Achieving Equitable Education in Calhoun County

Rebecca Reno Research Associate, The Kirwan Institute September 23, 2006

Why We Should All Care About Diversity and Equity

 Why should those who are not marginalized care about diversity and equity?

 A nation and all its residents share a linked fate  This issue is particularly important for regions today • Disparities make the region less competitive, nationally and globally

Democratic Implications of Failing to Achieve Diversity

 Equitable public education has implications for our democratic society  Education as gatekeepers to our democracy  Our inequitable arrangements are making it difficult, if not impossible to achieve either legitimate education or a true democracy  Without full diversity we are not adequately preparing students for citizenship in our nation, or our global society

Process of Educational Reform

 Start with goals  Define equitable education  Define the greater goals of public education  Check current conditions against goals  Identify factors creating & perpetuating current inequities  Design and implement reform

Setting Goals

Setting Goals

 Must start with a definitive vision of the end goal  Education Vision Statement: Equal access for all students to have

opportunities

and

resources

to achieve their fullest potential and to encourage and help each child to take advantage of that access.

 What does equitable education look like, how do we know when we’ve arrived?

 Funding, academic performance, democratic participation, etc.

Overarching Goals of Public Education

“The function of education is to teach one to think intensively and to think critically....Intelligence plus character that is the goal of true education.”

-Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. The Purpose of Education Speech

Goals of Education

What are our educational goals?

 The mission statement for the US Department of Education includes: ensuring

equal access

to education and promoting

educational excellence

throughout the nation.

 The U.S. Supreme Court has identified the objective of pubic education as the "[inculcation of] fundamental

democratic political system values

necessary to the maintenance of a ." -

Ambach v. Norwick

, 441 U.S. 68, 76-77 (1979)

Goals of Education

What are our educational goals? (Cont.)

 Education has both a public purpose:  Employment  Preparing Students for Citizenship  And a private purpose:  Building Human Capacity (personal/social)

Public Goals of Education

 Serving the

job marketplace

is one of the fundamental roles of education.

 Higher Education: Education should prepare students for success in colleges and universities and/or  Employment: Education should develop job skills and train students for employment • This ensures the U.S. can compete economically with the rest of the world  This represents the bulk of our education efforts

Public Goals of Education

 Serving a

democratic society

fundamental roles of education is one of the  Preparing students for citizenship has been a stated goal of American education throughout U.S. history • • Instill fundamental values & transmit knowledge necessary to partake in our democracy In 2002, the Supreme Court in

Grutter

acknowledged the importance of preparing students for citizenship

Goals of Education

 Serving the

individual

roles of education is one of the fundamental  Building Human Capacity:  Developing individual character and values such as honesty, integrity, self-discipline, hard work, volunteerism and charity  Create good community members and good global citizens by teaching students to take and hold the perspective of others  Stress the interdependence among people and between people and their environment

Factors & Conditions

Current Conditions in Public Education

 Economic Segregation  Racial Segregation  Achievement Gap  Discipline Rates  Funding Disparities  Graduation Rates

WHAT IS CAUSING THESE DISPARITIES?

Education Factors: Institutional Arrangements

 

Funding

Has long been identified as inequitable; generally little success in reforming “The resources devoted to the education of poor children and children of color in the U.S. continues to be significantly less than those devoted to other American children on virtually every measure.” -Linda Darling-Hammond, Myths and Realities: African Americans and the Measurement of Human Abilities

Education Factors: Institutional Arrangements (cont.)

   

Racial Integration

Racially integrated schools have demonstrated positive social, psychological, and academic benefits. Efforts to achieve being increasingly challenged in court, and are subsequently abandoned.



Economic Segregation

Rates of economic segregation high, and rising. Correlates strongly with racial segregation  Socioeconomic status of the school, after the influence of the family, remains the greatest predictor of student success and achievement

Education Factors: Institutional Arrangements (cont.)

