I understand where Jeffries is coming from. I also am a first-generation graduate who attended the highly regarded University of Florida and had to inform people that I was there for academics.

I owe my success to the true remedy for the virus of inequity in education: education choice.

Although I grew up as a recipient of the federal free and reduced-price lunch program, education choice afforded me the opportunity for cross-cultural immersion and an escape from the prospect of generational poverty. When I was still young, my teachers and parents praised my intellectual abilities and scores on standardized assessments despite my relegation to traditional courses that lacked rigor. This all changed when I applied for and was accepted into the International Baccalaureate program. It empowered me to see beyond my current situation and defy the stigma assigned to being a Black male student on free and reduced-price lunch.

At that time, there were not many choice options beyond public magnet schools, but the experience broadened my perspective. Today, there are magnets, charters, scholarship programs, vouchers and other choice programs available to students.

The adversary to progress for Black students is not the terminology used for analyzing standardized testing results, but rather the latent systemic racism that these tests reveal. Education choice gives them a way out of a system that for too long has worked against them.

September 1, 2020 3 comments

Achievement Gap Blog Guest Commentary and Opinion Coronavirus / COVID-19 Dan Lips Education and Public Policy Education Equity Education Savings Accounts Featured Reading Scholarship

Reducing inequality in outside-of-school learning opportunities by investing in, expanding children’s savings accounts

Dan Lips July 10, 2020

Dan Lips

Research indicates that the richest 20% of American families spent approximately $9,400 on enrichment for their children, such as tutoring, compared to $1,400 spent by the poorest 20%, as of 2006.

The COVID-19 pandemic has cast a spotlight on one of the significant barriers to equal opportunity in American education. Children from lower socioeconomic backgrounds are more dependent on in-school learning and have fewer resources to learn when schools are closed.

As lawmakers and school leaders work to prepare for the 2020-21 school year, including planning ahead for potential school closures and providing distance learning options, policymakers should consider new reforms to address longstanding inequalities in outside-of-school learning opportunities, which contribute to the achievement gap.

Background on the summer learning ‘slide’ and potential pandemic learning ‘dive’

In the past, researchers have found that children return to school after summer vacation having lost some of the learning gains made during the prior school year, and that children from poorer families regress more than kids from wealthy families. Over time, differences in outside-of-school learning opportunities and cumulative “summer learning slides” contribute to the academic achievement gap.

Many factors affect children’s learning opportunities when school is out of session. One difference is access to financial resources. According to Greg J. Duncan and Richard J. Murnane, the richest 20% of American families spent approximately $9,400 on enrichment for their children compared to $1,400 spent by the poorest 20%, as of 2006.

Reducing inequality in outside-of-school learning was an important goal before the pandemic. Now, it’s an urgent national challenge. More than 50 million children missed months of school in 2020, and the outlook for the upcoming school year remains uncertain.

The effects of pandemic-related school closures will be felt most acutely by disadvantaged children. Brown University researchers predict that children will return to school this fall having lost at least one-third of a typical year’s worth of learning in reading and a half a year’s knowledge of math. Importantly, they predict that these losses “would not be universal, with the top third of students potentially making gains in reading.”

In other words, the pandemic is increasing the achievement gap.

Facing the likelihood of periodic school closures and reduced schooling hours this fall, the United States risks growing and cementing an academic achievement gap for a generation of schoolchildren.

Investing in and expanding children’s savings accounts to promote equal opportunity

One option to address inequality in outside-of-school learning would be to invest in disadvantaged children’s education savings accounts and expand their allowable uses to include tutoring and enrichment expenses during the pandemic.

Several states, cities, and charitable organizations have created programs to invest in children’s savings accounts as a mechanism to reduce wealth inequality and promote saving for college. In their 2018 book “Making Education Work for the Poor,” William Elliott and Melinda Lewis describe how children’s savings account programs can promote equal opportunity. Elliot and Lewis reported that: “At the end of 2016, there were nearly 313,000 children with a CSA in 42 programs operating in 29 states, a 39% increase in enrollment from the previous year.”

Encouraging empirical evidence suggests that children’s savings account programs have positive effects for children and parents even during their early years. For example, Washington University conducted a randomized control trial in Oklahoma in 2007, providing $1,000 investments into the 529 savings accounts of approximately 1,350 children randomly selected. A control group of approximately 1,350 students did not receive investments. The “treatment group” received other benefits including savings matches and educational materials about savings for college.

