CLOSING THE ACHIEVEMENT GAP THROUGH CONVERSATIONS ON RACE

1. CLOSING THE ACHIEVEMENT GAP THROUGH CONVERSATIONS ON RACE Delvin Dinkins, Ed. D., Principal, Tredyffrin/Easttown School District, Wayne, PA

2. Goals of this presentation • To review literature and a conceptual framework for the achievement gap • To share a study that examined educators' beliefs about underachieving students • To explore ideas that may diminish effects of the achievement gap

3. Abstract • Achievement gaps more transparent due to NCLB, causing critical challenges • Achievement gap and black underachievement are complex challenges in whiter suburban school districts • Should schools address the gap, shoulder blame, or "level the playing field” • Needed: inquiry into how a group of teachers make sense of the achievement gap in a highly regarded school • Beliefs profoundly shape how people define, frame, and approach problems and interventions

4. Research Goals • Invite voices that are often unheard, unfamiliar, or both • Learn how a group of educators talked about issues and problems related to low achievement • Learn how educators mapped, named, and framed problem(s), choices and solutions • Generate local knowledge in order to respond to underachievement

5. Conceptual Framework • Present study was informed by three areas: • Achievement gaps • Adult learning • Language and Belief systems • Research Questions • How do teachers talk about race, class, culture, and achievement? • What beliefs, attitudes, and practices shape their conversation? • How effective can a discussion group be in addressing such issues?

6. Achievement Gap • Broad consensus about the factors that influence achievement: • racism and classism • lowered expectations • large class sizes • ineffective instruction • out-of-school factors such as health care, poverty, and parent education level

7. Explaining the Achievement Gap: Out of School Factors • Historical Explanations • Long-held beliefs about black racial inferiority (e.g., Jensen,1969) • “Separate but equal”--1896’s Plessy v. Ferguson • Deficit models

8. Explaining the Achievement Gap: Out of School Factors • Conventional Explanations • 1966 Coleman Report*: family background • Capital: a useful concept for exploring resource discrepancies among groups • Cultural capital • Social capital *Equality of educational opportunity, report of the office of education to congress and the President

9. Explaining the Achievement Gap: Out of School Factors • Conventional Explanations • Parental involvement • Savvy, high SES parents • Minority parents and parents of lower SES disadvantaged • Community disenfranchisement

10. Explaining the Achievement Gap: In-School Factors • School/Organizational Factors • Education/schools reproduce and sustain current structures • Forces within schools tend to establish differential conditions and outcomes • Schools expect, and rely on, cultural capital • greater cultural capital  better prepared for academic demands, receive favoritism by teachers, and reap the benefits of encouragement and support in the schooling process (Lareau, 2003; Kalmijn & Kraaykamp, 1996)

11. Explaining the Achievement Gap: In-School Factors • School/Organizational Factors • Schools tend to overestimate the resources of parents and homes • Racial and ethnic segregation

12. Explaining the Achievement Gap: In-School Factors • School/Organizational Factors • Tracking: principal means of academic and societal stratification • Effects of placement: instructional, social, and institutional (opportunity structure)

13. Explaining the Achievement Gap: In-School Factors • School/Organizational Factors • Students' individual resources also directly affect their effort and opportunities to learn • Opportunities to learn may be compromised by selection of courses, minority status, etc.

14. Adult Learning in Schools • Designed to effect change in performance; to assist teachers with becoming more connected to their practice; and to support them in generating knowledge about their work with students

15. Belief Systems • Words reflect an opinion and a worldview (Bakhtin, 1981) • Beliefs are commonsense understandings and explanations by which people make sense of their surroundings (Gathright, 2002)

16. Research Site: Clearfield High • 1,850 students: 87% white, 8% Asian American, 3% Black, 1% Latino, and 1% Pacific Islander and American Indian • 140 teachers: 129 white, 5 black, 4 Asian and 2 Hispanic • Record of academic excellence: 1180 SAT (100% participation), 30 AP courses, 180 AP Scholars, 60 National Merit students, 94% enrollment in college, 1150 AP tests (93% score of 3>) • Four course levels with varied weighting (quality points) • Philosophy of access, options, and choice • More than 100 student-initiated and student-runclubs

