ipl-logo

Closing The Achievement Gap

1108 Words5 Pages

I want to congratulate you on completion of your first year as the Secretary of Education of the United States of America. I have not agreed with all of the decisions you have made in one short year, however, I promise I will not complain about your actions, I will simply give you one very important suggestion that could really help the students in this country. As I am sure you have learned, closing the achievement gap is one of the most important tasks leaders in education are currently facing. Closing the achievement gap cannot be fixed by small changes in a short period of time which is why the first step to closing this gap is to stop evaluating schools and students based on proficiency and start using the growth system of measurement. …show more content…

Rewarding schools based on proficiency allows schools that are plagued by poverty to be set up for failure. Schools that are in areas with high rates of poverty show lower academic success due to students facing difficulties in their home life can affect their performance in school. Judging schools based on proficiency levels not only reduces possible funding for schools in need, but it also gives a “false impression that all high-poverty schools are ineffective” according to the Thomas B. Fordham Institute (Petrilli, M., & Churchill, A., n.d.). Looking at the Minneapolis Public School District, as one example, we …show more content…

This task feels impossible as it is very complex and affects a large population of students in the United States. Closing the gap can’t be done overnight by simply changing one or two things, however, changing the way student success is measured is a necessary first step. Measuring students based on growth will help funding be distributed in a way that will benefit the students that need it most. Using the growth system of measurement also supports the school system in correctly identifying the best methods of teaching for the many different demographics within the United States school system. Using proficiency to measure the success of school causes a large amount of students to be forgotten. Schools only focus on students that are capable of meeting the proficiency level, which leaves out students that are already above that level or are too far below to catch up. These are the reasons why I am urge you to make the change from proficiency to growth to start closing the achievement gap and allow all students the opportunity to

Show More
Related

Cutting Through The Hype Chapter Summary

1269 Words | 6 Pages

His goal, to close the achievement gap in his classroom. The consistent thoughts throughout chapter three is that the way to close the gap is to provide adequate funding. I am in complete agreement with David and Cuban that if policymakers continue to believe that the achievement gap can be closed by setting high standards but not providing the means to attain these standards, then the gap between white and black, high and low, poor and rich, English speaking and non-English speaking will remain! Summary Chapter three of “Cutting Through the Hype”, discusses not only the history of the achievement gap but also, where the idea of closing the achievement gap originated, what problems closing the achievement gap would solve, the question, does focusing attention on closing the achievement gap work?, and the solution to the achievement gap in their eyes.

Read More

How Did Roland Fryer's Experiments Affect Minority Children?

1062 Words | 5 Pages

A Harvard Economist named Roland Fryer he did experiments in hundreds of classrooms in different cities. Fryer used private money to pay 18,000 kids and he spent $6.3 million dollars to do studies. This experiment was done in four cities: Chicago, Dallas, Washington and New York City. These Children were paid for having good test scores and for not fighting each other. Fryer expected a certain city to be more successful, but the experiment had no effect at all.

Read More

School Vs. Society In America's Failing Schools Summary

441 Words | 2 Pages

Additionally, the author mentions that according to the professor’s research, the “score gap between American students and those in the highest-ranked countries” decreases by “25 percent in math and 40 percent in reading” once adjustments for the student’s socioeconomic status have been made. However, this problem is getting harder for public schools to solve as “[t]he public school population is getting poorer”. Porter then introduces Andreas Schleicher, the top educational expert of O.E.C.D who runs the PISA tests, as Schleicher firmly disagrees with Professor Carnoy’s claims. According to Professor Carnoy’s results, “fewer than 15 percent” of American students should be from families of lower socioeconomic status, but Schleicher found that “65 percent of principals in American schools say at least 30 percent of their students come from disadvantaged families”.

Read More

Urban Life In The Wire

1242 Words | 5 Pages

Decades of public policy and private action have systematically excluded people of color—especially black people—from good neighborhoods, jobs, and wealth-building opportunities. Among the many consequences for children of color is that they disproportionately attend high-poverty public schools. High-poverty schools tend to lack the educational resources—like highly qualified and experienced teachers, low student-teacher ratios, college prerequisite and advanced placement courses, and extracurricular activities—available in low-poverty schools. As a result, high-poverty schools are tasked with a tremendous load and are often unable to provide either the quality of education or the additional resources and supports needed to help students in low-income families succeed (Jordan,

Read More

Texas Accountability System History

1124 Words | 5 Pages

Carnoy, Loeb, and Smith (2003) found a weakness in the relationships between TAKS scores and other outcomes such as high school graduation rates and scores on college entrance exams. Other researchers (Klein, Hamilton, McCaffrey, & Steecher, 2000) analyzed increases in scores in Texas on the NAEP, increases that they state political leaders attributed to the accountability system, and found that Texas score improvements in mathematics at grade 8 are not significantly different from those of other states that did not have strong accountability systems in place. In fact their data show evidence that the achievement gap between white students and underrepresented minorities actually increased. Some argue that the data show that the accountability program actually negatively impacts schools that were already academically behind before the implementation of the accountability system (Fassold,

Read More

What Our Education System Needs Is More F's Summary

569 Words | 3 Pages

In Carl Singleton’s article, “What Our Education System Needs is More F’s,” he argues that students aren’t receiving the failing grades they deserve. School systems are to blame for the lack of quality in America’s education. No other recommendation for improvement will succeed. The only way to fix the American education system is to fail more students. According to Singleton, the real root of the issue is with the parents.

