Reclaiming children left behind: addressing the causes and cures for low minority achievement.

One of my most unforgettable and painful moments as an educator occurred during my first few months as superintendent of the Memphis, Tenn., City Schools. I had to meet with two caring, responsible and very disillusioned minority parents whose daughter was graduating as valedictorian of one of our inner-city high schools.

The parents were distraught. Their hardworking, dedicated student had a 4.0 grade point average but a score of 15 (out of 36) on the ACT exam used for admissions decisions at colleges and universities.

Their child had worked hard for a scholarship she knew she needed to be the first in her family to go to college. Now she was devastated. The family, which had supported her and dreamed with her, was shattered. There would be no scholarship. There would be no four-year college with that low score. The school had not prepared that child for a higher level of education. The system had failed her--as it fails millions like her.

A U.S. Department of Education study shows that the average 12th-grade African-American student is reading and doing math at around the level of the average 8th-grade white or Asian student. Hispanic students are about as far behind. Both African-Americans and Hispanic college students obtain diplomas at half the rate of white or Asian students. Inner-city high schools that serve low-income minority and immigrant populations graduate fewer than half their students. Those who do manage to make it through high school, in too many cases, have had their academic careers badly mishandled, have been tracked into oblivion or have been mislabeled into mediocrity.

The conditions for low minority achievement are both educational and a combination of social-economic-environmental issues. Together, they create a negative synergy that can relegate students to the ash heap. Our sense of urgency about implementing valid solutions stems from the bleak options for those students who are left behind.

Inside Schools

The stark failure of our education system to prepare all of our children for productive futures is attributable to several factors, among them low expectations, traditional organizational structures and poor instruction, resistance to change, lack of leadership, the shortage of quality teachers and a failure to recognize the remarkable resilience and dreams of even those students who struggle the most.

When I was superintendent in Memphis, we eliminated all math courses below Algebra 1 in high schools. Students had to take at least a three-year college-prep math program because the low-level courses to which many had been assigned no longer existed.

Low expectations are a life sentence for these children. A rigorous college-prep program is how a student gets to college. In today's knowledge economy, most of the good jobs in fields that are growing require a college diploma as an entry ticket. We start with the premise that college is necessary for minority children with a history of low-achievement and then it becomes a matter of tracking them into college.

Low-achieving students are the products of low expectations. They get less challenging work because teachers don't expect much from them. Less challenging work means the students have less-developed cognitive skills. Those students are condemned to low self-esteem. Students who are disrespected by the work become less and less capable.

Traditional school structure is another culprit. It can crush a child with a fragile purchase on academic competence. Too many schools with large populations of poor minority students are designed to do anything but help them. The schools are huge, dreary, impersonal, under-resourced, low performing and unsafe, oblivious to the promise of the young lives who venture inside for awhile and frequently drop out. They are schools that lose children, not schools where children can find themselves.

Institutions with a long history of failure will not become havens of success by continuing to do what they have always done or making a few minor adjustments. This is as true for a school as it is for a business. Bold, systemic change that revolutionizes every aspect of the school is required. Leadership, policy, curriculum, instruction, student support, data collection and evaluation--all of it has to be stood on its head, re-examined, re-invented.

It takes the very best teachers--those with a passion for content, solid pedagogical skills and a grounding in the particular needs of low-achieving students--to succeed at these kinds of educational heroics. Sadly, those teachers are not typically the ones we find in underperforming schools with large populations of minority children.

In Redesigning Schools, What Matters and What Works, author Linda Darling-Hammond observes: "A substantial body of research suggests that one of the most important school determinants of student achievement is the quality of teachers." But we know what happens in inner-city schools. Cities recruit new teachers for schools that have trouble retaining faculty. The new teachers, inexperienced and undersupported, free to better pay and better working conditions at the first opportunity. Turnover is high; quality is low. A Gallup Poll conducted for Phi Delta Kappa showed that poor urban schools had three times the attrition rate of any other schools.

Outside Classrooms

The educational factors that affect low-achieving students are compelling. But just as urgent are the communities and the conditions of their lives outside the classroom. In fact, we can argue, and studies show, no walls exist between the two.

