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Fixing Urban SchoolsHas No Child Left Behind helped minority students?

African-American and Hispanic students — largely

in urban schools — lag far behind white students,

who mostly attend middle-class suburban schools.

Critics argue that when Congress reauthorizes the

2002 No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB), it must retarget the legisla-

tion to help urban schools tackle tough problems, such as encour-

aging the best teachers to enter and remain in high-poverty

schools, rather than focusing on tests and sanctions. Some advo-

cates propose busing students across district lines to create more

socioeconomically diverse student bodies. But conservative analysts

argue that busing wastes students’ time and that permitting charter

schools to compete with public schools will drive improvement.

Meanwhile, liberal analysts point out that successful charter programs

are too costly for most schools to emulate, and that no one has

yet figured out how to spread success beyond a handful of

schools, public or private.

I

N

S

I

D

E

THE ISSUES ......................363

BACKGROUND ..................370

CHRONOLOGY ..................371

AT ISSUE ..........................377

CURRENT SITUATION ..........378

OUTLOOK ........................379

BIBLIOGRAPHY ..................382

THE NEXT STEP ................383

THISREPORT

Stephan Howell, 18, dropped out of his Indianapolishigh school after several suspensions for fighting.

Approximately half of all African-American high-school students fail to graduate.

CQResearcherPublished by CQ Press, a division of Congressional Quarterly Inc.

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CQ Researcher • April 27, 2007 • www.cqresearcher.comVolume 17, Number 16 • Pages 361-384

RECIPIENT OF SOCIETY OF PROFESSIONAL JOURNALISTS AWARD FOR

EXCELLENCE ◆ AMERICAN BAR ASSOCIATION SILVER GAVEL AWARD

362 CQ Researcher

THE ISSUES

363 • Has the No Child LeftBehind law helped urbanstudents?• Should governmentsmake schools more raciallydiverse?• Are teachers preparedto teach successfully inurban classrooms?

BACKGROUND

370 Educating the PoorEquality in education hasbeen a contentious issuethroughout history.

372 Two TracksMany educators call forhigher standards.

374 Minority SchoolsUrban schools have hadrising minority enrollmentin recent years.

376 Poor in SchoolRising urban poverty hasincreased the burden onurban schools.

CURRENT SITUATION

378 Congress DividedReauthorization of the No Child Left Behind Act(NCLB) is not a certainty.

379 Retooling NCLB?President Bush and theDemocrats disagree onnecessary changes.

OUTLOOK

379 Agreeing to DisagreeEducators disagree overhow to raise standards.

SIDEBARS AND GRAPHICS

364 Minority Districts OftenGet Less Funding High-minority districts getless revenue per student.

365 All Racial/Ethnic GroupsImproved on TestFourth-grader math test.

367 As Minority EnrollmentRises, Teacher Quality DropsIn Illinois, minority schoolshave poor teacher quality.

368 Blacks and Hispanics AttendHigh-Poverty SchoolsFew white fourth-graders attend high-poverty schools.

371 ChronologyKey events since 1954.

372 Dropouts’ Problems Often Begin EarlyUrban students are far lesslikely to graduate.

373 Majority of Dropouts AreHispanic, BlackThey represent over 75 per-cent of 20-year-old dropouts.

374 The ‘Behavior Gap’Many educators blame asystem that’s white-centered.

377 At IssueWould raising teacher payhelp struggling schools?

FOR FURTHER RESEARCH

381 For More InformationOrganizations to contact.

382 BibliographySelected sources used.

383 The Next StepAdditional current articles.

383 Citing CQ ResearcherSample bibliography formats.

FIXING URBAN SCHOOLS

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April 27, 2007 363Available online: www.cqresearcher.com

Fixing Urban Schools

THE ISSUES“I didn’t go to school

much in elementary,and they saw me as

a bad girl” who skipped class,says Jeanette, a Houston high-school student who droppedout several times but is strug-gling to get a diploma. Afterher parents divorced whenshe was in grade school, shefell into a pattern typical ofurban students, repeatedly“switching schools,” some-times living with her moth-er, sometimes her father andsometimes with an aunt who“didn’t make us go to school”at all. 1

In middle school, Jeanettebegan taking drugs but latergot involved in sports, whichmotivated her to try, some-times successfully, to keep up hergrades and stay off drugs. Some teach-ers have tried hard to help her, butlike many troubled urban kids, shepulls back. “If I need help . . . I don’tsay anything. . . . They have to askme.” Still, Jeanette is determined toavoid the fate of her parents, whodropped out of school when they hadher. At the time, her mother was only13. “I don’t want to live like them. Iwant to have a better life,” she says.

Jeanette typifies the daunting chal-lenge that urban schools face in pro-moting academic achievement amongchildren whose lives have been disor-dered and impoverished.

Most middle-class families with chil-dren have moved to the suburbs, leav-ing urban schools today overwhelm-ingly populated by low-income,African-American and Hispanic stu-dents. “Nationally, about 50 percent ofall black and Latino students attendschools in which 75 percent or moreof the students are low-income, as

measured by eligibility for free andreduced-price lunch,” according to theCenter for Civil Rights at the Universityof North Carolina. Only 5 percent ofwhite students attend such high-povertyschools. 2 (See graph, p. 368.)

These schools, mostly urban, aren’tmaking the grade, even in the contextof lagging achievement in Americanschools overall.

Although states show significant vari-ations, nationwide “71 percent of eighth-graders are not reading at grade level,”and the percentage shoots up to be-tween 80 and 90 percent for studentsof color, says former Gov. Bob Wise,D-W.Va., now president of the Alliancefor Excellent Education, a broad-basedcoalition that advocates for academi-cally stronger high schools.

Furthermore, of the approximately15,000 U.S. high schools, 2,000 —mostly in cities — account for half ofthe nation’s school dropouts, says Wise.

When President George W. Bushjoined Massachusetts Sen. Edward M.

Kennedy and other congres-sional Democrats to enact theNo Child Left Behind Act(NCLB) in 2002, a key aimwas requiring states to reportachievement scores for allstudent groups. That ensuredthat lagging scores of low-income and minority studentswouldn’t be masked by hav-ing only state or district over-all average scores reported. 3

This year, Congress is ex-pected to provide funding tokeep the law in operation,but there’s considerable dis-agreement about where fed-eral education law should gonext, and lawmakers may waituntil next year to considerrevisions (see p. 379).

NCLB’s test-score reportingrequirements “make it morepossible to look at whetherschools are doing well just

for more affluent students or for poorstudents” as well, and that’s valuable,says Jeffrey Henig, professor of politicalscience and education at ColumbiaUniversity’s Teachers College.

But some supporters, including Pres-ident Bush, say the NCLB has donemore than just improve data-gathering,arguing that the law itself has pushedachievement upward. “Fourth-gradersare reading better. They’ve made moreprogress in five years than in the pre-vious 28 years combined,” he said onMarch 2. 4

Many education analysts disagreewith that rosy assessment. The smallimprovement in fourth-grade readingand mathematics scores is part of along-term trend, which began yearsbefore NCLB was even enacted, saidHarvard University Professor of Edu-cation Daniel M. Koretz. “There’s notany evidence that shows anything haschanged” since NCLB, he said. 5

And for urban schools, the post-NCLB picture is especially grim.

BY MARCIA CLEMMITT

AP P

hoto

/Mat

t Rourk

e

Philadelphia police officers guard West PhiladelphiaHigh School on March 12, 2007, where a teacher wasattacked by three students three days earlier. Experts

suggest that a “behavior gap” between black and whitestudents parallels the academic achievement gap

between high- and low-performing students.

364 CQ Researcher

Of the non-achieving schools inNew York state, for example, 90 per-cent are in cities and 80 percent inthe state’s five biggest cities, saysDavid Hursh, an associate professorof teaching and curriculum at the Uni-versity of Rochester’s Margaret WarnerGraduate School of Education.

The gap between average readingscores of black and white fourth-gradersnarrowed by only one point on the500-point National Assessment of Ed-ucational Progress test (NAEP) between2002 and 2005, and the narrowing ap-pears to be part of a long-term trend,since it narrowed by three points be-tween 1998 and 2005. Between 2002and 2005, the reading-score gap be-tween white and black eighth-gradersactually widened, from 25 points to28 points. 6

The continuing severe achievementgap, newly highlighted by NCLB’s data-reporting requirements, leaves law-makers and educators scratching theirheads about what to do next.

Some analysts say lagging achieve-ment in urban schools demonstratesthat poor families in poor communi-ties require much more intense inter-ventions than middle-class students,including better teachers and longerschool days as well as improvedhealth care, nutrition and parentingeducation.

