It is one of the curiosities of our age that certain far-right organizations and political leaders prattle on about the “achievement gap” as if they cared more than anyone in the world about the children and families who are not succeeding in schools and society. We often hear governors and legislators invoke their concern for “poor children trapped in failing schools” as their rationale for putting public money into private hands and decimating the public schools that most children attend.
Paul Thomas sees a method to their rhetorical compassion.
The achievement gap, he reminds us, is an equity gap.
They love the idea that charter schools and TFA can take the place of changing the tax structure. See here too.
Far-right politicians and wealthy ALEC-supporting corporations cynically invoke the “achievement gap” to blame the schools for social and economic inequality. They are happy to give to charter chains and Teach for America. Because that supposedly demonstrates their compassion and absolves them of any responsibility to do anything about the scandalous income inequality of our era.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Diane,
The last paragraph of your blog states the true issue facing eductaion and the United states today! That you were able to state it in about 50 words as opposed to the far right and ALEC supporters continual and countless rantings against puclic schools, teachers and the supposed “waste of taxpayer dollars on failing system” is genius.
PCTIFS is the New PC …
The “achievement gap” is a red herring. It’s a SYMPTOM of the problem of poverty and the concentration of the poor in this country. The achievement gap is an invention.
By the way, on page 57 in the Reign of Error- good read. I’ll end up reading it twice. I’m getting my SLO colleagues to buy copies- we’re going to use it for a book study.
The lovely new school grades in Utah came out this year. My school, which is fairly high-risk, got a C. The principal told us that with one exception state-wide, schools with similar SES got Cs or lower.
The good news is that our parents haven’t been freaking out over this. I think that they realize that we really DO have a quality school, even with the stupid grade.
Of course poverty matters, but it is not the end of the conversation. If it were, then we would expect no significant differences between urban poor school districts. The truth, however, is that some urban poor school districts have students who perform better than others. Could the answer possibly be that those school districts have better teachers, curriculum, leadership and resources? I know you don’t like the Broad Foundation, but you simply can’t ignore the differences between urban poor districts that they have put the data out on. http://www.broadprize.org/resources/reports2013.html
The first Broad prize went to Houston.
Why is Houston in crisis yet again?
I’m not promoting their prizes. Cherry picking victims as you appear to do with the Houston School District doesn’t help anyone.
I do believe that their poverty adjusted data is worth paying attention to because, as I said above, although poverty indeed matters, it is one of many factors in a child’s educational success or lack thereof. Good teachers, administrators, curricula and resources are the 3 factors that schools and education policymakers can control and are the reasons why some poor districts do better than others.
While I agree with Diane and others that the so-called “Achievement Gap” is being pushed most heartily by right-wing governors, “entreprenuers”, billionaire hedge funders, and ALEC, the origins of the term is firmly from the “Left.” One of the strengths of “Reign of Error” is that it has so much thorough history packed into the analysis.
And part of the history of the mess we are facing is how much union busting and basing of public schools came from “liberals” and the “progressive left.” Here in Chicago, as I worked for years in the public schools and the Chicago Teachers Union, I watched the critics of the problems with our public schools lay a firm groundwork for what is now clearly the right-wing (and neolioberal) privatization attack on our schools here — and on public eduction everywhere.
It would almost take someone who wrote about The Language Police to deconstruct how completely the left and right merged into one slug-like creature when it came time to destroy American public schools.
The first groups to bring up the notion of an “Achievement Gap,” let’s remember, were those who pretended to have roots back in the “Civil Rights Movement.” Some of their roots were even sort of real, since they had marched, often with their Moms (see “The Brothers Emanuel” about how Young Rahm learned to love the poor and fight against racism as a young guy…).
