Tracking and Test-Score Gap, could it work?

Just in advance, this post is more designed to inspire talk, because I wish to see what everyone has to say about this rather heated topic.

As Maureen Hallinan has so properly pointed out to us, tracking is a system in which theory is designed to focus the education of the student by pairing them into similar groups of knowledge and ability. This sounds like a great solution to help bring up the overall grades of a failing school. Use this program to target those kids that are in the most need of help and provide them with special attention to help improve their intelligence while not making the students who are at the higher end of the level bored and lose interest.

With this concept, not only are students being helped out but the job is easier on the teacher as well. With tracking no longer will you have students who vary widely in their test scores, but you can focus on a particular group, because that group is the only group within your classroom.


This sounds great! However, with this (in practice) has become a huge issue involving segregation and many other issues at hand. Hallinan does a very comprehensive job explaining all of the pros, cons, and ways to improve the tracking system to make it a better and more effective system.

The question I pose to everyone is this. Can tracking help failing schools and improve the test-score gap? While the social aspects of "segregating" the low SES and ethnic children into the lower level classes is a monsterous issue, would not the benefits of allowing these students to move at their own pace out number these in the long run? Or does tracking involve the opposite and simply further increase the test-score gap as smart kids get smarter while the lower tracked kids just try to keep up?

Financial Equality Not The Answer

School funding comes from a number of sources, but the main source is property tax. The more your house is worth, the more your school should recieve. Money has been seen as an tool used to create inequality in the schools and has been manipulated to correct inequalities. In 1965, Congress passed Title 1 in which over $100 billion has been dispensed to school districts with high concentrations of "impoverished" students (Traub, 55). Lawsuits and court decisions have also attempt to equalize spending amoung schools and districts. Many of these results have had mixed reviews, but they are also hard to track because of the complex nature of gather the information. Equalilizing the school finance system will not necessarily lead to more equality in educational opportunity. Even if spending per pupil was the same accross the nation, inequalities would still exist.

"A child living in an inner city is in school for only so many hours. It's the rest of the day- as well as the rest of the neighborhood- that's the big influence and the problem," -James Traub.

Unfortunately, schools are not equal because communities, families, and students are not equal. Students face a plethora of challenges in inner cities as vividly shown in Amazing Grace. Youth witnessing murders, drug use, parents dying of AIDS, who have a lack of sleep, health care, safety, sanitation, and confidence are on unequal grounds before the first bell rings. Not to say that amazing things cannot happen, but that is what it is, amazing, when it does happen.

The government has so much money, as do the communities in which they are attempting to assist. With the Colman Report, maybe this money should focus on the social aspects that contiune this vicisous cycle. Reforming the spending on per pupil might sound great but if the greatest hinderance to a child success happens out of school, pumping more money into schools might just be putting bandaids on a gunshot wound. Schools cannot and should not be seen as the insititution that can cure the social ills all by itself.

Families, Communities and Schools: Why aren't parents involved?

The school will teach children how to read, but the environment of the home must teach them what to read. The school can teach them how to think, but the home must teach them what to believe. - Charles A. Wells

Successful family involvement is not a sporadic activity. It is a sustained commitment to instill the habits of learning and to set high expectations. It is making connections to teachers and schools not only when trouble arises, but as a part of the everyday process of children’s schooling. - U.S. Secretary of Education


The above quotes express what all of this week’s authors seemed to agree upon- the importance of parental involvement in today’s school systems. In Lareau’s article she states that parental behavior is a major factor in educational performance, and that teachers have now made it a priority to increase participation (Lareau 1987). Hoover Dempsey and Sandler state that “parental involvement in child and adolescent education generally benefits children’s learning and school success (Hoover –Dempsey, Sandler 1997). There has been a lot of discussion about ways and methods to get parents involved in the education of their children, but I’d rather not focus on that right now. I’d like for us to discuss reasons why we think parents aren’t as involved as they could and should be.

Lareau mentioned three major reasons for the lack of parental involvement in society. The first was the culture poverty-thesis, which basically suggests that lower and working class families do not value education as much as middle and upper class families do. The second placed the blame on individual schools, saying that they make middle class families feel more welcome than working and lower class families. Also included in this second reason is the individual teacher and his or her leadership capabilities. The third reason mentioned involves cultural capital and differing social and cultural experiences among educational leaders and parents (1997).

Maybe we need to first start with what we think parental involvement should look like. One example is the Caswell County Training School, the focus of the article by Emilie V. Siddle Walker. The article described the school as being driven by parent and community involvement. Parents were involved in pretty much every aspect of the school, from student transportation to providing student and teacher resources, to facility expansion. PTA meetings at the school were frequently filled to capacity and teachers were required to attend. Mandatory attendance for teachers meant that parents knew that any issues they needed to address with their child’s teacher could be brought up before or after the meetings. Could this have led to a sense of empowerment for parents that may be lacking now?

What do you think? Is the Caswell County Training School an accurate picture of how involved you think parents should be, or is too extreme? Do you think Lareau’s reasons are valid in explaining the lack of parental involvement today? Do you think that parents have less of an influence on their children now than in decades past, so maybe they feel investing in their educations will be fruitless? I’m including this link to a 45 second video of a parent who puts the blame on educators- video. Do you think she's right? I’m interested to see what everyone thinks!

related links
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http://life.familyeducation.com/peer-pressure/self-image/36377.html
http://www.plti-alex.org/
http://www.hfrp.org/publications-resources/browse-our-publications/adolescence-are-parents-relevant-to-students-high-school-achievement-and-post-secondary-attainment

Open Topic: Parents are Needed

“If parents value schooling and think it is important, then kids take it seriously.”
-- Prescott School Principal, 1987

“The former slaves’ fundamental belief in the value of literate culture was expressed most clearly in their efforts to secure schooling for themselves and their children.”
-- J. Anderson, 1988

Many studies have shown the benefits of parental involvement in children’s education. This week we read about the effect it can have on children’s academic success and on the reasons behind why parents do or do not become involved in participating.

