regular subject matter from the academic disciplines has been replaced with courses like “opportunity math” for students who supposedly cannot learn algebra.
Low expectations. Research has documented that a poor student is five times more likely to have an inexperienced or inadequately trained teacher, and these teachers often focus their instruction on achievement levels that reflect a cultural bias; for example, teachers often do not believe poor and minority students can achieve high academic proficiency, so instruction and assignments are watered down to low levels of expectation.
Classroom practices that are unresponsive to students. Too many classroom teachers focus their energy on what is taught rather than on what is learned. Effective teachers focus their lessons first on the needs of their students.
After visiting urban schools throughout the United States, Kati Haycock and her colleagues were stunned not only by how little was expected of poor students, but also by the low level of classroom assignments that were given to them. Even worse, in high-poverty middle and high schools, Haycock reported a surprising number of coloring assignments, rather than assignments in writing and math: “Even at the high school level, we found coloring assignments. ‘Read To Kill a Mockingbird, says the 11th-grade English teacher, ‘and when you’re finished, color a poster about it’” (Haycock, 2001, p. 8).
Eliminating the Bigotry of Low Expectations
“When I became superintendent, I carefully reviewed data from throughout the school district. I was surprised to see that 800 students in our largest high school had not taken algebra, and they were not scheduled to take algebra in the future. When confronted with the data, [the principal of the school] looked puzzled and shrugged. ‘I guess they just kinda fell through the cracks,’ he explained. I reacted fairly quickly: ‘It must have been a hell of a crack!’ Upon further examination, I learned all 800 students were African American. I directed the principal to immediately schedule all of the students in pre-algebra and then algebra. He shook his head and explained, ‘I can’t do that. The schedule has already been completed.’ I responded, ‘Today is Friday. You have all weekend to make the necessary adjustments. I want the revised schedule in my office on Monday morning.’”
—Superintendent, North Carolina
While the bigotry of low expectations appears to be far less pervasive in recent years, it does linger on. In his closing statement in a recent South Carolina school finance case, an attorney for the state remarked: “The effects [poverty] has are deeply embedded in society and culture in the state. Is altering the effects of poverty something schools can do, or is that something society has to muster? The answer is no, we don’t know how to do this. It’s not happening anywhere” (Richards, 2005, p. 19). In fact, it is happening—in many schools and districts in South Carolina and across the country. Poor children are indeed achieving at high levels.
Evidence abounds to support an immediate expansion of the successful intervention practices currently being employed with underachieving, poor youth (Barr & Parrett, 2001). Despite decades of research regarding the detrimental approaches used in public education, too many educators have yet to acknowledge the proven consequences of these destructive practices and replace them with more effective approaches to educating poor students.
Educators must address the pedagogy and mythology of the past to create schools that can indeed effectively educate the underachieving children of poverty. Critical to reorganizing schools and classrooms for success is the need to support and enhance the capacity of classroom teachers. Without question, it is the child’s teacher who represents hope and promise for our under-performing poor children.
The next chapter provides an overview of the research, evaluation, and data analyses conducted on high-performing, high-poverty schools. It includes a wide variety of classrooms, schools, school districts, and community strategies that have been unusually effective in improving the achievement and school success of the underachieving children of poverty.
Chapter 3
Research on High-Performing, High-Poverty Schools
“We have much more to learn from studying high-poverty schools that are on the path to improvement than we do from studying nominally high-performing schools that are producing a significant portion of their performance through social class rather than instruction.”
—Richard Elmore (2005, p. 45)
Research has identified a steadily growing number of schools where poor and minority students are learning effectively and achieving high academic standards. In the late 1970s, Ron Edmonds and his colleagues began identifying the traits of effective schools where this phenomenon was occurring. Later, scholars at Louisiana State University analyzed more than 100 separate studies over a 10-year period that identified schools in high-poverty areas where the students were achieving at similar levels as middle-class students. More recently, schools associated with the High Schools That Work (HSTW) program reported that all types of underachieving students, particularly poor and minority high school students, could perform satisfactorily when provided with a rigorous, relevant college-prep curriculum and when better supported in their studies (Bottoms & Anthony, 2005).
Perhaps most significant was a series of reports from the Education Trust that began in 1999 and attracted national attention to schools in every part of the nation where poor and minority students were outperforming their more advantaged peers. Dispelling the Myth (Barth et al., 1999) identified 366 schools where more than half of the poor or minority (African-American and Hispanic) students were achieving in the top 25% of the schools in reading and math. Dispelling the Myth Revisited (Jerald, 2001) identified more than 4,500 schools where some aspect of students’ academic performance placed them above 75% of the schools in their states. More recently, Dispelling the Myth … Over Time (Education Trust, 2002) reported on this continued trend, focusing on thousands of schools that were maintaining sustained achievement success. The work of the Education Trust has further documented that effective schools can successfully teach poor and minority students and ensure that they are achieving high levels of proficiency.
The fact is that we can successfully educate all students when we choose to do so. Hopefully, the flawed conclusions of the past about the lack of influence schools have on the academic achievement of poor children and youth have finally been put to rest. The policies and practices inspired by Coleman’s report—and other research of that time—were wrong and destructive. We now possess vivid, powerful evidence to document the tragic errors that have impeded the achievement of generations of children and can begin to correct those errors.
Identifying Strategies for Accelerating the Achievement of Poor Children
Scholars, research organizations, and concerned educators and community members continue their efforts to discover and disseminate information on why and how some schools have been so successful with the children of poverty. By 2005, 18 studies had been published on the policies, programs, and practices that have encouraging results with children of poverty. While our nation has perpetually sought to better our schools, the specific work of improving low-performing schools that enroll a significant number of children of poverty is rooted in the late 1970s when Ron Edmonds and his colleagues began identifying the correlates of effective schools (Edmonds, 1979a, 1979b, 1981, 1982). Soon thereafter, the Louisiana School Effectiveness Study conducted and analyzed a decade of research that explained remarkable school successes with poor and minority students in that state (Teddlie & Stringfield, 1993).
Beginning in the late 1990s and continuing to the present, the number and sophistication of these studies and reports
