Equity in Education

A good friend of mine, who is incredibly inspiring in the field of education, suggested I write about equity in education.  She posed the question about whether all children can receive the same education.  She mentioned working with students from dysfunctional families.  She asked if teachers should be penalized for working in schools in particularly challenging communities.  I believe, if I’m hearing her correctly, she is referring to the high stakes testing we all hear so much about.

No Child Left Behind.  Sounds good in theory, right?  While I applaud George W. Bush (I never thought I’d write that phrase) in his desire to have all children meet standards, regardless of their backgrounds, the implementation of this idea went, unsurprisingly, awry.  While there is something to be said about not discounting students who have particular challenges and having high expectations for all children regardless of perceived ability (See Robert Rosenthal’swork), the reality of having students, even those for whom English is not their first language, perform at standard is unrealistic.  I remember sitting in an auditorium, full of educational specialists, prior to the 2002-2003 school year, with all of us pondering what the recent legislation meant for students with significant disabilites, or for students who spoke little to no English.  Was it reasonable to expect teachers to get these students up to 'standard'?

First, I'll attempt to address the question of whether all children can receive the same education.  No.  Students should receive equal access to education.  Children should  receive an appropriate education.  No, teaching all children the exact same material in the exact same way is not effective.   We all know that kids are different.   They have different needs and require a variety of instructional methods.   Should we require diffferent standards for different students?  Wow, that's a loaded question, isn't it?

First, the argument that we should teach the same material to all students.  On some level, this really does make sense.  We are a mobile society and there is constant movement between schools, districts, and states.  It would be helpful if there were a more cohesive alignment amongst our curricula so that there isn't such a huge disparity.  An anecdote to illustrate my point - my older daughter's kindergarten teacher had very different expectations at one elementary school than my younger daughter's current kindergarten teacher has at her current school.  My daughters are two years apart and these are two different schools within the same school district in the same city. I am amazed at the difference. All attempts at writing were encouraged by my older daughter's teacher and very little guidance was provided (she wanted her students to gain confidence in the process).  My younger daughter's teacher is starting to teach sentence structure (including capitalization and periods at the ends of sentences). My younger daughter will be much better prepared for first grade than my older daughter was. While I understand both teachers' points of view regarding expectations, it's no wonder my older daughter's first grade teacher was concerned about her writing skills in her first few months of the school year.  These differences were just between two schools in the same city.  Differences between districts and states can be dramatic.

Equity is a controversial issue, particularly when it comes to serving children with disabilities. Students with mild disabilities should have access to the same curriculum as students without disabilities.  A student with a reading disability should still have access to the science curriculum that is provided to his peers.  An individualized academic intervention should be available to him for improving his reading skills, but he should also be able to participate in his science class with his nondisabled peers.  Books on tape is just one example of a way that this student can still have access.  In this way, in a sense, he is getting the same education as his peers, but in a slightly modified way.  This is a reasonable way to provide some amount of equity in education.

Obviously, students with severe disabilities require different curricula.  It would be folly to expect a student with severe cognitive deficits and limited communication skills to learn a foreign language or solve a Calculus problem.  However, provisions have been made for these students. They have teams of invidivuals helping to individualize their educational goals, and work on daily living skills.  There is still an expectation for growth, which can be demonstrated using portfolio assessment. 

Assessment is a sticky wicket. It can be stressful.  It can be stressful for the students, and it can be enormously stressful for teachers, especially when the stakes are so high.  While I don't condone it, I certainly sympathize with the teachers who tend to 'help' their students on those assessments.  The temptation to do so would be incredible.  However, assessment can give us data to tell us whether what we are doing is effective.  Some would argue that teachers and administrators are able to assess the effectiveness of what they do without formalized testing and that formalized testing is a waste of time, money, and energy.  I do see value in it, however.

I had a long debate with my dad about assessment and whether there is any value in it.  My dad held the view that it should be cast aside.  I, on the other hand, saw assessment as being a valuable tool.  For example, Curriculum Based Assessment (CBA) in reading can help track a student's progress.  If a 4th grade student is presented with a 4th grade reading passage and reads 50 words per minute, that gives a good baseline for the student's current level. Enter in the (hopefully well-targeted) academic intervention.  Give it a few weeks and allow the student to read another 4th grade passage.  Was there improvement?  If yes, there is good reason to believe the intervention is working.  If not, it might be worthwhile to reevaluate the intervention (a few repetitions over several weeks would be best). Yes, the teacher might also casually observe a difference in the classroom, but small improvements might be missed.  Repeated assessments can track progress and they don't take very long to do. Assessment can provide data to help drive educational decisions.

Assessment data for entire schools, districts, and states can also give a good snapshot of how our students are doing in the classrooms.  While it is uncomfortable to think about, we can separate out the data to see how boys perform compared to girls, how different races/ethnicities stack up, how kids in poverty stack up, etc.  It is uncomfortable but necessary.  This provides us with additional information about problems we see in the academic environment - a place to start examining the current circumstance and begin brainstorming solutions.  Without these data, we are left with our intuition to form opinions and make decisions. Not that our intuition is necessarily something we shouldn't listen to, but we should pair that with assessment data as well.

And now, to address my friend's specific comment regarding dysfunctional families and particularly challenging communities. I worked in an urban high school in a challenging community - and by challenging, I mean lower socioeconomic status.  Sixty-six percent were qualified for free or reduced lunch. Fights broke out in the halls regularly.   There was a lockdown because of a shooting at the McDonald's across the street.   I lasted a year.  A lot of the teachers were devoted to their students and maintained an unstoppably optimistic view about their ability to make a difference in students' lives.  They employed best practices as teachers. Some teachers were there past their prime, obviously burned out, and just trying to eke it out until retirement.  Those tireless teachers deserved to be rewarded and handsomely.  The tired teachers deserved to be paid.  They still did their jobs, possibly better than I would have, to be honest, (I worked as a school psychologist and typically met with students on an individual basis).  I suspect that the tireless teachers were more engaging, and likely their students were able to absorb more of the curriculum than those in the classrooms of burned out teachers.  It would be interesting to look at the data to check my assumptions.  I could be wrong.  In fact, having worked as a school counselor and psychologist, I have seen how good, engaging teachers can often be given the most challenging students.  After all, they are the most skilled, so they should be able to handle the challenging ones, right?  But perhaps this could negatively impact their classroom's scores on an assessment.  That wouldn't be right, would it?  Particularly not if remuneration, or even the ability to keep one's job were at stake.

Assessments should not be the only thing by which we judge teachers.  As I said before, I believe assessments, both for individuals and for groups, can provide valuable data.  The problem lies in giving too much weight to any particular assessment.  This is where teachers have a justifiable reason to be upset. Perhaps we can take something from how we have decided to assess those with significant disabilities (no, I am NOT drawing a comparison between the two groups), where assessment data is but one piece, would be a better measure for teacher quality.  Consideration should be made regarding the particular community a teacher has chosen to work in.  The teacher's commitment to continuing their own education should be taken into account.  Their effort in attempting to connect with students' parents should be recognized.  Classroom observations should be included. There is a lot more to the story than test scores. 

I don't have the answers.  I wish I did. This is such a difficult, multi-faceted issue.  I haven't even begun to scratch the surface.