The task of creating equal education opportunities in a society full of uneven opportunities can seem nearly impossible. But, as Richard E. Nisbett reminds us in "Think Big, Bigger … and Smaller" (p. 10), even small changes can yield long-term benefits for students who start out at a disadvantage.
Consider one of the low-tech interventions Nisbett describes that has been shown to improve the school achievement of struggling students. When teachers clearly tell students about the powerful role that effort—as opposed to purely natural intelligence—plays in getting high grades, and show students that they themselves can build stronger neural connections through applying themselves to learning, even chronically failing students start to work harder and do better.
- Tune in to the messages that your school communicates to kids. Examine the language used to recognize high academic achievers, descriptions of famous people in textbooks and class readings, or even the comments you write on student work—about what leads to accomplishments: native ability or hard work? What might give students the message that only people with special abilities can achieve? How might you infuse messages about the importance of strong effort in a way that would motivate students who are far behind and discouraged?
- Spend a class or two talking with students about how the brain develops and how, through applying effort, they can actually strengthen their own intelligence (You may find the December 2009/January 2010 EL article "How to Teach Students about the Brain" and the accompanying downloadable handout for students helpful). Are your students aware that intelligence is malleable, or do they perceive it as a fixed commodity they either possess or don't? What about the low achievers in your class?
The Question of Segregation
According to the articles "Integrated Schools: Finding a New Path" (Gary Orfield, Erica Frankenberg, and Genevieve Siegel-Hawley, p. 22) and "Overcoming Triple Segregation" (by Patricia Gándara, p. 60), segregation by ethnic background of public schools in the United States is on the upswing, a reality which limits minority students' prospects for a high-quality education and all students' prospects for learning to work and interact with students from varied cultures. Gándara claims on page 63 that segregation contributes significantly to the persistent Latino-white achievement gap:
One recent study of mathematics achievement in the United States concluded that although the increase in average education and income of Latino families should have significantly closed achievement gaps, the damage caused by increased segregation had cancelled out those gains (Berends & Peñaloza, 2010). Likewise, researchers at the University of California at Santa Barbara concluded that the variable that explained the greatest amount of variance in academic achievement between ELLs and native English speakers was the degree of segregation that the ELLs experienced (Rumberger & Tran, 2010).
- Are schools within your district—or your city—segregated by race? By socioeconomic background? Are the schools with higher proportions of white students considered the "better" schools, and does official data about school achievement back this up? How much chance do nonwhite kids have to attend these majority-white schools?
- Is there de facto segregation within your school: Are a greater preponderance of students from white or Asian backgrounds represented in more rigorous academic programs (or alternative programs with positive reputations), and students of other races overrepresented in less prestigious classes? Do many Latino students spend much of their school day solely in ELL classes, or with other Latinos? If such segregation exists, is it openly acknowledged as a problem—and if not, how do you think it could be?
- Do you consider majority-white schools to be segregated? Why or why not? How might spending the bulk of their school years only with students of their same ethnicity be a problem for white students as well as for students of color?
Are Unrelenting Expectations Enough?
An axiom held by many advocates of closing achievement gaps is that maintaining unrelenting high expectations for students from at-risk backgrounds—and teachers who serve them—can shrink the gap. Another is that lowering expectations does violence to hope. Karin Chenoweth ("Leaving Nothing to Chance," p. 16) lists "Expect that all students will meet or exceed standards" as one of the fundamental practices of school leaders who increase achievement in high-poverty schools, and notes that these schools must "operate on a higher plane than many middle-class schools." But—also in this issue, on p.29—veteran advocate for education equity Jonathan Kozol states
People who devote their lives to tinkering with clever ways to close the race gap by "demanding more" of children and their principals and teachers within segregated settings are, knowingly or not, upholding the same failed and tainted promises given to us more than a century ago by Plessy v. Ferguson.
What do you think? Will holding high expectations be enough to close achievement gaps if schools remain segregated and highly unequal in resources? Could a focus on "demanding more" ever become a liability in the press for equity?