Questioning the Questions Asked about Education
Considering all the things I like about Twitter, having discussions or debates by Tweeting is not one of them because I often get lost and the character count works against elaboration and nuance.
Yesterday, I was added to a debate that appears to be about the impact of poverty on student achievement—and a central question about why some high-poverty students excel although most do not. One person seems to be seeking research that focuses on comparing high-poverty students against each other to tease out the reasons for why some achieve higher than most.
First, let’s consider that when we talk about student achievement we are almost always defaulting to high-stakes test scores. In that context, we must frame all questions about success, excelling, and/or achievement within some solid facts about what standardized tests reveal (and what they don’t).
The SAT remains a fair representation of how all student scores on high-stakes standardized testing remain strongly correlated with race, social class, parental education levels, and gender. See for example from the 2015 SAT:
Therefore, in virtually all high-stakes standardized data sets, we find that being affluent, white, and male correlate strongly with high scores while being poor, of color, and female correlate Questioning the Questions Asked about Education – the becoming radical:
