Richard Rothstein spoke to the AASA and told them that “reformers” like Joel Klein were wrong in claiming that high expectations and better teachers would close the achievement gap.
Here is a summary of his presentation:
Rothstein: Segregation Practices Block Achievement Gains
by Sasha Pudelski
Richard Rothstein gave a powerful lecture Thursday at the Federal Relations Luncheon where he urged AASA members to recognize the historical underpinnings of the academic achievement gap.
Rothstein, a senior fellow at the UC Berkeley School of Law, discussed how local, state and federal policies since the Great Depression have contributed to the intentional racial and socio-economic segregation of schools and communities. He urged superintendents to be proud of the academic gains that have been made over the past decade with regards to NAEP scores, graduation rates and other academic measures and to recognize the limitations of schools districts in doing more to improve low-income student achievement levels.
Rothstein’s latest social policy project, which he spoke of extensively during the lunch, is to educate policymakers, school leaders and others about how calculated policy changes aimed at maintaining segregated communities and schools since segregation in the 1930s continue to prohibit disadvantaged populations of students from reaching the same levels of achievement as their middle-class white counterparts.
“We have state-sponsored segregation and we will never narrow the achievement gap unless this goes away,” said Rothstein. But as a society, he argued, we have become convinced inaccurately that segregation is an accident of demographics rather than a long-standing deliberate attempt by our leaders to maintain separate communities and school districts.
Rothstein told the audience that school leaders need to stop apologizing for the achievement gap when they’re doing so much to improve it. He touched on a recent longitudinal analysis he authored that found while the most disadvantaged students in the country are improving on TIMSS, PISA and other benchmarking measures, disadvantaged students in places like Finland and Canada are actually doing worse on these measures over time.
He criticized those in the reform movement who believe that evidence of one school that succeeds in educating concentrated groups of disadvantaged students is evidence that it is possible everywhere. He slammed school reformers like Joel Klein, former chancellor of the New York City schools, who argue that if school leaders had higher expectations and higher-quality teachers, they could ensure every poor, hungry, mobile student was achieving in an equivalent manner to his stable, rich, healthy peer.
Rothstein concluded by insisting that if the United States ever hopes to make radical gains in eradicating the achievement gap, the answer is not in the school reform agenda, but in concrete changes to federal, state and local policy that force disadvantaged students to be integrated into middle-class or high-wealth school districts.
“When disadvantaged students are grouped together in schools, their challenges are compounded and build upon each other. … Unless we integrate disadvantaged students into middle class schools, we will never narrow the achievement gap beyond what we’ve done today,” Rothstein said.
(Sasha Pudelski is a government affairs manager with AASA.)
Housing policy is key
Correlation is not causation. I’m all for reducing the achievement gap, but I don’t buy the argument that segregation is the cause of it. I’ve taught in two suburban schools that had a significant number of kids whose parents recently fled “the ghetto”. These kids do not flourish just because they’re surrounded by “good” students. In fact, I’ve seen some of them run amok as they encounter the relatively easy-going discipline policies of the “good kids” school. These kids seem to need the kind of firm (dare I say KIPP-like?) structure that is anathema to the suburban parents. Instead of fighting segregation, Rothstein should be fighting chaotic school environments and content-lite curricula. These are the real impediments to closing the achievement gap.
Ponderosa, your experience is not in line either with research or with my experience of 13 years leading an integrated suburban school that has a low income housing project in the community. Rothstein is so on target and so brave for saying what no one wants to hear.
I agree with you.
I’m happy that integration is working at your school. However Allen’s (below) and my experience seems more common. Berkeley, California’s public high school is probably one of the most integrated schools in the country, yet from what I hear from people who teach there, there’s been a Grand Canyon between the disadvantaged and advantaged kids there for forty years (Isn’t Rothstein from Berkeley? How much time has he spent at the HS?). It seems to me we’ve been down this road before in the Seventies. Integration didn’t work. It’s another dodge that prevents us liberals from facing some hard realities, such as the fact that what many disadvantaged kids need is boot-camp-style discipline and the antithesis of Dewey-style progressive education. These kids need massive infusions of intellectual capital, and that can only happen in an orderly environment and with a rich, knowledge-focused (not skills-focused) curriculum. Furthermore many disadvantaged kids are way behind their advantaged peers already at the age of 6 –throwing them together with their age-mates in that case is cruel and stupid.
