How Much Should/Can the Government Do to Shrink the Achievement Gap?

How many more governmental programs can address/solve the achievement gap? Can they make a difference?

Madison WI government officials have met and have some ideas on how to address the achievement gap present in the school district. I've linked two articles not only to read for the plans by these officials, but for the comments by the readers.  They seem skeptical and underwhelmed by instituting policies that are unfunded or underfunded and create more governmental support and/or control of children and families. 

The Wisconsin State Journal wrote Achievement gap in Madison School District under scrutiny:

Closing the achievement gap in the Madison School District will require a strong core curriculum in school and more support from outside of school, leaders of the district, city and county said Wednesday.

Madison School District Superintendent Jane Belmore, Mayor Paul Soglin and Dane County Executive Joe Parisi met Wednesday before the city’s Education Committee to discuss collaborative ways to help struggling students.

The three were in agreement about needs to improve student attendance, foster parent involvement and increase access to after-school programs. Other issues, such as increasing the amount of summer programming, received less attention.

"I would suggest that we not worry about funding. In other words: Design the best programs possible. Then we’ll worry about funding them," Soglin said.

Ann Althouse, based in Madison, picked up on the article and wrote in her blog:

"I would suggest that we not worry about funding."

"In other words: Design the best programs possible. Then we’ll worry about funding them."

The quote is from Madison Mayor Paul Soglin, and the issue is "the achievement gap" in Madison schools. Soglin has suggested "expanding access to nutritious food outside of school, supporting transportation for students and parents, and increasing the amount of time children spend in learning environments."

Increasing the amount of time children spend in learning environments sounds like a polite way of saying keep them away from their parents as much as possible.

Both articles spurred interesting discussions via the comment section on why readers are skeptical of the government leaders' ideas on how to improve achievement gaps.  Most apparently believe many of educational problems are out of the hands of government officials.

Snippets from the Journal's comment section:

Whazzat - December 13, 2012 8:04 am
 

MagnusP - you are spot on. There is another major issue responsible for the failure of minorities in the school system. Children should not be having children. We cannot expect good parenting skills from 16-17-18-19-20 year olds. The underachievement problem will not go away until leaders in the minority community address the issue. Kaleem doesn't want to talk about it because there is no money to be made tackling the real problem.

MagnusP - December 13, 2012 7:38 am

It is very simple. Parents do not demand that their kids stay in school, do their homework and get  passing grades. Until that happens don't worry about enhancing the educational experience.

wipolitics - December 13, 2012 7:23 am

"You cannot fail to parent your children at home, then expect teachers to work miracles with them in the classroom."

EnuMPowers - December 13, 2012 7:03 am

Is that an elephant in the room? Shhhhh, nobody mention it.

Hint - This isn't a school problem.

 

Althouse readers had comments about parenting (or lack thereof) and delved into other issues about fiduciary responsibility, testing for these gaps (and why) and the groups behind this push for increased governmental involvement:

bpm4532 said...

Sounds like a guy who is opposed to open enrollment.

If he believes his stuff he should start with one school and all those things should be funded by the education funds available to that school. Unfortunately, these big thinkers who have access to other people's money, dream this stuff up and impose it like a blanket. A hot, stifling blanket, underwhich you suffocate.

When it doesn't work, they want to expand it, coerce students from leaving and insisting that just a little/lot more money is required to achieve the goal.

12/13/12 10:50 AM

 

 

Dave said...

"expanding access to nutritious food outside of school"

Um, isn't feeding kids the parents' responsibility? And now nutritious the food that parents feed the kids is isn't a matter of money. It's a matter mostly of convenience/laziness - nutritious food generally requires a bit more work than just throwing it in the microwave.

But even if you're on food stamps (and use only food stamps to buy food) for a family of 3, it's over $6000/year. That's over $500/month, which is more than I spend to feed my family of 6.

Nevermind the redundancy of food stamps and the school lunch program.

Or is he advocating universal boarding school, so the State can have full, interrupted access to kids, without parental influence, to turn them into good unthinking drones?

12/13/12 10:48 AM

 

 

Dust Bunny Queen said...

"expanding access to nutritious food outside of school, supporting transportation for students and parents, and increasing the amount of time children spend in learning environments."

Expanding access to nutritious food outside of school? How is he going to do that. Come into the kitchen, raid the fridge and pantry and throw out the junk food. Supervise the cooking or non cooking of meals? He's gonna need a bigger army.

Transportation. YES. Chevy Volts for everyone.

Learning environment? What does he mean by that? Just sitting in a classroom for longer hours and having an incompetent teacher drone on at you and spouting politically correct talking points at you is NOT a learning environment.

No wonder our schools are failures at education. The people at the top levels can only spout meaningless claptrap and think mushy thoughts.

12/13/12 10:45 AM

ricpic said...

Gaps are bad? Only to mad, as in crazy, egalitarians who refuse REFUSE to acknowledge that everything is hierarchical. Everything.

12/13/12 10:42 AM

Shouting Thomas said...

You've inadvertently entered into Steve Sailer territory here.

He's written often about the "nice white lady" educational initiative.

I.e., taking black and hispanic kids out of their dysfunctional homes and passing them off to the nice white ladies for proper rearing. Pre-school and after-school programs, enrichment programs, school lunches, etc.

He's also noted that long, term, this will backfire, and he points to the "Lost Child" controversy in Australia. Literally, aborigine children were taken from their parents to be raised by "nice white ladies." This is now viewed as almost a form of cultural genocide.

12/13/12 10:35 AM 

Is the "elephant in the room" comment (from a State Journal writer) connected with this Althouse reader's thoughts?  

SomeoneHasToSayIt said...

All those proposals are doomed to failure.

I'm 5'8". You can bring in the best coach in the world, and I can be as motivated as can be, but the coach will never succeed in getting me to dunk a basketball.

All he/she will be able to do is get me to vertical jump the highest that I can, given my height, muscle characteristics, and proper technique.

With other people of different starting-gate potential and attributes, he/she will succeed - easily in some cases.

But as long as the coache's metrics are "# of persons able to dunk", rather than "each person jumping as high as THEY can", results will be disappointing, and (oh my) you may even see racial disparate impact in results, which will also be correlated with racial difference is average height.

All that to say that - the 10000lb elephant in the room is that students come in with widely varying IQ, and so achievement metrics that can only be achieved by persons of certain IQs (like dunks for tall people), will be under-achieved by those without those IQs, despite the best coaching, the smallest class size, the longest hours, the best study habits, etc.

If you're 4'l1", you can't dunk. If you're 70 IQ, you can't reach some academic metrics.

And it is wrong to punish coaches and teachers for anything other than "getting the best, given the limits of the starting materials".

And also, grouping results by Race is NOT a good idea. You will always be disappointed at the disparate impact, because like many other attributes that have a strong genetic component, it is not evenly distributed across all the Races of Man.

Reality's a serious bitch, but there it is. Ignoring it never works.

Now, let the un-informed charges of "racism" , begin.

12/13/12 10:53 AM

Reread the first paragraph and this sentence:  

They seem skeptical and underwhelmed by instituting policies that are unfunded or underfunded and create more governmental support and/or control of children and families. 

So why do governmental bodies insist they have the answer by implementing more programs and regulations? 

Arne Duncan's Vision of Community Schools Realized? Dinner Now Served at Schools.

Parents don't have to figure out dinner menus. What a deal.

What are food stamps for?....one reader asks in this Ann Althouse blog Who Gets Free School Dinner in Madison Wisconsin:

"Unlike the lunch program, eligibility for a free dinner is based on whether the school qualifies for the program based on school poverty rates, rather than the income level of an individual student. So any student participating in an eligible after-school program can eat the dinner meal for free."

Eligible schools for the dinner program must have at least 50 percent of students qualify as low-income. In Madison last year, 18 elementary schools, seven middle schools and East and La Follette High schools met that requirement.

To be eligible, students must take part in an academically focused after-school program, not an after-school sport. Memorial is looking into setting up a homework club for athletes between practice and the free meal so that they can participate in the free meal.

So, in this affluent city, we are nevertheless so poor, that the federal government is subsidizing free dinner at 18 elementary schools, 7 middle schools, and 2 of the 4 high schools. And it doesn't matter how much money your parents make, you get free dinner if you go to that school and do an after school activity... as long as your activity is not sports.

Yeah, that makes so much sense. What's with discriminating against the students who, after sitting at desks all day, choose a physically active after-school activity? Aren't they more in need of food? What's the connection between this policy and fighting obesity?

"This progressive city is way behind other cities in that regard," [Mayor Paul] Soglin said. "We should not look at this as a frill, or as an experiment, but something citywide."

This is not a frill. It's an imperative... within the progressive agenda... which seems to have to do with increasing dependency of government and inspiring the young to look to the authorities as their nurturing, nourishing mothers. 

This connects nicely with Arne Duncan's plan of community schools and the superseding of parental responsibilities ceded to governmental authority:

If children are hungry, they need to be fed. It's hard to learn if your stomach is growling. We need to take that on. If students can't see the blackboard, need eyeglasses, we need to do that. If students need a social worker or counselor to work through the challenges they're facing at home in the community, we need to do that.

And so I -- my vision is that schools need to be community centers. Schools need to be open 12, 13, 14 hours a day six, seven days a week, 12 months out of the year, with a whole host of activities, particularly in disadvantaged communities.

And when schools truly become centers of the community, where you have extraordinary teachers, the best teachers, the best principals, great nonprofit partners coming in during the non-school hours to support and do enrichment activities, social services, then those students will beat the odds, will beat poverty, will beat violence in the community, will beat sometimes dysfunctional families, and be productive citizens long term. They will go to college.

The comments from Althouse readers shouldn't be missed.  Here's a comment explaining the issue with the government becoming a nanny and freeing parents from raising their own children (while placing the responsibility on taxpayers):

So let's do this:

for every free meal that a kid gets from school, subtract a proportionate amount from the food stamps.

if a parent is so incapable of parenting that they can't feed their kids at all -- not breakfast, not lunch (what's wrong with a PB & J?), not dinner -- let's assume they can't provide for any of their basic needs, and set up "public boarding schools" (but, again, no more welfare benefits for the kiddies).

What's next: subsidized clothing distribution?

Of course, the biggest issue is that plenty often, this is a money-maker for the schools, when the subsidies from the feds are substantial enough that they cover the full cost, and some. 

Is the role of government now to feed kids one, two, three meals a day?  What ARE parents responsible for today in raising their children?  In some areas of the country, the schools even feed students on the weekend.  This is from Washington state in response to articles on feeding students at school:

You mean food is not being sent home from school with kids for the weekend where you live?  It is where I live. The food isn't coming from the school food services.  It is coming from places that seem to be working with or in coordination with food banks---connected to  social services operation.  Food is packaged out and put in book bag sized backpacks and delivered to the schools for students to pick up on Friday afternoon.  That way the students have some food for the weekend.  I guess the social services operations thought of this before the schools did.  They are using the schools as their distribution point.  It is really quite a sophisticated operation.