FOR MINORITY ACHIEVEMENT, FIX ACADEMICS, NOT SOCIAL POLICY
z45\doc\web\2000\10\lamp.txt
From: Martin Kozloff [mailto:kozloffm@uncwil.edu]
Sent: Thursday, October 26, 2000 10:04 AM
Subject: [education-consumers] Why Black Students Lag Behind?


	Searching Under Street Lamps? Let the Educationists Point the Way
"the major independent variable--the variable that has the most
direct, proximal, and strongest effect on achievement--the variable
that is the easiest and least expensive to change--is (hold on
tight!) curriculum and instruction. That is, what is taught and how
it is taught.  "




For at least five decades, the discrepancy in school achievement between
minority and white students as a group has been explained by factors only
indirectly related to achievement; for example,


1.  Demographic factors, such as differences in culture and cultural
capital, "race," family structure, the percentage of minority children in a
school population, and socioecomic status (Battle, 1998; Bernstein,
1971-75, 1990; Caldas & Bankston, 1998; Duncan, Yeung, Brooks-Gunn, &
Smith, 1998; Hart & Risley, 1995; Roscigno & Ainsworth-Darnell, 1999;
Smith, 1990).


2. Personal, interpersonal, and organizational factors, such as size of
school, style of school leadership, school culture, family involvement,
students' self-perceptions, and teachers' expectations (Cooper & Moore,
1995; Hamachek, 1995; Trusty & Watts, 1996).


These factors are said to foster differences in: (1) children's preparation
for school: (2) support for children during school; (3) how children are
treated in school; and (4) even children's ability to learn.  Certainly
these sorts of generalizations are enlightening.  However, they have not
specified, and they cannot specify effective measures to reduce and to
prevent the achievement gap.


This is because


1. The factors listed above are not direct causes of high or low
achievement; at most they are contributing conditions. For example, parent
involvement (such as helping with homework) may firm up children's skills,
but does not teach fundamental reading skills, such as decoding and
comprehending text, which is presumed to occur in class.


2. Most of the factors cannot be changed; e.g., family background, "race."


3. Many factors will not be changed in the foreseeable future; e.g., social
stratification.


Therefore, continuing to examine interrelations among "race," social class,
family, expectations, self-esteem, and culture, and the effects of these on
children's achievement, is similar to an inebriated person looking for keys
under a street lamp.  The keys aren't there, but it's the easiest place to
look.   From an ideological point of view, continued research (and money
spent) on these variables serves the latent function of appearing to be
concerned but really doing nothing to change the situation, except to make
it appear a lot more complex.


		Will Someone Turn on the Lights?


In fact, project Follow Through
(http://darkwing.uoregon.edu/~adiep/ft/151toc.htm), research on parochial
schools (Bryck) and on effective secondary schools (James Coleman), and our
own (most fortunate) research in schools down here, all show that the major
independent variable--the variable that has the most direct, proximal, and

strongest effect on achievement--the variable that is the easiest and least
expensive to change--is (hold on tight!) curriculum and instruction. That
is, what is taught and how it is taught.


Therefore, you can have high parent involvement, teachers and students with
high expectations, computers in every classroom, strong school leadership,
teacher teaming and supervision, small class size, instruction "adapted to
each student's learning styles" (whatever on earth that might mean), and
any other feature touted by the education professoriate as a "best" (and
necessary) "practice," but if you are still using whole language, fuzzy
math, and student-directed "activity centers" (among other tragi-comic
inventions), you will, as usual, end up with illiterate and math-inept
students (unless their parents get them private tutors).


However, you can have (and we do have) schools serving poor and minority
children, with 60% turnover of students, with little parent involvement,
and with computers no one has yet hooked up, but 88 + % of the children
pass the state tests in reading proficiency, and there is NO discrepancy on
this (or on any other measure so far) between Black and white, affluent or
disadvantaged children.


What is it about these schools that has changed? They use focused,
systematic instruction (in fact, SRA/McGraw-Hill Direct Instruction
curricula) in reading and language, beginning in kindergarten.


	Three Rules: Simplify, Simplify Somemore, Ignore Most Ed Perfessers


Test the kids to determine each kid's stating level and lesson.
Get the materials.
Train the teachers.
Do it faithfully.
The kids all learn.
The school culture changes.
Teachers become sophisticated at instructional design.
Cycle complete


Leaving public schooling to the education professoriate: (1) who create the
inane curricula which are field tested, if at all, only in their
imaginations; (2) who indoctrinate new teachers to their fantastic
"philosophies" and "theories" of learning and their self-bestowed
socio-political agendas, and who leave ed students largely incompetent to
teach anything to mastery (or even to define mastery); and (3) who,
ironically, are the very ones who conduct research on why public schools do
not seem to work very well, especially for our most vulnerable
children--ensures that business will remain exactly as usual.


Beyond simply letting the foxes into the henhouse, we provide these morons
with henhouse kingship in perpetuity.




Battle, J. (1998). What beats having two parents?  Educational Outcomes for
African American students in single- versus dual-parent families.  Journal
of Black Studies, 6, 783-801.


Bernstein, B.B. (1971-75).  Class, codes and control.   London, Routledge
and K. Paul.


Bernstein, B.B. (1999).  The structuring of pedagogic discourse .  London:
Routledge.


Caldas, S.J., & Bankston, C. (1998).  The inequality of sepration:  Racial
composition of schools and academinc achievement.  Educational
Administration Quarterly, 34, 533-557.


Cooper, H., & Moore, C.J. (1995).  Teenage motherhood, mother-only
households, and teacher expectations.  Journal of Experimental Education,
63, 231-249.


Duncan, G.J., Yeung, W.J., Brooks-Gunn, J., & Smith, J.R. (1998).  How much
does childhood poverty affect the life chances of children?  American
Sociological Review, 63, 406-423.


Hamachek, D. (1995).  Expectations revisited: Implications for teahers and
counselors and questions for self-assessment.  Journal of Humanistic
Counseling Education and Development, 34, 65-75.


Hart, B., & Risely, R. (1995).  Meaningful differences in the everyday
experience of young American children.  Baltimore, MD:  P.H. Brookes.


Roscigno, V.J., & Ainsworth-Darnell, J.W. (1999). Race, cultural capital,
and educational resources:  Persistent inequalities and achievement
returns.  Sociology of Education, 72, 158-178.


Trusty, J., & Watts, R.E. (1996).  Relationship between self-concept and
achievement for African American preadolescent. Journal of Humanistic

Counseling Education and Development, 35, 29-40




Martin A. Kozloff
Watson School of Education
University of North Carolina at Wilmington
601 South College Road
Wilmington, NC 28403
910-962-7286
http://www.uncwil.edu/people/kozloffm