Askwith Education Forum: Closing the Nation's Racial Achievement Gaps
by Amelia E. Lester
Controlling for background factors, a black child and a white child entering kindergarten score much the same in tests of mathematical and reading ability. Over the first two years in the classroom, the average black child has fallen so far behind the average white child in test scores that he or she can be said to have lost the equivalent of three months of schooling.
Harvard Junior Fellow in Economics Roland Fryer describes these findings, the results of his analysis on a longitudinal study of early childhood education, as constituting nothing short of a "national emergency." And in May, he gathered with two other experts in the field at an Askwith Education Forum to discuss what should be done about it. The event, the third in the "Closing the Nation's Racial Achievement Gaps" series organized by Harvard's Achievement Gap Initiative, was entitled "Racial Gaps In School Readiness: The Importance of Early Childhood."
During his address, Fryer worked through a few hypotheses to explain his startling findings. He rejected the possibility of setback over summers rather than in the classroom, racial biases among teachers under observation, and flaws in the tests themselves, to finally settle on differences in school quality as the most likely catalyst for these changes in test scores. Jokingly describing the dramatic twists and turns of his research as "a bit like Law and Order," Fryer said that having decided to pursue this hypothesis, he made a further, unexpected discovery: Traditional measures of school quality (Internet access, teachers with advanced degrees, teacher-to-student ratios) are less statistically significant in influencing what he calls the "education production function" than variables like litter around the school, lunch programs, and PTA funding. "School quality is a very amorphous term," he cautioned in conclusion. "Defining what we mean by this term and how to go about improving school quality is where I believe the cutting-edge research is to be done."
Approaching the problem from a public-policy perspective, David Grissmer, a senior management scientist at the Rand Corporation, pondered the likelihood of change following the release of this new data. He cited a pragmatic reason why politicians need to take heed of the We need to understand the differences within families, including cultural backgrounds, that influence the development of the skills children need to perform well on tests."achievement gap and begin to implement solutions. "Our future economic competitiveness depends on becoming technically more proficient," he said, going on to explain that labor flows are such that the United States can no longer depend upon imported talent to fill this need. "We have to develop our own talent," he said, "and that means attention being paid to these issues of racial achievement, where the rubber meets the road."
Grissmer believes the most promising research on this issue is being done in laboratories. "Developmental science has made lots of progress in understanding cognitive achievement over the last 10 years," Grissmer said. "There's going to be an integration of brain research into the [social science] community that has traditionally analyzed score gaps." All of the important developmental skills are formed in the family, he said, rather than being biologically determined. "We need to understand the differences within families, including cultural backgrounds, that influence the development of the skills children need to perform well on tests."
Lesser Professor and Dean Kathleen McCartney, a developmental psychologist, argued that the focus in research thus far has been on what children experience at home or in the school. "But what's missing in all of these models is the developing child--the thinking organism with cognitive abilities who interprets and builds on [his or her] own experiences."
McCartney outlined her implicit theory of change, based on one simple idea: "We need to start early." The widening gap between black and white children is most likely due to the disengagement with school experienced by black children, McCartney postulated. "One of the best ways of ensuring engagement in school is making sure the children have a good experience," she said. "If the other kids in the class beginning school already know their letters and numbers, that can be disheartening." McCartney added that the "mediocre" state of American early childhood education is largely a result of "the trade-off between affordability and quality that comes from a lack of government involvement [in early child care]." She also recommended a greater emphasis on building relationships between teachers and children through mentoring programs as well as less teacher rotation in the early years of schooling. McCartney had a clear closing message--a consensus statement with which her fellow panelists, and educators everywhere, would surely agree. "We need to give children the knowledge that they can do it," she said. "They need to know that people are invested in them."
