Starting From the Bottom: Why Mexicans are the Most Successful Immigrants in America

I applaud this research as it provides an appropriate framing of success.  While so many groups begin at the proverbial "bottom," that bottom is demonstrably different across groups.  Not unlike other groups, it's clear that Mexicans immigrants aspire to higher education.

"Asian American exceptionalism" is also a myth that is harmful to all groups, Asian Americans, included.  "Stereotype promise" can indeed help some students achieve in schools; the downside though is becoming an "outlier" within one's own group, creating stressful environments for others. 

Along with this re-framing of the achievement debate—oftentimes cast psychologically in terms of "grit" and "impulse control," this research will help dispel the myth that "Mexican American parents don't care" about their children's education. 

My own research in Subtractive Schooling concurs with these findings and further illuminates why generational differences in student achievement and attitudes toward schools exist.

Angela Valenzuela

Starting From the Bottom: Why Mexicans are the Most Successful Immigrants in America 

A new study from UC Irvine and UCLA challenges our definition of success

By Mitch Moxley

Photo by Gareth Davies

Who’s more successful: The child of Chinese immigrants who is now a prominent attorney, or a second-generation Mexican who completed high school and now holds a stable, blue collar job?

The answer depends on how you define success.

In fact, according to a study by University of California, Irvine, Sociology Professor Jennifer Lee and UCLA Sociology Professor Min Zhou, contrary to stereotypes, Mexican-Americans are the most successful second-generation group in the country. The reason is simple: The study considered not just where people finished, but from where they started.

The report serves as counter-point to arguments raised by Amy Chua, a Yale Law School professor better known as the Tiger Mom. In a new book, The Triple Package, Chua and her husband, Jed Rubenfeld, argue that some groups—namely Chinese, Jews, Cubans, and Nigerians—are more successful than others because they possess certain cultural traits that enable them to be.

In a nutshell, Chua’s “Triple Package” includes: a cultural superiority complex, impulse control, and insecurity. Combined, the authors assert, these traits drive the groups to succeed within a broader American culture that is comparatively lackadaisical. They base their argument on an analysis of test scores, educational achievement, median household income, and other factors.

The UC study, however, argues that it’s not any specific cultural trait that makes groups like Chinese-Americans more successful than others. Lee and Zhou say both Chinese-American and Mexican-American parents highly value education. Most parents do. But the reason Chinese-Americans get ahead is because they start ahead. Way ahead, in many cases.

The study, called “The Success Frame and Achievement Paradox: The Cost and Consequences for Asian-Americans,” looked at Chinese-, Vietnamese-, and Mexican-Americans in Los Angeles whose parents immigrated to the U.S. At first glance, the study’s findings seem to reinforce claims made by Chua and her supporters: Children of Chinese immigrants far exceeded other groups when it came to educational outcomes. Sixty-four percent of Chinese immigrants’ children graduated from college, compared to 46 percent of native-born whites in L.A. Of the Chinese-American college graduates, 22 percent went on to attain graduate degrees.

Asian-American kids, the study found, have good role models and extra help from family and community when it comes to schooling. They also benefit from well-educated parents who put them in good schools and push them into high-income, high-status professions, including medicine, pharmacy, engineering, and law.

Mexican-Americans had the lowest level of educational attainment in the study. Eighty-six percent had graduated from high school, compared to 100 percent of the Chinese-Americans, and just 17 percent had graduated from college.

Fundamental to Chinese-Americans’ overall level of success is that their parents are already highly educated. Chinese immigrant parents were by far the most highly educated in the study—in L.A., 60 percent of Chinese immigrant fathers and 40 percent of Chinese immigrant mothers had a bachelor’s degree or higher. According to a separate study by Pew Research Center, 61 percent of recent Asian immigrants between the ages of 25 and 64 had a bachelor’s degree, which is more than double the U.S. average.

Meanwhile, Mexican-Americans’ high school graduation rate was more than double that of their parents, and their college graduation rate more than doubled that of their fathers and tripled that of their mothers. According to Lee, the results are clear: When success is measured as progress from generation to generation, Mexican-Americans come out on top.

The study found that Mexican parents strongly value education, but that their frame of academic achievement is less exacting than Chinese-American parents. They emphasize finishing high school, possibly going to college—though not necessarily an elite one—and having some kind of career. Mexicans aspiring to higher education, the study found, look toward good colleges in the L.A. area, and often settle on community colleges in their neighborhoods. Because many Mexican parents have a relatively low level of education, they were not as well-equipped to help their children succeed as Chinese-American parents.

“My mom never said to me to, ‘Get an A.’ She said, ‘Do your best,’” Nadia, a 28-year-old second-generation Mexican-American who is working toward her master’s in education, told the researchers. Nadia was the first in her family to go to college and pursued a graduate degree even though her parents didn’t understand the point of staying in school beyond a bachelor’s degree.

Lee found that second-generation Mexican-Americans who attained the highest education outcomes had access to public resources at their schools such as zero periods, College Bound programs, and AP classes, in which students learned how to apply for colleges. Many also had a teacher, guidance counselor, or coach who encouraged them along the way and guided them through the college application process.

Consider Camille, one of the study’s subjects. A 27-year-old second-generation Mexican woman who earned a bachelor’s and master’s degree from the University of Southern California, Camille’s parents arrived in the U.S. as unauthorized immigrants and worked in garment factories. Her parents wanted her and her twin sister to attend college but had no way to help them.

After high school, the twins attended a local community college, where Camille met a guidance counselor who guided her through the admissions process to a four-year college. After Camille was accepted by USC, the counselor visited her parents to persuade them of the merits of allowing their daughter to leave home for school. “She really went above and beyond,” Camille said.

The point of the study, Lee says, was to reframe the debate about what success means.

“We wanted to understand how parents’ position and parents’ immigration status, how their level of education, how all of these factors then shape how the second generation frames success,” she says. “We really wanted to reframe the debate about success.”

Professor Jennifer Lee of University of California, Irvine.

Photo by Zócalo Public Square

Lee says that in the U.S., Asian-Americans benefit from a broad cultural belief in “Asian-American exceptionalism”—that Asians are inherently brighter and more hard-working than others—while other groups, such as Mexican-Americans and African-Americans, are subjected to negative stereotypes.

In elite U.S. universities, Asian-Americans make up a disproportionate percentage of the student population. Although they comprise just 5.5 percent of the American population, Asian-Americans account for just under one-fifth of the entering class at schools such as Harvard, Yale, and Princeton. At University of California, Berkeley, they make up 43 percent of the student body, but they are just 13 percent of the state’s population. Chinese parents also define success narrowly and invest their resources in their sons and daughters achieving it. (This is also, Lee says, why you don’t see many Chinese-Americans in careers such as writing, acting, fashion, and art.)