  

Teacher Quality

Low income students and students of color are less likely to have highly qualified teachers, have higher rates of teacher turnover, more uncertified teachers and are more likely to have a new teacher who is teaching outside the subject they were trained in

Teacher/Staff/Administrative Diversity

  Nationally, 2001-2002 60% of public school students White, 90% of teachers are. Black students 17%, while teachers constitute only 5%.

Benefits of diversity: role models, understanding of cultural differences, higher expectations for ethnic groups, encourages students to perform better, can work towards breaking down stereotypes.

Education Factors: In-School Practices

 

Curriculum/Pedagogy

  Often diluted, non-engaging, culturally biased, and transmits low expectations. This has a direct negative effect on students’ performance

Academic Tracking/Ability Grouping

  By race: • Students of color 7 times more likely to be in a lower track class • Half as likely to be in a gifted class By class: “A highly proficient low-income student has a 50% chance of being placed in a high track class  Undermines any integration efforts

Education Factors: In-School Practices (cont.)

  

Special Education

  African American males overrepresented Also over-diagnosed with mental retardation, specific learning disabilities, and categorized as having emotional disturbances

Discipline

  Blacks, particularly males often subject to more frequent and more harsh disciplinary actions, even when controlling for behavior Black males two to five times more likely to be suspended than white males.

Teacher & Student Retention

Education Factors: Out of School

  

Early Childhood Education

  More we learn, more we are capable of learning Over 80% of the gap in 4 th grade reading scores already discernable in kindergarten

Community Engagement and Resources

 Support networks, resources (libraries, tutoring programs)

Health

  Prenatal care: African Americans and Hispanic women are twice more likely to receive late or no prenatal care Low income children have less access to high quality healthcare, and are more likely to suffer from untreated dental and vision problems, poor nutrition and environmental-induced diseases

Education Factors: Out of School (cont.)

  

Environment

  Lead • • 9x higher levels of lead in low-income children 6 million children lost an average of 7 IQ points because of lead exposure Asthma • • African Americans hospitalized four times the rate of whites Pollution and vacant housing associated with a 40% increased risk of asthma over age two

Housing

 Linked to student retention. • By kindergarten, over 48% of low income children have lived in at least three homes • Black students are twice as likely to change schools frequently

Parental Education & SES

 Leading indicator of student academic achievement

Constructing a Solution: Best Practices

Overarching Education Policy: Economic Integration

 Need sustainable reform  Solution must have the scope and breadth to disrupt the current arrangement  Quality varies by locale  Schools reflect racial, ethnic and SES segregation of the region  Integration  By Race  By Socioeconomic Status

Race & Class Intersections

 Increased racial and economic segregation in the 1990s  More than 70% of African Americans and 76% of Latinos attend mostly minority schools 1  Nationally the average white student attends a school with fewer than 20% low income students. African American and Latino students attend a school with 44% low-income students 2 Source: 1. Flinspach, S.L. & Banks, K.E. (2005). Moving Beyond Race: Socioeconomic Diversity as a Race-Neutral Approach to Desegregation in Wake County Schools. In School Resegregation, Must the South Turn Back? 2. Rusk, D. 2002. Trends in School Segregation. In Divided we Fail: Coming Together through Public School Choice.

Negative Factors Correlated with Socioeconomic Segregation

 A middle-class school is 22x more likely to be high performing than a low-income school  Inadequate funding & resources  Negative peer influences  Low levels of parental involvement  Low expectations, lower standards Source: [1] Harris, D.N. (2006). Ending the Blame Game on Educational Inequality: A Study of ‘High Flying’ Schools and NCLB. Educational Policy Research Unit, Arizona State University.

Negative Factors Correlated with Socioeconomic Segregation

 Discipline problems  High student mobility  Under-qualified teachers  More inexperienced  Academically weak  Teaching in subjects not trained for  Educators that haven’t received “sustained professional development”

Teacher Quality & Attrition

Source: Helping Children Move from Bad Schools to Good Ones. Richard D. Kahlenberg. The Century Foundation. 6/15/2006

Benefits of Socioeconomic Integration

 Increased student expectations  Access to social capital  Affects cognitive development for ALL students • Opportunities to interact in deeper and more meaningful ways, Increased perspective taking, Higher levels of Reasoning  Improves academic achievement for low income students and students of color “The notion that all children perform better in middle-class schools than in poverty-concentrated schools is the most consistent findings in research on education.” Gary Orfield Cited in

Divided we fail: Coming together through public school choice

.