Confronting the enormity of the social, economic and environmental barriers to achievement for at-risk students can seem overwhelming and beyond the mandate of schools and teachers. But it is at the heart of reclaiming those students and freeing them to realize their dreams. The issues are a necessary consideration of any solution.

Most low-achieving minority students live in single-family homes where the average income is below the poverty level. They have limited access to quality health care. The education level of their parents is frequently below high school. The communities that surround them are poor and without resources. No libraries. No parks. No museums or public performances. No quality preschool. No decent housing. No models for understanding or accessing these things even if they did exist. Bring this child into a classroom and all that is lacking comes with him or her.

A high correlation exists between parent education, family income and school achievement. A high correlation also exists between a quality preschool experience and student achievement. To narrow the focus of improving scholarship to the school alone is to ignore economic, social and community gaps that are as wide and treacherous as sinkholes.

Policy researcher Richard Rothstein, author of Class and Schools, has studied the correlates for low achievement and underscores this point: "We know that a great deal of the variance in achievement is related to factors beyond school and, therefore, that direct nonacademic intervention at the individual, family and community levels can increase educational outcomes."

In other words, low-achieving minority students cannot depend solely on school to remedy the problems that interfere with learning. They are caught between schools that don't serve their needs and family and community resources inadequate to compensate. Only by acknowledging that a multifaceted impoverishment of resources creates the net they are trapped in can we begin to unravel it.

Transformation Tools

We can turn low achievement into academic success. The strategies I work with at the Institute for Student Achievement and that others use in similar programs are aimed at the high school level. But the principles apply to any level where students are desperate for a real chance at learning in the face of tremendous odds. Those strategies are academic rigor, support for students, personalization, continuous improvement and a professional learning community for teachers.

At a time when the vast majority of jobs require a college degree or some type of postsecondary degree, most low-achieving students are relegated to classrooms where remediation and low skills instruction are the norm. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, 65 percent of the available jobs in 1950 were filled by unskilled workers. By 2000, that percentage had more than reversed to 85 percent of jobs requiring professional and skilled workers and 15 percent requiring unskilled workers. So whether a student chooses to attend college, the job of the school is to prepare students so they have the choice to make.

In order for low-achieving students to be prepared for the challenges of postsecondary education, the workplace and citizenship, they need to learn how to use their minds well, to think, to reason, to solve problems, to make meaning from knowledge and facts--all habits that are developed when teaching and learning are intellectually rigorous.

However, just giving low achievers intellectually challenging work won't make them college-ready. These students do come to high school with low performance that can't be ignored. They need directed, quality time during the school day and beyond the school day--an extension of the regular, academically rigorous program into after hours. That time should be used for skill development, tutoring, test prep, college tours, homework and project work.

Personalized Learning

When extended day is relevant to the challenging academic program, when the students know the teacher has high expectations for them and when the students are engaged in meaningful work, they will attend.

At Bushwick High School, a school in Brooklyn, N.Y., that partners with the Institute for Student Achievement, students who were working on a challenging group project took it upon themselves to stay after school to work together, gave up their lunchtime to work and waited for the teacher in the morning before the start of class. After they had passed the course, they came back to continue working on their project because they felt they weren't finished exploring its possibilities.

Parent involvement is not optional in the reclamation of low-achieving kids. Minority parents can provide a solid foundation for a student's academic success. A key point is to build trust with parents. Often their own school experiences were unhappy ones. They have doubtless endured many negative contacts with schools when their child was in trouble. So it is critical that parents be helped to see the school as a friendly, welcoming place. Staff and teachers must reach out to parents and families to establish alliances, develop relationships and keep channels of communication open.

Schools can use different strategies for creating a personalized learning environment. At Bronx International School, personalization is achieved through the use of advisories where teachers serve as advisers, counselors and advocates for a small number of students throughout the four years of high school. No student falls through the cracks.

Teachers need support, too. They need professional development to integrate literacy and numeracy across the curriculum. They need transitions to use an inquiry-based approach to learning. They need to learn about promoting higher-order thinking and complex problem solving. They need experience in using multiple forms of assessment and time with colleagues to plan and develop curriculum and discuss ways to help their students. They need external coaches who can work with them to assess their practice, co-construct lessons and implement strategies. Coaching is a critical and often neglected component of professional development.

And finally, teachers must be supported in their efforts to connect with minority students' communities and culture and to celebrate both in making learning meaningful.

