| On December 12, the Education Trust released a national analysis of public
school data and found that many schools with high concentrations of
minority
children living in poverty score among the top one-third percentile of all
schools in their states. The report, "Dispelling the Myth Revisited,"
finds
that in 2000, more than 4,500 high-poverty and high-minority schools
nationwide often outperformed schools with a predominantly white student
population living in wealthy communities. The Education Trust analyzed a new U.S. Department of Education database
created by the American Institutes for Research, combining school-level
assessment scores with demographic and other kinds of information on
nearly
all of the nation's schools. Of the high-performing schools meeting the analysis criteria for the
report,
those identified as high-poverty schools have approximately twice the rate
of low-income students compared with all public schools nationally, and
score in the top one-third in their states. Similarly, schools on the
high-minority list have more than twice the rate of African American and
Latino students, and also score in the top one-third in their states. Some
of the commonalities among these high-performing schools were
- Parent involvement efforts to raise student achievement;
- Increased instruction time for reading and mathematics;
- A system of monitoring individual student performance and help to
struggling students before they fall behind;
- Investment in professional development for teachers;
- State and district accountability systems with consequences for school
administrators; and
- Use of state/local standards in curriculum, instruction, student
assessment, and teacher evaluation.
According to Craig Jerald, author of the report and senior policy analyst
at
the Education Trust, "[the report] could help many educators overcome
their
limited expectations for poor and minority children. But we know that more
work still remains to be done."National PTA urges national and state/local governments and agencies to
adequately fund programs that address the complex issues of the academic
achievement gap that continues to exist, and meet the special needs of
children and families living in poverty.
For additional information regarding the report, "Dispelling the Myth
Revisited," visit www.edtrust.org/documents/DTM02report.pdf. This article courtesy of "This Week in Washington" for the week of December 14, 2001. The newsletter comes to you free of charge via the Internet as a service of National PTA in the furtherance of its nonprofit and tax-exempt status. Unless otherwise noted, PTAs may reproduce and distribute the materials from the National PTA website for PTA use without express written permission. National PTA materials may not be duplicated by any other organization or person without written permission. |
