Why Inner City Kids Have A Natural Learning Advantage
Whenever the U.S. talks about its long-term strategy for global competitiveness, it rarely puts inner city kids atop its list of assets. And that's a shame. After working in urban education for more than twenty years, I can tell you firsthand we're not making the most of this amazing resource.
No question, many urban children face a lot of challenges in their young lives. But from my experience, they have developed one powerful, extremely valuable characteristic that many of their suburban counterparts lack: grit. By this I mean they have courage and persistence and quickly get back on their feet after setbacks. Urban kids have grit by the boatload--and with the right tools and encouragement, grit will turn these young people into a wellspring of talent in the future.
Many experts believe that more doors open through proficiency in math and science than any other subjects currently taught in our schools. Aptitude in these areas is irreplaceable in the cultures of advanced nations. Yet we hamstring both our schools and our children when we expect teachers to instill proficiency in math through instruction alone. Practice--especially the kind of practice in which the learner is personally invested in the outcome--is essential.
The problem is that, unlike many other skills kids can develop, there is typically no immediate feedback loop for math practice. Imagine putting a child on the foul line of a basketball court, blindfolding him, and then asking him to learn to shoot foul shots. With no way to see how to improve, what would be the result? "This is dumb. What's the use? I'm bored."
These are the very same responses teachers hear when kids practice math.
Under the right conditions, however, the incredible grit that inner city kids have can be put to use to improve their accomplishments in math. When students experience self-affirmation through an immediate feedback loop--whether in athletics or in bettering math skills--it sets up a cycle of pride and determination that is unstoppable.
Once kids take ownership of their own learning process and make an internal decision to master a skill, they no longer shy away from challenges but actively seek them out. If we provide our children with a world of fascinating challenges and give them the freedom to make mistakes without judgment, they will push their skills right to the edge. They will mess up frequently, but ironically, in making all those mistakes and immediately correcting them, they will get faster and more competent at that skill.
We call this phenomenon "deep practice." Deep practice is not a function of the classroom--and it's both impractical and misguided to think prolonged practice should happen there. Somehow, a feedback environment has to be created wherein kids take active ownership of their practice requirements during their free time at home, school, library or elsewhere. If physical and psychological rewards are made part of the regimen, kids will latch on with tremendous energy.
That's where the use of technology comes in. Kids will lose themselves in a game-like environment where progressively, new skills and improvement are recognized. We've seen it work. In Philadelphia, such an online program was first introduced in more than 2,600 third through eighth grade classrooms. Students took it upon themselves to practice, logging over 216,000 hours in a progressive journey of learning that encompassed simple addition, decimals, fractions, exponents and even complex algebra. One year later, the School District of Philadelphia reported a 7.4% increase in fifth grade students scoring at the proficient and above level, compared with a 5.2% increase for students statewide. Improvement for eighth graders was even more impressive: an 11.1% increase in students scoring proficient and above, versus a 6.1% increase statewide.
In the district's academic region, where the program was most diligently implemented, fifth grade scores increased 15.1%--double the school district's broader increase and three times the state average. In one school, eighth grade results jumped nearly 42% in a single year.
Over the past nine years, Philadelphia students have correctly solved about 948 million math problems using the online program. The result was a district-wide increase in the percentage of students scoring proficient and above on the Pennsylvania System of School Assessment (PSSA) tests every year, for a total gain of 39.5 percentage points.
Philadelphia is not unique. In Pittsburgh, where the same deep practice program is being deployed district-wide, three schools ranked among the lowest in district surged to second, third and fourth place within two months after a targeted concentrated effort. The students' incentive was simply a trophy that travelled from classroom to classroom on a weekly basis, giving them something to work for.
A Pittsburgh math coach reported that one student who had won "player of the week" honors--a child living in adverse circumstances--was so inspired he would go to the local community center and practice for hours, without direction, simply to get continued recognition. He had the grit to go somewhere and do something he had never done before in order to reach his goal.
We live in the technological age, at a time when proficiency in math is paramount. We must develop our nation's capacity to compete in this realm. Under the right conditions, inner city children are more eager to practice math, less discouraged by failure, and respond more positively to self-affirmation, than suburban kids.
I am convinced that urban children, with their indomitable spirit and inexhaustible supply of grit, are the keys to uplifting and rebuilding our nation to its former glory. Technology can play a pivotal role in tapping the resolve of these unique kids, creating a paradigm shift in education, and ultimately closing America's achievement gap.