Lee argues that Asian-American students gain from this “stereotype promise”—the idea that being viewed through the lens of positive stereotypes can serve as a performance booster. In her research, she has found that positive stereotypes about Asian-Americans are reinforced in schools by teachers, guidance counselors, and administrators. In some cases, Asian students with mediocre grades in junior high were placed in advanced classes in high school regardless. (Stereotype promise can have a negative effect as well; Asian-Americans who are not high achieving reported feeling like outliers.)

Comparing different ethnic groups and their places in society, Lee often uses a baseball analogy. Asian-Americans, she says, tend to end up on the third base of life. But “their parents are so highly-educated, they almost start the race to get ahead on third base,” Lee says. “But all we see is that they’ve made it to third base. That’s not to say they don’t work hard to get there. They do. But they have certain advantages that other groups don’t have.”

Mexican-Americans, Lee says, are starting from behind home plate. “In the sense that they come [to the U.S.] much more poorly educated than the average American, they have a lot more catching up to do just to get to where the average American is. For Mexican-Americans, the fact that their children make it to first or second base is enormous progress.”

Mitch Moxley has written for publications including GQ, the Atlantic, and Grantland, and he is the features editor at Roads & Kingdoms. Follow him on Twitter.

The Latino Education Crisis Rescuing the American Dream

Check out the full report.
-Patricia

By: Patricia Gandara

The education achievement gap between Latinos — the nation's largest and fastest growing minority group — and most other students is enormous, and in many cases growing. In fact, Latinos in the United States have made almost no progress in college completion rates during the last three decades, according to Patricia Gándara in a new WestEd Policy Perspectives paper.

In The Latino Education Crisis: Rescuing the American Dream, Gándara, Co-Director of the Civil Rights Project at the University of California, Los Angeles, observes that, in 2008, Latinos were about half as likely as African Americans and a third as likely as Whites to obtain a college degree. Especially in states like California and Texas, where Latinos make up half of the public school students, this means a large segment of the population will be ill-equipped for the education-intensive careers of the 21st century.

Educational attainment is not the only problem these students face. Gándara notes that student achievement is highly correlated to household income and parental academic attainment — two other areas in which Latinos trail other groups.

In this paper, Gándara outlines a program of known policy interventions to help narrow the Latino education gap. The interventions Gándara lays out to address this crisis acknowledge the interconnectedness of homes, schools, and communities.

Young Latino Children Show Strong Classroom Skills, Despite Many Growing Up in Poverty

A couple notable findings:
“Culture and language growth play a huge role in boosting achievement, which we now see benefit many Latino children.”

"those attending highly segregated or violent schools went downhill in their own school achievement (Suárez-Orosco and others).

-Patricia

The American Psychological Association
May 3, 2010

But for teens, peer pressure, mediocre schools undercut initial gains.

WASHINGTON – Immigrant Latinos display strong parenting practices and raise socially agile children, but these early gains are likely to be eroded by mediocre schools and peer pressure in poor neighborhoods, according to findings published by the American Psychological Association.

In a special section of the journal Developmental Psychology, a team of researchers examines how no-nonsense parenting practices – especially Latino traditions of strict discipline, respect for adults and strong family bonds – shape children’s social and cognitive growth and their assimilation into mainstream culture.

“Immigrant kids begin school with surprisingly good social skills, eager to engage teachers and classroom tasks, even though many are raised in poor households,” said Bruce Fuller, PhD, of the University of California at Berkeley, who co-edited the special section. “This stems from tight families and tough-headed parenting. Our findings shatter the myth that immigrant or low-income parents necessarily produce troubled children.”

One study, based on 19,500 kindergartners nationwide, found that Latino children engaged in classroom activities and displayed cooperative skills at levels equal to those of white non-Latino children, despite vast differences in family income between the groups. In addition, Latino children’s social skills contributed to their learning about numbers and mathematical concepts during this first year of school, the researchers found.

But children’s social agility and classroom enthusiasm often wanes by middle school, according to the researchers. “These children benefit from a strong foundation against outside negative forces, which contributes to their early school achievement but fades over time, especially during adolescence,” said Cynthia García Coll, PhD, of Brown University, co-editor of the special section. “Assimilation places many children at risk of losing tight bonds to family and [experiencing] school failure.”

The national study of Latino kindergartners included teacher reports of five social competencies: engaged approaches to learning, self-control, interpersonal skills, internalized problem behaviors (anxiety, loneliness, low self-esteem) and externalized problem behaviors (propensity to argue, get angry, act impulsively). “Those Latino children who were the best at focusing on learning tasks showed the steepest learning curves in math,” said Claudia Galindo, PhD, a University of Maryland professor who co-directed the study.

Children from African-American homes did not show comparable levels of classroom engagement and social agility. “Poverty alone does not explain the strength of parenting or the social assets that children bring to school,” Fuller said. “Culture and language growth play a huge role in boosting achievement, which we now see benefit many Latino children.”

Children from Puerto Rican families, in contrast to those of Mexican heritage, showed disparities in social competence when compared to white non-Latino children. Children of Cuban or South American descent (whose parents had higher education levels, on average) showed equal competence when compared to white non-Latino children.

Two additional studies in the journal’s special section show how early gains for Latino children can be undercut during adolescence through peer pressure, weak schools and the perception of ethnic discrimination. In the first study, Latino teens who pulled away from parents and their ethnic identity displayed weaker school engagement (Umaña-Taylor and Guimond). When teens perceived ethnic or racial discrimination, they tended to retain stronger family ties that strengthened their ethnic identity, the researchers found.

The second study – tracking 294 older Latino and Asian immigrant children – found that those attending highly segregated or violent schools went downhill in their own school achievement (Suárez-Orosco and others). The rising rate of single-parent families in many immigrant communities is associated with a drop in children’s school performance.

Other findings include:

* Young Latino children’s enthusiasm and agility in classrooms stems from warm yet firm parenting practices (Livas-Dlott and others). Researchers observed 25 Mexican-American 4-year-olds inside their homes and found that mothers on average were clear and direct when children misbehaved or failed to complete an assigned task. This tough-love parenting occurred within a supportive climate, nurturing cooperative children who expressed mutual obligations to family members, researchers said.

* Another study shows how strong customs from one’s native country can promote learning by teaching children to pay attention to what is going on in front of them (Lopez and others). Researchers gave instructions to 38 6- to 11-year-old siblings in order to examine differences in learning processes between those raised under Mexican traditions and those raised by parents who practiced American customs. Children paid more attention to their siblings’ activities and learned a novel task more readily when living in homes where Mexican customs were practiced. Children paid less attention to their siblings, and learned less, when living in homes where Western traditions and individualistic practices prevailed.

