The Hechinger Report. Study: Boosting soft skills is better than raising test scores

This research shows that boosting soft, socio-emotional learning (SEL) skills is better than test-prep curriculum used to boost test scores.  We still need to address the injustices and lack of validity of our high-stakes testing systems and not let the testing companies get off the hook. 

In addition to SEL, let's fully incorporate Ethnic Studies and well-designed, staffed, and funded bilingual education programs to this list given that ample research solidly points to these as not solely achievement boosters, but achievement-gap reducers. 

These are not issues of evidence, but rather politics.  Why can't we do all three?  How and where do we get the leadership and teachers that can implement all three?  I have a lot to say about this, but I'll stop here for now.

-Angela Valenzuela

Study: Boosting soft skills is better than raising test scores

Chicago analysis finds schools that foster social-emotional development get better results for students

Proof Points

Column by JILL BARSHAY

March 2, 2020

High school students comfort each other on Chicago’s South Side. A new Chicago study shows that students who attend schools that foster soft skills do better in high school and beyond. (Photo by Scott Olson/Getty Images)

We hear the phrase “failing schools” a lot but what really defines a failing school? Generally, we look at test scores. Schools that aren’t getting students to improve their math and reading achievement on the standardized tests administered by each state are the ones singled out for shame, punishment and sometimes closure. That’s led to excessive test preparation — and even fraud — to boost scores.

Education researchers are trying to come up with different ways to measure success. One of them, economist Kirabo Jackson of Northwestern University, has zeroed in on soft skills, which include traits like empathy and perseverance, and found that if you were to set up a competition between schools that raise test scores and schools that foster soft skills, the soft skills schools would win.

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In a large study of more than 150,000 students in all 133 of Chicago’s public high schools, Jackson has calculated that schools that build social-emotional qualities such as the ability to resolve conflicts and the motivation to work hard  are getting even better short-term and long-term results for students than schools that only boost test scores. The schools that develop soft skills produced students with higher grades, fewer absences and fewer disciplinary problems and arrests in high school. Later, the students who attended these high schools graduated and went to college in higher rates. In a few more years, we may learn that the students who attended schools that are strong in soft skills earned more college degrees.

“What we’re showing is that schools that actually cause kids to become more gritty, those kids tend to be likely to persist more in college,” said Jackson.

“You could actually do a lot more good by focusing on schools that promote social-emotional development as opposed to focusing on schools that raise test scores,” he added.

We haven’t been totally misguided to focus on test scores all this time. Schools that boost test scores also tend to be the ones that boost social-emotional skills. But the overlap isn’t perfect. An exemplar school for boosting test scores at the 95th percentile might only be 75th percentile for building soft skills, according to the Chicago high school data. Importantly, Jackson is noticing outliers: schools that are sensational at building soft skills but terrible at boosting test scores, and vice versa.

Related: Research scholars to air problems with using ‘grit’ at school

Jackson declined to identify strong or weak schools by name because the research is in early stages. The study, “School effects on socio-emotional development, school-based arrests and educational attainment,” is still a working paper, which means it has not yet been peer-reviewed and may still undergo revisions. In February 2020, Jackson presented these early findings at conference of the National Center for the Analysis of Longitudinal Data in Education Research (CALDER) and the paper was circulated by the National Bureau of Economic Research. Along with Jackson, there are four co-authors from the University of Chicago Consortium on School Research, Northwestern University and the Mindset Scholars Network.

Measuring squishy soft skills is controversial and complicated. Scholars have found many problems in measuring “grit,” a popular social-emotional trend in schools, for example.

Jackson and his research colleagues relied on students’ responses to a social-emotional survey given to Chicago public school students from 2008 onward. Students answered a range of questions about their own perceptions of their interpersonal skills, social well-being and hard work. For example, students said how much they agree with a statement like, “If I need to study, I don’t go out with my friends.” (For a more examples of survey questions, I typed up a bunch here.)

