 |
 |
 |
 |
Personal Education Plan (PEP):
Statute
Flyer
Informational HandoutTHE MINORITY ACHIEVEMENT GAP: A Continuum of Crisis
Much attention has been focused on the minority achievement gap in North Carolina’s schools during the last three years. Indeed, the N.C. Justice and Community Development Center ( Justice Center) first focused the spotlight on the minority achievement gap in a major policy report, Exposing the Gap, released in January 2000. We presented facts and figures that illustrated a disturbingly wide and persistent gap in academic achievement between minority and majority students, and a list of recommendations for closing that gap. We published subsequent reports in 2001 and again in 2002. Regrettably, the gap in achievement between minority students and white students continues to persist. We have not reached a crisis in education; we are on a continuum of crisis that is ever expanding.
The disparity in educational achievement between minority and majority students is not a new phenomenon; however, the introduction of high stakes testing has made measuring the disparity a more visible enterprise. The official story is that the ritualistic administration of standardized tests each spring will result in an improvement in learning and achievement among North Carolina’s school children. Unfortunately, the scores on those standardized tests suggest otherwise. For the 2004-2005 school year, twenty percent of the State’s school children tested in the gateway years—third, fifth and eighth—did not make a passing score on the End of Grade (EOG) tests in math and reading. The failing numbers are worse if disaggregated by race and/or ethnicity; 33.9% of Black students, 31.5% of Hispanic students, and 28.1% of Native American students did not make level III or above on the 2001-2002 EOGs. 1
Supporters of high stakes testing argue that it is only because of the testing program that the achievement gap has been revealed. It is a valid argument. Clearly, we needed to quantify the minority achievement gap in order to determine its parameters. But the validity of high stakes testing ends with its use as a tool to assess the state of educational affairs. High stakes testing is more than a measuring scale; it is a club that further beats down students who are already ill-served by the current education system.
The purpose of every practice and policy in education must be to engender student learning. High stakes testing does not contribute to learning. The whole concept of high stakes testing is the antithesis of sound education policy. Quality teachers use a variety of methodologies to ensure that students become good learners and testing is certainly one of those methods. However, teachers generate tests that are based on the material that they have taught. In addition, once the tests are completed, the teacher reviews and evaluates the students’ performance on the test. This evaluation and review process allows the teacher to determine each student’s understanding of the material. Those students who perform poorly can be offered assistance in their respective areas of weakness.
There is no such process with the high stakes testing program used in North Carolina’s public schools. Students, pencils in hand, fill in bubble sheets to the best of their ability. The answer sheets are collected and sent off to be processed. The classroom teacher does not review and evaluate the students’ performance on the test. In spite of State Board of Education policy, it is impossible for teachers to provide focused intervention for students who fail to make Level III or above on the state tests. Teachers do not have an opportunity to review the tests and see each child’s errors in thought that led to failure to succeed on the tests. Without this knowledge, teachers cannot design an individualized plan to meet the particular child’s educational needs. Sometimes having that one, precise piece of information about a child’s thought process can make all the difference. My ten-year-old neighbor came over to visit one day and was less than her generally exuberant self. I asked her what was wrong and she told me that she was having trouble in her math class. They were studying adding and subtracting fractions with different denominators. I gave her a few problems to solve and then reviewed them with her. She understood the concept of reducing each to the lowest common denominator but when she added or subtracted, she literally added or subtracted the common denominator. I explained her error and gave her additional problems that she solved correctly. Imagine her performance on an end-of-grade math test where she consistently repeated the same error.
It is important that we recognize high stakes tests are not learning tools; they are simply measuring tools. The more enamored that we become with measuring, the less we serve the needs of students. There are inherent problems with this over-reliance on tests to make important decisions, particularly as they pertain to individual children. For one, the obsession with tests has de-emphasized individual student learning and replaced it with teaching to the test. Second, we know that many students simply do not test well. This is particularly the case for many minority students as confirmed by a growing body of educational research suggesting that minorities perform below their potential depending on how high the stakes are for a given test. There is clear evidence that state standardized tests used under the ABC’s Program have inherent errors and are far from being a perfect measure of what students know. There also is the question of racial or cultural test bias. Test makers continue to find test questions that are unfair because some students have cultural experiences that give them a competitive advantage in answering particular questions. Lastly, there are wide differences in the skill level of teachers and in school resources across North Carolina. These differences often translate into unequal educational opportunities.
Minority students are particularly disadvantaged by the undue use of high stakes test. The test results have become the basis for promotion and retention in our public schools. Fail to score well on the tests and there is a strong likelihood that you will be retained, this in spite of the strong evidence that grade retention does not benefit students and may actual harm them. 2 Students who are retained are more likely to become disengaged from the education process and eventually drop out of school. 3 There is also a discriminatory component to the practice of retention. Studies have shown that retained students tend to be male and African American, with parents who are less educated than the parents of nonretained students. 4 In addition, students who are retained are more likely to come from lower socioeconomic backgrounds than nonretained students. 5
For minority students, public education has become a field and high stakes test are the landmines. The fortunate few manage to navigate the field intact and go on to lead productive lives filled with opportunities. But a significant number of minority students are crippled or even destroyed while trying to make it through our public education system.