* Researchers surveyed 15,362 African-American, Latino and Asian tenth- graders from 752 schools about their understanding of how racial and socioeconomic barriers affect their expectations for well-paying jobs (Diemer and others). Two years later, the researchers asked the students about their extracurricular activities, school achievement, community participation and vocational expectations. Reading and math achievement had the strongest effect on the students’ expectation of winning high-paying jobs, while awareness of racial and economic barriers had the strongest effect on the value that students placed on work.

Articles in the special section

Citation information: "Latino Children and Families: Development in Cultural Context," Developmental Psychology, Vol. 46, No. 3.

“Learning From Latinos: Contexts, Families, and Child Development in Motion: Introduction to the Special Section” (PDF, 74KB)
Contact Bruce Fuller by phone at 415-595-4320 (cell); or contact Cynthia Garcia Coll by e-mail or by phone 401-447-4590 (cell).

“The Social Competence of Latino Kindergartners and Growth in Mathematical Understanding” (PDF, 117KB)
Contact Claudia Galindo by e-mail or by phone at 814-876-0683.

“Sociopolitical Development, Work Salience, and Vocational Expectations Among Low Socioeconomic Status African American, Latin American, and Asian American Youth” (PDF, 180KB)
Contact Matthew A. Diemer by e-mail or by phone at 517-614-9274.

“Attention to Instruction Directed to Another by U.S. Mexican-Heritage Children of Varying Cultural Backgrounds” (PDF, 155KB) Contact Angelica Lopez by e-mail or by phone at 831-459-2002.

“Academic Trajectories of Newcomer Immigrant Youth” (PDF, 158KB)
Contact Carola Suarez-Orozco by e-mail or by phone at 718-431-4232 or 609-734-8266.

“Commands, Competence, and Carino: Maternal Socialization Practices in Mexican American Families” (PDF, 133KB)
Contact Alejandra Livas-Dlott by e-mail or by phone at 919-608-4007.

“A Longitudinal Examination of Parenting Behaviors and Perceived Discrimination Predicting Latino Adolescents’ Ethnic Identity” (PDF, 171KB)
Contact Adriana J. Umana-Taylor by e-mail or by phone at 480-727-8670.

Schools’ Grades Reflect Persistent Disparity

By JENNIFER MEDINA and ROBERT GEBELOFF | NY Times
Published: November 17, 2009

Over the last three years, high schools that received the lowest marks from the city have been the ones with the highest percentages of poor, black and Hispanic students, despite an evaluation system that was meant to equalize differences among student bodies, according to an analysis by The New York Times of school grades released this week.

Blacks and Hispanics make up on average 77 percent of the student population in the 139 schools that received A’s this past year, compared with more than 90 percent of the schools that received C’s or worse. While the vast majority of A schools have a high minority enrollment, 14 of the 15 largest high-performing schools in the city have drastically lower black and Hispanic enrollment.

As a result, black and Hispanic students over all are more likely to attend a school that scored lower under the city’s grading system: 34 percent of black and Hispanic students attend a high school that received a C or worse, compared with 15 percent of whites and Asians.

The analysis found a similar grade distribution in 2007 and 2008.

Philip Vaccaro, who helped design the progress reports as a member of the Department of Education’s accountability office, said grades were designed to be as “demographically neutral” as possible. To keep schools with a predominance of lower-achieving students from being measured only against those with a predominance of high-performers, schools are compared with those whose students scored similarly on eighth-grade standardized tests.

The lower grades reflect the fact that graduation rates are lower for blacks, Latinos, special education students and those still learning English. Schools with more special education students and those who are overage when they enter high school also did poorly, even though the grading system accounts for those differences as well.

“The way we have tried to deal with the issue is by building an incentive to help these students graduate,” Mr. Vaccaro said. “Over time we hope these will have an impact and that schools will redouble their efforts to help students because there’s a large payoff for them. These are really graduation outcomes and to change that we know that is going to take some time.”

While the majority of A schools do have a significant population of black and Hispanic students, those schools are relatively small.

Several of the city’s largest high schools that have struggled for years received low grades on the progress reports, and those schools have a high population of black and Latino students, as well as special education students and English language learners.

One high school principal in Queens, who declined to be named for fear of punishment, said that the school had received more needy students in recent years and that it was difficult to help them catch up.

“I don’t disagree with holding us to a higher bar, but not all schools are being asked to do the same thing,” the principal said.

Schools Chancellor Joel I. Klein has closed a number of poor-performing large high schools and replaced them with smaller schools, often several in one building. A report this year by the Center for New York City Affairs at the New School asserted that the push for smaller schools put more strain on the remaining larger schools.

“One of the effects of opening up so many new small schools was that the remaining large schools became ever more burdened with the students least able to navigate the system,” said Clara Hemphill, who wrote the report. “Once a school goes into a downward spiral, it is very hard to come out of it, and adding a couple of high-needs students certainly doesn’t help.”

Norman Thomas High School in Murray Hill, Manhattan, a school of more than 2,000 students, 96 percent of them black or Hispanic, received a D for the third year in a row.

“We deserved a better grade,” said one student, Christian Rodriguez, 15, from the Bronx. “Everything is changing; everything is changing slowly. The environment is getting better for the students to learn. They’re cracking down on lateness, cutting classes.”

Colin Moynihan contributed reporting.

Equity and social justice

To check out the "Call to Action Report" from the Equity and Social Justice Initiative. Good stuff! -Patricia

By Ron Sims | Opinion Page
Special to The Seattle Times
February 10, 2008

"I have the audacity to believe that peoples everywhere can have three meals a day for their bodies, education and culture for their minds, and dignity, equality and freedom for their spirits."

— Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. (1964)

More than four decades have passed since the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. set forth this vision. Yet, today we remain a society burdened by vast disparities in wealth, health and opportunities. Not just in this country, but also in our county, named after Dr. King.

At this moment, here in communities as forward-thinking as Seattle and King County, the color of your skin or your home address are good predictors of whether you will have a low-birth-weight baby, die from diabetes, or your children will graduate from high school or end up in jail:

• A child in South King County is more than twice as likely to drop out of high school as one in East King County;

• A worker making between $15,000 and $25,000 a year is 10 times less likely to have health insurance than one making more than $50,000 per year;

• A youth of color is six times more likely than a white youth to spend time in a state or county correctional facility;

• A Southeast Seattle resident is four times more likely to die from diabetes than a resident of Mercer Island;

• A Native American baby is four times more likely to die before her first birthday than a white baby.

These statistics are both endless and maddening. The reality they represent for so many residents of King County is the reason we are today launching the King County Equity and Social Justice Initiative. Unfortunately, race, class, gender and immigration status are not just simple measures of the ways we differ, but rather insidious surrogates for the things that matter most — health, a living wage, opportunity, education, access to housing and safe neighborhoods.