The Washington University researchers studying the program over time reported that the treatment group benefited in multiple ways. In terms of financial benefits, “treatment children are 30x more likely than control children to have 529 college savings,” and the total amount of savings is 6x more than the control group.

The researchers also found that children receiving the investments demonstrated emotional-social benefits compared to the control group, particularly among economically disadvantaged children. “At about age 4, disadvantaged treatment children score better than disadvantaged control children on a measure of social-emotional development,” the researchers found, adding: “The effects of the CDA in these groups are similar in size to at least one estimate of the effect of the Head Start program on early social-emotional development.”

A short-term option for pandemic school closures and long-term strategy to promote equal opportunity

Most children’s savings account programs use state-managed 529 plans as the savings vehicles. 529s allow tax-free savings for college, K-12 tuition and job training expenses. Federal lawmakers have proposed expanding the allowable uses of these accounts to include tutoring and other enrichment costs. Combining reforms to invest in disadvantaged children’s 529 accounts while expanding their allowable uses has the potential to narrow the outside-of-school learning gap.

Another option would be to establish short-term ESAs to pay for tutoring and other outside-of-school learning costs. For example, Florida’s Reading Scholarship Account program provides children in grades 3 through 5 who are academically behind in reading with $500 in an account that can be spent on instructional materials, tutoring, or summer or afterschool programs focused on reading and literacy skills.

Florida’s program could be a model for how states and school districts encourage tutoring and remedial instruction for children affected by pandemic-related school closures. But the short window of time to establish, oversee, and manage new savings account programs for tutoring during the pandemic could be a challenge.

529 accounts are already overseen by state governments, which can ensure that funds are spent on allowed uses and not withdrawn for other purposes, particularly if government funding is being invested into these accounts. During the COVID-19 pandemic, 529 accounts would provide a practical vehicle for directing education funding to lower-income families to pay for tutoring and other services to make up for time lost while schools are closed without requiring states to establish and manage new ESA programs.

Beyond the pandemic, investing in disadvantaged children’s savings accounts has the potential to reduce wealth and educational inequality and promote equal opportunity.

July 10, 2020 0 comment

Achievement Gap Commentary and Opinion Demographic Research Education Choice Education Equity Featured Parental Choice School Choice

Gigantic and all-too-real segregation must end

Matthew Ladner June 29, 2020

Matthew Ladner

James Arthur Baldwin was an American novelist, playwright, essayist, poet and activist. His essays, as collected in Notes of a Native Son (1955), explore intricacies of racial, sexual, and class distinctions in Western society, most notably in regard to the mid-20th century.

“You were born where you were born and faced the future you faced because you were black and for no other reason,” James Baldwin wrote to his nephew James in 1962.

“The limits to your ambition were thus expected to be settled. You were born into a society which spelled out with brutal clarity and in as many ways as possible that you were a worthless human being. You were not expected to aspire to excellence. You were expected to make peace with mediocrity. Wherever you have turned, James, in your short time on this earth you have been told where you could go and what you could do and how you could do it, where you could live and whom you could marry.”

Nearly 58 years have passed since Baldwin wrote those words. How much has changed?

Are Black students still “not expected to aspire to excellence” and to “make peace with mediocrity?” Look at the PISA math and reading exam results and judge for yourself:

Are people still telling Black students “where you could go and what you could do?” Ask Kelly William-Bolar, a Black mom who spent time in jail for sending her children to a better-performing public school in Ohio. Read the Newsday investigation regarding the continuing role of race, income and real estate in segregating families by school.

Or look at the report published by the Fordham Institute on interdistrict open enrollment in Ohio, a first-of-its-kind analysis conducted by researchers at Ohio State University and the University of Oklahoma. See any suburban districts volunteering to take urban kids through open enrollment transfers?

Me neither, which leads inevitably to the conclusion that Kelly William-Bolar’s case was anything but a fluke, that those lines were working exactly as intended, and still do today.

Hundreds of thousands of students, many of them students of color, sit on private choice and charter waitlists. Anti-choice interests not only shamelessly do whatever they can to keep those families waiting, but they also sometimes mumble about segregation in a theoretical fashion, attempting to justify their actions. The gigantic and all-too-real sort of segregation on display in the map above does not ever seem to merit their attention.

