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achievement gaps

education
Achievement GapEducation ResearchPolicy Wonks

Florida achievement gaps in international context

Matthew Ladner May 8, 2019
Matthew Ladner

Several weeks ago, we looked at American racial achievement gaps in math and reading from an international perspective using data from the Program for International Student Assessment, an international test that every three years measures reading, mathematics and science literacy of 15-year-olds.

In 2012, the PISA exam included subgroup specifically for Florida. Let’s take a look:

So, a couple of notes. This PISA data is from 2012. The National Center for Education Statistics shows that Florida’s white, black and Hispanic students all saw very large academic gains since the 1990s. We have reason to fear, therefore, that if the PISA exam had been given in, say, 1998, the results would have looked very frightening indeed. As it is, the results didn’t look so great in 2012.

Florida’s black students land in the vicinity of students in Chile and Mexico. Chile and Mexico spend only a fraction of what is spent per pupil in the United States and must contend with much larger student poverty challenges. Florida’s Hispanics scored higher, but still performed similar to students in Greece and Turkey, lower-spending countries.

The Third International Mathematics and Science Study exam from 2015 allows us to take a similar look at Florida subgroup achievement in international context. PISA and TIMSS test a different grouping of countries (with quite a bit of overlap) and test somewhat different things. Nevertheless, TIMSS also included Florida subgroups.

Here are the results for mathematics for nations and Florida racial/ethnic subgroups on eighth-grade math.

As was the case in the PISA data, American black students achieved similarly to students in nations that spend only a fraction of what American schools spend per pupil, and with more severe poverty challenges. Florida’s Hispanic students score higher but also find themselves outscored by countries such as Malta, Slovenia and Kazakhstan, which don’t begin to match American levels of spending. Florida’s Asian and Anglo students didn’t conquer the globe but had scores that were comfortably European if not Asian.

Make what you will of this information, but in my opinion, we have miles yet to go.

May 8, 2019 0 comment
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Charter SchoolsParental Choice

Once bored, now soaring, thanks to all-boys charter school

Ron Matus March 28, 2018
Ron Matus

BRADENTON, Fla. – Lena Clark has a recurring nightmare. The former Army medic and Iraqi War veteran is trapped on the battlefield – bombs exploding, smoke everywhere – and desperately looking for the date in her contract that tells her when she can leave. She can’t find it. Nobody can help. The war drags on.

Brothers Frankie and Allen Clark are thriving at Visible Men Academy, an all-male charter school. Pictured here, the Clark family. (From left to right: Lena, Kennice, Allen, Frank and Frankie.)

Clark said the nightmare persists because it’s about her sons, Frankie, 11, and Allen, 10, and the hurdles they face as black males. It’s about the education she feels they must have – and she and her husband must give them – to navigate a world that can be hostile to children of color.

“I’m always going to be in a war for my children because I am raising black men,” Lena Clark said. “And that’s something I need my school to help me with.”

Thankfully, she said, she and her husband found that school.

For the past three years, Frankie and Allen have attended Visible Men Academy, a K-5 charter school south of Tampa Bay that is 100 percent male, 99 percent low-income, 96 percent black and Hispanic – and on the rise academically. The school emphasizes personalized instruction and character development. It’s big on expression through art and parental engagement. That combo, Clark said, has been a tonic for her boys.

“When they get up in the morning, they iron their own clothes and say, ‘We’ve got to be men today,’ “ she said. “If I have to pull them out for a dentist appointment, they’re like, ‘Mommy, what are you doing?’ They don’t want to go. They want to be in school.”

It wasn’t always that way.

Clark said she and her husband, Frank, removed their boys from their district school because the boys’ enthusiasm had begun to wane. Frankie and Allen are straight-A students. Clark said she pressed teachers for tougher assignments, but it didn’t happen.

When Frankie and Allen got home, they binged YouTube with Bill Nye the Science Guy, and devoured websites for brain teasers. That was good, but the Clarks also saw another sign their sons weren’t getting the intellectual nourishment they needed at school.

“We were higher than our grade level, but our teacher didn’t have anything for us beyond that,” Frankie said. “It wasn’t really challenging.”

Too often, Allen said, it was also frustrating.

“If a student had to be redirected,” he said, meaning steered back on track after dis-engaging or causing a disruption, “it was like, ‘Here we go again.’ “

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March 28, 2018 0 comment
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Achievement GapBlog AdministrationBlog GuestProgressives and ed reform

Peter Hanley: Wishing outrage extended to America’s two-tiered education system

Peter H. Hanley December 22, 2014
Peter H. Hanley
Hanley

Hanley

Editor’s note: This is the second post in our school choice wish series. See the rest of the line-up here.

I wish those who are outraged and protesting that “black lives matter” over the two-tiered policing and criminal justice system would connect the dots and express similar outrage over our two-tiered, state-operated, feudal education system. Why do so few similar demonstrations occur, and never with a statewide or national scope, about the outcomes American education provides to families generally, but particularly for African-Americans, when the effects on lives are at least equally devastating?school choice wish 2014 logo

At the surface, America has these two exemplary 21st Century societal systems that represent the very core of its founding beliefs – equality, justice, and fairness. Criminal law is not race- or class-based as written in statute. Everyone is equal before the law and no one is above it. Public education is free and, since the 1954 Brown v. Board of Education U.S. Supreme Court decision, universally open and equal for all. The double standards that in fact exist are neither explicit nor openly condoned. We have reams of data to document the injustices at the hearts of both systems.