And, in some instances, the problem is getting worse, not better. Despite the unprecedented growth and prosperity our region has experienced as a whole, some of us are losing ground. From 1970 to 2000, the gap between the median incomes for African-American families and the total population widened in King County. The rate of homeownership during this period declined for African-American families while it remained steady for white families.

The gulf between the rich and the poor is widening, a fact that can be seen in the great disparity in our neighborhoods around the county. While many of our communities are thriving, some neighborhoods increasingly foster the conditions that lead to poor health, underemployment, poor education, incarceration, loss of opportunity and unsafe living.

We also know that the stressors of racism and discrimination may be contributing to poor health. A highly educated, professional African-American woman is more than twice as likely to have a child with very low birth weight, compared with a white woman with a high-school diploma or less.

Achieving the most basic elements of the American dream has become a nearly insurmountable uphill climb for many of our neighbors. Far too many will find it an impossible dream.

I am especially worried about our children, too many of whom are born into poverty, in neighborhoods with high crime, poor education and little economic opportunity. All should have an equal opportunity for a living wage and a healthy, successful future. But, they do not. More than 40 years after Dr. King's vision, the flame of hope for the future is growing dimmer for too many.

A lucky one

I was one of the lucky ones. At 6 years old, in Spokane, I watched the demolition of my family home after a mere 30-days notice. I spent my first years of school falling behind in my reading skills because that is what my teachers expected. But, I also had a fifth-grade teacher who believed in me and made an enormous difference in my life by helping me see opportunities, not obstacles.

It is true that some of us do get through. Some of us may be lucky enough not to feel the direct, daily pain of these inequities. But, we all suffer. We all share in the lost productivity and the economic expense associated with criminal-justice and other crisis services. We all experience the economic results when our work force is not as productive as it might be in our increasingly competitive global environment. We all absorb the costs of high rates of disease and lack of access to health insurance by others.

When a majority of us are comfortable in a nice neighborhood, with a good job and access to good schools, it's easy to ignore the hopelessness and despair felt by children of color with the odds of getting an education and a good job stacked against them.

We all need to own the reality of inequity by tearing down the curtain that hides it, by naming it, by measuring it, by talking about it, and by tracking our progress and solving it. We need empowered community voices to partner with government and others in shaping policies and decisions. We need to look across traditional boundaries for solutions. We need to attack inequities at their sources.

I believe fervently that we can reverse this course. Not overnight, but over time. This is our commitment in launching the Equity and Social Justice Initiative.

Inequity, by its very nature, is a solvable problem. The reason inequity exists is that we have discovered solutions that work for some of us. We have just not applied these solutions to all of us.

We can see that thriving communities have the kind of conditions that make them a good place to be healthy, raise children, work, and pursue activities that uplift our spirit and mind. These conditions are not surprising: affordable housing, quality education, livable-wage jobs, safe neighborhoods, accessible support services and efficient transportation. Research is showing that these underlying community conditions, or social determinants, are powerful predictors of individual health and well-being, and changing them for the better can yield huge dividends.

Collective solutions

So, let's be clear: Our jarring statistics of inequity are neither natural nor inevitable. Human forces, both historical and current, have allowed some to prosper and thrive, but have failed many others, in particular, the poor and communities of color. We, collectively, have created this problem, and therefore we, collectively, must take on developing and implementing the solutions.

Within the public sector, federal, state and local governments have not made good progress in eliminating disparity. Instead, and in truth, decades of misguided policies have contributed to the problem — policies that have isolated the poorest neighborhoods from economic opportunities, provided inadequate schools and support services, and disenfranchised communities trying to do better.

But what we have created, we can change.

We just need to keep asking ourselves one question: "What if all people of King County had the same opportunities — regardless of race, ethnicity, gender, immigration status, sexual orientation or disability — for quality education, basic health care, jobs that pay a living wage, affordable housing, safe neighborhoods, and the same opportunity to enjoy the natural environment?"

The answer is clear and simple: A new, better and very different King County would emerge. If everyone had access to jobs paying a living wage, nearly 400,000 people currently struggling with very low incomes would enjoy healthier lives. If all of us had the same access to quality health care as the most-privileged, this would be one of the healthiest places in the world to live. If all of us had the same opportunity for education as our most-affluent citizens, the competitiveness of our work force would frighten every one of our competitors.

All residents of King County would reap the benefits — through greater economic vitality, a better-educated populace, a less-expensive health-care system, a lower-cost criminal-justice system, and better government through a more engaged and representative citizenry. Most of all, instead of lamenting young lives wasted, we would enjoy the contributions of healthy, educated and engaged young people, whether they are machinists at Boeing, software engineers at Microsoft or another Jacob Lawrence, whose art speaks to people of the world.

I believe this region is poised to make great strides toward achieving equity. But, I'm also realistic. Correcting societal inequities is a complex and multilayered undertaking. No one single approach will solve it. However, we can identify and implement the elements that will bring about positive change. And, we can trust that early small success will lead to later, longer-term, larger success.

King County government must be part of the solution that helps sow the long-term seeds of nurturing equity and social justice.

A call to action

This initiative begins with a call to action. As outlined in our report, each of the county's executive departments will take concrete steps to address inequities in 2008.

We will also work across departments and with partners to identify opportunities to correct inequities closer to their source. For example, we will implement a tool for systematically asking hard questions when making policy and funding decisions, leading to opportunities to improve conditions in marginalized communities. Similarly, through an innovative cross-departmental approach, we will work side-by-side with neighborhoods and local partners to be catalysts for healthier and more vibrant communities.

We will broadly engage our communities. We are looking forward to having real conversations with our local residents to raise awareness about these inequities, discuss root causes and mobilize around solutions.

And, we will work on particular regional priorities. I believe closing the education gap is where we should start, working with partners on identifying strategies to create school communities that improve literacy, reduce dropout rates and improve graduation rates.

This is only a beginning. Some might be reminded of the proverb that talks about the longest journey beginning with a single step. But we are more fortunate than that. We are not taking the first step and many have come before us. Nonetheless, I'm under no illusion that we are on anything but a long journey along a difficult, rocky path. But, there are few, if any, other paths with as important a destination.

"Human progress is neither automatic nor inevitable ... It comes only through the tireless efforts and passionate concern of dedicated individuals ... This is no time for apathy nor complacency. This is a time for vigorous and positive action."

— Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. (1958)

Gatsby’s Green Light Beckons a New Set of Strivers

We can learn so much from listening to our youth and how they see the world. -Patricia

By SARA RIMER | NY Times
February 17, 2008

BOSTON — Jinzhao Wang, 14, who immigrated two years ago from China, has never seen anything like the huge mansions that loomed over Long Island Sound in glamorous 1920s New York. But F. Scott Fitzgerald’s 1925 novel, “The Great Gatsby,” with its themes of possibility and aspiration, speaks to her.