“The purpose of education,” Baldwin wrote “…is to create in a person the ability to look at the world for himself, to make his own decisions.”

The time is long past for families to make their own decisions about where and how their children will be educated.

June 29, 2020 0 comment

Achievement Gap Charter Schools Commentary and Opinion Education and Public Policy Education Choice Education Equity Featured Public School Choice School Choice Video

Education choice advocates discuss equity for children of color

redefinED staff June 26, 2020

redefinED staff

Step Up For Students’ Keith Jacobs made a recent guest appearance on The Soul Purpose Show, a podcast with the goal of educating, enlightening and empowering listeners through engaging and thoughtful conversation on topics including education, relationships and pop culture.

The episode, which aired June 20, was one in a three-part series titled “Education Matters” and was hosted by Keith Harris, CEO of a youth services nonprofit, and Monica Williams Harris, Esq. Appearing with Jacobs were Kendra Spence-Wester, veteran educator and principal of Renaissance Charter School at Cypress in West Palm Beach, Florida; and Katrina Long-Robinson, vice mayor of Westlake, Florida, owner of KLR Consulting and a former charter school administrator.

Running at just under an hour, the podcast touches on a host of issues regarding traditional public and charter schools, exploring questions such as:

· Is it realistic to say that education is the great equalizer, or is education equity merely an aspirational goal?

· If education equity is possible, what would it look like?

· How can communities move beyond blame for a failure to address systemic issues and move toward solutions?

The participants, all of whom benefited from education choice within the traditional public school system when they were students, also discuss the importance of high expectations and rigor for children of color, the intrinsic connection between school funding and education outcomes, and the importance of advocating for change as opposed to settling for a mere promise that education will improve.

You can listen to the podcast here.

The Soul Purpose Show airs every Saturday at 11 a.m. on Facebook Live, YouTube and NTouch News Radio.

June 26, 2020 0 comment

Achievement Gap Commentary and Opinion Education and Public Policy Education Choice Featured School Choice

Fixed for whom, Ms. Weingarten?

Matthew Ladner June 22, 2020

Matthew Ladner

In the film “The Matrix,” Laurence Fishburne’s character, Morpheus, explains to the protagonist that the world he perceived himself to be living in actually had been a neural computer simulation. Humanity had lost a war against its own artificial intelligence mechanical creations years before. Human beings were grown captive in tanks, kept under control by a system known as the Matrix, and used as batteries.

The film’s final scene and credits roll to a song by Rage Against the Machine called “Wake Up.”

Last week, American Federation of Teachers president Randi Weingarten gave an interview on MSNBC. Host Stephanie Ruhle posed this scenario for Weingarten’s comment:

We know that there are kids living in cities in this country where those cities and those schools are not serving them. If you live in an inner city and you’ve got kids, your best chance for economic mobility for your child is through a great education, and there are schools that are not serving our kids.

Weingarten responded:

And those schools need to get fixed like we did in New York City.

New York City schools may have been “fixed,” but this raises the question, “fixed for whom?”

Weingarten’s organization virulently opposed the education reforms of former Mayor Mike Bloomberg, who left office in 2013. Since 2013, New York City has been run by American Federation of Teachers ally Mayor Bill de Blasio. Have New York City Schools been fixed since 2013?

Fortunately, New York City is one of the districts included in the Trial Urban District Assessment of the NAEP. The chart below looks at trends for black and Hispanic students since 2013. On these tests, 10 points approximately equals a grade level’s worth of average progress.

Most of both groups of fourth graders scored “Below Basic” on the 2019 fourth-grade reading exam. The schools clearly are not “fixed” for the sort of students in New York City that Stephanie Ruhle asked Weingarten about in the interview.

In fact, the schools needed improvement in 2013, and then got worse rather than better. If New York City schools have not been fixed for students, for whose benefit have they been fixed? The United States Census Bureau offers a telling clue:

Weingarten’s confusion is understandable, but New York City schools have not been fixed for all students. Rather, they look to have been rigged for her organization and others.

Wake up, New York.