To tease out how much of these skills could be credited to a student’s high school, the researchers factored in students’ prior academic achievement and how they responded to the surveys in middle school. They also adjusted students’ responses for gender, race/ethnicity, family income and the socio-economic status of the student’s home neighborhood, down to the census block. All these adjustments are important because a student’s context matters in how he or she answers a question. Kids are more likely to say “I’m a hard worker” if they’re surrounded by kids who don’t work hard, Jackson explained.

In the end, the researchers had an estimate of how much each high school boosted soft skills, based on how ninth graders answered surveys from 2011 to 2017. And they found that the students’ self-reported answers had a significant correlation with school grades and attendance in ninth grade. The students who went to the high schools that were good at developing soft skills also had fewer disciplinary incidents.

For the older students in the study, the ones who entered ninth grade between 2011 and 2014, researchers saw that students who attended these soft-skills high schools had fewer arrests throughout their high school years and graduated high school in greater numbers. After high school, these students attended college, both two-year and four-year institutions, in higher numbers and persisted in college in higher rates. It’s too early to see college graduation rates for these students.

To check their findings, the researchers compared siblings who attended different high schools and the ones that attended to schools that were better at boosting soft skills had better outcomes.

Related: Should taxpayers and schools invest in ‘growth mindset’ programs?

The study is making several important contributions to educational research. It’s more proof that students are self-aware and honest enough to give survey answers that can actually measure social-emotional skills. It also indicates that increases in students’ soft skills matter for the educational outcomes that we care about like better grades and college attendance.

There’s a debate in the research community about whether interventions to boost “grit” or  “growth mindset”  actually cause students to learn a lot more or do better in school. Those trendy social-emotional concepts weren’t tested in this study. But schools that improved social well-being had larger effects on attendance and behavioral infractions while those that promoted hard work, which is closely related to the concepts of grit and growth mindset, had bigger impacts on grades. Jackson’s research is making a case that some schools are able to develop these soft skills much better than other schools.

A big question is what the schools are doing to achieve that result. Further research is needed to learn if the above-average schools had adopted a social-emotional curriculum or trained their teachers to foster these skills. Jackson told me he wasn’t aware of a particular social-emotional curriculum that was in widespread use. It’s also possible that successful schools weren’t doing anything special but were staffed by adults who treated students with respect, fostered a sense of community and inspired students to study hard.

What do we do with this research? Should we start surveying every high school student in America and rank schools based on how well they’re boosting soft skills? Jackson said that kind of ranking would be “misguided.”

“Anything can be gamed,” said Jackson. “If you say, ‘We’re going to reward you if you have students who say they are gritty,’ you’re going to have schools training students to report that they’re gritty. That’s not going to be very helpful.”

Jackson’s goal is to go into the schools that are at the top and learn what the grownups are doing in the building to promote social-emotional skills and see if those things can be replicated at other schools.

“Once we figure out what those are, maybe we can attach stakes to those behaviors,” said Jackson. “We can use the self reports [student surveys] as a way to figure out which practices we want to promote in professional development or teacher evaluation.”

This story about social-emotional development was written by Jill Barshay and produced by The Hechinger Report, a nonprofit, independent news organization focused on inequality and innovation in education. Sign up for the Hechinger newsletter.

Push to increase the number of teachers of color in California classrooms gains momentum: Initiatives underway to increase diversity among California teachers

This article is evidence-based with respect to the importance of teachers' race and ethnicity in terms of how it matters significantly for students' lives at the classroom level, impacting positively the achievement gap.  This focus in California on the recruitment and retention of teachers of color needs to happen everywhere.

-Angela

Push to increase the number of teachers of color in California classrooms gains momentum

Initiatives underway to increase diversity among California teachers

Increasing the number of teachers of color in California classrooms has been a top priority for State Superintendent of Public Instruction Tony Thurmond since he started the job in January. Now, he’s planning a statewide task force focused on improving teacher diversity in California schools. 

“The data shows when kids see a teacher who looks like them it makes a huge difference,” Thurmond said in an earlier EdSource interview.

Hiring a diverse group of teachers can help students academically and provide role models for their future, research has revealed.

Thurmond already has assembled an advisory group focused on closing the persistent achievement gap between students of color and their white and Asian peers. 

Research shows a strong association between poverty and students’ lack of success on achievement tests. And while poverty is not unique to any ethnicity, it does exist in disproportionate rates among African-Americans and Hispanics, and among English learners.

Having more teachers with diverse backgrounds in the classroom has a positive impact on learning for students of color and for closing achievement gaps, according to a study from the Learning Policy Institute. Students of color generally have higher test scores, are more likely to graduate from college and to succeed in college when they have teachers of color in the classroom they can look to as role models.

But this doesn’t happen often enough. Fewer than 4 percent of teachers in California were African-American and 20.7 percent were Latino, while 5.4 percent of the state’s students were African-American and 54.2 percent were Latino in 2017-18, according to data from the California Department of Education. About a quarter of the state’s teachers are male.

A survey of participants of a virtual town hall on the achievement gap, hosted by the Department of Education in Sacramento in September, found that an overwhelming majority agreed that getting more teachers with diverse ethnic and racial backgrounds into classrooms is essential to reducing the achievement gap. 

The Closing the Achievement Gap Initiative has come to much the same conclusion. The group is led by four co-chairs: Manufou Liaiga Anoa’i, a school board member with the Jefferson Elementary School District in Daly City; Ryan Smith, chief external officer for the Partnership for Los Angeles Schools, a nonprofit that runs 18 schools within Los Angeles Unified; Roseann Torres, CEO of Torres Law Group and a board member in the Oakland Unified School District; and Elisha Smith Arrillaga, executive director of The Education Trust-West, a nonprofit organization focused on closing the achievement gap. 

At least 100 people across the state have been working with the initiative, which launched in February. Diversifying the teacher workforce is a large part of their discussion, Smith said.

 “We see recruitment and retention of teachers of color to be key to improving the outcomes of marginalized students,” he said. 

Smith said the most impactful teacher he had growing up was another African-American male who told him he could do anything and that there would be obstacles, but that he believed in him.

“What I see is that when students see themselves in the educator we put in front of them and when the educator can speak to the experiences of the student and understand the culture that the student resides in and they understand the challenges of being a person of color, there is a connection there that is important,” Smith said.

The California Department of Education defines teachers of color as all teachers who are not white, said Scott Roark, a spokesman for the department.

Thurmond and the California Department of Education also want to identify effective strategies of school districts that have successfully been able to recruit and retain teachers of color, according to Smith. They want to work with advocacy groups to raise awareness about the need for those teachers and to spotlight universities that have effectively increased the number of students of color who go on to become teachers.

San Diego State University recently started a program aimed at increasing the number of Latino and bilingual teachers in California. Beginning next year the university will accept 100 students from local colleges into its bilingual credentials program, which prepares teachers to teach in bilingual K-12 classrooms. The program, which is supported by a $3.7 million grant from the U.S. Department of Education, will offer students a stipend.

That effort will be ratcheted up when a task force focusing on increasing teacher diversity in California classrooms begins its work. The California Department of Education is in the early stages of putting the task force together and no timelines have been set, according to Roark. The task force will work closely with CSU Northridge, which has a program focusing on preparing men of color to become teachers. 

In the meantime, the Closing the Achievement Gap Initiative will continue to meet monthly and conduct virtual town halls, surveys and regional meetings with stakeholders across the state. 

Although the group’s recommendations to close the achievement gap won’t be completed until early next year, a report released in September by The Education Trust and Teach Plus, a nonprofit organization that trains teachers for leadership roles, may offer some insight into what is needed to retain black and Latino teachers.

The report, “If you listen we will stay: Why teachers of color leave and how to disrupt teacher turnover,” is primarily based on interviews with administrators and teachers who identify as African-American or Latino, from California, Illinois, Indiana, Tennessee and Texas.

The report offered four recommendations to state leaders to help recruit and retain African-American and Latino teachers:

• Offer loan forgiveness, service scholarships, loan repayment incentives and relocation incentives.
• Invest in the recruitment, preparation and development of leaders committed to positive working conditions for a diverse workforce.
• Collect and study data on teacher recruitment, hiring and retention by race and ethnicity.
• Ensure curriculum, learning and work environments are inclusive and respectful to all racial and ethnic groups.