Schools that try new approaches to lift the level of low-achieving minority students need to document progress carefully. It is imperative to collect data on optimal and just-ordinary approaches, to adjust and refine and even revolutionize the curriculum to energize forward momentum. Schools that work in this way self-examine and self-monitor curriculum, instruction, use of time, class organization, professional development, student performance and teacher assignments.

Benchmarks for student progress are attendance, course passing grades, test data and graduation rates. Assessments of student performance can be portfolios, demonstrations and exhibitions of authentic student work.

Conditions for Change

Once we add up all the proven elements that lead to high student achievement, we get a picture of a very different school, a connected, intimate, demanding school. A small school.

Small is the concept at the heart of the new student success model. Small schools allow for things that aren't possible in large schools, such as a laser-like focus on academic rigor, the expectation that every student will graduate and go on to college, support for students and personalization.

Tom Vander Ark, executive director of education for the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and a former school superintendent, told an audience: "The evidence is clear, in fact it is overwhelming: Small schools improve attendance, achievement, climate, safety, graduation and college attendance rates, staff satisfaction and parent involvement. And the research is clear, size is even more important for disadvantaged students. Of the great high schools that I've visited, the schools that have served disadvantaged students and achieve graduation and college attendance rates of at least 90 percent all have fewer than 400 students."

None of this happens without the support of districts, administrators and school boards for real transformation. Administrators have to be willing to provide resources and assess and change policies, procedures, structures and norms of behavior that do not lead to high achievement for all students.

Equally important is a strong principal. The principal who actively encourages commitment to a compelling vision and mission creates the positive change that can come from uniformly high expectations for the school and its students. The principal-as-catalyst promotes and rewards experimentation and provides time and support for teachers to research and examine new approaches for meeting the needs of low-achieving students.

That principal needs teachers who value working collaboratively, who take responsibility for student learning and who are willing to invest time in their own professional development. Teachers who care about what they do and who do it well are not only catalysts for student achievement; they also are role models for how to shape and conduct a productive life.

And last, we need among all of us a sense of urgency about low-achieving minority students. We need to believe that it is not all right to deny some American children access to a quality education. We need to appreciate the real human cost of such negligence.

Persistent Aspirations

The Institute for Student Achievement surveyed the 9th graders in our partner schools about their aspirations and career intentions. These are children with a history of failure and outward behavior that would suggest they have the same low expectations for themselves that others have of them. These are kids who have been written off. Close to 90 percent of those low-achieving minority students said they intended to go to college. Those kids were silently holding on to their dreams and aspirations, refusing to give up on themselves.

So we can't give up on them either. It takes significant and sustained work to provide the conditions for academic success to low-achieving minority students. It takes a willingness to tackle profound change and learn right along with the students. But it can be done and it must be done. Those children don't have any other options. So we don't have any other choice. [] RELATED ARTICLE: Lessons Learned About the Achievement Gap.

BY ROSSI RAY-TAYLOR

Let's start by stating the obvious: With or without No Child Left Behind, closing the disparities in achievement for students of color, low-income students and English language learners is the right thing to do. Indeed, having recently commemorated the 50-year anniversary of the Brown v. Board of Education decision, equity of access and outcomes remains the unmet promise of equal education for all.

Educators and policy analysts have begun to talk about gaps in achievement; notably between African American and Latino students and their white and Asian peers, between low-income students and children from middle-income homes, between rural and urban students and those educated in the suburbs and small cities.

Whether "a gap" or "gaps," the point is that for a myriad of reasons schools find it difficult to consistently produce the same high level of access and learning for all of their students. Of course, individual differences may explain school success, but tragically race, class and language spoken in the home are far too predictive of school success and failure.

A Network Forms

Challenged by the slow pace of eliminating the disparities of achievement, a group of superintendents accepted the invitation of Allan Alson, superintendent in Evanston, Ill., to meet in 1999 to discuss our experiences eliminating the gap in our communities. These districts, all located in major university towns and academically high performing, had long histories of diverse populations and disaggregated test data that was shared with the public--long before the mandates of NCLB. We all realized our schools would not be successful until race and class were no longer correlates to academic success.