17. Research Site: Clearfield High • Disproportionate number of black students struggle academically, enroll less challenging courses, do not participate in extra-curricular activities • Black students are part of small working class communities

18. Academic Achievement Group • Consisted of a variety high school educators • Formed after several parent and educator meetings regarding student underachievement • Emerged from encouragement and positive interest in talking with others

19. Academic Achievement Group • Meetings • Forum where educators could share observations, explore research, discuss frustrations, and raise questions • Context in which knowledge could be shared, constructed, and challenged

20. Overview of Themes • Nurturing and Resisting Black “Culture” • Black Isolation and Teacher Relationships • Whiteness and the Construction of Achievement • Permanence of Achievement • Interrupting and Maintaining Black Course-Taking Patterns • Justifying the Status Quo • Deficits, Defiance and Other Blames • Racial and Economic Disparities • Community Distrust • Social Justice and Colorblindness: Struggles to Make Race Salient

21. Overview of Findings • Educators’ conversations reflected that notion that achievement connected to race and class • Educators primarily attributed low achievement to students and their families • Educators’ conversations shifted between a black deficit perspective and a social justice perspective • Educators struggled to maintain a social justice stance because of demands within the school • Educators resorted to traditional assumptions about race, class and achievement • Belief systems and language can function as barriers to change (Kumashiro, 2003)

22. Educator assumptions about race, class and achievement • Assumption 1: • Students are not created equal • Assumption 2: • Students do not enter school with the same social and cultural resources • Assumption 3: • Educators believed that they did not actively contribute to black underachievement

23. Educator assumptions about race, class and achievement • Assumption 4: • Students have the same opportunities. The opportunity structure within the school is fair and impartial. • Assumption 5: • The academic picture at Clearfield, no matter how racially segregated, is natural and inevitable.

24. Educator assumptions about race, class and achievement • Assumption 6: • Blacks and low-income students have a culture of underachievement that explains their failure. • Assumption 7: • Educators felt that holding higher expectations of all students compromised their integrity and set students up for failure and disappointment

25. Summary and Conclusions • The educator group as a form of inquiry ultimately did not create necessary conditions for change • While educators participated in conversation about problems, they were unable to look deeply or introspectively • Most educators in the group did not have an experience in which their beliefs and personal histories increasingly became subjects of inquiry

26. Summary and Conclusions • Despite the potential for a social justice orientation to the inquiry into achievement and ultimately black student failure, inquiry did not automatically serve as a lever for initiating reform • The solutions did not reestablish the school as a radically different place for helping, teaching and learning, nor did they include improvement in educator-related work

27. Ideas to Explore: Learn • Student Attitudes and Behaviors • High performing black students experience pressure when they fear failure in light of negative racial stereotypes. • When blacks perceive inconsistencies in the opportunity structure, they are likely to underachieve (Mickelson, 1990). • Impact of peer group on adolescent behavior • Black males experience substantial alienation from the educational process; racial identity plays a greater role in furthering academic achievement for black females than for black males (Cockley, 2001; Dawson-Threat, 1997)

28. Ideas to Explore: Learn • Student Connectivity to School • Examine the ways in which black students experience the social environment of schools and classrooms (Northwest Regional Educational Laboratory, 2002) • Extracurricular participation in high school is a way for students to extend learning as well as connect to others and the school environment outside the regular school day

29. Ideas to Explore: Learn • Student Connectivity to School • Quality of students' relationship with influential adults is an important predictor of school success • Educators can be role models and effective sources of support for some students • Positive social relationships could create powerful incentives for students

30. What can we do? • Examine patterns of student engagement • Look at course-taking behavior • Be watchful of inviting and uninviting teachers • Be an advocate • Place students in higher level courses and offer support • Be aware of how students experience school and classroom • Ensure students are not over-identified for special education • Extend the benefit of the doubt to students • Challenge practices of lowered expectations and gate-keeping • Start your own honest conversations and be a critical friend