I remember years ago being reminded year after year that someone named “Kati Haycock” was liberal, a civil rights veteran, and all that stuff. While every time she opened her mouth she was bad mouthing our “failing” inner city schools, and attacking us failing teachers at schools like DuSable, Tilden, Collins, or Bowen, all of which I taught at…
Kati Haycock made a nice living being the “liberal” voice and face of reaction, and for all I know, she’s still at it.
But she wasn’t the only “liberal” brand to attack us. One of the most important names in that compost heap is Edelman.
Jonah Edelman used his cred (child of the founder of Save the Children, remember?) to front for the billionaires at Stand for Children.
Meanwhile Jonah’s brother Josh was for years in charge of privatization in Chicago’s public schools as head of the “Office of New Schools”. Josh packed that office with Ayn Rand zealots who pushed through charters wherever they could to the detriment of the city’s real public schools for five years.
Anyone who read “The Audacity of Hope” (as I did) after reading “Dreams from my Father” knew what was coming, and that it wouldn’t be pretty. Our olegenous Senator from Illinois didn’t get his degrees from Columbia and Harvard without proving he was ready to get his hands dirty trashing the public schools and peddling “entrepreneurial”ism. That “Waiting for Superman” White House visit was as carefully staged to promote reaction as the Michelle Rhee Time magazine cover. And as I’ve reminded people in Chicago for years, Arne Duncan is not a racist in any sense I can use the word. And I marched against the Chicago Nazis and even interviewed one of their leaders, Frank Collin, decades ago.
Arne’s not a racist. Some of his best friends are black.
He’s just doing the job of white supremacy and Empire as he was trained to do and proved his merits in doing here as CEO of CPS. So… This is a lot more complicated than some might share.
We could go on. For the record, I think most people reading this would agree that The New Yorker and The Atlantic are “liberal”. And yet for years they have been publishing some of the most mendacious yet slick teacher bashing and union busting attacks on the unions and public schools, with greasing provided by glib guys like Steven Brill and Jonathan Alter (two who come to mind).
The facts of this history matter a lot. And the facts and massively impressive history in “Reign of Error” are one of the reasons I believe the book is not only going to be a New York Times best seller, but also be one of the “crossover” books of the year — impressive enough to be read by intelligent citizens who have for too long been watching the school squabbles from the sidelines and believing everything they read in The New York Times.
We’ll see.
Sorry, the Broad Foundation is not exactly an unprejudiced, neutral, impartial and unbiased entity. It has a definite agenda and ideology that colors any conclusions that it might arrive at.
So that means you just ignore their poverty adjusted data which demonstrates what we all know…not all urban poor school districts perform equally bad. Good teachers, administrators, curricula and sufficient resources are the things that educators and education policymakers can control and they make a difference.
If you have never watched the 2006 AERA Presidential Address of Gloria Ladson-Billings, please do (it starts 45 minutes in to the session): http://www.softconference.com/MEDIA/WMP/260407/#49.010
And why if I may ask?
Because she reconceptualizes the achievement gap. She’s brilliant and I’m proud to have her here in Madison at the UW. http://www.nwp.org/cs/public/print/resource/2513
Thanks!
The children aren’t trapped in failing schools. They are trapped in failing families and failing communities. When children grow up thinking that having a baby in middle school is normal, there is little that schools alone can change about those children’s lives–the middle-school-aged parent and the baby of a child in middle school. When entire communities see early parenthood as normal, the consequences are compounded. Unfortunately for the children, the efforts and economics of school reform are directing funds away from the root causes in order to focus on the symptoms.
A great observation, Diane. Thank you.
Adding to the grotesquerie of so-called education reform, not only does the discourse on the “achievement gap” – placed in quotes because it’s a political coinage intended to limit and control the terms of debate – mask the equity gap, but it also masks the pedagogical malpractice and bankruptcy of the so-called reformers, since in reality the “achievement gap” is a euphemism for “all testing, all the time.”
“. . . since in reality the “achievement gap” is a euphemism for “all testing, all the time.”
Quite correct Michael, quite correct.
