Students in poverty less likely to pass standardized tests than others, results show
In the 2013-14 school year, only 5.48 percent of Tuscaloosa City Schools 10th-graders in poverty passed the math section of the ACT test.
This past year's test results, the percentage of 10th-graders living in poverty who met or surpassed the ACT's math standards dropped to 3.56 percent.
Black and Hispanic students didn't do much better. Both student groups dropped from 6.51 and 21.05 percent to 3.84 and 5.35 percent, respectively. In comparison, the percentage of white students passing the ACT's math test increased from 44.96 percent to 49.67 percent.
The school system's percentage of non-poverty 10th-graders passing math dropped from 34.35 percent to 30.82 percent.
The achievement gap is inescapably evident in the Tuscaloosa City Schools. The percentage of poor, black and Hispanic high school students passing the math test lingers in single digits while almost half of white and non-poverty students pass with 27 to 46 percentage points higher.
The achievement gap in education refers to the difference between the test scores of minority and low-income students and the test scores of their non-low income, white and Asian peers.
Jeremy Zelkowski, an associate professor of mathematics education in the University of Alabama's College of Education, said the achievement gap is not something that's unique to the Tuscaloosa City Schools, but is a trend that's reflected in standardized tests nationwide.
"From a research perspective, that's across the country," Zelkowski said. "There's no question that socioeconomic status is the biggest tie between low achievement and high achievement."
Tuscaloosa City Schools Superintendent Paul McKendrick said he's not pleased with the low percentage of passing test scores. To hopefully improve on that, the school system is training teachers to better understand the ACT and ACT Aspire — the standardized test for grades 3-8 — and do more to assessments of students strengths and weaknesses.
But the achievement gap is hard to fix. It starts as early as elementary school.
"With the gap, that's why pre-K is so important," McKendrick said. "You can see it starts in third grade. That's why we're as much as possible trying to get more pre-K and coordinating with groups like Head Start and Success by Six. If you don't get students caught up, that achievement gap just continues."
In third grade, 32.38 percent of students in poverty passed the math section of the 2014-15 ACT Aspire. The percentage of black students who passed was 33.2, and the percentage of Hispanic students who passed was 31. The percentage of non-poverty and white students passing was 91.89 and 86.3, respectively — an achievement gap between 53 and 60 percent.
Zelkowski said unfortunately, there's not much school systems can do to close the gap.
"Those are things that schools cannot impact," he said. "What they need to do is look at schools that are in low socioeconomic areas, that are successful, and see what they did and replicate that. As far as closing the achievement gap, that can't change overnight.
"You might have to change the culture where these kids come from or even who their guardians are. When kids grow up around low achievement and their friends at school don't think education is important, how are you going to change that kid's mind about education without changing his culture?"
Changing the culture of a student's environment is not a school system's job. The resources they're given are meant to educate. But just because a school system can't change a student's home culture, Students in poverty less likely to pass standardized tests than others, results show | TuscaloosaNews.com:
