The Money Myth: School Resources, Outcomes, and Equity

Chapter 8: Correcting Dynamic Inequality in Practice: Exploring What Schools Do for Low-Performing Students

Chapter 8 Correcting Dynamic Inequality in Practice:ExploringWhat Schools Do for Low-Performing Students IN THE PREVIOUS chapter, I confirmed that inequality among students increases over the period from eighth to tenth to twelfth grade, in a pattern I have referred to as dynamic inequality. The increases over time are most strongly related to family background and to demographic variables, including race and ethnicity, though there is some evidence that school resources and improvements in student commitment to schooling can moderate dynamic inequality. Furthermore, dynamic inequality increases not steadily but in bursts—for example, when students move from middle school to high school—so the question of what schools do to moderate dynamic inequality includes the question of how they treat transitions.These patterns and the finding that school resources are now allocated in ways that reduce dynamic inequality only a little raise, first, the descriptive question of what (if anything) schools are doing to break this pattern (especially under the pressure of state accountability and No Child Left Behind) and second, the normative question of what schools could do to achieve dynamic equity. For elementary and secondary education, the initial question centers on what schools are doing for their lowest-performing students: what are they doing to help low-performing students learn at rates at least equal to other students, and how are they helping with transitions and other potential bursts of inequality? In the language often used in school finance, we should see what schools are doing to “level up” low-performing stu- dents, and we certainly would hope not to see schools “leveling down,” or narrowing inequalities and achievement gaps by neglecting highperforming students. A substantial literature on interventions tends to focus on specific programs or practices—on the effectiveness, for instance , of such programs as Open Court or Read 180, or of after-school programs or tutoring—rather than on what individual schools do. But students experience the practices that schools adopt. In shifting the focus from particular practices to schools, three colleagues and I have examined an exploratory sample of schools1—a sample large enough to enable us to detect patterns, though obviously too small to be widely representative , particularly because our sample is confined to the San Francisco BayArea. In the next section, I describe the twelve public schools and our methods of collecting information about their practices for students who are behind—practices that could potentially minimize dynamic inequality. I concentrate for now on school-level actions, postponing until chapter 10 a discussion of the district, state, and federal policies that might improve dynamic inequality. I next evaluate some of the practices that schools have adopted to help low-performing students. Many schools incorporate general practices, like after-school programs and tutoring.Others use specific curricula,usually labeled interventions, that target different levels of the K–12 system; these programs emphasize reading and math and are usually self-contained. I review here not only whether these programs are effective but also how schools (and sometimes districts) “choose” among alternatives, often in casual and poorly informed ways. The concluding section summarizes some implications for the allocation of resources,broadly defined in ways consistent with the improved school finance , and for educational policy. I then return to the different versions of dynamic equity raised in chapter 6 and argue that this conception poses substantial challenges to the existing system of education. AN EXPLORATORY SAMPLE OF PRACTICES AT TWELVE SCHOOLS Educational institutions at virtually all levels—at various points in K–12 education , including ninth grade; in community colleges and four-year colleges ; even in graduate school—develop special programs for students who are behind their peers or who are behind standards (sometimes ill defined) that establish what students should know.And thankfully so: the alternatives are either more stringent “admissions” requirements to make sure that underprepared students never advance to the next level or “sink or swim” attitudes toward students who lack basic skills and who are thus left to suffer on their own.The ubiquity of remedial or intervention efforts is testimony to a 176 The Money Myth powerful American belief in second chances and in institutional rather than individual responsibility for student progress. At every level, the practices that educational institutions follow vary considerably . It is often difficult to understand such variation because case studies often focus on apparently exemplary efforts—for example, the analysis of Railside School, which adopts a...