Education research supports that accelerated programs for gifted students and a curriculum of challenging academic subjects increases learning for students who participate in such coursework. The December 2001 report from the NC Commission on Raising Achievement and Closing Gaps recommends that schools provide opportunities for minority students to be exposed to “…advanced content, challenging strategies, and quality work…” as a means of increasing minority student achievement and closing the gap. But in North Carolina’s public schools, minority faces are few in programs for the gifted and in honors and advanced placement courses.
For the 1999-2000 school year, black students represented about 30% of the overall student population, but only about 10% of the enrollment in elementary and middle school programs for academically and intellectually gifted (AIG) students. 6 The picture at the high school level is equally dismal. For example, during the 2000-2001 school year, black students made up 18.2% of students enrolled in Honors English IV; white students accounted for 81.1% of students enrolled in Honors English IV. The disparity in enrollment in advanced placement (AP) English is even wider. In 2000-01 Black students represented 9% of the students enrolled in AP English IV, white students represent 90.6%. Other minority groups constitute less than 1% of students enrolled in higher-level math and/ or English courses.
Thousands of minority students, fully capable of excelling academically, are being denied educational opportunities that would allow them to reach their maximum potential. College admission offices look favorably upon a transcript that shows that a student has engaged in rigorous academic work.
For example, the UNC system schools minimum undergraduate admission standards require that an applicant has successfully completed three years of mathematics—Algebra I, Geometry, and Algebra II. A freshman entering a UNC system school for the first time in 2006 will need to have an additional higher-level math course for a total of four math courses. The low enrollment of Black students and other minorities in higher-level math courses results in denied opportunities to obtain what many consider to be some of the best and most affordable college educations available.
AP courses also play a significant role in college admissions. The Advanced Placement Program, introduced four decades ago, allows students to complete college-level studies while still in high school. At the end of the AP course, students take an exam. If they make the required score on the AP exam, then the students may use the AP course for college credit and/ or for course placement. More than 90% of colleges and universities nationwide permit credit and/ or placement for students making qualifying scores on AP exams. In 2000, of the 19,249 North Carolina students taking AP exams, 81.2% were White and 8.7% were Black. Of the White students taking the tests, 58% made a passing score of three or higher, contrasted with 26.5% of Black students. The number of Black students achieving a score of three or higher has decreased gradually since 1997. 7
Ethnic and racial minorities are disproportionately represented in the dropout rate, with Blacks, Hispanics and Native Americans dropping out at a much higher rate in relation to their overall representation in the school population than Whites. Grade retention makes it more likely that a student will dropout of school. Grade retention is an essential component of North Carolina’s Student Accountability Standards, which relies on high stakes testing to make promotion and retention decisions.
The dropout rate tells us how well our schools are doing in keeping our children in school—an outcome that predicts future employment, earnings and overall social condition for students. According to a 1997 US Census Bureau report, on average, high school dropouts earn $6300 per year less than a high school graduate. 8 The gap in earnings is more dramatic, the higher the level of educational achievement. A graduate of a four year college with a bachelor’s degree earns an average of $20,400 more than a high school dropout and a professional degree holder $53,000. 9
The value of education is not simply to get a good job. But lack of an education is a detriment in our ever changing world. A public education system that denies its minority students a quality education dooms those students to limited life opportunities. The achievement gap does not end with public education; it continues into the work force, into opportunities for home ownership, into opportunities for financial security and self-sufficiency.
The continued emphasis on high stakes testing perpetuates a pervasive blindness that prevents us from addressing the real issues in public education. The State Board of Education and the Department of Public Instruction point to the incremental increases in scores shown by the tests as signs of progress. The reality is that nearly half of the minority students in North Carolina are not being served well by the public school system. Exclusion from higher level courses, over inclusion in special education programs, and zero tolerance discipline policies coupled with high stakes testing severely curtail Black, Hispanic and Native American students’ ability to succeed in the current educational system. But it doesn’t end there; it also curtails these students’ ability to have a fair shot at the American dream.
1. EOG information from NC Department of Public Instruction Preliminary Data for 2001-2002 school year. Percentages are for performance composite of math and reading.
2. See for example, William A. Owings & Susan Magliaro, Grade Retention: A History of Failure, Educational Leadership, 56 (1), September 1998.
4. R. Byrd & M. Weitzman, Predictors of early grade retention among children in the United States, Pediatrics, 93(3), 1994; S. Dauber, Characteristics of retainees and early precursors of retention in grade: Who is held back? Merrill-Palmer Quarterly, 39(3), 1993.
5. William Owings & Susan Magliaro, 1998.
6. William Darity, Domini Castellino, Karolyn Tyson. Increasing Opportunity to Learn via Access to Rigorous Courses and Programs: One Strategy for Closing the Achievement Gap for At-risk and Ethnic Minority Students. Report prepared for the North Carolina Department of Public Instruction and submitted to the North Carolina State Board of Education. Raleigh, N.C.: NCDPI, 2001
7. Minority Achievement Report: Trends in Subgroup Performance, NC Department of Public Instruction, 2001.
8. United States Census Bureau, Educational Attainment in the United States: 1997, Washington DC: U.S. Department of Commerce, Economics and Statistics.