June 22, 2020 0 comment

Achievement Gap Analysis Demographic Research Education Choice Education Equity Featured Florida Tax Credit Scholarship School Choice Vouchers

Study shows positive impact of Florida Tax Credit Scholarship on public schools

Patrick R. Gibbons February 19, 2020

Patrick R. Gibbons

As the nation’s largest tax credit scholarship program has expanded, students attending public schools most likely to be affected by the competition of private schools are experiencing higher test scores, reduced absenteeism and lower suspension rates, according to a new report from the National Bureau of Economic Research.

The findings of David Figlio, Cassandra M.D. Hart and Kryzstof Karbownik are contrary to what scholarship opponents like the Florida Education Association, which sued to stop the Florida Tax Credit Scholarship program in 2014, have claimed.

The report, “Effects of Scaling Up Private School Choice Programs on Public School Students,” is the latest in a series of studies demonstrating positive impacts of the tax credit scholarship program. And in this case, those positive impacts go beyond the students who benefit directly from the scholarships.

The Urban Institute found last year that students participating in the scholarship program were more likely to attend and graduate from college than eligible peers remaining in public schools, while annual evaluations from the Florida Learning Systems Institute repeatedly have revealed that Florida’s most disadvantaged students have the same annual learning gains as all students of all income levels nationally.

Figlio and company found the positive impacts of the program, which is providing more than $600 million in scholarships this year to help more than 109,000 economically disadvantaged students, were largest for schools facing the most competitive pressure from scholarship-eligible private schools and for lower-income students as well as black and Latino students.

Statistics for children who are eligible for free or reduced-price lunch

The researchers previously had studied the scholarship’s impact on public school students and found positive results, but the program has grown significantly since then, encompassing 4 percent of Florida’s K-12 student population. Their new study was focused on determining the effects of the expansion.

Measuring the impact against six categories of competition – density, distance, diversity, slots, churches and a combined measure they call the “competitive pressure index” – they found positive impacts across all of them for reading scores, combined math and reading scores, absenteeism and suspension rates. (See charts below.)

Using standard deviation to measure the impact, they were able to determine that suspensions and absences would be reduced by 0.6 to 0.9 percent of a standard deviation for every 10 percent increase in program size. To put this in perspective, the researchers pointed out that the black and white achievement gap itself is 62 percent of a standard deviation.

The upshot: The researchers’ results were consistent with their past findings, which showed modest benefits at the time the voucher program was introduced and indicated further growth of those positive effects as the program has scaled up.

Averaged math and reading scores

February 19, 2020 2 comments

Achievement Gap Commentary and Opinion Customization Education Choice Education Equity Education Savings Accounts Featured Gardiner Scholarship Parental Choice Reading Scholarship School Choice

Privilege hoarding will remain K-12 issue of next decade

Matthew Ladner January 6, 2020

Matthew Ladner

The biggest K-12 question over the next 10 years likely will remain the same as it has been in previous decades: Which students get the opportunity to participate in multi-vendor education, and which do not?

Only a small (but growing) number of people recognize the question’s importance.

The public education system is rigged in favor of the well-to-do and against the less fortunate. Consider the chart below, which shows that American 13-year-olds with college-graduate parents show a better grasp of math than 17-year-olds whose parents did not attend college.

This is not solely reflective of the fact that advantaged kids have access to higher-performing schools, although that surely is part of the story. It’s also the case that well-to-do Americans started exercising multi-vendor education decades ago.

So how can advantaged 13-year-olds know more math than not-so-advantaged 17-year-olds? It might have a lot to do with private tutors, the educational network Kumon, the supplemental math-learning franchise Mathnasium and other perks their parents paid for out of their own pockets. Look at the chart below; do you think what it illustrates has something to do with our scant progress in closing achievement gaps?

Me too.

Unbundling of education is at an advanced stage for the well-to-do. They generally attend schools – the more effective ones – but also have more supplemental education opportunities. In other words, the privileged get access to the fanciest schools and then have the equivalent of a privately financed education savings account as a top-off to hire tutors, attend camps, and many other things.

Florida lawmakers have taken small steps to expand opportunities for disadvantaged students. They’ve created new opportunities for them to attend different public and private schools in the form of charter schools and private choice programs. They’ve created an education savings account program for children with disabilities, giving participating families expanded flexibility to choose schools, hire therapists and specialists. And they’ve created a modest education savings account program ($500 per year) for students struggling with literacy.

Multi-vendor education is here to stay. Whether disadvantaged students will be able to participate in it is a question we should address in the decade ahead.

January 6, 2020 2 comments