From speeding tickets to drug arrests through convictions to imprisonment, African-Americans (as well as Latinos and poor people of all colors) are disproportionately represented, often grossly so. In the 2011 U.S. Department of Justice’s report, Contacts Between Police and the Public, the Bureau of Justice Statistics found that while white, black, and Hispanic drivers were stopped at similar rates nationwide, black drivers were three times as likely to be searched during a stop as white drivers, and twice as likely as Hispanic drivers. During a more than 20-year period, white secondary students were slightly more likely to have abused an illegal substance within a month than a black student, yet black youths were arrested at twice the rate. Although black Americans make up only 12.7 percent of the U.S. population, they make up 48.2 percent of adults in federal, state, or local prisons and jails.

All Americans accused of a crime have an absolute right to an attorney, but the quality of that defense is inconsistent at best. More than 70 percent of American public defenders’ offices reported extreme or very challenging funding issues in 2012. On average, each public defender handled more than one new case for every day of the year at a rate of $414.55 per case. Given that the poverty rate for both African-Americans and Latinos is about 25 percent compared with 9 percent for whites, many more minorities are affected by this overburdened system.

If convicted, Supreme Court decisions that have made an “inadequate defense” argument nearly impossible to win on appeal only further weaken efforts that advocates make for increasing funding for public defenders. Courts have upheld convictions even when defense counsels have slept during trials, used cocaine and heroin throughout trials, and admitted they had not been prepared on the facts or law of the case.

These “dots” that have stirred outrage connect easily into an education system that falls far short of its promise for equality and justice. As the Alliance for School Choice recently noted, 75 percent of state prison inmates are high school dropouts. This failure feeds the criminal justice system.

We are making slow progress to increase parental choice, but most students remain assigned to schools via ZIP code.

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December 22, 2014 1 comment
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Achievement GapBlog AdministrationProgressives and ed reformSchool Choice

What would Dr. King say about our schools now?

redefinED staff January 20, 2014
redefinED staff

MLK school 4

What would Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. say today about our schools? What approaches would he support to close achievement gaps? What would he think of school choice?

Over the past year, we asked a number of folks to weigh in on those questions. For a podcast last January, we asked the Rev. H.K. Matthews, a civil rights icon in west Florida who knew Dr. King. We asked others for a blog series that ran last August, on the 50th anniversary of Dr. King’s “I Have A Dream” speech.

As we celebrate MLK Day today, we thought it appropriate to highlight those posts. We know there are no easy answers, but we hope these voices contribute thoughtfully to the debate.

From H.K. Matthews: School choice: an extension of the civil rights movement

From Darrell Allison, president of Parents for Educational Freedom in North Carolina: Access denied, from lunch counters to zip codes

From John E. Coons, longtime school choice advocate: MLK and God’s schools

From Vernard T. Gant, director of urban school services with the Association of Christian Schools International: The unrealized dream of educational justice

From Peter H. Hanley, executive director, American Center for School Choice: Parental choice would honor The Dream

January 20, 2014 0 comment
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Achievement GapCommon CoreEducation PoliticsSchool Choice

I’m conservative, I’m for school choice and I back Common Core

Special to redefinED September 6, 2013
Special to redefinED
Wendy Howard: Higher standards will mean our next generation is better prepared for college or the workforce. That’s good for kids, parents, taxpayers and our country.

Wendy Howard: Higher standards will mean our next generation is better prepared for college or the workforce. That’s good for kids, parents, taxpayers and our country.

Editor’s note: Wendy Howard is executive director of Florida Alliance for Choices in Education, a group that includes a wide range of school choice organizations, including Step Up For Students, which co-hosts this blog. A shorter version of this post ran this week as a letter to the editor in the Tampa Bay Times. Given Wendy’s conservative political bent, her staunch support for school choice and the concerns about Common Core, we thought it worthwhile to share a fuller version.

With attacks on the Common Core State Standards for education coming from both sides of the aisle, what are parents to think?

I’ve heard Common Core is Obama’s agenda to indoctrinate our children. I’ve heard it’s an unconstitutional federal takeover. I’ve even heard it’s a scheme to perform experiments nationwide on our next generation. After doing some research, I learned none of those concerns hold water. The bickering continues, however, while our children suffer the consequences.

The fact is, our kids need higher standards for education. Let’s look at a couple of disconcerting facts from the perspective of a parent with two children attending a public charter school.

Forty percent of Florida’s class of 2013 who took the ACT college entrance exam were graded “not college ready” in any subject, which is higher than the national average of 31 percent. As a parent, this has huge financial implications. If my children are part of these statistics, I will have to pay for remedial classes in college, something I simply cannot afford. As a taxpayer, I expect my child’s diploma to mean she actually succeeded in high school and can move right into college courses. As a nation, millions of kids and their parents are impacted each year when that turns out not to be the case.