And until all of those involved in the teaching and learning process that should be public education (and even those in the private education sector) realize that the supposed “achievement gap” is based on false and invalid premises and practices we will continue to cause harm to many innocent students through those noxious educational practices that are educational standards, standardized testing and the grading of students.
Come jump on the Quixotic Quest Bandwagon (get your tickets fast, they’re free for the reading) to rid the world of those pernicious malpractices by reading and understanding and passing on the information in the never refuted or rebutted work of Wilson’s “Educational Standards and the Problem of Error” found at: http://epaa.asu.edu/ojs/article/view/577/700
And for all you regular readers, I semi-apologize for repeatedly posting this but I figure that there are new readers out there everyday that have not heard of nor read Wilson.
Brief outline of Wilson’s “Educational Standards and the Problem of Error” and some comments of mine. (updated 6/24/13 per Wilson email)
1. A quality cannot be quantified. Quantity is a sub-category of quality. It is illogical to judge/assess a whole category by only a part (sub-category) of the whole. The assessment is, by definition, lacking in the sense that “assessments are always of multidimensional qualities. To quantify them as one dimensional quantities (numbers or grades) is to perpetuate a fundamental logical error” (per Wilson). The teaching and learning process falls in the logical realm of aesthetics/qualities of human interactions. In attempting to quantify educational standards and standardized testing we are lacking much information about said interactions.
2. A major epistemological mistake is that we attach, with great importance, the “score” of the student, not only onto the student but also, by extension, the teacher, school and district. Any description of a testing event is only a description of an interaction, that of the student and the testing device at a given time and place. The only correct logical thing that we can attempt to do is to describe that interaction (how accurately or not is a whole other story). That description cannot, by logical thought, be “assigned/attached” to the student as it cannot be a description of the student but the interaction. And this error is probably one of the most egregious “errors” that occur with standardized testing (and even the “grading” of students by a teacher).
3. Wilson identifies four “frames of reference” each with distinct assumptions (epistemological basis) about the assessment process from which the “assessor” views the interactions of the teaching and learning process: the Judge (think college professor who “knows” the students capabilities and grades them accordingly), the General Frame-think standardized testing that claims to have a “scientific” basis, the Specific Frame-think of learning by objective like computer based learning, getting a correct answer before moving on to the next screen, and the Responsive Frame-think of an apprenticeship in a trade or a medical residency program where the learner interacts with the “teacher” with constant feedback. Each category has its own sources of error and more error in the process is caused when the assessor confuses and conflates the categories.
4. Wilson elucidates the notion of “error”: “Error is predicated on a notion of perfection; to allocate error is to imply what is without error; to know error it is necessary to determine what is true. And what is true is determined by what we define as true, theoretically by the assumptions of our epistemology, practically by the events and non-events, the discourses and silences, the world of surfaces and their interactions and interpretations; in short, the practices that permeate the field. . . Error is the uncertainty dimension of the statement; error is the band within which chaos reigns, in which anything can happen. Error comprises all of those eventful circumstances which make the assessment statement less than perfectly precise, the measure less than perfectly accurate, the rank order less than perfectly stable, the standard and its measurement less than absolute, and the communication of its truth less than impeccable.”
In other word all the logical errors involved in the process render any conclusions invalid.
5. The test makers/psychometricians, through all sorts of mathematical machinations attempt to “prove” that these tests (based on standards) are valid-errorless or supposedly at least with minimal error [they aren’t]. Wilson turns the concept of validity on its head and focuses on just how invalid the machinations and the test and results are. He is an advocate for the test taker not the test maker. In doing so he identifies thirteen sources of “error”, any one of which renders the test making/giving/disseminating of results invalid. As a basic logical premise is that once something is shown to be invalid it is just that, invalid, and no amount of “fudging” by the psychometricians/test makers can alleviate that invalidity.