She is inspired by the green light at the end of the dock, which for Jay Gatsby, the self-made millionaire from North Dakota, symbolizes the upper-class woman he longs for. “Green color always represents hope,” Jinzhao said.

“My green light?” said Jinzhao, who has been studying “Gatsby” in her sophomore English class at the Boston Latin School. “My green light is Harvard.”

Some educators say the best way to engage racially and ethnically diverse students in reading is with books that mirror their lives and culture. But others say that while a variety of literary voices is important, “Gatsby” — still required reading at half the high schools in the country — resonates powerfully among urban adolescents, many of them first- and second-generation immigrants, who are striving to ascend in 21st-century America.

“They all understand what it is to strive for something,” said Susan Moran, who is the director of the English program at Boston Latin and who has been teaching “Gatsby” for 32 years, starting at South Boston High School, “to want to be someone you’re not, to want to achieve something that’s just beyond reach, whether it’s professional success or wealth or idealized love — or a 4.0 or admission to Harvard.”

The novel had fallen into near obscurity by the time Fitzgerald died in 1940, said Charles Scribner III, whose great-grandfather signed the author with the family publishing company in 1919. It was revived in the 1950s and ’60s when Mr. Scribner’s father, Charles Scribner Jr., started publishing a paperback version and a student edition for colleges and high schools.

Its popularity soared after Robert Redford played Gatsby in the movie in 1974. In more recent years, a musical version made its debut at the New York Metropolitan Opera and the novel has been turned into a hip hop movie, “G,” set in the Hamptons. The book now sells more than half a million copies a year, with high schools and colleges making up the biggest share of the market, Mr. Scribner said.

Jinzhao’s teacher, Meredith Elliott, and other teachers at Boston Latin and other urban schools, say their students see in “Gatsby” glimmers of their own evolving identities and dreams. The students talk about the youthful characters — Gatsby; Daisy Buchanan, the married woman he loves; Tom, Daisy’s husband and a onetime Yale football star; and the narrator, Nick Carraway — as if they were classmates or celebrities.

“I see Tom as this really mean jock,” said Vimin To, a 15-year-old Boston Latin sophomore who is in Kay Moon’s American literature class. “When he was in high school, he was king of the hill. He had it all. He was higher than everyone, even the teachers.”

As for Daisy, in Vimin’s view: “She’s turned into an empty person. Like Paris Hilton.”

Vimin’s father works in a restaurant — “not very glamorous,” Vimin said — and came to the United States as a refugee from Vietnam. Vimin relates to the story of Gatsby’s rise from the backwoods of North Dakota to New York. “It’s a very inspirational tale, especially when you’re from a background such as Mr. Gatsby,” he said.

His version of Gatsby’s dream: “My goal is to make my parents proud of me. I’ve always been told to succeed, to take advantage of the opportunities they’ve given me — just to be financially stable, to be able to support your family.”

At the nearby Fenway School, some of Fran Farrell’s seniors, who read “Gatsby” this year as part of their study of the American dream, found different lessons in Gatsby’s life and violent death.

“I think this American dream is an interpretation of a white poor man’s dream,” Nicole Doñe, 17, whose family is from the Dominican Republic, said during a lively class discussion. “For me the American dream is working hard for something you want. It’s not about having money. My dream is to get an education that I can’t get in the Dominican Republic, to live comfortably.”

Several of her classmates disagreed. “The American dream has a lot to do with money,” said Harkeem Steed, 17, who compared Gatsby to his hero, Jay-Z.

“Everything in this life is about money,” said Melanie Nunez, whose family is from the Dominican Republic. “How are you going to get to college?”

These teachers take pains to present the book with a great deal of social and historical context, and they say it crystallizes for many students questions about both the materialism of Gatsby’s dream and the possibility of attaining their own versions of the dream, especially in today’s highly stratified economy.

“Here’s Gatsby out of nowhere in this mansion, having these lavish parties and really and truly fulfilling the American dream, and that’s very compelling for them,” Ms. Moran said. “But it’s a cautionary tale, too.

“The culture sells the American dream so hard and so relentlessly, but they’re wary, and they should be,” she continued. “One reason students appreciate the book is that there is a level of honesty that they value. They need these honest stories to perhaps balance what is otherwise presented as this shining possibility for everyone.”

During a recent discussion with several other students in Ms. Moon’s class, Will Murphy, 16, whose father works two jobs as a firefighter and an E.M.T., was relating Gatsby’s accumulation of enormous wealth to his own chances of hitting it big in today’s economy. “Getting rich seems so far out of the picture,” said Will, who has a part-time job scooping ice cream. “Everybody thinks about it, but the older you get, the less possible it seems.”

“In other countries, people say, ‘Oh, if you go to America, everything is going to be better,’ ” Will went on. “It’s better, but it’s not as good as you think it will be. You won’t instantly become rich.”

One of Will’s classmates, Ashley Waters, 16, who helps her father with his antique consignment business, agreed. “The American dream is possible, but it’s just really hard,” she said. “Everything is so expensive — the price of college, housing. Look at the price of gas. The economy is going down.”

Shauna Deleon, 16, whose family is from Jamaica, nodded. “The American dream is not open to everyone,” she said. “There are certain pathways, certain gateways.”

For Shauna’s parents, as for the parents of her classmates, one of those gateways is the four-century-old Boston Latin, with its rigorous entrance exams and alumni who include five signers of the Declaration of Independence.

As a sophomore working to meet the school’s demands, Shauna sometimes feels as if her mother’s green light is her. “She puts all her hopes in me,” said Shauna, who talks about becoming a thoracic surgeon. “I have all this weight and responsibility. Sometimes I can’t live up to it.”

A couple weeks later, Ms. Moon and Ms. Elliott wrapped up “Gatsby” and, with “The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn,” “The Joy Luck Club” and “Ethan Frome” also behind them, moved on to the next novel on the sophomore list: “Their Eyes Were Watching God” by Zora Neale Hurston.

Jinzhao Wang, meanwhile, has been reflecting more deeply about the meaning of the green light. “I’m not an American citizen, so when I apply to college I will be competing with all the top students in Asia,” said Jinzhao, whose parents are teachers and who lives in the Allston neighborhood, across the river from Cambridge and the red brick buildings of Harvard. “I have to set an even higher standard.”

Here, too, she had found inspiration in “Gatsby.” “The Dutch settlers went all the way across the ocean to this new land — America,” Jinzhao said, referring to Nick’s bittersweet reflections that end the book. “America appears to the Dutch settlers as Daisy appears to Gatsby. Gatsby’s hopes and dreams are American ideals. His effort is the real ideal of the American dream.”