“Ghetto” kids “run amok” because they need “firm structure” Sounds like an argument for building more prisons.
Maybe the reason for the achievement gap is teachers that believe racist sterotypes instead of doing their best to educate and nurture ALL of their students regardless of their backgrounds.
Cathy,
The achievement gap is generally attributed here to poverty and has little or nothing to do with teacher effort or attitude.
It’s true. The biggest achievement gap is between the children of affluence and poverty. It is larger than the black-white gap. See the work of Sean Reardon of Stanford.
This research would seem to support poster Ponderosa’s position over poster DNAmartin’s position. Being in a less chaotic environment and being around students with heaps of general knowledge will not change the fact that poor students have come from poor households and thus not have a large impact on the gap.
I know that a student coming from poverty has a huge disavantage but a teachers effort and attitude towards his or her students is immeasureable. Is it hard? Yes, but that is our job as educators. If you only want to teach rich, smart, monolingual children I would suggest that you apply to Chote or Andover Academy.
Ponderosa, would you say that the two integrated suburban schools where you taught gave the disadvantaged students access to “less chaotic school environments and more content-rich curricula” than the segregated schools that they came from? I suggest that integration does fight chaotic school environments and content-lite curricula that you say are the “real impediments to closing the achievement gap”.
In your experience at the two suburban schools, you say the “ghetto” kids were surrounded by “good” students. This language suggests that your perceptions may have tainted your interpretations. Perhaps different teachers at the schools where you worked would report different results. I am a teacher who works with integrated students and I see them adjust to the expectations, respect, and challenges of their new environment. You say that students do not flourish just because they are surrounded by “good” students. I would suggest that disadvantaged students also need help from the staff and teachers so that they are not seen as kids whose parents recently “fled the ghetto”. This suggests additional funds for counselors, smaller class sizes for relationship building, and appropriate staffing.
It also may suggest sensitivity training.
DNA,
You may notice I put those words in quotes. We can play all the politically correct language games we want; changing lingo does not change basic truths.
I love most of the ex-“ghetto” kids I had and continue to get. But many of them clearly have not had certain “software” installed that advantaged kids get from home –i.e. 1. Self-Control and Civility 101, and 2. Essential Basic Knowledge of the Wide World and the Words That Describe It. You doubt? A recent study showed that by age six advantaged kids have heard 35 million more words from their parents than disadvantaged kids. These disadvantaged kids need a team of adults whose mission it is to install this software. Suburban schools aren’t geared up for this. Counselors may help the transition, but they can’t install all this, especially #2. And unless this installation starts early, a huge achievement gap between disadvantaged and advantaged kids will open by middle school. We can obfuscate this gap by giving kids easy coursework in which they get A’s; or saying that the measure of achievement is the kid’s demonstration of vague “thinking skills” rather than mastery of knowledge; or putting them in AP classes and pretending we’re not inflating grades to prevent mass failure; but the gap is there nonetheless. Do we teachers have the courage and clarity-of-vision to discuss the real problem honestly, or will we continue to hide behind PC platitudes and misdiagnoses (e.g. “it’s institutional racism!” or “It’s a resource gap” or “It’s segregation”)?
Simply integrating populations is not enough, and I hope Rothstein (and you, Diane) realize that. There must also be resources placed in the middle- and upper-class schools to assist with that integration, including assistance for students to meet the challenges of changes in academic rigor and meaningful professional development for teachers and staff who may be dealing with large-scale issues of poverty for the first time.
I work in a choice district at a school that began attracting a lot of disadvantaged students from around the city and county about 7 years ago. Prior to that, the school had been majority white, and most of the families were affluent.
Seven years later, the population is about evened out, but the prevailing attitude among administrators is that we can still ‘recruit good students’ to our school rather than actually teach the students we have coming through the door. Teachers and guidance counselors have received no training about how to deal with the unique problems of the changing population. Students who come to us from low-performing elementary and middle schools have very few resources available to them for getting caught up with their better-prepared peers; rather than being truly integrated, they are also usually tracked together into classes with their low-performing peers. The district still has a school social worker only visit our campus once a week, when we really have students that could use her on a daily basis.
I could go on with examples, but it’s clear to me that the divide is so great in some communities that continued integration measures would also require a significant investment of money that is clearly not coming.
I think that you are correct. It takes both. Integration of the school and the resources for students who need them to level the playing field. I do believe that Richard Rothstein would agree.