6. Having shown the invalidity, and therefore the unreliability, of the whole process Wilson concludes, rightly so, that any result/information gleaned from the process is “vain and illusory”. In other words start with an invalidity, end with an invalidity (except by sheer chance every once in a while, like a blind and anosmic squirrel who finds the occasional acorn, a result may be “true”) or to put in more mundane terms crap in-crap out.
7. And so what does this all mean? I’ll let Wilson have the second to last word: “So what does a test measure in our world? It measures what the person with the power to pay for the test says it measures. And the person who sets the test will name the test what the person who pays for the test wants the test to be named.”
In other words it measures “’something’ and we can specify some of the ‘errors’ in that ‘something’ but still don’t know [precisely] what the ‘something’ is.” The whole process harms many students as the social rewards for some are not available to others who “don’t make the grade (sic)” Should American public education have the function of sorting and separating students so that some may receive greater benefits than others, especially considering that the sorting and separating devices, educational standards and standardized testing, are so flawed not only in concept but in execution?
My answer is NO!!!!!
One final note with Wilson channeling Foucault and his concept of subjectivization:
“So the mark [grade/test score] becomes part of the story about yourself and with sufficient repetitions becomes true: true because those who know, those in authority, say it is true; true because the society in which you live legitimates this authority; true because your cultural habitus makes it difficult for you to perceive, conceive and integrate those aspects of your experience that contradict the story; true because in acting out your story, which now includes the mark and its meaning, the social truth that created it is confirmed; true because if your mark is high you are consistently rewarded, so that your voice becomes a voice of authority in the power-knowledge discourses that reproduce the structure that helped to produce you; true because if your mark is low your voice becomes muted and confirms your lower position in the social hierarchy; true finally because that success or failure confirms that mark that implicitly predicted the now self evident consequences. And so the circle is complete.”
In other words students “internalize” what those “marks” (grades/test scores) mean, and since the vast majority of the students have not developed the mental skills to counteract what the “authorities” say, they accept as “natural and normal” that “story/description” of them. Although paradoxical in a sense, the “I’m an “A” student” is almost as harmful as “I’m an ‘F’ student” in hindering students becoming independent, critical and free thinkers. And having independent, critical and free thinkers is a threat to the current socio-economic structure of society.
I’ve heard you speak sarcastically before about how politicians would like us to think they care more than parents, families and teachers about the “achievement gap” and how urban education (especially) fails the kids. But you need to understand that often- not always, but often – it is ONLY the teacher who deeply cares about the students succeeding. In my experience as an inner-city kindergarten teacher, this is the case.
I’m not sure how helpful this kind of rhetoric is from either side of the political aisle. We have to stop assuming that those on the other side don’t care about kids – they do. You’re just setting up a strawmen because you can’t bear to consider compromise with them – it’s all or nothing.
Unfortunately, the result of that approach is exactly that – nothing. So please, continue to write the insightful portions of your blog, but back off this rhetoric. You are better than that.
Dear Diane,
I agree entirely with this post. In fact, George Counts came to a similar perception about the largely privileged parents who sent their children to progressive schools in the early 1930’s but had no larger social vision within which to situate their son’s and daughter’s education. In the opening pages of Dare the School Build a New Social Order, he castigates these parents in the following terms:
“The weakness of Progressive Education thus lies in the fact that it has elaborated no theory of social welfare. In this, of course, it is but reflecting the viewpoint of the members of the liberal-minded upper middle class who send their children to Progressive schools–persons who are fairly well-off, who have abandoned the faiths of their fathers, who assume an agnostic attitude towards all important questions, who pride themselves on their open-mindedness and tolerance, who favor in a mild sort of way fairly liberal programs of social reconstruction, who are full of good will and humane sentiment, who have vague aspirations for world peace and human brotherhood, who can be counted upon to respond moderately to any appeal made in the name of charity, who are genuinely distressed at the sight of unwonted forms of cruelty, misery, and suffering, and who perhaps serve to soften somewhat the bitter clashes of those real forces that govern the world; but who, in spite of all their good qualities, have no deep and abiding loyalties, possess no convictions for which they would sacrifice over-much, would find it hard to live without their customary material comforts, are rather insensitive to the accepted forms of social injustice, are content to play the role of interested spectator in the drama of human history, refuse to see reality in its harsher and more disagreeable forms, rarely move outside the pleasant circles of the class to which they belong, and in the day of severe trial will follow the lead of the most powerful and respectable forces in society and at the same time find good reasons for doing so. These people have shown themselves entirely incapable of dealing with any of the great crises of our time–war, prosperity, or depression. At bottom they are romantic sentimentalists, but with a sharp eye on the main chance. That they can be trusted to write our educational theories and shape our educational programs is highly improbable.”
