Breaking Out of the "Reformers" Box!

Over the last few years I have pointed out to state education officials that there is a clear pattern that should be obvious to anyone looking at so-called "failing" schools in Louisiana. I shared with leaders the average demographics of the schools threatened with takeover by the state: approximately 95%+ of the students qualify for free or reduced price meals, and approximately 95%+ of the students are African-American. For the record, I am neither making any kind of "predictions" as to the academic achievement of the students in these schools based on "low expectations" nor am I saying that African-American students from low income families cannot learn or achieve high academic standards. On the other hand, I am stating that we should be carefully examining why it is that these are the shared demographics of these schools.

Researchers have found, by and large, that neither race/ethnicity nor the income of families has much to do, directly, with student achievement. What researchers have found, however, is that many of the underlying conditions that are found to impact student achievement are disproportionately distributed by race and income. These underlying conditions, which include such things as number of parents in the home, the number of books in the home, the number of hours of televisions watched, and the number of times a week children are read to, are all powerful predictors of student achievement, and are not under the control of our schools. I asked Paul Pastorek, the State Superintendent, to join with a number of groups looking at developing initiatives to impact some of these out-of-school factors. Instead, he started highlighting what he calls high poverty/high performing schools. None of these schools come close to overcoming the kinds of challenges faced by those schools taken over by the state.

I decided to look for "75/75/75 schools" in Louisiana. These would be schools where 75% or more of the student body was African-American, and at least 75% of the students came from families qualifying for free-or reduced meal prices, and 75% or more of the students in the school met state proficiency standards in both reading and math. I did a search using data from a nationally recognized school data engine, School Data Direct, and discovered the following. In the latest data set, Louisiana had 359 public schools in the state where over 75% of the students were African American, and over 75% of the students were receiving free or reduced meal prices. Out of these 359 schools only one school met the 75/75/75 criteria. I won’t even mention the school’s name, because it is not likely that the school actually created the success, since it is elementary, in New Orleans, and is a school of choice. Due to these factors it would require a bit more analysis to determine if it is the school that is achieving these results, or whether the results are the product of some selective admissions practices, and score-scrubbing which appears to currently be a problem in New Orleans. At any rate, ignoring the patterns of the 358 out of 359 schools does a disservice to the students in those schools, and a policy based on the one school that appears to be an outlier would likely not be fruitful. A policy based on exceptions is not likely to be an exceptionally good policy! Instead, let's work together to develop interventions that impact the underlying conditions!

We must break out of the box that limits education reforms to the limited time that students spend at school!