The Kentucky Human Rights Commission has joined the chorus of voices condemning Woodford County High School for its recent ill-advised letter to African American parents announcing a special assembly to discuss the academic performance of Black students. When parents raised a ruckus the school immediately cancelled its plans and the Woodford County superintendent issued an apology, acknowledging that the letter was "poorly worded." Kentucky education commissioner Terry Holliday sent a stern warning to the superintendent calling the letter a "lapse in judgment" and calling for corrective action to assure such an event doesn't occur again.
While the leadership of Woodford County High deserves this criticism, it would be a shame if this episode passes without some reflection on the part of educators and the general public as to why a school would feel motivated to send such a letter in the first place.
Provisions of both state and federal school accountability laws hold educators responsible for improving the overall test scores of students who are African American, Hispanic, have disabilities, and/or who receive free or reduced lunch. There's a good reason for this, of course. Historically these groups of students have significantly underperformed Whites and students without disabilities and who don't receive free or reduced lunch. Beginning with the federal No Child Left Behind Act, policy makers recognized this unacceptable disparity and since then educators have responded with various strategies to try and close the achievement gap.
In many schools, however, this has led to an overemphasis on students' membership in various groups, rather than their individual performance level.
Let me emphasize that I have no knowledge of instructional practices at Woodford County High, so I can't say if this has happened there in the past. But I know from first-hand experience as a teacher and administrator that schools face a huge temptation, in their effort to prioritize resources, to devote extra attention, not to all struggling students or even all African American students, but to African American students whose past performance suggests the possibility of easily scoring proficient on state exams, thus giving the school an extra accountability boost.
In educational parlance, these students are known as "bubble kids," (they are on the "bubble" between the "apprentice" and "proficient" performance levels), or sometimes more cynically, as "low hanging fruit." They are even more valuable to the school if they occupy multiple accountability categories, like being African American and receiving free and reduced lunch.
The effect of all this is that educators begin to see students more as potential test scores than as individual learners with complex needs. It also means that some students whose performance appears intractably poor may get a minimal amount of attention and support.
What I'm describing is the product of an educational system that, because of the very structure of school accountability, is obsessed with testing and test scores, and not (necessarily) a particular attitude toward groups of students as a whole. Still not a flattering picture.
It's important to note that Kentucky schools have made a great deal of progress in moving toward a much more individualized approach to teaching and learning in recent years. Practically every school in Kentucky has initiated a system of tiered interventions to provide extra attention to every student who is struggling to reach proficiency, regardless of their ethnicity, disability, or socio-economic status.
But the ultimate focus in many schools remains the same: higher student performance as measured by state exams.
Again, I can't say if any of this was at work in Woodford County High's decision to issue that letter to parents and call an assembly with African American students. Woodford County is a very high performing school district by any measure. Woodford County High's 2011-2012 school report card indicates that it had too few African American students to be accountable for their group performance under NCLB. But the overemphasis on leveraging higher test scores for groups of students and for students in general is typical for most schools in Kentucky.
I'm not suggesting, as some educators have, that we get rid of the tests or school accountability. Taxpayers deserve some clear indicators of what students are learning. But as someone who trains aspiring school leaders, I believe we need to shift our emphasis toward the inputs in the learning process, especially classroom-level instruction, rather than the outputs of test scores.
This means schools should continue to work toward having a focused, high-quality curriculum guaranteed to all students, and that teachers should deliver well-structured lessons that include frequent, ungraded assessments of student progress toward learning targets, and make regular adjustments in their teaching based on this progress. And this should happen in every classroom.
I know many schools have been diligently working toward doing just what I'm describing, probably in Woodford County as well. But I also know from experience that most Kentucky schools have a long way to go in this regard. Far too many schools still put all their improvement energies into various intervention and support programs without making significant changes in everyday teaching practices.
If we devote more energy to improving the teaching and learning experience in every classroom and to responding to individual learning needs, schools could not only avoid the kinds of embarrassments recently experienced in Woodford County, but test scores for all students might ultimately improve as well.
Comments