The teachers who were interviewed said they often experience an antagonistic school culture and feel undervalued and disconnected from the curriculum being taught. They would like to be allowed to teach in more creative and meaningful ways because students aren’t always represented in the curriculum or in classroom materials, according to the report.

The teachers said they want to work in an environment where they can impact students beyond test scores and allow them to graduate with a strong racial identity. They tend to stay at schools where there are strong relationships among staff and a commitment to equity, social justice and the dismantling of racism, according to the study.

“Recruiting teachers of color only gets them into the building,” according to the report. “We must pay equal, if not more, attention to their retention to make a long-lasting change in the diversity of the workforce.” 

Diana Lambert is based in Sacramento and among other topics writes about teachers and teaching in California

Excellent opinion-editorial by Stephanie Hawley, AISD's new Chief Equity Officer. Racism is indeed in the very DNA of our country.  Scroll below to view Hawley's proposed antidotes to what she terms," the cancer of educational racism."

-Angela Valenzuela

From Denial to Diagnosis: Curing Racism in Public Schools

• Published on September 3, 2019

Stephanie Hawley

Chief Equity Officer at Austin Independent School District

“There is separation of colored people from white people in the United States. That separation is not a disease of colored people. It is a disease of white people. I do not intend to be quiet about it.” --Albert Einstein, The Travel Diaries of Albert Einstein

As a Black woman, mother, teacher, administrator, racial equity advocate and inclusion strategist, I have been asked more times than I can remember by well-meaning White teachers, leaders, and politicians, "How can you help close the racial achievement gaps?" The question in and of itself assumes that "I," as a woman of Color, may have the cure for the cause of the racial equity gaps in education-- that devastating centuries-old global disease of racism.

Racism is in the very DNA of our country birthed in the bloody legalized genocide of Indigenous people, nourished and gorged for centuries on the "human capital" of enslaved Indigenous people and enslaved Africans and currently sustained by the exploited labor of people of Asian and Mexican descent.

When I ask questioners, "What do you think is the real problem causing the racial achievement gaps," individuals inevitably point to a myriad of stereotypical factors (that often also apply to millions of White students): Black, Brown and Indigenous children's lack of motivation and preparation, poor parenting and most often labels are affixed including economically disadvantaged, in poverty, traumatized, etc. While these descriptors of the conditions with which children of Color (and White students) may live might be accurate, rarely is there a mention of the strengths, resourcefulness, resilience and creativity Black and Brown students bring to the public school learning experience. Most often, well-meaning educators with deficit mindsets about the children, recommend additional supplementary grant-funded programs or extended time with the same failing curricula and the same teachers who are under prepared to support students of Color. Few, if any of the questioners, profoundly and consistently interrogate a public school system perfectly designed to predictably fail students of Color (statistically speaking).

The American public school system is where racism insidiously metastasizes without detection, intervention, and treatment because we've been "schooled" and socialized NOT to examine the system. Antiracist educators are stepping up to transform White cultural conformity in schooling to racially and culturally inclusive learning experiences for all students.

Individually and collectively, we educators may be in denial that we are the system and we are the disease that tacitly and blindly normalizes, centralizes and prioritizes the thinking, needs, values, history, culture and fears of White children and White families. We have been "schooled" to do so. 

Even in the face of alarming data for decades, educators continue to assume the achievement data gaps are telling us how broken the students of Color are, but in fact, the achievement data tell us how well the system is working for White students and how poorly it is designed to serve Black and Brown students. Educating Diverse (including White) students is not about choosing one group or the other, but using researched-based strategies that promote the learning and flourishing of all students.

Educators who are growing in racial and cultural consciousness sometimes shield White colleagues from words like, "antiracist," 'White fragility," "White privilege," "White supremacy" and other terms that might upset their sensibilities and shut down their amygdala for fear they may tune out/run away and never come to the table for courageous conversations and accountable actions to address individual and systemic racism in classrooms and schools. While empathy is critical, coddling and protecting fragile colleagues to the detriment of students have created and sustained an environment that is toxic and unacceptable.

