Paul Ruiz, senior advisor of the Education Trust, spoke recently in Tacoma about ways to close the achievement gap. His personable, practical, and engaging presentation went beyond standard racial achievement gap data into information on income, city, and international gaps.
Some of Ruiz’s points that struck me most were about the poverty, city / state, and international country gaps:
- While Washington’s students’ reading and math scores were usually middle of the pack for various grades compared to other states’ student scores, Washington’s African American’s tested higher than other state’s African Americans.
- Students’ scores from various US cities were much higher than other cities. Kind of made me want to move some kids to other cities.
- The US was not among the top countries with high student scores.
- My favorite slides/comments were about “the” minority and high-poverty students in a few schools that scored VERY high (if I remember correctly, nearly 100% in one school and in the other school students progressed from 20% proficiency to 70%?) after four years of the entire teaching staff focusing on student achievement! It appears it can be done (despite all the excuses thrown around – “These kids don’t have parents.” “These kids are poor.” “These kids . . . blah, blah, blah.”). Stop blaming kids and their environments – focus on what we can do: TEACH them!
Dr. Ruiz spoke some about charter schools. I agree with him – I hear charter schools touted as the innovative miracle child of education. Innovation can happen in public schools too – what’s the big deal? I believe that innovation comes from people, not systems (charter vs. public school) and I don’t believe that effective teaching has changed much in thousands of years. Perhaps what needs to be innovated is uncovering the obstacles that keep effective teaching from being implemented (my thoughts, not Dr. Ruiz’s).
The overarching message I heard was that we need to believe that all kids can succeed and give them challenging assignments rather than assume they won’t be able to succeed despite multiple strikes against them (poverty level, number of absent parents, etc.). Teach to and challenge the child’s capability and don’t “dumb down” to the child’s environmental surroundings.