Higher standards will mean our next generation is better prepared for college or the workforce. That’s good for kids, parents, taxpayers and our country.

Here’s another troubling statistic: Thirty percent of high school graduates can’t pass the U.S. military entrance exam, which is only focused on basic reading and math skills. At what point does the lack of high standards become a national security issue? If the learning gap between the U.S. and other countries continues to rise, which country becomes the next super power? What does our country look like in 20, 40, 60 years? I guess that depends on whether we look at the achievement gap between the U.S. and other countries as a crisis – or another issue we kick down the road.

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September 6, 2013 13 comments
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Achievement GapParental ChoiceProgressives and ed reformSchool Choice

Dr. King, the Dream & educational progress

Ron Matus August 23, 2013
Ron Matus

Fifty years ago next week, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. delivered his “I Have A Dream” speech to 250,000 people in Washington D.C. It remains one of the greatest speeches in American history, offering a sweeping vision of hope and equal opportunity in the midst of so much fear and turbulence.

MLK snippedMany of us will reflect on how far we have come, and how far we have to go, since Dr. King energized millions with his words – and there’s no doubt education will be part of those discussions. To that end, we’re running a series of posts next week on the Dream and our schools.

We asked our bloggers to consider a scenario described by education leader Howard Fuller: On Feb. 1, 1960, four black students sit down at a lunch counter in Greensboro, N.C. and are denied service. They spark the lunch counter movement, helping to focus the nation’s conscience on racial segregation. Now, four black students sit down at a lunch counter and they’re welcomed like other diners. But they can’t read the menu.

What do racial achievement gaps say about the state of Dr. King’s dream? How does our current education system expand or contract his vision of social justice and equal opportunity? Is there reason to be hopeful when it comes to school choice, educational quality and the academic success of low-income and minority children? Please join us, beginning Monday, to read what some of our bloggers have to say. And please add your thoughts to the discussion.

August 23, 2013 0 comment
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Blog AdministrationCharter SchoolsEducation ResearchPrivate SchoolsSchool ChoiceTax Credit Scholarships

Study: Students in faith-based schools have academic edge over public school peers

Ron Matus May 13, 2013
Ron Matus
Jeynes

Jeynes

For many school choice supporters, enrollment growth across many sectors is reason to cheer. But new research may give policymakers pause about whether they’re pursuing the options that result in the best academic outcomes.

William Jeynes, a professor at California State University, Long Beach, and a senior fellow at the Witherspoon Institute, found students in religious schools were, on average, a full year ahead of their peers in traditional public and charter schools. After controlling for parental involvement, income, race and gender, the students were, on average, seven months ahead.

The findings, recently published in the Peabody Journal of Education, were based on a first-of-its-kind meta-analysis of 90 studies that compared academic performance across the three sectors. Jeynes also found:

  • Even wider gaps between black and Hispanic students in religious schools and their public school counterparts.
  • Smaller racial achievement gaps in religious schools.
  • Fewer behavior problems among  students in religious schools.
  • Little difference in academic performance or behavior issues between students in traditional public schools and students in charter schools.

The implications for school choice, he said, are obvious.

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May 13, 2013 1 comment
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Achievement GapBlog AdministrationCharter SchoolsEducation PoliticsFundingSchool BoardsSchool ChoiceTeacher QualityTesting and AccountabilityUnionismVirtual Education

Florida roundup: charter school politics, teaching to the test, school safety & more

Ron Matus February 7, 2013
Ron Matus

Teaching to the test. The FEA is rallying members to a petition started by UFS Professor/blogger Sherman Dorn. Gradebook.flroundup2

Charter schools. In a vote along party lines, the House Choice and Innovation Subcommittee approves a bill that would allow charter schools to move into unused district buildings. redefinED. Coverage also from the Palm Beach Post, Tallahassee Democrat, Gradebook, StateImpact Florida.

Poverty. South Florida Sun Sentinel: “More than half a million kids under 18 in Broward, Palm Beach and Miami-Dade counties live in low-income households that earn up to 200 percent of the Federal Poverty Guidelines, the National Center for Children in Poverty at Columbia University reports. For a single mom and child, that translates into an income of $30,260 a year or less.”

School security. A jury orders the Palm Beach County School Board to pay $1.7 million in a case involving a mentally challenged, 3-year-old girl who was sexually attacked by a 15-year-old ninth grader on a school bus in 2007, reports the South Florida Sun Sentinel. More from the Palm Beach Post. A Hernando County middle school teacher on paid administrative leave since last April is on a keep-off-campus list generated by district officials after the Newtown tragedy, reports Hernando Today. Osceola will beef up police presence at elementary schools, reports SchoolZone. The video of a girl beating another girl on a Pasco school bus gets posted on Facebook; arrests ensue, reports the Tampa Bay Times. An 11-year-old, special needs student in Duval either falls or jumps out of a school bus and sustains life threatening injuries, reports the Florida Times Union.

Teacher evaluations. The Florida Times-Union files suit against the Department of Education to force the release of teacher evaluation data.

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February 7, 2013 0 comment
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