The Right Thing to Do, The Smart Thing to Do Enhancing Diversity in the Health Professions -- Summary of the Symposium on Diversity in Health Professions in Honor of Herbert W. Nickens, M.D. (2001) / Chapter Skim
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Systemic Reform and Minority Student High Achievement
Systemic Reform and Minority Student High Achievement
Pages 260-280
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From page 260... ...
The dimensions of the underrepresentation problem have been well examined in Reaching the Top, a 1999 report of the College Board's National Task Force on Minority High Achievement. According to the task force report, student performance differentials by race and ethnicity appear as early as elementary school and persist through college (College Entrance Examination Board, 1999~.
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From page 261... ...
Instead, the SAT I scores of minority students ove~predict performance at traditionally white colleges and universities (Bowen & Bok, 1998; College Entrance Examination Board, 1999~. In other words, within the same range of SAT I scores, the average college grades of minority students are lower than the average college grades of white students.
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From page 262... ...
MODERN SYSTEMIC REFORM AND HIGH-STAKES TESTING Our purpose in this paper is to explore the extent to which the current American educational reform movement is achieving the important goal of substantially improving overall student achievement, and especially high achievement, while at the same time reducing achievement gaps among racial and ethnic groups. The fundamental presumption of modern educational reform is that all children should have equal access to high-quality contemporary curricula, and that all students (or in practical terms, nearly all)
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From page 263... ...
Smith argued that without adequate resources available to schools that serve poor and minority students, higher standards would lead to an increase in the achievement gap and greater levels of failure for minority and poor children. Adequate resources, including qualified teachers, adequate facilities, and proper instructional materials, constitute what is often called "opportunity to learn" (Rothstein, 2001~.
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From page 264... ...
HISTORICAL ANTECEDENTS OF SYSTEMIC REFORM STRATEGIES Neither high-stakes testing nor standards setting—components of the modern systemic reform movement is new. With roots that go back at least two millennia to the civil service examination system of the Han Dynasty (206 B.C.220 A.D.)
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From page 265... ...
The premise underlying the CEEB system was that by making the standards for college admission clear, and by using these standards to create a common college entrance examination, high schools with good teachers could reliably prepare diligent students for admission to selective Ivy League colleges. This same premise that good teaching and student diligence rather than extraordinary talent or privilege are the essential prerequisites for academic success is an axiom of modem educational policy.
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From page 266... ...
Certainly, for at least three decades beginning in 1960, the SAT and the ACT were used by selective public and private colleges and universities to identify minority students who they believed, by virtue of their test scores, had the potential to succeed. In places where affirmative action policies in college admissions have been ended, it can conversely be argued that the SAT is now a hurdle to minority access to higher education because, as described above, relatively few minority students receive high scores on standardized tests.
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From page 267... ...
Many states adopted minimum competency testing and, going beyond federal requirements, included such testing as part of their high school graduation requirements (Texas Education Agency, 1996~. The use of testing in Title I of ESEA provided a model for the use of testing in state education reforms ofthe 1990s (Ravitch, 1995~.
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From page 268... ...
In a cohort analysis comparing the scores of 1996 eighth graders with those of 1992 fours graders California appears to have done a slightly better job than Texas in supporting ongoing student mathematics learning. If, however, one compares state scores at fixed grade levels i.e., 1992 fourth graders with 1996 fourth graders and 1992 eighth graders with 1996 eighth graders it appears that Texas has done a better job in supporting student learning.
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From page 269... ...
The data clearly indicate that younger students have made significantly greater progress than have older students (Loveless & Diperna, 2000~.~° Indeed, the increases in reading and mathematics learning gains from grades 8 to 12 are about one-third the gains from grades 4 to 8. 'I One of the few findings about which there is broad agreement is that learning gains decrease as students move through the American education system.
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From page 270... ...
In a separate study, Grissmer and Flanagan used census figures to adjust NAEP data that rely on student reports of key variables such as family income about which children may be poor judges (Grissmer & Flanagan, 2001~. Grissmer and Flanagan then disaggregated adjusted state NAEP data by geographic locality—urban, suburban, and rural to see the breadth of effect that state policy has on student learning gains.
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From page 271... ...
Finally, disaggregation by ethnicity is especially important because the raison d'etre of systemic reform is to achieve equity in the educational system. A look at state NAEP data in the 1990s shows that no state at any grade level has shown statistically significant gains across all academic subjects, ethnic and racial groups, and localities.
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From page 272... ...
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From page 273... ...
13 Texas Assessment of Academic Skills Texas has a comparatively long history with systemic reform and has made an unusually large investment in collecting data on school and school district performance, including student test performance (Texas Education Agency, 1996~. Moreover, because of a recent high-profile legal challenge to the state's testing system,~4 and a Texan's prominence in the 2000 presidential election race, these Texas data have received careful scrutiny.
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From page 274... ...
274 THE RIGHT THING TO DO, THE SMART THING TO DO tional pattern, despite considerable political attention and substantial state funds dedicated to improving reading performance. Similar data exist for the middle school years.
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From page 275... ...
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From page 276... ...
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From page 277... ...
A close look at Texas education between 1980 and 2000 suggests that for systemic reform to have its intended effect, schools and school systems need to have certain capacities and supports (Treisman & Fuller, 2001~. In Texas, a series of successful court challenges to the state's system of financing education addressed massive inequities in local capacity to offer the kind of education envisioned in the state's standards.~S Rural and urban schools, as well as schools with high proportions of poor children, received large increases in state aid that allowed them to create "opportunities to learn." Further, a broad-based coalition of business leaders heavily engaged in strengthening Texas education through a standards-based approach counterbalanced the natural legislative tendency to is In the case of Edgewood Independent School District et al.
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From page 278... ...
We must invest in building the extracurricular institutions that have produced so many of today's senior professionals (College Entrance Examination Board, 1999) , and we must charge these institutions with building a generation of professionals that reflects our increasingly diverse population.
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From page 279... ...
Washington, DC: Brookings Institution Press. Texas Education Agency.
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From page 280... ...
New York: College Entrance Examination Board.
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