A friend who use to teach in Washington DC shared that some of the teachers she worked with were almost illiterate. How does that happen? Maybe segregation isn’t the poblem, but a system that would allow an illiterate teacher to be in the classroom in the first place.
You make a very good point. If teacher preparation programs culled more college students and raised their standards, the we would get a better quality of teachers. As it is presently, anyone can get in the and anyone can pass and get a teaching degree. Notice I said “get”, not earn. It’s all about the money. Take this from a former teacher, counselor and principal. I’ve seen it with my own eyes. Then they have tenure to protect them.
In Massachusetts the, “anyone can get in” comment is just not accurate. Licensure exams set the bar high and students enrolled in education programs must demonstrate competence before earning a teaching license. Also, students enrolled in education programs work exceptionally hard in their courses as well as in their internship placements.
Regretfully, you seem to have a low opinion of teachers and for that I am truly sorry. I wish you would have had the privilege to meet and experience highly trained, qualified educators who earned degrees and certification. BTY all tenure does is guarantee ” due process” under the law. Teachers have been and can be terminated.
As the principal wasn’t it your decision to grant a teacher due process rights? Why grant it to someone who you deemed unworthy?
And what is your opinion on the TFA temps?
By the way, this movement is not attracting more to the profession. The experienced, knowledgeable teachers are leaving in droves and the newbies will just dabble until the economy improves or something better comes along.
The profession is being destroyed.
Teacher churn/ test prep Stepford drones is the goal.
I have never met a teacher that was “almost illiterate.” How on earth would that person have graduated from the university? And many teachers, myself included, graduated at the top of our classes from university. Yet, we are frequently told, by policymakers and others, that the only reason that we are teachers is that we could not do anything else. I find that incredibly offensive.
Frustrated Parent: that was an OPINION your friend shared. Teachers must have 2 college degrees, a Bachelor’s degree and a Master’s degree and they also must pass a battery state exams to get a certification. I seriously doubt if those your friend is referring to are almost illiterate.
I sent her the post so maybe she will comment.
Would the end of segregation by income work without the end of private schools?
I believe the original post was referring to segregation in terms of the isolation of a race, class or ethnic group by enforced or voluntary residence in a restricted area, by barriers to social intercourse, by separate educational facilities, or by other discriminatory means ( defined by Webster’s) in public schools. I attended fully integrated public schools K – 12 in Westchester.; black and white, rich and poor.
BRAVO! Richard Rothstein is on point, he clearly articulates the fundamental flaws with the corporate reforms sweeping the country. The unsaid story in this speech is how the profiteers are influencing local, state federal policy despite the more than obvious flaws and damage to our children
The historical underpinnings go back further than Rothstein did. They go back to the days of the enslavement of people of color, when teaching them how to read and write was illegal and served as a tool to continue their oppression. This tactic is still in use today.
My question is related, but different. Could tracking be considered a form of segregation in that a tracked curriculum denies students access or equitable access? Could tracking be considered a form of oppression?
Mary –I was thinking the same thing. Tracking is segregation within the school. And I think tracking is GOOD because it allows me as a history teacher to tailor my instruction to meet kids in their “zone of proximal development”; that is, to give them knowledge that makes them stretch but is not beyond their reach. Tracking is differentiated instruction, but without the pretense that all kids of the same age are getting the same education. Can’t we live without this pretense? Or will we continue to lie to ourselves about the real state of the content of our kids’ minds? Will we continue to preserve the pretty-looking heterogeneous classrooms that frequently bore the top kids and bewilder the low kids? (And will we divert this argument from one about substance to one about semantics [“He said, ‘top’ and ‘low’ kids!”]?)
The challenges that poor and disadvantaged students face are many and complex. One of the greatest is the governmental and institutional policies that label these children (and with NCLB, their entire school) as failures. We can choose to see their cultural and linguistic deficits or we can choose to see their assets. For many of these children, being treated as “not good enough” is one of the most haunting aches they must overcome cognitively, educationally, and emotionally. The policies that require them to be repeatedly tested and labeled are inhumane.
It is widely held here that poverty is the greatest disadvantage that poor and disadvantaged students face. It is the explanation for poor assesment scores and can not be overcome by what happens in the school. It seems perfectly reasonable that poverty would also have a significant impact on learning in the classroom.
This is an important and very interesting thread, tying together discussions on tracking within schools, “skimming” between schools, the relationship between poverty, test scores, and student performance, and the role of traditional zoned school in SES segregation in the country. I look forward to seeing more comments.
