Before we all break for the holiday, I wanted to pass along some interesting posts on this week's "nation's report card" tally of how 21 urban districts fared on national reading and math exams.
Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools rated high compared with the other districts on the 2013 National Assessment of Educational Progress, though proficiency rates remain frustratingly low across the country, especially for low-income and minority students. As I noted in my article, CMS' large numbers of white and middle-class students compared with most other districts contributed to its high rankings.
Paul Hill of the University of Washington's Center on Reinventing Public Education elaborated on that issue in a Friday blog post.
"It is tempting to squeeze the urban NAEP scores for evidence about what city is doing better or worse than other cities. But the big messages are that everyone's scores are very bad, and that cities with the highest concentrations of low-income and minority kids do the worst," Hill writes. "Some cities have gotten unstuck from the bottom and are regressing a little bit to the mean. That's better than staying stuck, but unless those cities increase a lot faster, and keep improving for a long time, most of their disadvantaged students will not be ready for higher education or good-paying jobs."
"The deep message here is that nobody knows how to educate large numbers of disadvantaged kids successfully. A new curriculum or teacher training initiative can move the needle for a while, but results then level out. A great school can do wonders for a few kids, but efforts to replicate are seldom as successful. As a country, we still haven't accepted the core fact that this problem remains unsolved."
Andy Smarick of the Thomas B. Fordham Institute also took a dim view of the results and the cheerleading that ensued. He blogged that "today is a day to be sad for millions of disadvantaged kids," not to celebrate. He also noted that winners and finalists in the Broad Prize for Urban Education competition fared poorly (though he didn't mention CMS, the 2011 winner).
Robin Lake of the CRPE called for expanding the data, especially on cities that have some of the most innovative approaches to urban education, including extensive use of charter schools.
"The NAEP TUDA has effectively focused our attention on cities, where reforms are most urgently needed, but the data don’t tell us what mayors and civic leaders across the country need to know: which cities are most quickly and equitably increasing students’ access to high-quality public schools," Lake wrote. "Our cities have long since moved past the notion of districts as the sole provider of public education. It’s time that our assessment and evaluation systems do, too."
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