A public school enrolling mainlymiddle-class white students has a one-in-four chance of producing good testscores, across years and in differentsubject matter, according to DouglasN. Harris, assistant professor of edu-cation policy at the University of Wis-consin, Madison. A school with a pre-dominantly low-income minoritypopulation has a 1-in-300 chance ofdoing so. 7

Experts blame the poor outcome onthe fact that urban schools, like all schools,are staffed and organized to provide sub-stantial extra help to only 15 percent ofstudents and curriculum enrichment toanother 15, while “the students in the


Note: Hawaii is not shown because data are not available.

Source: Funding Gaps 2006, The Education Trust, 2006

Minority Districts Often Get Less Funding

In 28 states, school districts with high-minority enrollments received less per-pupil funding (shown as a negative number, top map) than districts with low-minority levels. For example, in Illinois, the highest-minority districts received an average of $1,223 less per student than the lowest-minority districts. In 21 states, the highest-minority districts received more per pupil (shown as a positive number, bottom map), than the districts with the lowest-minority enrollments. For example, in Georgia, the highest-poverty districts received $566 per student more than the lowest-poverty districts.

N.Y.

OhioNeb.

Va.

Iowa

Mo.

Calif.

Nev.

Ore.

Colo.

Wash.

Idaho

Utah

Ariz. N.M.

Wyo.S.D.

Alaska

Okla.Ark.

Ill.

Miss.

Tenn.

Ga.

Conn.

Mass.

R.I.

Vt.

W.Va. N.J.Del.

Md.

Ala.

Wis.

Mich.

Ind.Pa.

N.C.

S.C.

N.H.

Kan.Ky.

D.C.

-$2,000+

-$1,001 to -$2,000

-$500 to -$1,000

-$1 to -$500

Texas

Mont. N.D.

La.

Fla.

Minority Funding Gaps by State, 2004

Minn.

Maine

States where high-minority districts receivedless funding than low-minority districts

N.Y.

OhioNeb.

Va.

Iowa

Mo.

Calif.

Nev.

Ore.

Colo.

Wash.

Idaho

Utah

Ariz. N.M.

Wyo.S.D.

Okla.Ark.

Ill.

Miss.

Tenn.

Ga.

Conn.

Mass.

R.I.

Vt.

W.Va. N.J.Del.

Md.

Ala.

Wis.

Mich.

Ind.Pa.

N.C.

S.C.

N.H.

Kan.Ky.

D.C.

$0 to $500

$500 to $1,000

$1,001 to $2,000

$2,000+

Texas

Mont. N.D.

La.

Fla.

Minn.

Maine

States where high-minority districts receivedmore funding than low-minority districts

Alaska


middle are supposed to take care ofthemselves,” says Robert Balfanz, asso-ciate research scientist at the Johns Hop-kins University Center on the Social Or-ganization of Schools and associatedirector of the Talent Development HighSchool program, a reform initiative in33 schools nationwide. The formula forextra help fits most suburban schools,“but in urban schools 50 to 60 percent,and sometimes up to 80 percent, of thekids are “high-needs,” defined as Eng-lish-as-a-second-language students, spe-cial-education students or studentsbelow grade level or with severe atten-dance problems.

“We’re not set up to respond whenthat many kids need one-on-one tutor-ing, monitoring of their attendance on adaily basis, [or] people calling up to say,‘Glad you came today,’ ” Balfanz says.

One of the biggest problems is thekind of “student mobility” experiencedby Jeanette, the Houston dropout.

“Homelessness is much underreport-ed,” says James F. Lytle, a professor atthe University of Pennsylvania and for-mer school superintendent in Trenton,N.J. “Statistics are based on who’s inshelters and on the streets. But 20 to30 percent of our kids were living in‘serial households’ on a day-to-day basis,”or moving about from parents to grand-parents to relatives to friends — not liv-ing in the same house all the time.

Inner-city schools have a 40 to 50percent student-mobility rate, whichmeans up to half the students changeschools at least once a year becauseof parents losing or changing jobs,evictions and other factors, says Co-lumbia University’s Henig. That dis-rupts students’ ability to keep up withwork and build relationships with theadults in a school.

In addition, city students miss schoolfor a wide range of reasons, includinghigh asthma rates; lack of school buses,forcing kids to get to school on theirown, often through unsafe neighbor-hoods; and family responsibilities, likecaring for younger siblings.

“Imagine the teacher’s dilemma ina classroom where the population isdifferent every day,” says Balfanz.

But some conservative analysts arguethat a large proportion of high-needsstudents is still no reason for schoolsto fail.

“Schools frequently cite social prob-lems like poverty . . . and bad parent-ing as excuses for their own poor per-formance,” said Jay P. Greene, a seniorfellow at the Manhattan Institute, a con-servative think tank. “This argument thatschools are helpless in the face of so-cial problems is not supported by hardevidence. . . . The truth is that certainschools do a strikingly better job thanothers,” including public, private andcharter schools. 8

Some educators say one solutionfor low-quality urban schools is es-tablishing publicly funded “charter”schools and awarding vouchers forprivate-school tuition. 9 When choiceis expanded, “urban public schools thatonce had a captive clientele must im-

prove the education they provide orelse students . . . will go elsewhere,”said Greene. 10

But others argue that lessons fromsuccessful urban schools, includingcharters, demonstrate that raising low-income students’ achievement requiresresources and staff commitment thatmay be tough for the nation to muster.

“Teachers in high-poverty urbanschools are as much as 50 percentmore likely to . . . leave than thosein low-poverty schools,” in part be-cause of the intensity of the work, ac-cording to researchers at the Universityof California, Santa Cruz. 11

A second-grade teacher fluent inSpanish who reported working 10 hoursa day, six days a week said she’dprobably stop teaching when she hadchildren: “It’s too time-consuming andenergy-draining,” she said. 12

“None of the teachers in our samplecould conceive of being a successfulurban teacher without an extraordi-nary — perhaps unsustainable —

All Racial/Ethnic Groups Improved on Test

Fourth-graders in all racial and ethnic groups began modestly improving in math on the National Assessment for Educational Progress several years before passage of the No Child Left Behind Act.

* Some data for 1996 and 2000 not available

Source: U.S. Department of Education, National Center for Education Statistics

Average Fourth-Grade Scores in Math, 1996-2005(by race, ethnicity)

150

200

250

300

2005200320001996

Asian/Pacific White American Indian/ Hispanic BlackIslander Alaska Native

*

Passage of No Child Left Behind Act

**

(Score)

366 CQ Researcher

commitment to the work,” the re-searchers commented. 13

Not just schools but communitiesmust help in the effort to improve stu-dents’ performance.

“There ought to be a parade throughthe heart of town” every time a stu-dent achieves an academic goal, saysHugh B. Price, a fellow at the Brook-ings Institution, a liberal think tank.“We need to wrap and cloak kids inthis message of achievement.” That’show the military successfully trains sol-diers, Price says. “They will praise any-thing that’s good.”

Schools and communities also havea role in helping parents better equiptheir children for school, says MayorDouglas H Palmer of Trenton, N.J.,president of the National Conferenceof Democratic Mayors. “You don’t haveto be rich to talk to your child, helpher build vocabulary and learn to rea-son and negotiate,” as psychologistsrecommend, he says. “We can helpparents with these skills.”

As educators and lawmakers debatethe next steps to improving urbanschools, here are some of the ques-tions being asked:

Has the No Child Left Behindlaw helped urban students?

NCLB was intended to improveoverall academic achievement andraise achievement for minority andlow-income students, in particular,mainly by requiring more studenttesting, getting schools to report testdata separately for student groups in-cluding minorities and the poor andrequiring schools to employ better-qualified teachers.

The law, scheduled for reautho-rization this year, gets praise for fo-cusing attention on the so-calledachievement gap between minority andlow-income students and their middle-class counterparts. But critics say thelegislation doesn’t do enough to as-sure that low-performing urban schoolsget the excellent teachers they need.

Student achievement also has im-proved slightly under the law, someadvocates point out. “Is NCLB reallypaying off? The answer is yes,” U.S.Chamber of Commerce Senior VicePresident Arthur J. Rothkopf told ajoint House-Senate committee hearingon March 13. While current testingdata is still “abysmal,” it nevertheless“represents improvement from wherethis nation was” before the law.

