NCLB and the Closing of Achievement Gaps

We wrote a few weeks back about the passing of one of public education’s greatest supporters, Gerald Bracey. One of Bracey’s key attributes was to point out the statistical discrepancies that could occur when data is broken out by various subgroups.

Many times Bracey demonstrated how one had to look behind as well as beyond the numbers, that whole group progress might contrast with individual sub-group performances and vice-versa. In simplest terms, statistical analysis is very challenging and determining valid conclusions more difficult still.

With that in mind, we turn to some recent research that examines sub-group scores on the national and state achievement tests. While proponents of NCLB continue to insist that law has helped close the achievement gap, that is to say, to reduce the difference in scoring on standardized tests between whites and various subgroups, the law has not done so for one of the most important subgroups, the highest achieving students.

Researchers Jonathan A. Plucker, Ph.D., Nathan Burroughs, Ph.D. and Ruiting Song recently released a new report called Mind the (Other) Gap! The Growing Excellence Gap in K-12 Education (pdf). The writers note:

“One of the major objectives of the No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB) is to narrow the achievement gap among demographic subgroups of K-12 students. In NCLB’s implementation, the principal focus has been on minimum competency—of bringing a larger proportion of students to a basic level of educational achievement and closing achievement gaps.”

While there has been progress on that specific front, the researchers also noted:

“…. some observers believe the focus on minimum competency has come at a price. Although there has been a general improvement in academic performance, are achievement gaps also shrinking at the highest levels of student achievement?”

The answer, the researchers found, was no. In fact, they emphasize a new phrase called excellence gaps which is used to describe the differences between subgroups of students performing at the highest levels of achievement. The researchers concluded:

“The existence of such gaps raises doubts about the success of federal and state governments in providing greater and more equitable educational opportunities, particularly as the proportion of minority and low-income students continues to rise. The goal of guaranteeing that all children will have the opportunity to reach their academic potential is called into question if educational policies only assist some students while others are left behind. Furthermore, the comparatively small percentage of students scoring at the highest level on achievement tests suggests that children with advanced academic potential are being under-served, with potentially serious consequences for the long-term economic competitiveness of the U.S.”

Key Findings

The researchers concluded that the achievement gaps between students of different genders as well as different racial, economic, and linguistic profiles were extensive for the nation’s top-performing students. This of course is in direct contrast to what is happening for K-12 students as a whole.

Analyzing more than ten years worth of 4th and 8th grade state and national reading and math assessment tests, the researchers cast a spotlight on the data for the highest performing students. When looking at that one subgroup, they found that the achievement gaps between girls and boys, whites and minority students, disadvantaged and affluent students and their better-off peers, and those with English as their first language versus English-language learners either remained the same, or if the gaps were reduced, they declined only by the tiniest of fractions.

Two examples:

In 4th grade math, from 1996 to 2007 , the percentage of white students scoring at the advanced level on NAEP rose from 2.9 percent to 7.6 percent. In contrast, the percentages of black and Hispanic students rose from near zero to just about 1 percent.

For those 4th graders qualifying for free or reduced-price lunches, advanced-level math scorers raised their totals from 3.1 to 8.7 percent. In Grade 8 mathematics, the percentage of students scoring at the advanced level not eligible for the National School Lunch Program increased by 5.7 percentage points: for the students eligible for free or reduced-priced lunch the increase was .8 percentage points.

Citing a number of other such comparisons, the researchers concluded that excellence gaps on most NAEP tests were growing at both Grade 4 and Grade 8.

NCLB Impacts

While NCLB may not be totally to blame for this development (the achievement gap amongst the highest performing students was growing prior to enactment of the legislation), many predicted such results shortly after the law was enacted. The basic premise was that a focus on bringing all children to fundamental standards would lead to the brightest students, already under-served in most schools, to be shortchanged even further.

In addition, the punishment structures associated with NCLB led many states to set some very low proficiency standards. With NCLB focusing on getting all subgroups to pass that respective basic proficiency level, there is no incentive for schools to see to it that the best students climb further up the performance ladder.

And again, in a clear indication that data must be thoroughly scrubbed, there was one area where there seemed to be some positive developments. If one looked at the 90th percentile as a cutoff, there was some statistical progress in closing gaps for this high-performing subset.

Sadly though, in many cases the closing of the gap was due to one of two results: declining or stagnating scores for white students or modest improvements for disadvantaged groups. The incremental closing of the gap led the researchers to create a rate-based formula with the following predictions:

“it would take 38 years for free-lunch-eligible children to match more affluent children in math at grade 4 and 92 years for English-language learners to equal non-ELL students.”

Concern for our Highest Performers

In simplest terms, a state that narrowed gaps at the “proficient” level did not necessarily reduce those gaps at the “advanced” level. The researchers further note that this excellence gap is seldom discussed by any policy experts when school reform measures are reviewed.

For that very reason, one can attack NCLB and attack it hard. One could never contend that the law is ensuring that No Child is Left Behind, not when the achievement gap among the best and brightest is increasing with each passing year.