“I really want to go to Harvard,” she said. “But if I don’t get into Harvard, I will not die, right?”

“The journey toward the dream is the most important thing,” she said.

And, she added, “There is a green light beyond the green light.” For her that green light is China, where she hopes to use a Harvard education to help the country develop even faster.

A Place at the Table

Here's a suggestion on alternative forms of assessment from the perspective of a teacher - the people who actually know the students we code as numbers. A quote that stuck out to me while reading: "Education has a long red-pen tradition of how we measure achievement." -Patricia

By Susan Graham | Teacher Magazine
November 18, 2007
This is a Test, This Is Only a Test….

Or is it an assessment?

Assessing and testing issues are on my mind a lot lately. They’ve been hot topics at school, on the Web, in Education Week and around the dinner table at our two-teacher home.

But this brain dump is not brought on by first-quarter grades and the parent conferences we are having tonight at my middle school. You may think that I’m going to talk about No Child Left Behind , but I’m not. Nor is this about the recent release of National Board for Professional Teaching Standards assessment scores, or the new “Trial Urban District Assessment” results from NAEP - the Nation's Report Card. It’s more big-picture than any of that.

Testing and assessment are terms we throw around a lot in education. We have a love/hate relationship with them. But are TEST and ASSESSMENT interchangeable terms and tools?

Well, you’ll have to take my test.

Type TEST and then right-click to find a synonym. Microsoft Word will offer you: examination, experiment, check, analysis, trial, assessment and ordeal. So TEST and ASSESSMENT mean the same thing.

Now try this: Type ASSESSMENT and right-click. The synonyms offered are: appraisal, estimation, measurement, judgment, review, consideration, or opinion. TEST isn’t an option. So ASSESSMENT and TEST don't mean the same thing.

Trick question? No. The problem is that too many people are trying to dress up some pretty dull graduate school reports and policy white papers by using the MS Word thesaurus to find synonyms. While a TEST may be a form of ASSESSMENT, an ASSESSMENT is more than just a TEST. They are two different words that may, on occasion, be correctly interchanged. Here is how I see it:

A TEST measures what the test designer chooses to find out about what the test taker knows. Testing is negative in that it identifies what is not known about a definable body of content. It tells what has been mastered, where there are gaps, and can be analyzed to identify patterns for improved instruction. The underlying assumption, of course, is that the test maker knows what is critical information and has the authority to determine the correct answers.

An ASSESSMENT is a more complex process that attempts to capture what the assessment taker knows or can do. It is a positive model that tries to determine how effective the assessed person is at identifying critical information and communicating a justification of how and why his response addresses the question. The assessor is not empowered to impose his interpretation of what the assessment-taker implied or meant but did not state. An assessment is not about what is wrong; it is about (and only about) what the assessment taker sees as right. While it gives more power and control to the assessment taker, it also demands more. The primary responsibility lies with the person taking the assessment.

Education has a long red-pen tradition of how we measure achievement. What most of us remember of our own school assessment process was the opportunity to demonstrate what we did or did not remember about what we were asked to learn. It was safer. It was faster. And it was more defensible. It required less from both parties. Determining real achievement is more complex. It involves more risk on both sides. As the assessment-taker, I am taking the risk that I can demonstrate my achievement effectively. As the assessment-creator, I am going out on a limb and saying that I can can recognize your achievement if you demonstrate it effectively.

This same discussion about tests and assessments that my science-teacher husband and I have at the dinner table is taking place at policy tables as well. In a recent Education Week commentary, Accountability Tests’ Instructional Insensitivity: The Time Bomb Ticketh, assessment expert James Popham describes the current testing process as an accountability time bomb because it is instructionally insensitive.

How could American educators let themselves get into a situation in which the tests being used to evaluate their instruction are unable to distinguish between effective and ineffective teaching? The answer, though simple, is nonetheless disquieting. Most American educators simply don’t know that their state’s NCLB tests are instructionally insensitive. Educators, and the public in general, assume that because such tests are “achievement tests,” they accurately measure how much students have learned in schools. That’s just not true.

Dr. Popham is right, in part. Testing as an assessment of student achievement is inaccurate. But I would argue that Dr. Popham is also wrong about one thing. He has made an inaccurate assumption that teachers don’t get it. Teachers deal with living, breathing children who are our nation's favorite test subjects, and we are very sensitive to the limitations of trying to capture 200 days of learning with a single multiple-choice, end- of-course test. We get it! But whenever we point out this abuse of good assessment practice, we are accused of being unwilling to be held accountable because we are (a) lazy; (b) well intended but incompetent; and/or (c) unwilling to believe all children can learn.

I respectfully point out that Dr. Popham's biography indicates that he has been out of the K-12 classroom for more than 30 years. While testing, rather than assessing, may have been standard procedure during his years in the high school classroom, things have changed in most schools. Just as cybermetrics and learning theory have evolved, teachers' practices have also evolved to include multiple measures in differentiated formats. Many teachers know what good assessment looks like -- and we practice it. The fact that -- when accountability time comes around -- we are not judged by "instructionally sensitive" tools dismays us, but it is not our fault.

As professionals, our hands have been tied by decision making processes that, to a great extent, have excluded practicing classroom teachers from the conversation on accountability. I'll make an offer: Invite me to the policy table and I'll be more than happy to describe ways in which we and our students might be more fairly and accurately assessed. In return, I'll invite you to my dinner table, where we can continue the conversation over pie and coffee.

Susan Graham has taught family and consumer science (formerly "home ec") for 25 years. She is a National Board-certified teacher, a former regional Virginia teacher of the year, and a Fellow of the Teacher Leaders Network. She invites readers to pull a chair up to her virtual table as she offers her voice-of-experience perspective on teaching today, with a special focus on teacher leadership and continuous professional growth.

Tighter Link Sought Between Spending, Achievement in N.Y.

By Michele McNeil / EdWeek
September 4, 2007

As states look for ways to hold school districts accountable for how they use big increases in K-12 funding, New York’s experience may offer a test case in directing the flow of that new money.

Under the state’s ambitious “Contracts for Excellence” program, 55 of New York’s 705 districts will share $430 million in extra aid this school year, but are required to file detailed plans that limit the spending to five strategies intended to raise student achievement.

To read the rest of this story click here

Writing a new book

What an amazing ending quote by Reyes: "I represent every child that you somehow have not believed in." -Patricia

By Linda P. Campbell / Star-Telegram Staff Writer
August 30, 2007

In her fashionable black dress with the pleated hem and very-high-heeled pumps, Maria Reyes might be an advertising account saleswoman. A litigator. A motivational speaker.