The law has benefited urban schoolsby raising reading scores for African-American and Hispanic fourth- andeighth-graders and math scores forAfrican-American and Hispanic fourth-graders to “all-time highs.” Achieve-ment gaps in reading and math be-tween white fourth-graders andAfrican-American and Hispanic fourth-graders also have diminished sinceNCLB, he noted. 14

NCLB’s data-reporting requirementshave “lifted the carpet” to reveal twopreviously unrecognized facts aboutAmerican education — “the continuingunder-performance of the whole sys-tem and the achievement gap” for low-income and minority students, saysDaniel A. Domenech, senior vice pres-ident and top urban-education adviserfor publisher McGraw-Hill Educationand former superintendent of Virginia’svast Fairfax County Public Schools. 15

And while some critics complainthat NCLB gave the federal govern-ment too much say over education —traditionally a state and local matter— “there needs to be a strong feder-al role for these kids” in low-incomeurban schools “because they have beenleft behind,” says Gary Ratner, a pub-lic-interest lawyer who is founding ex-ecutive director of the advocacy groupCitizens for Effective Schools. “Statesand localities have not stepped up.”

Now NCLB “has got the country’sattention,” and when Congress reau-thorizes the law, “the federal role canbe redirected to focus on Title I schools”— those serving a large proportion ofdisadvantaged students — “and do

more of the things that professionaleducators support,” Ratner says.

NCLB’s requirement that everyschool “have very qualified teachers isgood,” says Gary Orfield, a professorof social policy at the Harvard GraduateSchool of Education and director ofThe Civil Rights Project.

But critics argue that NCLB doesn’tput muscle behind the high-quality teacherrequirement and sets unrealistic goalsand timetables for school progress.

NCLB actually “incentivizes teachers toleave failing schools,” the last thing law-makers intended, says Jennifer King-Rice,an economist who is associate professorof education policy at the University ofMaryland, College Park. “Teachers say, ‘Ican’t produce the AYP [average yearlyprogress] results’ ” the law calls for inlow-performing schools with few resourcesand, frustrated, go elsewhere, she says.Nevertheless, it’s still unclear whether andhow the government can enforce thequalified-teacher rule. (See graphs, p. 367.)

The law provides no additional fund-ing to help schools meet the teacher-quality goal, said Richard J. Murnane,professor of education and society atthe Harvard Graduate School of Edu-cation. “Teaching in these schools isextremely difficult work,” and “veryfew school districts provide extra payor other inducements to attract talentedteachers to these schools. 16

“As a result, all too often theseschools are left with the teachers otherschools don’t want,” he continued.“And the teachers who do have op-tions exercise seniority rights to leave. . . as soon as they can.” 17

The achievement targets set by NCLBare panned by many. The main goalschools must meet is moving kids overa standardized-testing threshold from“basic” or “below basic” understandingof reading and math to a “proficient”level or above. But focusing on thatnarrow goal as the key measure bywhich schools are judged created badincentives to game the system, manyanalysts say.



Rather than concentrating on raisingoverall achievement or trying to givethe most help to students who scorelowest, many schools concentrate “onstudents who are on the bubble” —those who need to raise their scoresby only a few points to move into the“proficient” range — and “forget theothers,” says Patrick McQuillan, an as-sociate professor of education at BostonCollege’s Lynch School of Education.Schools that succeed at pushing thescores of “bubble” students up by afew points are deemed successful, ac-cording to current NCLB standards,even if they leave the neediest studentseven farther behind, he says.

The law’s pronouncement that 100percent of U.S. students will test atthe “proficient” level is simply unreal-istic, some critics say.

“We’ve never fully funded educa-tion in the United States,” and achieve-ment continues to lag far below the“proficient” level, especially for low-income students, says Domenech. So“let’s not kid around and say that by2014” all students will be academicallyproficient, he says. “That’s like saying,‘I’m going to push you out the window,and I know you can fly.’ ”

Furthermore, NCLB’s focus on ahandful of standardized tests as thesole measures of children’s progressputs teachers in an ethical bind that“definitely lowers their morale,” saysMarshalita Sims Peterson, an associateprofessor of education at Atlanta’s Spel-man College, an historically blackschool for women.

Teachers in training are taught thatstudents are individuals with a wide va-riety of learning styles, and that no sin-gle assessment can define a student, saysPeterson. The NCLB’s excessive focuson a single measurement of achieve-ment “leaves the teacher in an awfulposition” she says. “You need to keepthe job, but when you are actually com-pleting that form” stating the single score“for a third-grader, you’re asking, ‘Is thatall there is to this child?’ ”

Should governments make schoolsmore racially and economicallydiverse?

Today, most African-American andLatino students attend urban schoolswith a high concentration of low-income students and very few whiteclassmates.

Some advocates argue that the coun-try has backtracked to an era of sepa-rate but unequal schools and say gov-ernment programs aimed at creatingmore racially and socioeconomically di-verse schools are good tools for nar-rowing the achievement gap. Oppo-nents of government interference withchildren’s attendance at neighborhoodschools argue that with residential neigh-borhoods increasingly segregated byrace and income, school integration isunrealistic, and that governments

should focus instead on improvingachievement in urban schools. 18

“The effort to get the right racial bal-ance is misguided” and represents a kindof “liberal racism — a belief that blackchildren need to be in school with whitechildren to learn,” says Stephan Thern-strom, a history professor at HarvardUniversity and a fellow at the conserv-ative Manhattan Institute.

If integration “can be managed nat-urally, that’s fine, but there is no clearcorrelation that can be drawn fromdata” showing it’s important for clos-ing the achievement gap, Thernstromsays. He rejects as incomplete andflawed studies that suggest integrationdoes make a big difference. Further-more, “if you need a white majorityto learn,” learning will soon be im-possible in America, since Hispanic,

Minority Enrollment and Teacher Quality

In Illinois, 88 percent of the schools that were virtually 100 percent minority ranked in the lowest quartile of the state’s Teacher Quality Index (graph at left). By comparison, only 1 percent of the all-minority schools ranked in the highest quartile (right). High-quality teachers have more experience, better educations and stronger academic skills. Similar patterns are found in most other states.

Source: “Teaching Inequality: How Poor and Minority Students Are Shortchanged on Teacher Quality,” The Education Trust, June 2006

Percentage of Illinois Schools in Lowest Quartile of Teacher

Quality Index, 2002-2003

Percentage of Illinois Schools in Highest Quartile of

Teacher Quality Index, 2002-2003

0

20

40

60

80

100%

0

20

40

60

80

100%

<50% 50-89% 90-98% 99-100% <50% 50-89% 90-98% 99-100%

11%

34%

70%

88%

13%

32%

4% 1%

Minority Percentage in School Minority Percentage in School

Percentage of schools Percentage of schools

368 CQ Researcher

Asian and African-American popula-tions are growing faster than the cur-rent white majority, he notes.

Racial concentration is not the sameas segregation and doesn’t stand inthe way of achievement, said his wife,Manhattan Institute Senior Fellow AbigailThernstrom. School districts are power-less to change housing demographics,making it highly unlikely that racialconcentration of students ever couldbe ended, she said. 19

Some school districts are attempt-ing to integrate lower-income and high-er-income students, rather than inte-grating schools based on race. ButAbigail Thernstrom argued that givingchildren a longer commute to schoolsoutside their neighborhoods, for anyreason, simply wastes time betterspent in the classroom. “Busing doesn’traise the level of achievement,” shetold C-SPAN. “Now they’re going tostart busing on the basis of social class.

And I have a very simple view of that.Stop moving the kids around andteach them.” 20

Meanwhile, some charter schools— such as the Knowledge Is PowerProgram (KIPP), begun in Houston —are making great strides in reducingthe urban achievement gap, and forthe most part those schools are notracially integrated, wrote New YorkTimes Magazine features editor PaulTough last year.

Most of the 70 schools that makeup the three charter networks he ob-served have “only one or two whitechildren enrolled, or none at all,” henoted. Leaders of the networks, all ofthem white, actually intend to educatetheir students separately from middle-class students, according to Tough.However, unlike those who’ve arguedthat schools can be “separate but equal,”the successful high-intensity charterschools aim for “separate but better.”

Their founders argue that “studentswho enter middle school significantlybehind grade level don’t need the samegood education that most Americanmiddle-class students receive; they needa better education,” he said. 21

But many advocates argue that datashow a proven way to improve edu-cation for thousands of low-incomestudents rather than for the handfulthat attend the highly successful char-ter schools is integration of minorityand poor students with middle-classchildren.