From this, the Minority Student Achievement Network was formed. MSAN's founding 15 school districts have grown today to 25 and have developed an emerging body of information that is assisting these and other interested districts. Through our joint work, we are learning some lessons about schooling and eliminating the gap.

Joint Learning

* Lesson No. 1: We won't fix what we will not recognize.

An essential first step is to shine the light of day on classroom, school and system results that display gaps in achievement. Rather than hide behind overall strong school performance in the schools and districts that make up MSAN, the leaders of these systems long ago learned to disaggregate data and to not call their systems a success until they are a success for all.

This is a bold step in the era of volatile and competitive school and community relations. But this step is essential to embracing a system that is not just satisfied with high achievement for some, but demands high achievement for all.

* Lesson No. 2: We are willing to lead and take part in honest discussions about race.

No matter how you spin it, eliminating the gap in achievement for students of color will require that we have the difficult conversation about race and its effects in schools and classrooms.

* Lesson No. 3: We also realize that cultures of blame do not produce success.

Blaming the students, their parents and home and finger-pointing toward teachers and principals seldom leads to long-lasting and productive change. Accountability is not the same as blame. If we expect our work to be productive we will need to establish environments in the classroom, teachers' lounge and the board room that support educators trying new routines.

* Lesson No. 4: We let the data speak and are guided by research.

We invest time, energy and focus on strategies guided by data and with evidence of success. In education we have invested too heavily in weak or misdirected models of change. Our focus in MSAN is to invest our time and attention in those interventions that through participant-engaged research show evidence of effectiveness.

We strongly believe that research must pass the "practitioner test"--that is it must connect with the reality experienced by teachers, principals and other practicing school-based educators. Ivory-tower research that does not address the political and social realities of life and leadership in schools will not produce effective change.

We are helping our teachers to learn that research and school- and district-level data can be used to inform the day-to-day problem solving needed by teachers. We do not look at data as a once-a-year topic for staff meetings but as a means of examining critical evidence to assist in problem solving about important questions to improve the practice of teaching in our schools.

* Lesson No. 5: We invest heavily in creating a culture of learning for all.

Students are not the only learners in schools. Teachers, principals, superintendents and central-office staff should demonstrate a shared culture of learning, inquiry and evidence seeking. For the last decade schools have been teaching students to form collaborative learning teams.

We have students form study teams and work on joint projects, yet we adults too seldom use these same strategies to form joint problem-solving teams around instructional strategies and teaching. We have begun to ask teachers to visit colleagues' classrooms but need to ask principals and superintendents to collaborate with peers to share knowledge, critique one another's work and support learning.

The creation of this professional culture of learning is demonstrated in what we read, the organization of staff development and staff meetings, engagement in professional organizations and the like. Through MSAN we are learning that a key advantage of a network is that it offers the opportunity for teachers to share ideas and to think aloud and pursue research-based problem solving with teachers from similar districts facing similar challenges.

Yet more novel is the belief that superintendents have much to learn from networking with peers to construct solutions to the problems they face.

Student Input

* Lesson No. 6: We create opportunities to hear the voice of our students and then we listen.

In 2000 the Minority Student Achievement Network surveyed 40,000 middle and high school students. That data led to the Tripod Project, follow-up student surveys, student panels for teachers, administrators and school boards and annual national student conferences. By listening to our students we learned, for instance, that despite our best efforts students do not always experience schools and classrooms as we intend.

We also have learned that sometimes we are incorrect in our interpretations of student motivation and engagement. Popular notions like the impact of "acting white" may be more complicated than believed.

As we attempt to create learner-centered classrooms, these are important insights to reaching all kids. We have learned to value the critical role that relationships between teachers and students play to student success.

* Lesson No. 7: Change the system to ferret out the "hidden curriculum."

We are aware the barriers to access and the solutions to achievement disparities faced by our schools require that we consider the entire system. Institutional practices may have consequences that are unintended or counterproductive to our goals.

In some of our districts parents talk about a hidden curriculum of institutional knowledge passed within some groups and not readily known by others. When to enroll in algebra and advanced placement classes and the resulting effect on access to selective colleges and universities is not always common knowledge to parents of students of color. Scheduling practices can create "virtual tracks" where enrollment in some classes restricts access to other courses and curriculum. Practices like restricted access to AP and other accelerated courses results in segregated schools within schools. Enrollment in some classes or course sequences can guarantee that a student will not be taught curriculum covered on the state high-stakes test or college entrance exams prior to the date the tests are given.

