Mike Petrilli and Janie Scull have a pretty good piece in this week’s
Gadfly analyzing how one aspect of the Obama Administration’s
Blueprint for ESEA Reauthorization would have played out in California elementary schools. Obama’s Blueprint would abandon the No Child Left Behind attempt to hold all schools accountable in favor of focusing on the lowest-performing ten percent of schools based on student growth and proficiency. In addition, the Blueprint identified a separate category of schools that had sizable achievement gaps but was silent on how big this portion would be and for which groups the gaps would be measured. These schools would be required to implement “data-driven” supports through interventions like expanded learning time, supplemental educational services, public school choice, or other strategies.
Mike and Janie, while applauding the limited focus on persistently low-performing schools, are not so fond of the gap-closing idea. They ask, “But what if some of those schools have large gaps not because their minority students are performing poorly, but because their white students are doing really well?” It turns out that in California elementary schools about a third of the schools with above average white-black and white-Hispanic achievement gaps also had above average black and Hispanic achievement. Those schools just had even higher