School desegregation by race “hasclear academic benefits,” wrote R.Scott Baker, an associate professor ofeducation at Wake Forest University.Data from Charlotte, N.C., show thatthe longer both black and white stu-dents spent in desegregated elemen-tary schools, the higher their stan-dardized test scores in middle andhigh school. Research also suggeststhat “where school desegregationplans are fully and completely imple-mented,” local housing also becomesmore integrated. 22

In the 1960s and ’70s some federalcourts mandated programs to help urbanminority families move to middle-classwhite suburbs. Long-term data fromthose cases show that children whomoved did better than those whostayed behind, according to Howell S.Baum, a professor of urban studies andplanning at the University of Maryland.In St. Louis, 50 percent of the blackstudents who moved to the suburbsgraduated from high school, comparedto 26 percent of those who remainedin the high-minority, low-income urbanschools. 23

Many policy analysts agree that seg-regating low-income children in somepublic schools “perpetuates failure,” wrotethe Century Foundation’s Task Force onthe Common School. Nevertheless,there is an “equally durable politicalconsensus that nothing much can bedone about it.” The panel argued thatthis must change: “Eliminating the


Blacks, Hispanics Attend High-Poverty Schools

Black and Hispanic students are more likely to be concentrated in high-poverty schools than white students. Forty-seven percent of black and 51 percent of Hispanic fourth-graders were in the highest-poverty schools in 2003 vs. 5 percent of white fourth-graders. By contrast, only 6 percent of black and Hispanic fourth-graders were in the lowest-poverty schools compared with 29 percent of the whites.

Source: “The Condition of Education 2004 in Brief” National Center for Education, June 2004

Percentage of Fourth-graders in High-poverty Schools(Based on proportion eligible for free or reduced-price lunch)

0

10

20

30

40

50

60%

HispanicWhiteBlackTotal

10% or less 11-25% 26-50% 51-75% More than 75%Poverty Level:


harmful effects of concentrated schoolpoverty is the single most importantstep that can be taken for improvingeducation in the United States.” 24

“Dozens of studies” dating back tothe 1960s “find that low-income chil-dren have . . . larger achievement gainsover time when they attend middle-class schools,” said the panel. 25

“The tragedy right now is thatplaces that were once forced to [inte-grate their schools] now aren’t allowedto,” says Orfield of The Civil RightsProject. “That will be seen as a cosmicblunder” for white Americans as well,he said. “We’re not preparing ourselvesfor the multiracial society and world”of the 21st century.

Are teachers prepared to teachsuccessfully in urban classrooms?

Urban schools have high teacherturnover, low test scores and manyreported discipline problems. Further-more, most of America’s teachingforce still consists of white, middle-class women, while urban school-children are low-income minorities,creating a culture gap that may behard to bridge.

Consequently, some analysts arguethat today’s teachers aren’t preparedto teach successfully in urban class-rooms for a variety of reasons, fromdiscipline to second-language issues.Others, however, point to sterling ex-amples of teachers and schools thatdo succeed and argue that the realproblem is teachers not followinggood examples.

Fifth-grade teacher Rafe Esquith, atthe Hobart Elementary School in cen-tral Los Angeles, routinely coaches hisurban Korean and Central American-immigrant students to top standardized-test scores. Furthermore, his classesproduce Shakespearean plays so im-pressive they’ve been invited to per-form with Britain’s Royal ShakespeareCompany, said Abigail Thernstrom. 26

But despite Esquith’s success, “no-body copies him,” even in his own school,

said Thernstrom. “I went to the fifth-grade [classroom] next door [to Esquith’s]one day,” and “it was perfectly clearnothing was going on.” When Thern-strom suggested the teacher might copyEsquith’s methods — which include be-ginning class as early as 6 a.m. andworking with students at his home onweekends — he remarked that “it’s anenormous amount of work.” 27

Today, around the country, “we dohave shining examples” of schoolsthat succeed at urban education, saysTimothy Knowles, executive directorof the University of Chicago’s Centerfor Urban School Improvement and aformer deputy school superintendentin Boston.

Ratner, of Citizens for EffectiveSchools, agrees. “I spent time in anelementary school in Chicago a fewyears ago where all the teachers wereteaching reading,” even at the uppergrades, equipping students with thevocabulary and comprehension skillsneeded for future academic work, hesays. “They had a good principal, andthey were showing that it can be done.”

But while successful urban schoolsand classrooms are out there, manyeducation analysts say the know-howand resources needed to spread thatsuccess to millions of students aresorely lacking.

Some individual schools are clos-ing the achievement gap for needystudents, but “very few, if any” entireschool districts have had equivalentsuccess, says Knowles.

Charter schools also haven’t seentheir successes spread as widely asmany hoped.

Out of Ohio’s “300-plus charterschools,” for example, “some . . . areindeed excellent, but too many areappalling,” wrote analysts Terry Ryanand Quentin Suffran of the conservativeThomas B. Fordham Foundation in arecent report. 28

There are reasons for that, saidMark Simon, director of the Center forTeacher Leadership at Johns Hopkins

University, in Baltimore. “Teachinglower-class kids well is tougher thanteaching middle-class kids.” Further-more, “it is surprising how little weknow about teaching practices thatcause students to succeed, particularlyin high-poverty schools.” 29

“You have poverty in many dis-tricts, but in urban schools you havea concentration of it” that makes teach-ing successfully there much harderthan in middle-class suburbs, saysTimothy Shanahan, professor of urbaneducation at the University of Illinoisat Chicago and president of the In-ternational Reading Association.Schools are traditionally set up todeal with 15 to 20 percent of a stu-dent body having very high needs,says Shanahan. But urban schools usu-ally have 50 percent or more of theirstudents needing special attention ofsome kind, “and that’s a huge bur-den on the teachers,” he says.

“Literally, we have 5-year-olds whocome into the Chicago school systemnot knowing their own names,” hesays. “I know local neighborhoods withgang problems, where the kids are upall night. Their mothers are hiding themunder the bed to protect them fromshootings in the street. Then teacherscan’t keep them awake in class.”

The nation’s rapidly growing His-panic population is heavily concen-trated in urban schools. That new phe-nomenon presents another toughobstacle for the urban teaching force,because “older teachers know noth-ing about working with non-nativeEnglish speakers,” says McQuillan ofBoston College.

Not just language but race compli-cates urban-school teaching. As manyas 81 percent of all teacher-educationstudents are white women. 30

“Those most often entering teachingcontinue to be white, monolingual,middle-class women,” wrote Jocelyn A.Glazier, assistant professor of educationat the University of North Carolina atChapel Hill. 31

370 CQ Researcher

Many teachers, especially whitewomen, shy away from making toughdemands on African-American students,according to a survey of urban com-munity leaders by Wanda J. Blanchett,associate professor of urban specialeducation at the University of Wis-consin, Milwaukee. “Especially withAfrican-American males, you hear theteachers say, ‘Oh, he is such a nicekid.’ But . . . this irks me when teach-ers baby their students to death in-stead of pushing. . . . I get that a lotwhen you have white teachers whohave never worked with black stu-dents from the urban environment.” 32

Many entering education studentsat Indiana University-Purdue Universi-ty, in Indianapolis, balked at the school’sfieldwork and student-teaching venues,which were in urban schools, wroteProfessor Christine H. Leland and Pro-fessor Emeritus Jerome C. Harste. “Theysaw our program’s urban focus as anobstacle to their career goals” of teach-ing in schools like the suburban onesmost had attended. 33

Some viewed urban students as analien race they didn’t want to learnto know. “Students rarely felt theneed to interrogate their underlyingassumption that poor people deservethe problems they have” or “spent anytime talking or thinking about issuessuch as poverty or racism,” Lelandand Harste wrote. After student teach-ing, however, some students changedtheir plans and applied to becomeurban teachers. 34

Race is a taboo subject in America,which some analysts say compoundsurban teachers’ difficulties. Manyteacher-preparation programs center onan effort not to see or at least not toacknowledge race differences, accord-ing to Glazier. But “by claiming not tonotice [race], the teacher is saying thatshe is dismissing one of the most salientfeatures of a child’s identity.” 35

“Many teachers believe that if theyrecognize a student’s race or discuss is-sues of ethnicity in their classroom, they

might be labeled as insensitive andracist,” wrote Central Michigan Univer-sity graduate student in education Drey-on Wynn and Associate Dean DianneL. H. Mark. But white teachers’ delib-erate color-blindness ignores students“unique culture, beliefs, perceptions,[and] values,” blocking both learningand helpful student-teacher relationships,Mark and Wynn argue. 36

BACKGROUNDEducating the Poor

A merican education has long strug-gled with providing equal edu-

cation for the poor, racial minoritiesand non-English-speaking immigrants.Until recently, however, even peoplewho never made it through high schoolcould usually find a good job. A new,global, technical economy may bechanging that.

In the earliest years in the UnitedStates, schooling wasn’t widespread. Afarm-based economy made extensiveeducation unnecessary for most peo-ple. In 1805, more than 90 percent ofAmericans had completed a fifth-gradeeducation or less, and education forricher people was often conducted byprivate tutors. 37

State legislatures were just beginningto debate whether to establish free tax-funded schools for all children. 38 Nev-ertheless, even in those early days, somereligious and other charitable groupsconsidered it a moral duty to educatethe poor. In New York City, for exam-ple, the Association of Women Friendsfor the Relief of the Poor opened acharity school in 1801. By 1823 the groupwas providing free elementary educa-tion for 750 children, with some pub-lic assistance. Similar charity schoolssprang up in most other major cities.

But as all states began establishingpublic education systems — betweenthe late 18th and the mid-19th century— questions over equality in educa-tion arose, first for black students andlater for immigrants. “When publicschools opened in Boston in the late18th century, black children wereneither barred nor segregated,” wroteDerrick Bell, a visiting professor at theNew York University School of Law.“But by 1790, racial insults and mis-treatment had driven out all but threeor four black children.” 39

Later, some black families joined withwhite liberals to form black-only schoolsin Massachusetts and in other states.But complaints about poor conditionsand poor teaching in those schools ledothers to sue for integrated education.

Even in the early 19th century, somecourts were bothered by race-basedinequities in education, said Bell. Afederal court struck down a Kentuckylaw directing that school taxes col-lected from white people wouldmaintain white schools, and taxes fromblacks would operate black schools.“Given the great disparities in taxableresources” this would result in an in-ferior education for black children,the court said. 40

Around the 1820s, waves of non-English immigration began, raisingnew controversies over educatingpoor children of sometimes-despisedethnicities.

Before 1820, most U.S. immigrantswere English, and a few were Dutch.But between 1820 and 1840 Irish im-migrants became the first in a longparade of newcomers judged inferi-or by the predominantly English pop-ulation. A rising tide of immigrationin the late 19th and early 20th cen-turies included many non-English-speakers — Italians, Germans, Chinese,Russians, Poles and many others —who posed new challenges for schoolsand were looked down on by manycitizens.


Continued on p. 372


Chronology1950s-1960sConcerns grow over studentachievement and racially segre-gated schools.

1954Supreme Court rules in Brown v.Board of Education that separateschools are inherently unequal.

1965Title I of the new Elementary andSecondary Education Act (ESEA)targets the largest pool of federaleducation assistance to help schoolsserving disadvantaged students.

1966Sociologist James S. Coleman’s“Equality of Educational Opportu-nity” report concludes that disad-vantaged African-American studentsdo better in integrated classrooms.

1969National Assessment of EducationalProgress (NAEP) tests launched butreport statewide average scores only,allowing states to mask laggingachievement among poor and mi-nority students.

•

1970s-1980sLatinos are becoming most seg-regated minority in U.S. schools.“Magnet schools” are established.School integration efforts grad-ually end.

1973Supreme Court rules in San Anto-nio Independent School District v.Rodriguez the Constitution doesnot guarantee equal education forall children. . . . In Keyes v.School District No. 1, the courtbans city policies that segregateDenver schools.

1990s-2000sSteady gains in African-Americanstudents’ test scores over thepast two decades begin to taperoff by decade’s end. . . . Povertyconcentrates in cities. . . . Gov-ernors lead efforts to raise ed-ucation standards.

1990New Jersey Supreme Court rulesin Abbott v. Burke the state mustprovide more funding for poorschools than for richer ones.

1991Minnesota enacts first charter-schoollaw.

1994In reauthorizing ESEA, Congressrequires states receiving Title Ifunding for disadvantaged studentsto hold them to the same academicstandards as all students.

1995Knowledge Is Power Program char-ter schools launched in Houstonand New York City. . . . Bostoncreates Pilot School program toresearch ideas for urban-schoolimprovement.

1999Florida establishes first statewideschool-voucher program.

2000Countywide, income-based schoolintegration launched in Raleigh, N.C.

2002Cambridge, Mass., schools beginintegration based on income.

2002No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB)requires states to report studenttest scores “disaggregated” byrace, income and gender to avoid

masking the failing scores ofsome groups. . . . U.S. SupremeCourt rules in favor of Ohio’sschool-voucher program, whichallows public funding for tuition atCleveland parochial schools. . . .State takes over Philadelphia’sbankrupt school system, allowsprivate companies to run someschools.

2005Hoping to halt isolation of thelowest-income students in inner-city schools, Omaha, Neb., triesbut fails to annex neighboringsuburban districts.

2006Department of Education admitsthat few students in failing cityschools receive the free tutoringNCLB promised and that no stateshave met the 2006 deadline forhaving qualified teachers in allclassrooms. . . . Government Ac-countability Office finds that nearlyone-third of public schools, mostin low-income and minority com-munities, need major repairs.

2007Gov. Deval L. Patrick, D-Mass.,puts up $6.5 million to helpschools lengthen their hours. . . .Democratic Mayor Adrian Fenty,of Washington, D.C., is the latest ofseveral mayors to take control ofschools. . . . New York CitySchools Chancellor Joel Klein sayshe will fire principals of schoolswith lagging test scores. . . .Teachers’ unions slam report call-ing for all high-school seniors tobe proficient in reading and mathby 2014. . . . Houston school dis-trict calls for state to replaceNCLB-related standardized periodictesting on math and reading withtraditional end-of-course subject-matter exams.

372 CQ Researcher

The new immigrants generally clus-tered in cities, the economic engines ofthe time, and overcrowded city schoolswere charged with integrating them intoAmerican life. Critics charged that theurban schools used rigid instruction andharsh discipline to control classroomsbursting with 60 or more children,many of whom spoke no English.

Two Tracks

I n the economy of the early 20thcentury, however, there remained

little need for most students to learnmore than basic reading and writing,

so the failure of poor urban schoolsto produce many graduates wasn’t seenas a problem.

In current debates over U.S. educa-tion, “people aren’t looking at educationhistorically” and therefore expect Amer-ican schools to do things they werenever designed to do, says Ratner ofCitizens for Effective Schools.

“We consciously decided to have atwo-track system,” he says. In the early20th century, education experts gener-ally agreed that “in the industrial agethere are lots of immigrants and poorpeople, and most are going to work onthe assembly line, so how about if wecreate an academic track and a general/vocational track” mostly for the poor?

The school system that we have “wasnever set up to educate all students tothe levels of proficiency now beingasked for,” Ratner says.

“I graduated exactly 40 years ago,and then about half the kids — 52percent — were graduating,” saysWise of the Alliance for Excellent Ed-ucation. “And the non-graduates couldstill get good jobs.”

But today “the fastest-growing sec-tors of the economy require two yearsof post high-school training,” says DanielJ. Cardinali, president of CommunitiesIn Schools, a dropout-prevention groupthat helps school districts bring serviceslike tutoring and health care to needystudents.


Continued from p. 370

With the baby-boom generation on the verge of re-tirement, sustaining the American workforce andeconomy depends on having a cadre of new young

workers to replace them, says former Gov. Bob Wise, D-W.Va.,now president of the Alliance for Excellent Education. But withjobs in the fastest-growing economic sectors now requiring atleast a high-school diploma and, often, two years or more ofpost-high-school training, coming up with an adequately trainednew workforce won’t be easy, Wise says.

The annual graduation rate has risen from a little over 50percent per year in the late 1960s to 73.9 percent in 2003. Ifit’s to rise higher, however, the improvement must come amongpoor and minority students, mostly in urban schools, who arefar less likely than others to earn diplomas. 1

For example, while about two-thirds of all students whoenter ninth grade graduate four years later, on-time graduationrates for minority and low-income students, especially males,are much lower. In 2001, for example, only about 50 percentof African-American students and 51 percent of Latino studentsgraduated on time, compared to 75 percent of white studentsand 77 percent of Asian and Pacific Islanders. 2

Students with family incomes in the lowest 20 percent droppedout of school at six times the average rate of wealthier students. 3

In about a sixth of American high schools, the freshman classroutinely shrinks by 40 percent or more by the time studentsreach senior year. For the most part, those schools serve low-income and minority students. Nearly half of African-Americanstudents, 40 percent of Latino students and 11 percent of whitestudents attend high schools where graduation is not the norm.

A high school with a majority of students who are racial or eth-nic minorities is five times more likely to promote only 50 per-cent or fewer freshmen to senior status within four years thana school with a white majority. 4

Meanwhile, the earning power of dropouts has been droppingfor three decades. For example, the earnings of male dropoutsfell by 35 percent between 1971 and 2002, measured in 2002dollars. Three-quarters of state prison inmates and 59 percentof federal inmates are dropouts. In 2001, only 55 percent ofyoung adult dropouts were employed. Even the death rate is2.5 times higher for people without a high-school educationthan for people with 13 years or more of schooling. 5

But if the consequences are known, the cures may be harderto pinpoint.

Many educators say dropping out starts early. “Disengage-ment doesn’t start in the ninth grade. It starts in fifth,” saysJames F. Lytle, a University of Pennsylvania professor and for-mer superintendent of the Trenton, N.J., public schools. Foron-track students in middle-class schools, “middle school hasthe most interesting, exciting stuff in class” — science experi-ments, readings about interesting people in history and stud-ies “of how the world works” — he says.

But once students are judged to be reading behind gradelevel, as happens with many urban fifth-graders, middle schoolsturn to “dumbed-down remedial work” that’s below students’real intellectual level and leaves them bored and dispirited, Lytlesays. It doesn’t have to be that way, he says. “But I wish thateducational courseware was farther down the road” of provid-ing ways to combine skills teaching with subject matter that is

Dropouts’ Problems Often Begin EarlyClear warning signs appear, such as skipping class


Calls in the 1990s for higher aca-demic standards by groups like TheBusiness Roundtable brought wide-spread attention to the problems oflow student achievement, especiallyin low-income schools.

Today few question the premisethat all students should attain higherlevels of literacy, mathematical problem-solving and critical thinking. Manywho work in schools argue that simplysetting higher standards isn’t nearlyenough, however, especially for urbanschools where most students alreadyare behind grade level.

As standards rise, for example, “ninth-graders are increasingly placed in in-troductory algebra classes . . . despite

skill gaps in fundamental arithmetic,”wrote Balfanz and Ruth Curran Neild,research scientists at the Johns Hop-kins University Center on the SocialOrganization of Schools.

But few resources exist to help kidscatch up, “nor are there many cur-riculum materials that specifically tar-get the spotty skills of urban ninth-graders,” the Johns Hopkins researcherssaid. And when students reading be-hind grade level enter middle andhigh school, their “secondary-certifiedEnglish teachers” — educated to teachhigh-school-level literature and com-position — “are generally unprepared”to diagnose reading problems or toteach the comprehension strategies and

background vocabulary they need.Science and history teachers are evenless prepared to help, Balfanz andNeild said. 41

Retooling the school system to sup-port higher standards may seemdaunting, but “a quick walk throughhistory” shows that it wouldn’t bethe first time the United States hasmade heroic efforts on education,says Wise. For example, “after WorldWar II, you had soldiers coming homein need of better skills, and you hadthe GI Bill” to help them continuetheir educations.

Then “in the civil rights era we said,‘We believe that every child should beable to enter school,’ and that happened,”

at students’ actual age level.“Kids disengage early,” says

Lalitha Vasudevan, an assistantprofessor at Columbia Univer-sity’s Teachers College whoworks in an education programfor young African-Americanmales who’ve been divertedfrom jail and are mostlydropouts. “Often, early on,they’ve had teachers say thingsto them that they interpret as,‘You don’t really care that I’mhere,’ ” she says.

Dropping out “is not a de-cision that is made on a singlemorning,” says a report fromthe Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. In an extensive surveyof dropouts, researchers found that “there are clear warningsigns for at least one-to-three years” before students drop out,such as frequently missing school, skipping class, being heldback a grade or frequently transferring among schools. 6

Some key factors cited by the dropouts in the Gates study:Schools don’t respond actively when students skip class anddon’t provide an orderly and safe environment. “In middleschool, you have to go to your next class or they are goingto get you,” said a young male dropout from Philadelphia. “Inhigh school, if you don’t go to class, there isn’t anybody whois going to get you. You just do your own thing.” 7

Lytle says cities could alsoestablish post-dropout acade-mies, like the Dropout Recov-ery High School he started inTrenton, which helped increasethat city’s graduation numbers.

“Rather than defining the wholeproblem as stopping dropouts,we can also reach out to thosewho already have,” he says. “Thereare a slew of people around”who are out of school and wouldlike to go back, from teenagemothers caring for their childrento 60-year-olds, he says. “Theyneed a school that is built aroundtheir lives. I simply don’t under-

stand why urban districts haven’t been more imaginative” about this.

1 Nancy Martin and Samuel Halperin, Whatever It Takes: How Twelve Com-munities are Reconnecting Out-of-School Youth, American Youth Policy Forum,www.aypf.org/publications/WhateverItTakes/WITfull.pdf.2 Ibid.3 Ibid.4 Robert Balfanz and Nettie Legters, “Locating the Dropout Crisis,” Centerfor Social Organization of Schools, Johns Hopkins University, June 2004.5 Martin and Halperin, op. cit.6 John M. Bridgeland, John J. DiIulio, Jr. and Karen Burke Morison, TheSilent Epidemic: Perspectives of High School Dropouts, Bill & Melinda GatesFoundation, March 2006.7 Quoted in ibid.

Majority of Dropouts Are Hispanic, Black

More than 50 percent of 20-year-old male high-school dropouts are Hispanic or African-American (graph at left). By comparison, 55 percent of the females are black or Hispanic (graph at right).

Source: “The Costs and Benefits of an Excellent Education for All of America’s Children,” Teachers College, Columbia University, January 2007

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OtherHispanicBlackWhiteAllmales

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OtherHispanicBlackWhiteAllfemales

Among 1.9 million 20-year-old females(by percentage)

Among 2.2 million 20-year-old males(by percentage)

Percent of 20-Year-Olds Who Are High-School Dropouts, 2005

23%16%

25%

58%

9%

15%

9%

24%

31%

16%

374 CQ Researcher

Wise says. “Now we’re saying that everychild should graduate.”

For a time, the civil rights era seemedto be accelerating growing academicparity in learning, at least betweenblack and white students. FollowingWorld War II, standardized test scoresfor black students began moving closerto white students’ scores. The yearsfrom the 1960s to the ’80s saw fullyhalf of the black-white academicachievement gap eliminated, says TheCivil Rights Project’s Orfield.

In the late ’80s, however, theprogress of African-American students

in closing the gap stalled, and be-tween 1988 and 1994, average testscores for black students actuallybegan falling. 42

Minority Schools

U.S. schools briefly became moreintegrated after the civil rights bat-

tles of the 1950s and ’60s, but shiftinghousing patterns have caused the con-centration of poor, minority and non-English-speaking students in urbanschools to rise for the past 25 years.

“One thing that’s not fully under-stood is that, through a long histor-ical process, we’ve concentrated ourmost needy students in a small sub-set of schools and districts” in ruraland, mostly, urban areas, vastly in-creasing the burden those schools facein raising academic achievement, saysBalfanz.

In its landmark 1954 Brown v. Boardof Education ruling, the SupremeCourt declared it illegal to intention-ally segregate schools by race. 43 In1964, Congress passed the Civil RightsAct, outlawing discrimination in any


D ata from around the country indicate that black stu-dents, especially males, are cited much more oftenfor disciplinary infractions than whites. The resulting

“behavior gap” parallels the much-talked-about academicachievement gap.

Many analysts blame the phenomenon in part on a “cul-ture clash” between black students, many poor, and an edu-cation system that’s white-centered and middle-class. But there’slittle agreement about exactly what the gap means and whatto do about it.

“You find the gap in all schools,” including wealthy ones,says Clara G. Muschkin, a researcher at the Duke UniversityCenter for Child and Family Policy. Nevertheless, some evi-dence suggests there may also be a behavior gap betweenricher and poorer students, which accounts for just under athird of the black-white gap, Muschkin says.

In North Carolina schools, the racial gap “is persistent at allthe grades” but is widest in seventh grade, says Muschkin. About30 percent of black seventh-graders and 14 percent of whiteshave at least one disciplinary infraction reported during theschool year.

African-American male students have the highest rates of sus-pensions and expulsions in most metropolitan areas around thecountry, according to Denise L. Collier, a doctoral candidate ineducation at California State University, Los Angeles. In New York,for example, where African-American males are 18 percent ofthe student population, they account for 39 percent of schoolsuspensions and 50 percent of expulsions. In Los Angeles, blackmales make up 6 percent of the population but account for 18percent of suspensions and 15 percent of expulsions. 1

Some educators say that many urban African-American stu-dents don’t learn at home the kinds of communication be-

haviors that are the norm for the middle class, and that thislack of background accounts for much of the gap.