What she doesn't resemble is the gang member and insolent juvenile offender who showed up for her first day of high school English wearing an ankle monitor.

"This is probably worse than being in juvenile hall," Reyes recalled thinking about her first encounter with teacher Erin Gruwell more than a dozen years ago at Woodrow Wilson High School in Long Beach, Calif.

With all the naiveté of an idealistic new teacher, Gruwell tried to cut through the rude resistance of her underachieving students by having them read about Anne Frank and other young people under siege, then write about their own damaged lives.

A distrustful Reyes was not initially impressed.

Gruwell seemed to think that "she was going to pass out these journals and we were going to suddenly get it ... because this is how things happened in her world," Reyes said. "She was the epitome of everything we hated about the education system."

But Gruwell persisted -- so much that her students started calling her Jason, the murderous corpse who keeps resurfacing in the Friday the 13th movies.

And then Anne Frank's story of her family's days hiding from the Nazis during World War II provided "this light in my dark world," Reyes said. "For the first time, I allowed myself to care like I had never cared before."

And she found "the strength and courage to confront my own truth, my own reality."

Reyes became one of the Freedom Writers, Gruwell's students whose journals became a book and a Hilary Swank movie depicting the journey of teenagers with hopeless futures who grew into self-confident, college-bound graduates.

Gruwell, who spoke to Fort Worth teachers a year ago, returned to town recently for a tandem appearance with Reyes at the Girls Inc. of Tarrant County's "No Limits" luncheon. Reyes barely reaches Gruwell's chin -- and that's in heels -- but she packs infectious energy.

"I believed at a very early age that my story was already told," Reyes said.

Her grandmother wasn't sent to school because she'd be punished for speaking Spanish. Her grandfather joined a gang because people who looked like him got beaten up. Her father dreamed of being a boxer, but his parents couldn't afford training. Her mother got pregnant at 15.

But writing, Reyes discovered, "was really the tool, the key that opened up my world to see something different."

Now 27 and a graduate of California State University, Long Beach, Reyes helps raise money for the Freedom Writers Foundation, which trains teachers to use gritty novels and journaling to help inner-city students connect with education, improve their writing skills and reach for higher academic goals.

It's an intensive and innovative approach.

Dunbar Middle School teacher Sefakor Amaa, who started a Junior Freedom Writers program in the spring for students who've struggled with the Texas Assessment of Knowledge and Skills, says her seventh-graders benefited from the reading, discussion and writing, even though their activities had to move from class time to after school to accommodate TAKS preparation.

Of the 54 Freedom Writers, most of whom are African-American, 74 percent passed the reading TAKS, Amaa said. One girl who didn't pass nevertheless raised her raw score 300 points.Amaa says that many of the students are again ready to pick up their pens and "little book that could," and that administrators are trying to sustain the Freedom Writers techniques as a component of raising student achievement.

It's in line with Reyes' challenge to audiences: Adults must create opportunities for young people to find their potential.

"Education is the thing that liberates us to see what lies ahead of us," she said.

"I represent every child that you somehow have not believed in."

