Achieving High Educational Standards for All Conference Summary (2002) / Chapter Skim
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5 Policy and the Education of Minority and Disadvantaged Students
5 Policy and the Education of Minority and Disadvantaged Students
Pages 68-85
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From page 68... ...
This chapter begins with a brief review of the history of court decisions and legislation related to desegregation, and then discusses the compensatory education programs that were begun in the mid-1960s. It then goes on to discuss education policies associated with court decisions concerning fiscal equity and the legal definition of an "adequate" education.
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From page 69... ...
Board in terms of "the six Rs: rights, resources, requirements, systemic reform, rules, and research-based pedagogy." Here, we turn our attention to Ferguson's first two Rs: rights and resources. In particular, we review how racial segregation and school funding inequities have been addressed by the courts and what is known about how policies related to these issues have affected student learning.
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From page 70... ...
Bradley that predominantly white school districts in suburban Detroit were not required to participate in a metropolitan-wide desegregation plan because the Court found no evidence that the suburban districts had intentionally discriminated against minority students. The outmigration of whites from the central city to the suburbs had left few white children in the Detroit Public Schools.
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From page 71... ...
He also noted that studies rarely paid attention to how desegregation policies were implemented, so the mechanisms by which desegregation exerted greater or lesser effects in different circumstances were unknown. For example, Ferguson argued that it is not enough to know that black and white students attended the same schools without knowing what policies and practices, if any, were being implemented at the school level to promote racial interaction in academic and social contexts.
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From page 72... ...
Orfield noted that while the research tends to show that integration produced some academic benefits for minority children, it is a mistake to consider academic outcomes as the only ones that matter. The larger goal of desegregation policies was to undo the structures supporting the racial polarization of society.
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From page 73... ...
With the goal of improving educational outcomes for students from low-income families, these programs sought to "break the cycle of poverty" by increasing opportunities for student participants to become well-educated and eventually to become gainfully employed. Unlike the court-ordered desegregation plans derived from the Supreme Court's decision in Brown v.
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From page 74... ...
Despite Alamo Heights' lower tax rate, that district provided nearly $600 in funding for each student, compared with only $356 per pupil in Edgewood a figure that also included supplementary antipoverty funding from federal sources. Writing for the Court majority, Justice Powell stated that the right to education is not specifically mentioned in the U.S.
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From page 75... ...
goes on to quote Justice Powell's majority opinion in Rodriguez: "The State [of Texas] repeatedly asserted in its briefs...that it now assures 'every child in every school district an adequate education.' No proof was offered at trial persuasively discrediting or refuting the State's assertion." Rebell added that the Rodriguez case focused almost entirely on funding disparities, and the adequacy of the education provided to students in the Edgewood district was not even discussed by the plaintiffs.
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From page 76... ...
The Kentucky supreme court ruled that not only was the school finance system unconstitutional, but so was the commonwealth's entire education system because it failed to provide students with the "thorough and efficient" education required by Kentucky's constitution. Rebell argues that it is no coincidence that the Rose decision occurred in the same year as the National Education Summit because the case clearly reflects the basic principles of the standards movement, as articulated at the summit.
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From page 77... ...
As discussed below, the Kentucky Educational Reform Act emphasizes capacity building, performance standards, and accountability. The above quote from Superintendent Gray demonstrates how KERA's ac
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From page 78... ...
So, if you have a very low performing student, or a very low performing school, and you say, "This is what you have to do," to the extent that the goal is viewed as out of the realm of possibility, it is not a motivating factor. The Kentucky Educational Reform Act was the legislature's response to the state supreme court's ruling in Rose.
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From page 79... ...
Commenting on Kentucky's experience, workshop participant Lorraine McDonnell emphasized the importance of patience in education reform. She noted that there is a problem in talking about having all children learn to high standards when we "are not dealing with what that means over what time period." She went on to note that educational reform programs too often are implemented "on an electoral cycle instead of on an educational cycle.
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From page 80... ...
The concept of equity motivating school finance reform today is shifting in emphasis from the amount of money spent to the adequacy of the education that the money provides" (National Research Council, l999e:69~. As Adams put it, the legal concept of educational adequacy has shifted the focus of the courts from issues related to the equality of inputs to outputs to the concern that students from all backgrounds should have a reasonable expectation of obtaining an adequate education, as it is defined by each state.
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From page 81... ...
(Note: Head Start and Title I are two large education programs that trace their origins to the mid-1960s and the Johnson administration's War on Poverty. Although Head Start is discussed briefly in Chapter 2, and evidence of the effectiveness of Head Start and Title I is briefly discussed by Ferguson [in this volume]
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From page 82... ...
Perhaps even more importantly, many state governments have made standards and accountability the centerpiece of their education policies (Curran, 1999~. Many scholars who participated in the conference and its workshops, including lay Heubert, lacob Adams, Michael Rebell, Lorraine McDonnell, Jennifer O'Day, Julie Underwood, and Catherine Snow, emphasized that standards-based reform has several elements that must be well aligned if the reform program is to succeed.
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From page 83... ...
That is, educators should not have to choose between failing a large number of students or allowing those students to graduate or progress to the next grade without having achieved established performance standards. Instead, Heubert argued a better use of testing and performance standards would be to conduct early and frequent formative assessments to diagnose students' needs, tailor instruction, and target educational resources.
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From page 84... ...
According to Heubert, the percentage of students especially minority and disadvantaged students who do not graduate from high school was already very high before states and school districts began their most recent round of increases in graduation and promotion requirements (National Research Council, l999c:128-132, 2001c)
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From page 85... ...
The outcome also will depend on the willingness of the public and public officials to devote the resources needed to improve instructional capacity and to make sure that the resources are used wisely. Finally, much also will depend on the availability and use of high-quality research to guide educators and policy makers as they decide how best to make education spending matter.
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