Here's a very good article by Michael Petrilli at Fordham Institute called How to Narrow the Excellence Gap in Early Elementary School. Here's his premise around the issue of the "excellence gap" between white students and students of color from K-12 grades (bold mine).
The excellence gap is even apparent at kindergarten entry. That indicates that much of the gap is driven by out-of-school factors, especially socioeconomic inequality between the ages of zero and five.
Yet many more Black and low-income students are achieving at high levels in kindergarten, especially in reading, than in later years. This indicates that something is causing the excellence gap to widen in the early years of elementary school.
That last point is what gives me hope. If we can understand why a disproportionate number of Black and low-income high-achievers are “losing altitude” in grades K–3, we might identify strategies to reverse this trend.
Key Factors
- Socioeconomic inequality continues to exert downward pressure on these students’ achievement.
The left would point to systemic racism and a weak social safety net; the right would point to family structure and culture.- Black and low-income high achievers may lack access to high-quality elementary schools.
- Early elementary teachers may be biased against Black and low-income high achievers.
In my post last fall on the gender gap in reading, I offered evidence that teachers in the early grades were biased against boys. That was apparent when researchers used data from the Early Childhood Longitudinal Study (ECLS) to compare students’ test scores to teachers’ evaluations of the same children’s abilities. Teachers systematically underestimated boys’ reading prowess, perhaps conflating their bad behavior with struggles in learning to read.
Parents, do you agree with this? It's not my experience but perhaps you have some experience. I find that teachers tend to overlook the quiet kids more.
- These students may be struggling with reading comprehension, thanks to limited content knowledge.
As E.D. Hirsch, Jr. has argued for over three decades, many children struggle to comprehend because they lack the vocabulary to be fluent readers. And their vocabulary deficit comes from a knowledge deficit; they haven’t been taught enough about science, history, geography, and the arts to recognize common words when they sound them out.
By the fourth grade, the NAEP reading assessment tests both the basic literacy skills included on the ECLS reading exam and the reading comprehension ability related to the ECLS general knowledge assessment. Especially at high levels of achievement, basic skills (such as decoding) can be taken for granted; the best readers, then, must also have a strong command of comprehension.
Because of my experiences in a kindergarten classroom (two teachers over four years), I would agree. I sometimes would pick not-grade-level K books and found that kids wanted to have more challenging material and learn more than one data point on a subject of interest.
One example that comes to mind is when I told several students who were interested in animals that there are different kinds of vets. And then I told them there were different kinds of physicians. One boy just couldn't believe that a doctor is not just "a doctor."
Interestingly, many solutions he offers come from gifted education studies.
- Identify students with the potential for high achievement via universal screening and local, school-based norms.
- Start universal screening in kindergarten.
- Go big on content knowledge, especially in grades K–3
- Incorporate grades K–2 into state testing and accountability systems.
I think one reason screening happens later is because education believes you may not find giftedness earlier and districts may not want to start programs that cost them time and money earlier.
However the point I'm making here is testing earlier -to find out more about every student sooner - helps teachers get a really good idea of where students are starting out.
Thoughts?
Comments
1. early in the year birthdays. Some could have entered a year earlier.
2. older siblings
3. parents who were well educated
To answer the question: yes to earlier testing. A major question is what should the testing cover? And another question is: what's the right opportunity for kids who are not considered gifted per the test, but because of the factors I outlined, are accelerated learners?
My son was reading at the 0.5 level at the end of Kindergarten. I think there were only 2 kids who were reading at a "lower" level. Not surprisingly, with a birthday at the end of April, he was the third or fourth youngest kid in the class. Over the summer, I followed some guidance from the K teacher about how to read with him, and when he tested for reading level the following Sept, he tested at level 1.3. I had moved him one full year in three months. He eventually did quality for Highly Capable services. We did not put him in because he would have had to skip a year of math, or rather I would have had to reach him third grade math which I felt was too much to do. This was not in Seattle by the way. He had done second grade math in second, then in third in Hi Cap would have done fourth grade math. I asked the teacher what the plan was for helping him the material and got pretty much a blank look. Most of the kids had entered in first.
Some kids are definitely ready for Hi Cap in first grade. These kids would have been incredibly bored in the regular first grade class. The state is paying some significant money for Hi Cap. I don't think the cost is any greater, with the possible exception of testing costs and out of service area transportation. But overall, the teacher/ student ratio is about the same. So districts should be able to start sooner.
In my experience, middle school, and increasingly high school, reading programs in Seattle are reader's workshop, which leaves little room for direct instruction or coherent background knowledge and enshrines that upper middle class belief in student choice, individualism, atomization, and recourse to the family for basic instruction.
SP
How many kids have parents who will push back when the teacher says it's ADHD? Or worse, how many kids will just keep getting suspended more and more often as bad behavior continues?
How many kids get the remedial reading instruction that actually works (if a reading issue is even identified)? I'm guessing there's a big difference in who gets help versus who doesn't that's highly correlated with socio-economic conditions.
Schools MUST use phonics instruction, and they MUST have teachers who know how to teach it properly before we have any hope of closing gaps.
Phonics Mom
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