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Education Gap Grows Between Rich and Poor, Studies SayBy SABRINA TAVERNISE
Published: February 9, 2012
DiggRedditTumblrPermalink. WASHINGTON — Education was historically considered a great equalizer in American society, capable of lifting less advantaged children and improving their chances for success as adults. But a body of recently published scholarship suggests that the achievement gap between rich and poor children is widening, a development that threatens to dilute education’s leveling effects.
News, data and conversation about education in New York. It is a well-known fact that children from affluent families tend to do better in school. Yet the income divide has received far less attention from policy makers and government officials than gaps in student accomplishment by race.
Now, in analyses of long-term data published in recent months, researchers are finding that while the achievement gap between white and black students has narrowed significantly over the past few decades, the gap between rich and poor students has grown substantially during the same period.
“We have moved from a society in the 1950s and 1960s, in which race was more consequential than family income, to one today in which family income appears more determinative of educational success than race,” said Sean F. Reardon, a Stanford University sociologist. Professor Reardon is the author of a study that found that the gap in standardized test scores between affluent and low-income students had grown by about 40 percent since the 1960s, and is now double the testing gap between blacks and whites.
In another study, by researchers from the University of Michigan, the imbalance between rich and poor children in college completion — the single most important predictor of success in the work force — has grown by about 50 percent since the late 1980s.
The changes are tectonic, a result of social and economic processes unfolding over many decades. The data from most of these studies end in 2007 and 2008, before the recession’s full impact was felt. Researchers said that based on experiences during past recessions, the recent downturn was likely to have aggravated the trend.
“With income declines more severe in the lower brackets, there’s a good chance the recession may have widened the gap,” Professor Reardon said. In the study he led, researchers analyzed 12 sets of standardized test scores starting in 1960 and ending in 2007. He compared children from families in the 90th percentile of income — the equivalent of around $160,000 in 2008, when the study was conducted — and children from the 10th percentile, $17,500 in 2008. By the end of that period, the achievement gap by income had grown by 40 percent, he said, while the gap between white and black students, regardless of income, had shrunk substantially.
Both studies were first published last fall in a book of research, “Whither Opportunity?” compiled by the Russell Sage Foundation, a research center for social sciences, and the Spencer Foundation, which focuses on education. Their conclusions, while familiar to a small core of social sciences scholars, are now catching the attention of a broader audience, in part because income inequality has been a central theme this election season.
The connection between income inequality among parents and the social mobility of their children has been a focus of President Obama as well as some of the Republican presidential candidates.
One reason for the growing gap in achievement, researchers say, could be that wealthy parents invest more time and money than ever before in their children (in weekend sports, ballet, music lessons, math tutors, and in overall involvement in their children’s schools), while lower-income families, which are now more likely than ever to be headed by a single parent, are increasingly stretched for time and resources. This has been particularly true as more parents try to position their children for college, which has become ever more essential for success in today’s economy.
A study by Sabino Kornrich, a researcher at the Center for Advanced Studies at the Juan March Institute in Madrid, and Frank F. Furstenberg, scheduled to appear in the journal Demography this year, found that in 1972, Americans at the upper end of the income spectrum were spending five times as much per child as low-income families. By 2007 that gap had grown to nine to one; spending by upper-income families more than doubled, while spending by low-income families grew by 20 percent.
“The pattern of privileged families today is intensive cultivation,” said Dr. Furstenberg, a professor of sociology at the University of Pennsylvania.
The gap is also growing in college. The University of Michigan study, by Susan M. Dynarski and Martha J. Bailey, looked at two generations of students, those born from 1961 to 1964 and those born from 1979 to 1982. By 1989, about one-third of the high-income students in the first generation had finished college; by 2007, more than half of the second generation had done so. By contrast, only 9 percent of the low-income students in the second generation had completed college by 2007, up only slightly from a 5 percent college completion rate by the first generation in 1989.
James J. Heckman, an economist at the University of Chicago, argues that parenting matters as much as, if not more than, income in forming a child’s cognitive ability and personality, particularly in the years before children start school.
“Early life conditions and how children are stimulated play a very important role,” he said. “The danger is we will revert back to the mindset of the war on poverty, when poverty was just a matter of income, and giving families more would improve the prospects of their children. If people conclude that, it’s a mistake.”