“Americans of a certain background learn . . . early onand employ . . . instinctively” techniques like sitting upstraight, asking questions and tracking a speaker with theireyes in order to take in information, said David Levin, afounder of the Knowledge Is Power Program (KIPP) charterschools, which serve mainly black and Hispanic students inseveral cities. 2

When students in one Levin class were asked to “give usthe normal school look,” they responded by staring off intospace and slouching, recounted New York Times Magazine ed-itor Paul Tough in an article last year on successful urban char-ter schools. “Middle-class Americans know intuitively that ‘goodbehavior’ is mostly a game with established rules; the KIPPstudents seemed to be experiencing the pleasure of being letin on a joke,” Tough observed. 3

Behavior like a proper in-school work ethic has to be taught“in the same way we have to teach adding fractions with un-like denominators,” said Dacia Toll, founder of the AmistadAcademy charter school in New Haven, Conn. “But once chil-dren have got the work ethic and the commitment to othersand to education down, it’s actually pretty easy to teach them.”

The academic gap that puts many black students in reme-dial instruction as they move through school may worsen theproblem, says Robert Balfanz, associate research scientist at theJohns Hopkins University Center on the Social Organization ofSchools. “In traditional remedial instruction, I assume you knownothing, so I teach the times table” and basic reading skillslike letter sounds, he says. “But the majority of kids behindcan actually read at a basic level. What they’re missing is com-prehension skill, vocabulary. So they get bored and frustrated.”

The ‘Behavior Gap’ Between Black and White StudentsMany educators blame a system that’s middle-class and white-centered


institution that received federal funds,including schools. 44 As a result, moreschools accommodated lower-incomestudents along with middle-class stu-dents, white students and students fromother ethnic groups.

The civil rights era lasted a scant20 years, however, and housing pat-terns and new waves of immigrationsoon led to concentrations of poorand minority students in many urbanschool districts again.

As early as 1974, the SupremeCourt effectively set limits on how farracial integration of students could go.

The court ruled in Milliken v. Bradleythat the remedy to racial segregationin Detroit could not include movingchildren to schools in the surround-ing suburbs. 45

Then, in the 1980s, federal effortsto desegregate schools effectivelyended. During the presidency of RonaldReagan (1981-1988), the U.S. JusticeDepartment backed off forcing statesto comply with desegregation man-dates. Two Supreme Court decisionsin the early 1990s effectively declaredthe goal of black-white school inte-gration had been addressed, as the

court ruled that school districts couldbe excused from court-ordered busingif they had made good-faith efforts tointegrate, even if they had not fullycomplied with court orders. 46

At the same time, however, His-panic students were becoming a newminority that concentrated in schoolswith bigger academic challenges thanothers, such as teaching English-language learners.

The segregation of Latino studentssoared during the civil rights era. In1973, in Keyes v. School District No. 1,the Supreme Court outlawed policies

Middle-class education majors student-teaching in urbanschools found that using books about topics their studentspersonally had encountered — including homelessness, racismand poverty — decreased discipline problems, even thoughthe teachers initially resisted the books as inappropriate forchildren, according to Professor Christine H. Leland and Pro-fessor Emeritus Jerome C. Harste of Indiana University-PurdueUniversity, Indianapolis. Once the student teachers broachedthe tough subject matter, they began reporting “fewer disci-pline problems . . . the children listened carefully and en-gaged in thoughtful discussions when they perceived that theissues being discussed were worth their attention.” 4

Many African-American student discipline problems involve“defiance” issues such as acting threatening or making exces-sive noise rather than activities like drug use or leaving theclassroom without permission, according to University of VirginiaAssistant Professor Anne Gregory. 5

Seventy-five percent of African-American disciplinary referralswere for “defiance” behaviors in a study Gregory cites, manymore than for other ethnic groups. That may suggest that teach-ers judge African-American students’ behavior more “subjec-tively” than that of other students, Gregory says. Based on theirpast feelings of being restricted and excluded, some African-American students may be more likely to act out when theyperceive that teachers are being unfair, Gregory suggests.

“If I was this little Caucasian boy or this preppy girl, shewouldn’t talk with me that way. I am like the opposite. I am thislittle thug . . . I mean, she don’t know,” one student in Gregory’sstudy said of a teacher perceived to be unfair. 6

Avoiding excessive discipline battles in urban schools re-quires a seemingly contradictory set of characteristics that noteveryone can muster, said Franita Ware, a professor of educa-

tion at Spelman College, a historically black school for womenin Atlanta. Teachers who succeed tend to be “warm deman-ders,” those whom “students believed . . . did not lower theirstandards” but also “were willing to help them.” 7

“Sometimes I mean-talk them in varying degrees of severity,”one teacher told Ware. But “sometimes you have to go back andsay, ‘What was really going on with you when I yelled at you?I’m just so sorry.’ ” 8

Often the adult is the provocateur in the behavior situation,even if they don’t realize it, such as when a student finds thenurse’s office door locked at 3:02 and starts pounding on it,says James F. Lytle, a professor at the University of Pennsyl-vania and former school superintendent in Trenton, N.J.

“A lot of it is just the way you talk to people — respect,”Lytle says. “Many are so accustomed to being denigrated. Thekids have so little that the protection of one’s ego is very im-portant.”

1 Denise L. Collier, “Sally Can Skip But Jerome Can’t Stomp: Perceptions,Practice, and School Punishment (Preliminary Results),” paper presented atthe American Educational Research Association annual meeting, San Francisco,Calif., April 2006.2 Quoted in Paul Tough, “What It Takes To Make a Student,” New YorkTimes Magazine, Nov. 26, 2006, p. 51.3 Ibid.4 Christine H. Leland and Jerome C. Harste, “Doing What We Want to Be-come: Preparing New Urban Teachers,” Urban Education, January 2005, p. 67.5 Anne Gregory, “Justice and Care: Teacher Practices To Narrow the RacialDiscipline Gap,” paper presented at the American Educational ResearchAssociation annual conference, San Francisco, Calif., April 2006.6 Quoted in ibid.7 Franita Ware, “Warm Demander Pedagogy: Culturally Responsive Teachingthat Supports A Culture of Achievement for African-American Students,”Urban Education, July 2006, p. 427.8 Quoted in ibid.

376 CQ Researcher


in Denver that hadthe effect of segre-ga t ing Hispanicand African-Americanchildren into sepa-rate schools. In en-suing years, however,this somewhat com-plex ruling was onlyspottily enforced, ac-cording to civil rightsadvocates. 47

Today Latinos“are America’s mostsegregated minoritygroup,” said Orfield.“The average Latinostudent goes to aschool that is less than30 percent white, hasa majority of poorchildren and an “in-creasing concentra-tion” of studentswho don’t speakEnglish. 48

Poor in School

U ntil around the 1970s, childrenof all races and classes attended

urban schools, and their averageachievement levels didn’t draw thesame alarmed attention as today.Urban sprawl and white flight fromcities over the past three decadeshave not only increased the num-ber of urban schools with high mi-nority populations but also in-creased the concentration of urbanpoverty as well, increasing the bur-den on urban schools.

“Sprawl is a product of suburbanpulls and urban pushes,” said the Uni-versity of Maryland’s Baum. “Familiesmove to the suburbs for good hous-ing, open space. They leave cities toavoid bad schools, threats to safety. . . contact with other races and poorpublic services.” 49

Furthermore, minority children aremore concentrated in urban areasthan the general population, largelybecause white families with childrenmove to suburbs while childlesswhites are more likely to remain inthe city, said Baum. Nationally, innearly all school districts with morethan 25,000 students, interracial con-tact has declined since 1986. 50

Even more than ethnic minorities,poor people have concentrated in cities,says Balfanz. Over the past 20 years,even in periods when overall povertyhas dropped, “the cities have gottenpoorer and the concentration ofpoverty there deeper.”

Between 1960 and 1987, the na-tional poverty rate for people incentral cities rose from 13.4 percentto 15.7 percent. At the same time,the poverty rate for rural residentsfell by one-half and for suburbanresidents by one-third. By 1991, 43percent of people with incomesbelow the federal poverty line livedin central cities. 51

“The nation’s studentpopulation is two-thirdsmiddle class (not eligi-ble for federally subsi-dized lunches), yet one-quarter of Americanschools have a majorityof students from low-income households,” ac-cording to The CenturyFoundation. 52

Among the burdensurban schools bear arepoverty-related learningdeficiencies childrenbring to school withthem, regulations andeconomic barriers thatlimit urban-school re-sources, and a historicalrole as job providers ininner cities.