Read More

Opportunity Gap

684 Words | 3 Pages

According to the 2015 Building a Grad Nation report, low-income high school students are graduating at a rate 15 percentage points behind their more affluent peers. The graduation rate is decreasing because of a problem that is affecting more and more students which is the opportunity gap. The opportunity gap is a barrier that low-income and minority students encounter when wanting to be educationally successful. The opportunity gap enlarges when students are lacking in resources, services, and experiences. This problem is mostly occurring to low-income and minorities students because they don’t have the advantages to afford the same resources as the privileged students.

Read More

Essay On Achievement Gap

1087 Words | 5 Pages

Clearly, performance on MAEP is not flat. The gains in reading have been slow, steady, and significant. The gains in mathematics in both tested grades have been remarkable for whites, blacks, Hispanics, and Asians. Despite these increases, the achievement gaps remain between white and black students and between white and Hispanics students because all groups are improving their scores.

Read More

The Pros And Cons Of American Education

1580 Words | 7 Pages

Although the common belief is that certain aspects of school are important for an ideal education for all students, the main problems that need to be rectified as soon as possible include the lettered grading system and test scores as the main measure of achievement as well as a lack of disciplined and motivated in teachers who do their jobs correctly in order for their students to reach their full potential and excel in life. Out of all the issues with American education today, one of the most overvalued yet problematic for students is the grades and scores that represent their classroom proficiency and content knowledge. It is true that today, in the United States, the easiest and seemingly most reliable way to track student performance and rank schools by quality of education is by simply marking students based on their scores on assignments and assessments done in school or on standardized exams designed to measure mastery of content, and by comparing and analyzing the

Read More

Reflection On School Board Meeting

517 Words | 3 Pages

Even after the bell rings, there is constant work happening to keep the school district running. The Council of Learning definitely hit this point home for me. In their twenty page document on student progress, they not only explained the importance of academic progress but the importance of pushing for a safer school climate for their students. Outside of the report they addressed the difficulty of excessive testing requirements and how it is putting down students. Only having had the perspective of a student, it was reassuring to see educators seeing a problem and actively seeking a way to fix the problem.

Read More

Essay On Inner City Schools

982 Words | 4 Pages

The injustices in inner city schools push the achievement gap farther apart. The community must act to help narrow the achievement gap, and provide the kids attending these schools to a fair opportunity to succeed. Current education in inner city schools lacks resources needed to push children to achieve at their

Read More

Music Education Argumentative Essay

1911 Words | 8 Pages

According to Obama’s Race to the Top Program, teachers in subject areas and grade levels that do not have required state tests (music, art, and kindergarten through third grade) or do not have enough state tests to accurately measure student growth will become the state’s responsibility to create an alternative system of evaluating student growth

Read More

What Is The Failure Of A Standardized Grading System

1415 Words | 6 Pages

One of the foremost problems with the modern education systems is its lack of standardized grading, and its failure to quantify something as qualitative as learning and growth. The common classroom in today’s society has reached a stereotypical basis for grading and what is expected of schools at a countrywide level. Some schools nationwide have tried to solve this problem with a different method of grading that involves the growth and proficiency in a subject area rather than being based on a weighted average of all the points accumulated throughout a semester. This method is known as standard-based grading (Hochbein). While normal grading is based on a cumulation of points that are awarded or penalized through extra credit, late turn-ins,

Read More

The Importance Of Standardized Testing In Schools

1335 Words | 6 Pages

Consequently, the Alabama government has not been able to ignore the overwhelming number of its districts that find themselves failing standardized tests. As test scores are indicators of a student 's overall quality of education, the state of Alabama has addressed this problem by attempting to address what type of education students are receiving in the classroom. While some measures to combat these failing test scores have been implemented, change has proven to be an uphill battle, one with many players, attitudes, and

Read More

Teacher Absenteeism In School

1943 Words | 8 Pages

There is no doubt that schools and school districts are under a lot of stress to remain off of school improvement. With the enactment of No Child Left Behind (NCLB) and various state initiatives, school districts across the nation feel as though they are under the gun to meet AMO, increase test scores, promote student engagement, make sure that students are college or career ready, etc. The pressure is high, and schools feel as though they are under fire not only by government, but the community and education circles, as well. School districts are constantly looking ways to improve student achievement, boost test scores and ensure that, when students graduate, they are college or career ready.

Read More

More about Closing The Achievement Gap

Related Topics

Open Document