Meredith Phillips, an associate professor of public policy and sociology at the University of California, Los Angeles, used survey data to show that affluent children spend 1,300 more hours than low-income children before age 6 in places other than their homes, their day care centers, or schools (anywhere from museums to shopping malls). By the time high-income children start school, they have spent about 400 hours more than poor children in literacy activities, she found.
Charles Murray, a scholar at the American Enterprise Institute whose book, “Coming Apart: The State of White America, 1960-2010,” was published Jan. 31, described income inequality as “more of a symptom than a cause.”
The growing gap between the better educated and the less educated, he argued, has formed a kind of cultural divide that has its roots in natural social forces, like the tendency of educated people to marry other educated people, as well as in the social policies of the 1960s, like welfare and other government programs, which he contended provided incentives for staying single.
“When the economy recovers, you’ll still see all these problems persisting for reasons that have nothing to do with money and everything to do with culture,” he said.
There are no easy answers, in part because the problem is so complex, said Douglas J. Besharov, a fellow at the Atlantic Council. Blaming the problem on the richest of the rich ignores an equally important driver, he said: two-earner household wealth, which has lifted the upper middle class ever further from less educated Americans, who tend to be single parents.
The problem is a puzzle, he said. “No one has the slightest idea what will work. The cupboard is bare.”
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Community Colleges: On the Frontline of Education in America
Community colleges are at the frontlines of education in America. That's the message Dr. Jill Biden and I have been taking across the country this week on our "Community College to Careers" bus tour. It's also a message that is especially important to the Latino community. So many Latinos rely on community colleges to pursue their dreams. Roughly half of college-going Latinos are enrolled in community colleges. And most of our Hispanic-Serving Institutions are community colleges.
As Latinos are the fastest growing minority in the U.S., it's critical that we invest in the institutions that are building up this skilled workforce in America.
The first elected office I ever held was as a trustee on the Rio Hondo Community College Board in California. So I know well the value these colleges have for Latinos. In so many ways, they're a perfect fit. Community colleges are local and flexible. They provide accelerated and translatable degree programs. And they provide training that sets people up for jobs in their community -- all at very low costs.
If we are serious about meeting the challenges of the 21st century global economy, and if the promise of fair access to higher education is to be realized, then it's going to happen at community colleges. That's exactly what Dr. Biden and I have been hearing on this bus tour through Ohio, Kentucky, Tennessee and Virginia. Workers are telling us how important community colleges have been not only to them, but also to their communities. Employers are telling us about this, too. In fact, a big reason for our bus tour is to see how businesses are partnering with community colleges to create innovative job training programs.We know that these partnerships are critical to ensuring American workers, and businesses, succeed in the future. That's why President Obama has made them an important centerpiece of his newest initiative to invest in American workers.
It's called the Community College to Career Fund. This $8 billion fund is designed to help workers obtain the skills they need to get job offers in industries that are hiring right now.
The President's plan helps Latinos by:
>Supporting paid internships for low-income students so they can earn school credit for work-based learning and gain relevant employment experience in high-wage fields; Establishing public-private partnerships to encourage businesses to invest in America through grants to encourage companies to locate in jurisdictions with pools of highly qualified local workers; Creating pathways to entrepreneurship for five million Americans through intensive programs that help participants open their own small businesses; and by Providing workers with the latest certified training and skills for jobs in high-growth and in-demand industries.
This last point is particularly important for Latinos. As a community, we are sorely underrepresented in science, technology, engineering and math (STEM). Take engineering for example. Less than 7 percent of American engineers are Latino. But over the next decade, there will be 1 million new U.S. job openings in STEM. And college students who study these fields will make a half-million dollars more over their lifetimes than other students.
As a community, it's imperative that we encourage our young Latinos to consider careers in STEM. That's why President Obama wants to invest $100 million to improve college education in these fields -- with a special focus on community colleges and minority-serving institutions that train many Latinos. And it's why the president is pushing for the creation of more clean energy jobs -- and for the skills training to match them.
America's future will only be as strong as the industries we create and grow, and that means we must support our entrepreneurs, our workers and the institutions that train them. By making this commitment to education and meaningful skills training for Latinos, we can educate our community, open new career pathways, restore our prosperity and create an America that's truly built to last.
The idea is simple: community colleges will partner with businesses to develop training programs that match the needs of local job-creators.