* Lesson No. 8: We build a culture safe for intellectual risk taking.

To think, learn, grow and innovate, one has to feel he or she can make a mistake, learn from it and improve. Students tell us that successful teachers "won't let them fail," are there to see them become successful and hold high expectations yet are supportive. Teachers say they are respected as professionals when their knowledge, perspective and experience are acknowledged by administrators.

The bottom line is this: If we expect teachers and students to invest in their own success and in the success of the organization, we have to provide environments where it is safe to try new practices and learn new things.

* Lesson No. 9: Focus, Focus, Focus. In the rush to respond to state accountability measures and NCLB, too many schools are awash in a tidal wave of reform initiatives. The change needed to eliminate gaps in achievement takes time and sustained, focused and purposeful effort.

* Lesson No. 10: There is no "magic bullet."

Perhaps the most significant lesson learned is that there is no magic bullet to eliminating the achievement gap. To paraphrase a title of a recent article by Gloria Ladson-Billings, who is the author of The Dreamkeepers: Successful Teachers of African-American Children: It's just good teaching.

The practices to eliminate the achievement gap for students of color in our schools appear to be strategies needed to achieve high levels of student success, period. That is a great lesson. Doing the right thing is good for everyone.

Rossi Ray-Taylor, a former superintendent, is executive director of the Minority Student Achievement Network, 160 Dodge Ave., Evanston, IL 60204. E-mail: rraytaylor@ comcast.net

RELATED ARTICLE: The institute's story.

The Institute for Student Achievement is a not-for-profit organization, founded fin 1990, that partners with high schools to enable under-performing, underserved students to stay in school, achieve academically, graduate college ready. The institute works to start new small high schools and to organize large schools into small learning communities.

The ISA Small Schools Model[TM] expects intellectually challenging curriculum and instruction for all students, strong leadership, collaboration, continuous professional development, multiple assessments, and strong support for teachers and principals to be entrepreneurial. Each ISA-supported school has a distinct personality, reflecting its community of learners and the unique ways it has chosen to reach academic excellence. An external coach who has expertise in small schools, instruction, school leadership and organization works closely with each school.

ISA's Seven Principles are the architecture for small, academically rigorous schools and every school applies the Principles to produce student success. Each ISA Model school has the following:

* a college preparatory instructional program inquiry-based learning, development of critical thinking skills and habits of work such as time management, literacy and numeracy across the curriculum. SAT prep, internships and community service;

* a dedicated staff of teachers and a counselor faculty share a common group of students whom they get to know well, teachers and a counselor work together as a team;

* continuous professional development--regular scheduled common planning time for staff, customized professional development opportunities, external coaches and summer and winter institutes run by our organization;

* Distributed Counseling[TM] counselors work closely with teachers and offer direct services to students and families; teachers function as advisers to students; students take trips to colleges and participate in college awareness;

* extended school day and school year--provides additional time for students to succeed at a challenging academic program, strengthen their skills through tutoring and meetings with teachers, participate in enrichment activities and community service activities and attend summer institutes;

* parent involvement--parents and the school are partners committed to supporting students' successful achievement and advancement to higher education, close communication between parents and teachers on student progress and needs; and

* continuous organizational improvement--supported by our strategic partner, National Center for Restructuring Education, Schools and Teaching at Teachers College, Columbia University, schools use multiple forms of data including the institute's student writing and math assessments, reviews of student work, test scores, course passing rates and reports on the implementation of ISA principles to guide their organizational and professional development decisions.

In September 2003, the institute received a $6 million grant from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation to open 10 small schools in New York City. Three of those schools (in Brooklyn, the Bronx and Queens) inaugurated 9th-grade classes of 100 students at the start of the 2004-2005 school year. Each year the school will add another grade for an eventual total of no more than 400 students. The remaining seven new schools will be open by September 2006.

More details about the institute can be found at www.studentachievement.org.

--Gerry House

Gerry House, a former superintendent, is president and CEO of the Institute for Student Achievement, 1 Hollow Lane, Suite 100, Lake Success, NY 11042. E-mail: [e-mail]