As awakening individuals and those desperately trying to remain racially and culturally conscious in school systems, we may continue to silently wait at the speed of comfort for White educators and administrators who have been schooled and socialized to avoid conversations about race and racism.

While we are patiently waiting for White leaders and educators to "elect" to confront racism and engage in the necessary and uncomfortable ongoing conversations and training needed to be held accountable for taking direct action for change, disproportionate numbers of Black children languish in detention, suspension, and Special Education. The children are predictably placed on the conveyor belt from frequent suspensions to juvenile detention and on to for-profit prisons. This is a hard truth from which we too often protect White privileged and fragile educators whose daily decisions as early as pre-k are one of the determining factors in the fate of Black and Brown children.

Systemic Diagnosis & Systemic Cures

Racism is a disease that takes on many forms and avoids the light of analysis while it benefits, privileges and profits all systems: health care, city governments (gentrification), insurance, housing, collegiate sports, banking, tech, law enforcement, entertainment, the multi-billion testing industry, for-profit prison industries and yes, public schools.

No child in America should be segregated by low expectations, imprisoned by illiteracy, abandoned to frustration and darkness of self-doubt. . . .Now some say it is unfair to hold disadvantaged children to rigorous standards. I say it is discrimination to require anything less -- the soft bigotry of low expectations. . . .

-George H.W. Bush, 1999 Improving Education Speech

Denial about racism (a common symptom of the disease) is so deeply entrenched in the individual and collective American psyche, many educators and administrators truly believe ourselves to be innocent and unaffected by racism because we are not directly involved in overt and intentional acts of hate. By focusing on our intentions instead of looking at the serious and daily impact and damage of individual and systemic decisions and policies that routinely exclude and criminalize children of Color, we educators, leaders and politicians believe our hands are clean. Racism is insidious and can be difficult to detect if educators are enmeshed in the traditional time constraints of schooling, focused on bureaucratic routines, and initiating the latest "quick fix"interventions.

Certainly, more questions could be asked to detect the cancer of institutional racism, but those below are an introduction to compassionately interrogating the system and are worthy of discussion with elected officials, families, colleagues, principals, board members and the community:

1.Are the system's annual measurable achievement goals lower for Black and Brown students than those established for White students?

 2. Are Black, Brown and Indigenous children disproportionately placed in suspension, detention, mental health facilities, alternative learning environments and Special Education?

3. Are Black, Brown and Indigenous children consistently "missing" from gifted and talented programs?

4. Are the system's most experienced teachers placed and/or allowed to select teaching assignments in predominantly White schools, historically supported by strong leadership, rigorous programming and modern facilities?

5. Are students of Colors historically and disproportionately zoned and assigned to old buildings that are in disarray, unattractive, poorly maintained and plagued by high teacher absenteeism and new, failing or developing leadership?

6. Are administrators, staff and teachers allowed to "opt out" of ongoing cultural proficiency, culturally responsive teaching, racial equity and inclusion training because they are "good" teachers, don't appear to be racist or simply express discomfort with the topics?

7. Are cultural proficiency and antiracist training experiences such low priorities in the system that when training opportunities emerge throughout the year, funding is difficult or impossible to secure?

8. Are antiracist teachers and administrators ostracized, silenced or isolated for speaking up about race, racist policies and differential treatment and outcomes for students of Color and students belonging to other historically marginalized groups?

A "yes" to even one of the questions is a sign racism is alive and has infested the district, school, program, department, and the classrooms.

Fortunately, we have had the cure for racism in education for many decades. Unfortunately, individually and collectively, we simply lack the political will to do what we know we must to bring about racial equity. We often blame the children, funding and politics (code for fear of making White people in power uncomfortable) for our individual and collective failure to do what we know works for Black, Brown and White children.

Over many decades, thousands of Black and Brown families and children have told us what is needed through interviews and research studies. What is needed to close the gaps is no mystery. It requires belief in our collective ability to transform the system with daily courageous action.

