Closing the learning gaps between needy and more affluent students

Closing the Learning Gaps

Since the Elementary and Secondary Education Act was named No Child Left Behind (NCLB) in 2001, billions of dollars have been spent in an effort to eliminate the learning gaps between students living in poverty and their more affluent peers. Billions more were added in Race to the Top (RTTT) initiatives.

The underlying assumption for these programs was the learning gaps were the result of “failing” public schools. In order to fix “failing” schools, more standardized testing was needed, teachers and administrators had to be evaluated more stringently and frequently, schools failing to bring the test scores of children in poverty to the level of more affluent students were threatened with closing and their staffs reassigned, children in “failing” schools saw their curriculum reduced to provide more instruction in the subjects being tested - essentially literacy and math, parents of students in “failing” schools were encouraged to send their children to alternate schools which were promoted for that purpose. (Ostensibly, the alternate schools were created to be incubators for improving instruction with successful practices to be then adopted by public schools but that concept was quickly abandoned by the charter schools as they came to see themselves as competing, rather than supporting, public schools.)

And the results? There is one standardized test widely accepted as the assessment by which all states can be compared. Known as the Nation’s Report Card, it is the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP). Every two years, over 900,000 students are tested in math and literacy. NAEP is meticulous in testing a demographically representative group including special needs students, English language learners, and those receiving free and reduced price lunches - the latter being the determinant of poverty status.

During the period from 2003 to 2015, NAEP test results for all groups improved modestly - less than one percent per year. But what of the so-called learning gaps between those children not receiving free and reduced priced lunches and those who were. They were essentially unchanged. (In Rhode Island, PARRC test results indicated gap increases between 2015 and 2016 in both literacy and math.) All those billions of dollars did not reduce the gaps.

Both NCLB and RTTT made the assumption the learning gaps were created in “failing” schools. It is a faulty assumption. The learning gaps between the two groups of students arise, to the largest extent, in the home. One University of Kansas study found a child in a home with professional parents hears 30,000,000 more words than a child in a welfare home - by age three. It is this huge advantage enjoyed by wealthier children, an advantage they enjoy throughout their schooling, that is reflected in the standardized tests results - the test results used to identify the learning gaps. A study by Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore schools found learning gaps grew most not between September and June when children are in school but during July and August.

Learning gaps, for the most part, exist because some children come from homes with more educated parents who are able to provide these children with resources unavailable in poverty homes. The disclaimer, “for the most part” is included because there are other home related factors negatively impacting children living in poverty which can contribute to learning gaps.

Leveling the playing field for children living in poverty requires providing these children with more of the opportunities enjoyed by more affluent children. All children are afforded a 180 day school year. To think within that 180 days, disadvantaged children can somehow “catch up” to their wealthier peers is faulty thinking. The wealthier children get their 180 days plus their home advantage - they will always be ahead. They will always be ahead unless programs are provided to children in poverty in extended school day and school year programs. Only then can these children catch up and keep pace.

The goal, a goal achieved by neither NCLB or RTTT, is to provide children in poverty what they need so they are able to qualify for employment opportunities which will allow them to escape the clutches of poverty and not be themselves raising a family in poverty.