I think “romantic semtimentalists . . . with a sharp eye on the main chance” does a fair job of describing those behind the present wave of so-called “school reform.”
Dear Diane,
I agree entirely with this post. Thank you. And I find it somewhat heartening that the late great George Counts anticipated something akin to the mindset of today’s so-called “educational reformers” when, in the opening pages of Dare the School Build a New Social Order, he was castigating the largely privileged parents who sent their children to progressive schools, but failed to think about the larger social order that might help to situate their son’s and daughter’s educational experience. You probably remember his words as well as anyone, but for those less familiar with the history of American public education, here’s what he said:
“The weakness of Progressive Education thus lies in the fact that it has elaborated no theory of social welfare. In this, of course, it is but reflecting the viewpoint of the members of the liberal-minded upper middle class who send their children to Progressive schools–persons who are fairly well-off, who have abandoned the faiths of their fathers, who assume an agnostic attitude towards all important questions, who pride themselves on their open-mindedness and tolerance, who favor in a mild sort of way fairly liberal programs of social reconstruction, who are full of good will and humane sentiment, who have vague aspirations for world peace and human brotherhood, who can be counted upon to respond moderately to any appeal made in the name of charity, who are genuinely distressed at the sight of unwonted forms of cruelty, misery, and suffering, and who perhaps serve to soften somewhat the bitter clashes of those real forces that govern the world; but who, in spite of all their good qualities, have no deep and abiding loyalties, possess no convictions for which they would sacrifice over-much, would find it hard to live without their customary material comforts, are rather insensitive to the accepted forms of social injustice, are content to play the role of interested spectator in the drama of human history, refuse to see reality in its harsher and more disagreeable forms, rarely move outside the pleasant circles of the class to which they belong, and in the day of severe trial will follow the lead of the most powerful and respectable forces in society and at the same time find good reasons for doing so. These people have shown themselves entirely incapable of dealing with any of the great crises of our time–war, prosperity, or depression. At bottom they are romantic sentimentalists, but with a sharp eye on the main chance. That they can be trusted to write our educational theories and shape our educational programs is highly improbable.”
I think “romantic semtimentalists, with a sharp eye on the main chance” does a fair job of describing those behind the present wave of educational reforms.
Mike Lee, the freshman senator from Utah who you have probably heard about too much lately (for the record, I did NOT vote for him), says it’s not an “income gap” but an “opportunity gap” that’s the problem. Read only if you have a strong stomach. http://www.deseretnews.com/article/765638261/Americas-opportunity-crisis.html
So what periods in history does this reform movement and equity problem mimic? What are the predictions about where we will go from here?
Can anyone paint a best and worst case scenario for me? I can’t see the forest for the trees.
The achievement gap is contrived based on an artificial test and designed to keep a people down rather than lift them up. At the least it draws kids away from a real education into the teach to the test mode so that, like the “haves”, they become book learned without a lick of common sense. If real authentic assments happened, the last might soon become first nad that would scare the hell out of those who are comfortable with those who are being pushed into the subclass.
Just allow public schools to do this http://savingstudents-caplee.blogspot.com/