First steps with antidotes to the cancer of educational racism include several do-able actions:

1. Ensure all leaders, board members, administrators ad community partners are engaged in ongoing training and development sessions to build relationships and community to establish and monitor the achievement of realistic equity goals.
2. Ensure all Black and Brown students are taught and supported by excellent (experienced, culturally conscious and antiracist) teachers, staff and administrators with high expectations.
3. Ensure curricula and teaching materials are culturally responsive, rigorous, relational, inclusive and affirming with positive images of students and achievers of Color and support varied approaches to critical thinking and interactive instruction.
4. Ensure buildings are modern, clean, and well-lighted; make certain external and internal facilities are welcoming and reflect respect for the culture(s) of the community.
5. Hold all leaders i.e. boards of trustee members, superintendents, and principals accountable for allocating the appropriate funding and developing policies and strategies to recruit, hire, develop, retain and reward excellent (experienced, culturally conscious and antiracist) teachers and staff.

The actions above are a mere primer for beginning the work to interrupt racism to close the racial achievement gaps. All actions require the "grit" constantly demanded of students of Color and students who have been impoverished by multiple racist systems since birth. Taking action to interrupt racism requires consistent courage and commitment to "unlearn" years of unconscious and conscious socialization and conformity to domineering White cultural norms in the P-16 system.

Public education is by design and default deeply and unconsciously racist as evidenced in the enrollment and academic outcomes data and the continued acceptance of the dominance of White cultural norms, segregated and low performing schools and poor building conditions for students of Color. I've been told many times over the years that teachers' unions, individual White educators, White parents, the nation, the city, the county, school districts, and school cultures are just not ready to accept responsibility for engaging in and benefiting from racism, let alone curing racism-- even when presented with evidence and tools to interrupt the privileges and damages.

Civilly and relentlessly examining interactions, policies, practices and communication that exacerbate and feed racist outcomes is only the beginning. Collectively, we can and will heal racism in public schools with a systemic commitment to lifelong "unlearning" of our socialization and public schooling that has had no time for self-diagnosis or the meaningful inclusion of the history and strengths of all cultures and races. The healing of educational racism will begin when politicians and educators actually engage in culturally proficient leadership, assure culturally responsive teaching for all students, and when immersing Black, Brown and White students students in inclusive and affirming learning experiences is the only way schooling is done in America.

The question from White politicians, educators and administrators will no longer be "How can you (Black educator, administrator and equity strategist) close the racial achievement gaps," but the core question will be,"What am I doing with my power as a White person to individually and collectively identify and eradicate the malignant disease of racism that creates racial equity gaps in education?"

While heralded as an antiracist by many African Americans, Einstein himself, struggled with deeply racist views of people of Asian descent as reported in his own diaries. However, like Einstein, educators cannot "be quiet about racism" and like Einstein, we all have unexamined racist beliefs and values that have yet to be addressed and transformed. The time is now for us to begin to heal ourselves individually and collectively so that we can cure a racist educational system that disproportionately wounds Black, Brown and Indigenous children daily.

How are you engaging in self-reflection, community-building and direct action to eradicate racism in public education? Let's chat! Contact me at convergenceconsulting3@gmail.com

When It Comes To The Achievement Gap In Austin’s Schools, There’s More To Say

There are great comments and reflections on this multiply-authored piece by Deb Kelt, Julia Hernandez, Patricia Nuñez, Dr. Michael Marder, and Will Davies curated by KUT's Claire McInerny.

There are insightful comments and discussion on KUT's Facebook page that I encourage you to read, as well.  Standardized tests are particularly problematic in reinscribing the very gap they purport to be addressing.

-Angela Valenzuela

When It Comes To The Achievement Gap In Austin’s Schools, There’s More To Say.

By CLAIRE MCINERNY, KUT • April 12, 2019  

GABRIEL C. PÉREZ

Last week, we published a story called Held Back, a look at the achievement gap in Austin ISD and how we educate students, especially those of color or from low-income homes.

It's an important issue to many in Austin and we heard from a lot of readers and listeners who wanted to continue the conversation on ideas brought up in the story – and some that weren’t.

We collected a handful of comments that represented larger themes present in the feedback to the story. They have been edited for brevity and clarity. 

The term ‘achievement gap’ blames students.