I wonder how the grades taught influence perceptions about the issues here. Would an elementary teacher have the same intuition and experience as a high school teacher?
George Ansalone has published meta-analyses of research about tracking. Look him up on the ERIC database. Middle School Association publishes articles and books about tracking written for practitioners and parents. Rothstein and Carolcorbettburris are correct. Logic would tell you that advantaged students do not lose the “heaps of general knowledge” that they have been gifted with by their home access to the cultural capital merely by associating with students who are different from them. Advantaged students continue to “test well” in the culture of the advantaged and may additionally gain different types of knowledge about the world at large. Who knows which kind of knowledge will best serve them in the increasingly interdependent future of this planet. Policy is betting on the stuff on the standardized tests . . . . me . . I’d bet otherwise.
They may not lose, but what do they gain?
One of my sons maxed out the math MAP test as a high school sophomore. He was taking graduate math classes at the state flagship university as a senior in high school. Would restricting him to high school math classes have caused him to “lose”? Probably not. Would he have learned less mathmatics because of his lack of access to mathmatical peers? Of course he would have learned less mathamatics.
Ignoring a knowledge deficit will not help these kids. Once decoding is mastered, reading ability is largely a function of general knowledge possessed (teaching “reading skills” like using context clues has a little value, but it is not nearly enough –too many kids don’t get the context either.) Without strong reading ability, these kids will remain hobbled academically and economically. Upper class parents flood their kids’ brains with knowledge through daily one-on-one annotation of life events. This knowledge is power. “Ghetto” schools need to simulate what upper class parents have been giving their kids. If you agree with these premises, then pretending that disadvantaged kids’ in-born assets are enough is tantamount to child neglect. You are consigning these kids to intellectual and economic impotence.
Rothstein argues, “When disadvantaged students are grouped together in schools, their challenges are compounded and build upon each other.” The knowledge deficits that you speak about in this post are compounded when students are place in segregated or tracked school environments. Disadvantages students need to interact in classrooms with many speakers and readers who have this powerful general knowledge that you describe. Research shows that they make greater progress in achievement when they have access to peers with the general knowledge. When they interact and talk with students with the same deficits as their own then these deficits are compounded. Disadvantaged students can bring great assets of creativity, problem solving, compassion, unique and valuable cultural experiences, perseverance, empathy, morality, patience, story-telling, and funds of knowledge in areas of nature or music to their more advantaged peers. Their assets are many and diverse when we look.
I do agree with you that we need to give these kids what upper class parents have been giving their kids. However, I don’t see upper class parents assigning their kids the KIPP boot-camp style school discipline that you mention. Kids do need the daily one-on-one annotation and thinking about daily life events that you describe.
I am interested in the trade offs that we might make as a society. Will the advantaged students be worse off if many or most of their peers have less general knowledge? That would seem to be the implication of the research you site. If the advantaged are worse off, should we care?
I often wonder if maybe we are wrong to think the solution is to mix the so called “ghetto kids” with your so called “good kids”. We are a 93% poverty school and my students have a rich cultural history and diversity that is interesting. Yes, they are poor, and transient, and many have families who struggle with different types of dysfunction. Some also have close knit families and church support systems. But those are my judgements, not theirs. I couldn’t imagine placing them into a different environment that sees them as “less than”, somehow deficient. How about a view that respects them and their families? How about giving more, not less, resources, to counteract the effects of high poverty? I choose to see their strengths, not their deficiencies. It’s tough, but I revel in the challenge to educate these great kids. I only wish I had the extra resources to help give them a step up to the starting line so they have a chance to get to the finish line. Some may disagree, but I think they belong in their neighborhood schools, with the people who know them best, and with support systems from the community. We are not a failing school. We strive to improve each year. But we can’t do it alone. Schools won’t eliminate poverty, better economic conditions and a living wage will do that.
Don’t Title I schools already get more money and resources than non Title I schools? Does it need to be spent differently? In my district a teacher shared the Title I school she worked at had a supply room full of supplies where as the teachers at my more affluent school are asking parents for paper.
Our Title 1 money pays for tutoring and RTI personnel mostly, some computers and other resources for at risk students. Sorry, with 93% poverty there is no supply room full of supplies. We do supply students with school supplies when they don’t have any. Many of us use our own personal money to buy shoes, jackets, uniforms, etc. I can’t speak for other schools.