Stop the blame game over achievement gap

Debates about the shortcomings of K–12 education in the United States typically focus on identifying who or what is to blame for the achievement gap — the lower standardized test scores and high school graduation rates among students of color and those living in poverty. Often these discussions are not only misguided but also ignore strategies that lead to success in school, even for children who are living in poverty, discouraged by racism and inequality and stressed by family and community dysfunction. We need to learn from and replicate these initiatives instead of blame and shame schools, teachers and communities for gaps in achievement.

Students from low-income and minority backgrounds live with stress that affects individual learning and classroom behavior. For example, a study designed to identify stress in New York schoolchildren after 9/11 found that “the students’ sense of threat or insecurity stemmed not so much from terrorism as from exposure to violence, inadequate housing, sudden family loss, parents with depression or addictions and so forth.”

Similarly, researchers recently screened students at four high-poverty schools in Los Angeles and found that 8 in 10 experienced at least three traumatic stressors — such as shootings, food insecurity and fights in the family — in the previous year. About 40 percent of students reported symptoms that school counselors said required treatment.

Stress bubbles up in schools in emotional reactions ranging from explosive rage to tuned-out depression. One disruptive child can derail an entire classroom. What’s a teacher to do with a whole classroom of stressed children?

Turnaround for Children, a nonprofit that addresses students’ social, emotional and behavioral needs in high-poverty schools, offers two strategies: Connecting high-risk students to the individual help they need and changing the school climate by training educators.

Connecting students to resources is not a radically new idea. It’s key to the community school concept, which links students and families to resources ranging from counseling to in-school dental clinics to help for parents in finding jobs. Despite its successes, this concept has not been widely implemented. The vast majority of children with mental health needs do not get support and services.

Turnaround for Children works with schools in New York City; Newark, New Jersey; and Washington, D.C. In these schools, connection to mental health resources and social services happens quickly, usually within three weeks of initial screening. Getting help quickly allows students turn their attention back to learning.  

At the same time, Turnaround trains teachers and school administrators to recognize stressed and disturbed children and provides educators with the tools to respond to students’ needs. A full-time Turnaround coach helps teachers plan and learn strategies to de-escalate and redirect student misbehavior. This has made schools with Turnaround programs “calmer and more productive, with fewer problem behaviors,” according to the organization’s website.

Mentoring is another effective strategy. Friends of the Children, a national charity that provides early intervention, stands out among the thousands of mentoring programs because of its successes helping vulnerable kids.

Freddie’s story shows the effectiveness of mentorship. At 6 years old, she lived in a New York City housing project, fought with classmates, dissed her teachers and had trouble focusing in school. Then a mentor from Friends of the Children entered her life. For the next 12 years, mentors spent time with her every week. They supported her through the death of her mother when she was in seventh grade and through graduation, with honors, from the Manhattan Center for Science and Mathematics. She is now a successful student at Syracuse University.

Half of the kids mentored by Friends of the Children have a parent in jail. About 85 percent were born to a teen parent, and 60 percent have a parent who did not graduate from high school. That’s why the program’s mentoring is so intense — four hours every week, year in and year out. The organization pays mentors, who spend time in schools and with families, becoming resources for both the students and their parents. After 12 years of mentoring, 83 percent of its at-risk children graduated from high school, 93 percent avoided any contact with the juvenile justice system, and 98 percent avoided becoming teen parents.

These strategies aren’t just about helping individual students; they can turn around whole schools. Strategic Learning Initiatives (SLI), a nonprofit that emphasizes collaboration, professional development and family engagement to improve children’s education, has succeeded in transforming failing schools in Chicago without firing principals and teachers.

The solution “is not rocket science,” said John Simmons, the head of SLI, in a talk at the Committee on the Achievement Gap forum in Minneapolis in 2010. The key, said SLI facilitator Terezka Jirasek, who also spoke at the forum, is to “honor all the stakeholders in the school and involve all of them — students, parents, teachers, cafeteria workers, principals.” SLI won’t contract with a school unless at least 80 percent of the teachers vote to try the process.

Simmons’ organization focuses on capacity building in the school community. On-site coaches, who are experienced teachers, build on educators’ strengths. They set aside time for teacher collaboration, sharing best practices and real-time feedback.

Instead of focusing on high-stakes annual tests, SLI works with teachers, using no-stakes weekly tests. Those test results do not go into grade books; they help identify what has been learned and what needs to be retaught to entire classes or to single students. With quick access to those results, teachers can act on them in a timely manner. The tests are formative, used to support and improve teaching and learning.

Arguing about whether teachers bear more responsibility than parents or whether poverty and the economic system are more to blame than teachers and the school system only diverts attention from our common enterprise: helping students learn and succeed.

In-school coaches for teachers, collaboration among teachers, paid mentors and other school-based services have proved effective in boosting achievement and strengthening ties between schools and families. Supporting teachers, kids and their parents in the school and community costs money, but our children are worth it.