The term "achievement gap" blames students -- it positions students as less than, behind, inferior, incapable. And it positions certain students in this light, namely students of color, students living in poverty, students who speak languages other than English. This is a deeply problematic term, and it's a stance that we must reject in education.

It's the systems we must overhaul. We must look at the many problems with standardized testing, including bias. We must look at what "counts" in school, and question the white supremacist values/ways of acting/ways of knowing that are often held up as "better" in the U.S. and in our schools.  We must look at whose languages are valued, and whose are not, and we must work to challenge the structures that prioritize English.

To me, this is the main reason why "achievement gap" is so offensive. It's just not true. I wish everyone could spend a few hours with the amazing kids I taught at Travis and Akins. The reading test may have given my students a certain label, but it was so utterly false and incomplete. My students interpreted books in ways that I would have never imagined, seeing things I had missed, sharing perspectives I would have never considered. Students shared their ideas with generosity and joy --  and they did all this in so many languages!

I’m grateful I had mentors who taught me how to see all the assets students bring, and how to then use these strengths to help everyone grow further. This appreciative lens changed my teaching in profound ways, and I am certain that if we started with student strength in our classrooms, the possibilities for future growth would be limitless.

 – Deb Kelt, former AISD teacher and Assistant Professor of Practice in the University of Texas College of Education

Tests aren't necessarily built for bilingual students.

Austin ISD currently has enrolled approximately 15,000 English learners (developing bilinguals) at the elementary school level. Some of these students are enrolled in robust and mature Bilingual Education programs that capitalize on students linguistic practices as resources for literacy development.  Establishing goals that include both Spanish (partner language) and English is critical as literacies and languages develop cohesively in reciprocal ways.

Raising awareness and understanding that bilingual students develop literacy differently is important. We know that the use of monolingual, whether Spanish or English metrics results in students scoring below their monolingual peers resulting in deficit thinking about our bilingual students.  This pushes educators to the abandon biliteracy goals, the purchase of remedial programs and the use of ineffective regressive instructional practices; all due to invalid metrics.

 – Patricia Núñez, M.Ed. Austin Area Association for Bilingual Education, past president and Julia Hernández, M.Ed. Austin Area Association for Bilingual Education, vice president

There has to be a balance.

The saddest feature of this beautifully reported story is the pitched battle between two ideas that should be working together rather than in opposition. These two ideas are automatic skills and creativity.  When in high school I had the worst physics course in the history of the universe but wanted to become a physicist, I started drilling myself on physics problems during summers. Creative came later.

Held Back describes project-based instruction as the antithesis of drill-and-kill for reading. I’m a co-director and co-founder of a program to prepare math and science teachers, UTeach. I developed and teach a project-based course in the UTeach sequence. But this does not mean that I dismiss the 3R approach at Graham. It should be looked at very seriously. The process may be intense, and it may be guided by tests, but that will be worth it if it gets more kids to the point where they can read and write with ease, for learning and for pleasure, and also learning through projects.

There has got to exist a middle path through this controversy.

 – Michael Marder, Executive Director of UTeach

To achieve, students should be given opportunities.

The “achievement gap,” often downplays the fact that Austin, and this nation, have repeatedly chosen segregation and inequitable resource and opportunity distribution for their schools. It’s a mistake to try to understand “achievement gaps” without paying attention to the historical and contemporary opportunity gaps that persist between the education provided to different groups of students based on race, class, and geography.

Austin, long one of the state’s most racially and economically segregated cities, has undergone “freedom of choice,” federal desegregation court rulings, the dissolving of attendance zones, busing, the expansion of magnets, “priority schools,” and the eventual restoration of neighborhood schools that mirrored the residentially segregated reality of the community.

Opportunity gaps have consequences. Black and Latinx students in AISD are dramatically underrepresented in AP and magnet programs, continue to be disproportionately disciplined, and many are opting-out of the public option entirely in favor of charters. Racism today works in more subtle and elusive ways than it once did. Everyday discriminatory practices often occur without intent, and can reflect lowered expectations, deficit mindsets, or implicit biases about certain students and communities.

 – Will Davies, Austin area bilingual educator, UT graduate student

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