Achievement Gap Reflection

I chose to try to model the Achievement Gap. As it turns out it is a monster that keeps growing. Every time I investigate one idea there are more and more issues that turn up. Obviously there is no simple solution to the achievement gap or we would have solved it by now.

The problem that I have encountered is that every single element of the Achievement Gap intertwines and intersects with each other. You can’t isolate any one factor, it is a never-ending rabbit hole and where does it end? The more I tried to refine the list of factors the more that it grew. Pretty much everything is a factor in the achievement gap.

Below is the brainstorm of ideas that are part of the Achievement Gap problem:

Some, but not all of the factors include: gender, race, parents’ education, parents’ income, books in the house, prenatal care, birth weight, and access to technology both in and out of school. These are just some of the many factors that effect a child’s achievement.

As I started to collect data, I began to put the information into a spreadsheet to try to make some sense of all the information. The problem is; how do you categorize each piece of information? Much of the statistical data does not seem to fit with each other. It's a jumble of separate pieces of information that seemed to not fit into a nice neat spreadsheet.

I keep trying to make some sense of all this data. I know that I haven't even scratched the surface as to the causes or factors of the Achievement Gap. But with all of this data how can I use it in my classroom to help the students that are falling behind? I know that in my own classroom I see firsthand many of these types of students that are falling behind. As a teacher, I know that myself and my colleagues are doing everything we can to close the gap, but it is an uphill battle. Often we feel alone in the trenches. There are so many things that we cannot control and an infinite amount of obstacles that exist even before the child enters our classroom.

As we talked in class I was asked what is the most important factor in the Achievement Gap? It was hard to put a finger on just one aspect. After our discussion in class and thinking about what are the most important factors I rated what I thought were the most important factors:

1. Mother’s education

2. Income

3. Race

4. Gender

5. Prenatal care (birth weight)

6. Household make-up/stability

7. Motivation

My conclusion is that with No Child Left Behind and schools trying to make AYP everyone is blaming the teachers for all of the troubles of our students while not wanting to address any of the other reasons for the Achievement Gap. We blame the teachers because it is easy. No one wants to point a finger at any of the other variables because it is too hard. It is impossible to isolate all (or any) of these factors so everyone likes to point a finger at teachers and make them the scapegoat in the Achievement Gap crisis.

It is easy to blame the messenger rather than look into the mirror. No one wants to admit their failures.

Here are some of the sources that I used:

http://www.edtrust.org/

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Achievement_gap_in_the_United_States

http://www.edweek.org/rc/issues/achievement-gap/

http://nces.ed.gov/nationsreportcard/naepdata/variables.aspx

http://www.usnews.com/articles/education/2009/10/07/do-elite-private-colleges-discriminate-against-asian-students.html

http://www.educationequalityproject.org/what_we_stand_for/achievement_gap

http://www.ideapartnership.org/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=537:achievement-gap&catid=37:reports&Itemid=60

Problem-based lesson Reflection

As a 6th grade teacher of Language Arts and Reading I wanted the students to create an authentic model that would enhance their understanding of a problem. As part of our writing curriculum the students learn persuasive writing. The hardest part of persuasive writing for young students is to see both sides of the argument. A major problem in this kind of writing is anticipating the arguments of the “other side” and responding satisfactorily to those arguments.

To help with this process I have the students ask their parents for something that they would like; i.e. a cell phone, redecorating their room, or a later bedtime. The parents will give a list of every reason that their son or daughter cannot have what the want. The student will then try to refute every one of their parent’s objections through a letter written to their parents.

I have done this assignment in the past and have found the students have had some difficulty organizing their ideas and overcoming some of the objections. I chose to introduce a model near the beginning of the assignment to help the students “visualize” the problem.

“Visualization tools are normally used to support some kind of investigation or larger learning activity. They are not used, as are many Mindtools, to produce a final model. Rather, they are used to help learners interpret ideas of to represent ideas while conducting a study and investigation of a topic.” (Jonassen, 2006)

I chose the software Inspiration because I felt that is would be able to serve the purpose of creating a visual view of the student’s problems and as a district we have enough student licenses for all of the kids.

I teach three separate blocks of students and I first modeled an example that all of the students were familiar with; redecorating your room. We have been working with this idea since the beginning of the assignment. I modeled with each of the classes how to create an Inspiration model and how to organize their thoughts.

“To successfully solve virtually any kind of problem, the problem solver must mentally construct a problem space. A problem space is mentally constructed by selecting and mapping specific relations of the problem.” (McGuinness, 1986)

Initially, I thought that all three-class models would be the same since I was facilitating the discussion. But to my surprise each class made different choices as how to set up the model and what each objection represented.




I was pleasantly surprised at how the different classes “built” our collective model. Working as a whole class gave the students the support and scaffolding they needed to complete their own personal models to overcome their parents objections. I felt that the students were able to better conceptualize their parent’s objections. They were able to have a better understanding of how to approach their ultimate final goal of writing a letter to their parents overcoming the objections to get what they want.

Here are some student examples:




The students used their models to help construct their argument for their parents objections. Overall I felt that it did help the students have a better understanding as how to approach their argument. They were able to group and see how many of their parent's objections were very similar to each other.