District Administration - November/December 2010 - (Page 26)

STUDENT ACHIEVEMENT Black children Educators seek new strategies to address persistent achievement gaps and discrimination against African-American students. By Ed FinkEl t’s a Familiar rEFrain in amErican Education: aFrican-amErican children score lower on standardized tests, graduate high school at lower rates, and are considerably more likely to be suspended or expelled than the general population. two recent reports, one from the council of the Great city schools and one from the american institutes for research, reveal that the achievement gaps are still large between africanamerican and white students. But concerted efforts in certain states and districts have shown that the historical trend doesn’t have to remain the same, and overall the picture may have brightened slightly over the past decade or two, according to statistics and anecdotal observations. still, some activist groups and educational researchers fear the systematic federal evaluations conducted under the no child left Behind law have given districts and states powerful incentives to move lower-achieving students out of their general populations to special education placements, alternative schools, or elsewhere—perhaps dovetailing with an urgency to create zero-tolerance discipline policies. a report from the Washington-based advancement Project, called “test, Punish and Push out,” makes a stark accusation: “The practice of pushing struggling students out of school to boost test scores has become quite common.” The report, released last January, focuses on graduation rates in the nation’s 25 largest school districts with at least 80 percent black and latino student enrollment, in the years immediately before and after no child left Behind was passed. From 1996 to 2002, 19 of these 25 districts saw graduation rates increase, 11 of them by more than 10 percent. But after the law passed, from 2002 to 2006, 19 of the 25 saw graduation rates decrease, eight by more than 10 percent. Those figures support the theory that the pressure to boost test scores after no child left Behind led students to be pushed out, although Jim Freeman, project director with advancement Project’s Ending the schoolhouse to Jailhouse track project, acknowledges the numbers do not provide hard proof. “it’s correlation evidence but A teacher helps a student at Hudson K-8 School in not causation evidence,” he says. “We’re trying to the Birmingham (Ala.) City Schools. The district get behind those numbers and figure out what’s works to ensure school is a priority for students. going on. Policies like exclusionary discipline, 26 November/December 2010 I Standing at Paul Lawrence Dunbar High School in the Baltimore City (Md.) Public Schools last fall, a student thinks ahead to the new school year. District Administration

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of District Administration - November/December 2010

District Administration - November/December 2010
Contents
From the Editor
News Update
Administrator Profile
District Profile
Black Children Still Left Behind
ARRA Funds Empower Schools to Power Down
A Call for Technology Leadership
Readers Pick Top 100 Products of the Year
Going Mobile
Superintendent’s Insights
Supervisor’s Opinion
Professional Opinion
Student Counsel

District Administration - November/December 2010