The Core Knowledge Blog

One of the most revealing aspects of Fordham’s report on high-achieving kids in the era of NCLB is the accompanying teacher survey:

The national survey findings show that most teachers, at this point in our nation’s history, feel pressure to focus on their lowest-achieving students. Whether that’s because of NCLB we do not know (though teachers are certainly willing to blame the federal law). What’s perhaps most interesting about the teachers’ responses, however, is how committed they are to the principle that all students (regardless of performance level) deserve their fair share of attention and challenges.

This precisely describes my experience teaching 5th grade in the South Bronx. A teacher in a school where the majority of kids read below grade level is unlikely ever to be asked what he or she is doing for kids who are at or above grade level. The immediate concern is triage.

If there’s a problem with the report, it’s that it only looks at kids in the 90th percentile. In struggling schools, the problem goes deeper than that, and the educational neglect can include virtually any kid who is at or above the proficient level. It’s a little distressing to hear such kids described as “gifted.” As soon as you label kids “gifted,” it becomes virtually impossible to get people concerned about their outcome, given the much greater concern about the other end of the spectrum. It’s assumed they’re doing just fine. I’ve had “high-achieving” kids who couldn’t in 5th grade tell you what form of government their country has, who had zero grasp of even rudimentary science concepts, or when asked to name another country beside the U.S. were as likely to answer “New Jersey” as “France.” That’s not an accident, but a real if unintended consequence of the focus on the low achievers.

In short, being a high achieving kid in a lousy school is the equivalent of being the smartest bear in the zoo. If you want to argue, as Andy Rotherham did, that choices have to be made and priorities established, that’s fine. But don’t suggest that they’re doing well. They’re being denied an education, as a de facto policy, which the Fordham report nicely illustrates.

What to do? Ability grouping — tracking — with a robust curriculum would be a good place to start.

Update: Great post by Eduwonkette on all this.