High-Poverty Schools

 Low-income students attending middle-class schools perform higher, on average, than middle-class children attending high-poverty schools Source: The Century Foundation (2004). Can Separate Be Equal? www.tcf.org

Benefits of Socioeconomic Integration (cont.)



Schools better able to attract and retain teachers

 Decreases drop out rates  Higher career aspirations  Students more likely to attend college  Fewer incidents with police  Less likely to become teenage parents

Overarching Education Policy: Regional Education

 District magnet/charter schools  Create high-quality magnet schools with academic, economic thresholds  Wake County Raleigh, NC  No more than 40% low income  No more than 25% performing below grade level on state reading test  Of the 36 Schools of Excellence designated by Magnet Schools of America in 2006, eight were in Raleigh  Black students: 40% to 80% grade level on standardized tests (10 years). Hispanic students: 79% to 91%. White students: performance did not decrease.

Overarching Education Policy: Regional Education

 Suburban schools: designated vouchers/choice plan  Provide academic support, transportation  Connect to regional housing policies  Minneapolis Choice is Yours  Free & Reduced Lunch Students given free and reduced lunch are given priority placement in suburban or magnet schools of their choice  Participants outperformed their peers, with scores in reading and mathematics that were respectively 23 and 25 percentile points higher

Overcoming Barriers & Resistance

   Residential Segregation  Controlled Choice  Housing Integration Political Challenges  School parents would choose a “good diverse school” over an “outstanding homogenous school” by a 67% to 26% margin  By 75% to 21% Americans favor public school choice across district lines Financial/Jurisdictional Challenges:  When possible offer financial incentives- St. Louis Source: A Report of the Century Foundation Task Force on the Common School. 2002. Divided we fail: Coming Together through Public School Choice.

In-School Reform

 Funding disparities  Work towards equalizing funding, but also determine most effective way to use funds  Eliminating detracking  Rockville Centre, New York  US Department of Education – high school advanced math most strongly associated factor with college graduation  Achievement rose for ALL groups

Success of Detracking

Students Completing Trigonometry Before Graduating High School Before Detracking After Detracking

Students from low SES backgrounds African American & Latino Initial low achievers Average achievers 32% 46% 38% 81% Initial high achievers 89% Source: Burris, C. C. (2004). When excellence and equity thrive. Education Week. 23, 32.

67% 67% 53% 91% 99%

In-School Reform

 Discipline Reform  Move from punitive, harsh model that removes student from the classroom  Focus on more democratic model: Student Responsibility Centers (Grand Rapids), Youth Courts  SRCs: One year prior to implementation there were 5,000 referrals to the office. 2002-2003 following the implementation, 546 plans were constructed, only 29 students transferred to the alternative high school, and the school experienced a 89% overall reduction in discipline.

In-School Reform

 Collaborative Education  Actively include the voice of parents, teachers, staff community members, businesses and organizations to make the schools truly public  Focus on Democratic Merit: Service Learning  Develops civic engagement, increases knowledge of community needs, more sophisticated understanding of politics, greater commitment to community service

In-School Reform

 Early Childhood Education  Work to provide every child with a preschool education  Connect the discontinuous education pipeline  Link P-12 to postsecondary education & employment

Moving Forward

 Reframe the Issue  Education reform for the benefit of ALL students, not just those historically disadvantaged.  Equity AS excellence.

 Maximize public investments  Reform for regional health

Moving Forward

 Plan big, start small  Conduct ongoing research  Build upon successes  Extensive public communication  Regional collaboration  Extend beyond education: Housing policy is education policy. Any serious effort must be inclusive of both.

www.KirwanInstitute.org