School reform: reality or dream?

by Jack Stapleton, Jr.

One of the most popular phrases in America these days is “failing schools.” Indeed, if you ask anyone if America’s academic system is a success, the answer is invariably a resounding “No!” We’ve had “failing schools” throughout the last century, and since most of us were students sometime during that period, we have still been unable to coin a different description, which would be “successful schools.”

The principal illustration of today’s failed curricula is most often the test scores of poor or minority kids, who seem to fall further and further behind those of middle-class students the longer they stay in school. President Bush’s education program — “No Child Left Behind” — is supposed to eliminate low-standard schools and elevate test scores for both poor and affluent students.

Pardon the unfunny pun, but I’d like to climb outside the conventional sandbox for a moment and ask the question: What if our schools are not failing? What if their real progress is obscured by the way test scores are usually reported and undercut by events beyond their control?

Evidence provided by a number of studies suggests that even city schools that serve disadvantaged youth are preventing failure, not causing it. The most recent of these studies, though by no means the only one, looked at five years of test scores for elementary students of low, middle and high socioeconomic status. To no one’s surprise, low-status kids started school well behind their middle- and upper-status peers on tests of reading and math, something schools cannot be held accountable for. To no one’s surprise, they fell further behind over the next five years.

We can hold failing schools accountable for that, right? Maybe not. During the school year, the students in all three status categories gained the same amount on the tests. The difference between the three groups is what happened during the summer.

When the kids came back in the fall, the tests showed that over vacation the poor kids lost ground in reading the first two summers, then held their own, but sank in math. The middle-class kids gained in reading and held their own in math. The kids from affluent homes gained in reading and math, but a lot more in reading.

These results shouldn’t surprise us. Many observers have noted that between birth and age 18, American children spent nine percent of their time in school, 91 percent out of it. I haven’t heard anyone suggesting lately that we hold families accountable, have you? And while studies show that students learn more in school than out, nine percent is not a lot of time.

The researchers cited above, from Johns Hopkins University, note that what poor kids need is not necessarily more school but more out-of-school activities that broaden students’ outlook, cultural experiences that are as diverse as trips to libraries, museums, art galleries, even zoos.

There’s no doubt that inequalities between what children receive in affluent schools and poor schools affect achievement. But these differences may not show up on test score variations in the early grades — and test scores are all that count in Bush’s program. Affluent students have much deeper early literacy experiences than poor children.

Kids in low-income schools with science books that predict man might one day walk on the moon can’t learn science, nor can children learn chemistry in so-called labs that have no chemicals. Students in classrooms where the teacher regularly communicates his or her displeasure with deteriorating buildings, lack of extracurricular programs, low faculty salaries are not likely to view their academic environment in a favorable light. Indeed, they are likely to view it with either disdain or hostility, hardly conducive attitudes for learning. Adults are not the only group in America that likes to feel wanted, even appreciated.

The social class differences in what kids do out of school can’t be ignored, either. As one student in a poor school in the state said recently: “We sit around in computer class and talk about what we would do if we had computers.”

It seems the notion of “adequate yearly progress,” as mandated by Washington, just got more complicated.

[Missouri News & Editorial Service, Inc. Copyright (C) 2002 MNES Corp.]