In Annette Lareau’s study on “Social Class Differences in Family-School Relationships: The Importance of Social Capital,” she found that overall parents from a middle-class school were much more involved with the school and had a more interdependent relationship, compared to the independent relationship she observed in a working-class school (1987).

Furthermore, Kathleen Hoover-Dempsey and Howard Sandler look at the reasons behind why parents “become involved in their children’s education” (1997). Basically, Hoover-Dempsey and Sandler found that schools need to not only invite parents to become involved in the school, but they also need to address what individual parents’ role construction (their idea of what and how a parent should be involved) and sense of efficacy for even wanting to help their children in school.

How can schools invite parents to participate, encourage parents to take a more active role in their child’s schooling and actually help parents believe that they can make a difference?

Over the course of the semester, we have learned about the evolution of schools and how they began in one-room school houses (with the teachers living in a family’s home) and progressed to the current education system we have in place now. Although it has not always been explicit, we have seen examples of parents taking an active role in educating their children. When the freed slaves wanted to educate themselves and their children they rallied together and started schools with their own money; education to them meant “liberation and freedom” (Anderson, 1988). Today, how can parents of all different backgrounds “prove” that they value education?

In comparing schools, Lareau observed that the parents from the middle-class school took a very active role in participating; they attended Open Houses, read to their children on a regular basis, and knew a lot about their child and their classroom. Unfortunately, she did not find nearly as much commitment from the working-class parents.

Pierre Bourdieu would remark that cultural capital influences the amount of involvement by the parents (1973). Transportation, time off from work, access to Internet and other resources all make parental involvement a lot easier for the middle-class parents compared to the working-class parents. Bourdieu would suggest that schools should openly teach parents how to become involved and expose the educational system’s hidden expectations. However, Lareau urges that further research needs to be conducted to truly understand the effects of cultural capital.

If we believe Bourdieu, and believe that students whose parents are involved benefit more and achieve higher success, then don’t we, as future educators, need to reinvent creative ways for teachers and school administrators to involve all parents, of all backgrounds, to become involved in their child’s education? Lareau states:

“It is important to stress that if the schools were to promote a different type of family-school relationship, the class culture of middle-class parents might not yield a social profit. The data do not reveal that the social relations of middle-class culture are intrinsically better than the social relations of working-class culture...Instead, the social profitability of middle-class arrangements is tied to the schools' definition of the proper family-school relationship” (p. 82, 1987).

Is there a way to help all parents to take a more active role in education, regardless of their own personal educational and occupational position?

Local Situation:
Currently, Metro Schools has school level, cluster level and a Parent Advisory Board to involve parents in the schools. At the school level, Metro lists a wide range of possible ways to be involved: sports events, parent groups, cafeteria and bus duty and more (http://www.mnps.org/Page2779.aspx). Additionally, the cluster level involves key parents from each school within a certain cluster (geographic location). The goal of clusters is to share ideas between schools and try to improve the city’s schools. Are these levels enough for all parents, or are these levels further encouraging a divide between the parents who have the time to attend the meetings and volunteer and the ones who have to work full-time and are unable to volunteer?

I am not arguing that increasing parental involvement is the silver bullet to our education system. But I have to wonder, what would our education system look like if all parents did take a more active role? What defines an "active role?" A few weeks ago, Zach and Nicole led us in a discussion about the “ideal classroom” inspired from reading John Dewey. Looking back, would increased parental involvement be one of the necessities for that ideal school?




Other interesting links:
http://www.tnpta.org/
http://www.ptotoday.com/index.php
http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m0KOC/is_/ai_n21093607

FYI: From the Nashville Post

School rezoning plan will save less than anticipated

Anticipated savings down to $1.2 million

By Nate Rau

09-30-2008 9:18 PM — The initial estimated net savings from the rezoning plan passed by Metro's school board in July will be less than originally anticipated, it was announced at a special work session on Tuesday.

Board members, at the time the plan was approved, were told the rezoning plan would save about $2 million through the closing of certain schools with smaller attendance numbers. That number is down to $1.2 million, according to an initial estimate released by the district.

Because the school board has promised $4.7 million in improvements to schools affected by the rezoning - in particular Pearl-Cohn High - there is a gap of approximately $3.5 million for the next fiscal year. That gap does not factor in capital costs, which could be extensive considering Wharton and Madison schools both need significant renovations.

Neither does it factor in transportation costs, according to Interim Director Chris Henson. Additionally, the $4.7 million promised by the board assumes a differentiated pay for teachers of 5 percent.

No matter how large the gap ends up because of additional costs, the board members remained committed to writing it into the next budget.

"There is no room for interpretation here," board member Steve Glover said. "We have said, as a board, this is going to be a part of the budget package. We have said, pretty clearly, this will be a part of it. It's not negotiable."

Several board members said it was their obligation to provide the funds promised when the rezoning plan was passed in order to ease tension in the community. Some have called the plan a "re-segregation" plan because it makes certain schools less diverse.

"Generally out there, there's a trust issue with government in general and with the school board in particular," board member Mark North said. "My position on dealing with distrust is that the only way to do it is to be trustworthy.

"And we're going to do what we say we're going to do. When we make commitments, we stand by them. We plan to fulfill them."

The work session also included discussion for how to communicate to parents the changes as a result of the plan. Communicating changes as a result of the rezoning plan could begin in November.