Bush Claims About NCLB Questioned

Bush Claims About NCLB Questioned 

Data on gains in achievement remain limited, preliminary. By David J. Hoff and Kathleen Kennedy Manzo Printer-Friendly Email Article Tag This Digg This Is the No Child Left Behind Act working? President Bush says it is, pointing to student-achievement results from a single subsection of the National Assessment of Educational Progress and tentative Reading First data. But the evidence available to support his claim is questionable. "Fourth graders are reading better," the president said during a March 2 visit to a school in New Albany, Ind. "They’ve made more progress in five years than the previous 28 years combined." In mathematics, he said, elementary and middle school students "earned the highest scores in the history of the test." The data Mr. Bush cited at that event are from just the "long-term trend" NAEP in reading and math, researchers say. All available data, they add, show modest improvements that can't be attributed to the 5-year-old law. Instead, progress in achievement is more likely a continuation of trends that predate the law. "There’s not any evidence that shows anything has changed," said Daniel M. Koretz, a professor of education at Harvard University’s graduate school of education. Other researchers suggest that the standards and accountability system of the NCLB law is drawing attention to achievement gaps and other inequalities and is causing educators to change their practice. But it's too early to say whether the federal law will result in achievement gains, they contend." The law's "mechanisms are just coming into play, and not enough time has passed to establish a trend," said Adam Gamoran, a professor of sociology at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. 'I'm Lobbying Congress' Portraying the No Child Left Behind law as a success is a critical element in President Bush's argument that Congress should renew it on schedule this year. The president signed the legislation, an overhaul of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act, with much fanfare in January 2002 and has cited it as his most important accomplishment in domestic policy. "I'm not only speaking to you, I'm lobbying," Mr. Bush said at the Silver Street Elementary School in New Albany earlier this month. "I'm lobbying Congress. I'm setting the stage for Congress to join me in the reauthorization of this important piece of legislation." Congress is laying the groundwork for reauthorizing the measure. This week, the Senate education committee held a hearing on the law's teacher-quality requirements. Next week, the House and Senate education committees plan to hold a joint session on an overview of the law. Rep. George Miller, D-Calif., and Sen. Edward M. Kennedy, D-Mass., the chairmen of the education committees and two of the architects of the bipartisan law, say they hope to renew it this year. But many observers expect the process will be delayed until next year or even after Mr. Bush leaves office in 2009. At the New Albany school, Mr. Bush highlighted the gains on the national assessment's long-term-trend tests in reading and mathematics. Secretary of Education Margaret Spellings pointed to the same NAEP data on the law's fifth anniversary in January, and during several other recent speeches. Citing One Set of Numbers ... President Bush likes to cite the "long-term-trend" NAEP as proof that the No Child Left Behind Act is working. The gains are significant only for 9- and 13-year-olds in math and 9-year-olds in reading. What's more, the gains fall into a five-year testing window, and only two of those years occurred after the law took effect. Between 1999 and 2004, the reading scores of 9-year-olds climbed from 212 to 226 on the test’s 500-point scale. The gap between African-American and white students that age narrowed to 26 points in 2004, compared with 35 points five years earlier. The gap between Hispanic 9-year-olds and their non-Hispanic white peers tapered from 24 points to 21 points in that same time period. ... While Relying Less on Another On the "national" NAEP, meanwhile, researchers say the advances in math reflect a continuation of student-achievement progress since 1990. Fourth graders are dead-even with where they were in reading when the law took effect in 2002. The slight decline in 8th grade reading scores is not statistically significant. On the math test, 9-year-olds' scores rose by 9 points, and the gaps between Hispanics' and African-Americans' scores and whites' scores narrowed slightly as well. Although the results for 9-year-olds on the reading test are positive, researchers say they can't be linked to the law. The testing window extends back to 1999--three years before President Bush signed the NCLB legislation into law and even before he was president. "With some of the claims that Spellings has made, for most of the time period there was no NCLB, so she can’t really say [any improvement] is because of the law," said Gerald W. Bracey, the author of Reading Educational Research: How to Avoid Getting Statistically Snookered,who runs a LISTSERV, or e-mail forum, tracking what Mr. Bracey calls the administration's "disinformation." Mr. Bracey, a frequent critic of testing programs, points out that implementation of the law began in 2002, but didn’t start to fuel significant change in schools until the 2003-04 school year. "So I guess [the Bush administration] should be sharing some of the credit with the Clinton administration," he said. In math, the gains since 2002 are the extension of an upward trend that dates back more than 20 years, researchers say. “They just pay attention to what happened after NCLB,” said Jaekyung Lee, an associate professor of education at the State University of New York at Buffalo. “Part of it is just a continuation of a trend from pre-NCLB.” The administration appears to ignore other data that suggest the law has had little or no positive effect on achievement. On a different NAEP exam, gains haven’t been as significant, Mr. Lee said. What is known as the “national” NAEP, as distinguished from the long-term-trend tests, shows 4th grade reading scores the same in 2005 as three years earlier, when the law was signed. Math scores rose 1 point between 2003 and 2005. While that increase was statistically significant, it was smaller than the 9-point gain between 2000 and 2003. The scores on the “national” NAEP demonstrate that the NCLB law’s impact is incomplete, said Katherine McLane, the U.S. Department of Education’s press secretary. “The secretary is the first to say we have more work to do,” Ms. McLane said in response to the criticisms. “That is one of the issues we have to look at in education.” Regardless of whether NAEP scores go up or down, it’s almost impossible to link those changes to the NCLB law without a well-designed research study, said Mr. Koretz of Harvard. That would compare a group of students who were exposed to NCLB policies against one that hadn’t participated in the testing and accountability measures in the law. Those are the types of studies that the Bush administration says must be presented as evidence to select reading materials for the Reading First program and to win approval for research grants from the department. Also, scores in the upper grades on both versions of the national assessment are for the most part unchanged from before the law’s passage. NAEP is given to a sampling of students nationwide. Scores on states’ own tests, however, are used to determine whether schools have made adequate yearly progress under the federal law. Mr. Gamoran of the University of Wisconsin said the debate over NAEP scores is probably irrelevant. Even in 2005, the law’s most significant policies weren’t fully phased in. Those include the requirements that all teachers be “highly qualified” and that all states annually assess math and reading achievement in grades 3-8 and once in high school, said Mr. Gamoran, the director of the university’s Wisconsin Center for Education Research. ‘Reading First’ Results In addition to speeches citing the NAEP long-term-trend data, members of the Bush administration have lauded the success of the $1 billion-a-year Reading First program, the largest new initiative in the NCLB law. In the administration’s blueprint for the reauthorization of the No Child Left Behind Act, unveiled in January, the Education Department described Reading First as “the largest, most focused, and most successful early-reading initiative ever undertaken in this country.” Few disagree that it is the largest and most focused. The initiative, which requires that participating schools use “scientifically based” materials and assessments, includes more than 5,600 schools in 1,600 districts. An estimated 100,000 teachers have had some kind of professional development associated with the program, according to the blueprint. But there is scant empirical evidence showing the program’s effect on student achievement. An independent interim study on Reading First implementation, released last year, included survey results from state officials. It showed that the program had led to significant increases in the time participating schools spent on reading instruction, as well as more substantive professional development and support for teachers, and the use of assessment data to inform instruction. A later survey, conducted by the Center on Education Policy, a Washington-based research and advocacy group, indicated that states were generally pleased with the program, with most claiming some improvement in student scores on state tests. President Bush’s blueprint includes preliminary results showing some gains in students’ reading fluency. “For the 2004-05 school year, students in Reading First schools demonstrated increases in reading achievement across all performance measures,” Education Department officials wrote in the blueprint. “The percentage of 2nd grade students who met or exceeded proficiency in reading on Reading First outcome measures of fluency increased from 33 percent in 2003-04 to 39 percent in 2004-05 for economically disadvantaged students; from 27 to 32 percent for [limited-English proficient] students; from 34 to 37 percent for African-American students; from 30 to 39 percent for Hispanic students; and from 17 to 23 percent for students with disabilities,” the document adds. Those gains, however, are based on a compilation of all test results in annual state reports for Reading First. That compilation includes results from the DIBELS assessment, or Dynamic Indicators of Basic Early Literacy Skills, developed by researchers at the University of Oregon and used in more than 35 states to monitor student progress on fluency and other measures. But they also include results from a variety of other assessments, including the Iowa Test of Basic Skills and Terra Nova. “The results show that more kids in the early grades are making great progress on learning the basic components of reading under Reading First,” Ms. McLane, the department’s press secretary, said of the data reported in the blueprint. Although such an assemblage of test scores can provide a general view of student progress, some researchers question whether the compilation says much about reading proficiency. “If the goal is just to see if students are improving, I think there is nothing wrong with using different tests as long as it is established that the tests are reliable and valid, and reasonably comparable,” Stephen D. Krashen, an education researcher and linguist at the University of Southern California, in Los Angeles, wrote in an e-mail. However, “many [researchers] feel that DIBELS is not valid.” Critics of DIBELS cite the tendency of some educators to teach to the tests or give the measures too much weight in judging reading ability. They also question whether a test that gauges how many words a student can read accurately in a minute, as DIBELS does, is a valid indicator of their proficiency. ("National Clout of DIBELS Test Draws Scrutiny," Sept. 28, 2005.) According to Mr. Bracey, fluency—the ability to read a text accurately and quickly—is not a good indicator of reading mastery, which requires comprehension. “Kids can be very fluent and not have a clue about what they just read,” he said. Success of Standards While most researchers say it’s too early to measure the NCLB law’s impact on achievement, many are beginning to see evidence that educators are changing their behavior as a result of both the federal law and policies that took root in the 1990s at the onset of the movement for higher standards and greater accountability in education. “The big success of No Child Left Behind so far is to galvanize attention to the challenges we face, particularly the challenges of inequity,” Mr. Gamoran said. But critics of the law question, in any case, the central place it gives to test scores. They say it puts too much emphasis on the negative consequences of failing to meet annual student-performance targets and glosses over the professional development and other interventions needed to improve struggling schools and get to the heart of elevating student achievement. “What’s troublesome about it is the idea that you can eliminate [achievement] gaps by putting pressure on schools and nothing else,” said Gary A. Orfield, the director of the Civil Right Project at Harvard and the University of California, Los Angeles. “It’s making a bad situation worse.” Vol. 26, Issue 27, Pages 1,26-27