First of all let me say that this is not a teacher-bashing blog. I respect teachers and I’m fully aware of the difficult challenges they face on a daily basis. Teachers are not solely responsible for the persistent academic achievement gap that exists between white students and students of color, especially black and Latino students at the elementary and secondary levels. But teachers do have a responsibility in closing the learning gap and can play a leading role in helping students believe in their own potential. It is that responsibility that I want to discuss in this blog.
The achievement gap (which some call the opportunity gap because of its class impact) is getting a lot of attention these days and rightfully so. If the gap is not closed the repercussions will be felt throughout the society for many years to come. The achievement gap contributes to broken neighborhoods, lost opportunities and a waste of tremendous talent that we can ill afford. Our colleges will be directly impacted because the achievement gap leads to soaring high school dropout rates and lower college admission and retention rates. We all have a stake in eliminating the gap.
In the past 20 years a wide range of scholars, politicians, community activists, parents and a host of others have weighed in on this challenge. While many have offered a number of reasons why the gap persists, there is still not a single solution that school districts can adopt to eliminate the problem in their districts. If the gap is poverty based, that suggests an economic solution-helping families and individuals get out of poverty and into the middle class. Unless I’m badly mistaken I don’t see our politicians funding a Marshall Plan or GI-type programs for our inner cities and rural areas anytime soon; so like so many other problems in this country we have to repair the plane while its flying.
Despite the constraints of our current faulty system, we still have to go forward in search of the silver bullet. Our job is to keep experimenting regardless of the obstacles that we face. There’s simply too much at stake. There have been successful models created that have closed and or eliminated the gap. Some have been district wide strategies while others have been school-level approaches. While these are still too few in number, we need to share and clone them.
Nearly all of the successful programs report positive and supportive attitudes on the part of teachers. The truth is that study after study has demonstrated that teacher expectations greatly affect student performance. Unfortunately these same studies report that Black and Latino students receive more negative behavioral feedback and more mixed messages from teachers than do white students.
Here are what researchersGood (1981) and Kuykendall (1991) discovered when they studied how teachers in the public classroom were behaving towards black students. They found that teachers were:
Their research suggests if teachers simply reversed each of these behaviors, student achievement would improve measurably. Think about that-a dramatic change could occur in the classroom if culpable teachers just changed their attitudes and believed that all students could excel. This behavioral change doesn’t require any additional funding or resources. It’s a change that every school district with an academic achievement gap could put in place next week. It’s a change that can be monitored by parents and classroom observers. More importantly it’s a transformation that teachers can make themselves.
Just imagine if teachers who currently engage in these 9 anti-self-esteem practices reversed their behavior and pledged to be the champion in the classroom that our kids need to be successful. What a wonderful place our public schools would become.
Asking teachers to change their behavior doesn’t let parents, students or others off the hook-that’s another blog. This blog is focusing on teachers and the role they must play in turning things around.