A large body of re-sea rch shows tha tmany low-income par-

ents interact with their children inways that hinder them in school,wrote Tough last year in The NewYork Times Magazine. For example,professional parents speak to theiryoung children about two-and-a-halfmore times in an hour than poorparents do and encourage them ver-bally about six times more often thanthey discourage them; low-incomeparents discourage their childrenabout three times as often as theyencourage them, he said.

Unlike poor parents, middle-classparents also encourage their childrento question, challenge and negotiate.In short, “in countless ways, the man-ner in which [poor children] are raisedputs them at a disadvantage” in aschool culture, Tough noted. 53

For a variety of reasons, urbanschools also have a much harder timekeeping good teachers. “Many thou-sands — perhaps millions — of urbanstudents don’t have permanent, highly qual-ified teachers, ones with the skill to

Continued on p. 378

Edwin Bradley listens to his fifth-grade daughter Antoinette read at theSouth Street School library in Newark, N.J. One of the poorest in the

state, the school district has been encouraged under a new program to support parental involvement in an

attempt to improve student performance.

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At Issue:Would raising teacher pay help struggling schools?Yes

yesPATTY MYERSTECHNOLOGY COORDINATOR, GREATFALLS (MONTANA) PUBLIC SCHOOLS

FROM TESTIMONY ON BEHALF OF THE NATIONAL EDUCATION ASSOCIATION BEFORE U.S. SENATE COMMITTEE ON FINANCE, MARCH 20, 2007

ensuring a highly qualified teacher in every classroom iscritical to closing achievement gaps and maximizing stu-dent learning. No single factor will make a bigger differ-

ence in helping students reach high academic standards. . . .Unfortunately, difficulty in attracting quality teachers and

high turnover rates severely hamper the ability to maintain ahigh-quality learning environment. Approximately one-third ofthe nation’s new teachers leave the profession during theirfirst three years, and almost one-half leave during their firstfive years. And turnover in low-income schools is almost one-third higher than the rate in all schools.

The teaching profession has an average national startingsalary of $30,377. Meanwhile, computer programmers start atan average of $43,635, public accounting professionals at$44,668 and registered nurses at $45,570.

Annual pay for teachers has fallen sharply over the past 60years in relation to the annual pay of other workers with col-lege degrees. The average earnings of workers with at leastfour years of college are now over 50 percent higher than theaverage earnings of a teacher. Congress should reward statesthat set a reasonable minimum starting salary for teachers anda living wage for support professionals working in school dis-tricts. NEA recommends that all teachers in America enter theclassroom earning at least $40,000 annually.

NEA also supports advancing teacher quality at the highest-poverty schools by providing $10,000 federal salary supplementsto National Board Certified Teachers. Congress also should fundgrants to help teachers in high-poverty schools pay the feesand access professional supports to become certified.

Often schools with the greatest needs and, consequently, themost challenging working conditions have the most difficulty re-taining talented teachers. . . . Many hard-to-staff schools arehigh-poverty inner-city school or rural schools that, as a conse-quence of their location in economically depressed or isolateddistricts, offer comparatively low salaries and lack [the] amenitieswith which other districts attract teachers.

NEA strongly supports federal legislation with financial in-centives for teaching in high-poverty schools, such as theTeacher Tax Credit Act introduced in the 109th Congress. Thebill would provide a non-refundable tax credit to educatorswho work at schools that are fully eligible for federal Title Ifunds for disadvantaged students and would help hard-to-staffschools retain the quality teachers they need to succeed.No

JAY P. GREENESENIOR FELLOW, MANHATTAN INSTITUTE

POSTED ON THE WEB, 2006

the common assertion that teachers are severely underpaidis so omnipresent that many Americans simply accept it asgospel. But the facts tell a different story.

The average teacher’s salary does seem modest at firstglance: about $44,600 in 2002 for all teachers. But whenwe compare it to what workers of similar skill levels insimilar professions are paid, we find that teachers are notshortchanged.

People often fail to account for the relatively low numberof hours that teachers work. Teachers work only about ninemonths per year. During the summer they can either work atother jobs or use the time off however else they wish. Eitherway, it’s as much a form of compensation as a paycheck.

The most recent data indicate that teachers average 7.3working hours per day, and that they work 180 days peryear, or about 1,314 hours. Americans in normal 9-to-5 profes-sions who take two weeks of vacation and another 10 paidholidays put in 1,928 hours. This means the average teacher’sbase salary is equivalent to a full-time salary of $65,440.

In 2002, elementary-school teachers averaged $30.75 perhour and high-school teachers $31.01 — about the same asarchitects, civil engineers and computer-systems analysts. Evendemanding, education-intensive professions like dentistry andnuclear engineering didn’t make much more per hour.

Some argue that it’s unfair to calculate teacher pay on anhourly basis because teachers perform a large amount of workat home — grading papers on the weekend, for instance. Butpeople in other professions also do off-site work.

Many assume that teachers spend almost all of the schoolday teaching. But in reality, the average subject-matter teachertaught fewer than 3.9 hours per day in 2000. This leavesplenty of time for grading and planning lessons.

It is well documented that the people drawn into teachingthese days tend to be those who have performed least wellin college. If teachers are paid about as well as employees inmany other good professions, why aren’t more high performerstaking it up?

One suspects that high-performing graduates tend to stayaway because the rigid seniority-based structure doesn’t allowthem to rise faster and earn more money through better per-formance or by voluntarily putting in longer hours. In anycase, it’s clear that the primary obstacle to attracting betterteachers isn’t simply raising pay.

378 CQ Researcher


communicate important stuff to kids,”says Kitty Kelly-Epstein, a professorof education at the Fielding GraduateUniversity in Santa Barbara, Calif. InCalifornia, at least, state rules forcesome urban school districts to rely ontemporary teachers because not enoughapplicants have required certifications,she says. “There never has been atime when low-income schools werefully staffed,” she says.

With joblessness high in cities, es-pecially for minority applicants, it’salso “not uncommon” for school dis-tricts to be the major job source inthe area, according to Johns HopkinsUniversity Associate Professor of Edu-cation Elaine M. Stotko and colleagues.In a tradition thatdates back to pa-tronage systems inthe early 20th cen-tury, urban politi-cians often interferewith schools’ hiringthe best managerialand teaching candi-dates by pressuringthem to hand outjobs “as politicalfavors.” 54

The SupremeCourt is due to ruleby the end of Junein two race-basedintegration cases.With a new con-servative majority,the court is widelyexpected to rule infavor of the white parents who areseeking to end race-based school in-tegration in Seattle and Louisville, Ky.Decisions against the school districtscould end many similar programsaround the country, many of whichwere court-ordered in the past. 55

But some school districts still worrythat schools with high concentra-tions of minority and poor studentsharm achievement. Over the past sev-

eral years, a few districts, includingRaleigh, N.C., and Cambridge, Mass.,have experimented with integratingstudents by socioeconomic status. In2000, for example, the school boardin Wake County, N.C., which includesRaleigh and its suburbs, replaced itsracial integration system with the goalthat no school should have 40 per-cent of students eligible for free orreduced-price lunch. 56

Raleigh’s effort was simpler politi-cally than most, because the schooldistrict contains both the area’s low-poverty and high-poverty schools. Ifthe higher-income suburbs had beenoutside the district, political push-backwould have made the program atougher sell.

Some early Raleigh results lookpromising. On the state’s 2005 HighSchool End of Course exams, 63.8percent of the low-income studentspassed, as did 64.3 percent of itsAfrican-American seniors, comparedto pass rates in the high-40 and low50-percent range for the state’s otherurban districts. 57

CURRENTSITUATION

Congress Divided

T he No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB),enacted in 2002, is intended to

push American schools to raise achieve-ment for all students, including low-in-come and minority children. As such,it represents one more step down aroad that Congress embarked on in its1994 reauthorization of the Elementaryand Secondary Education Act — exert-

ing federal influence to en-sure that all students meethigher academic standards.

With NCLB up for reau-thorization, Congress isstruggling to figure out itsnext steps, with little ap-parent agreement on thehorizon. With the press ofother business, and strongdisagreements in Congressabout the education law,it’s not clear that it will bereauthorized this year. Thenew congressional Demo-cratic majority has alreadybegun to hold hearings,however.

U.S. businesses havebecome increasingly in-volved in education pol-icy, and many business

leaders are urging Congress to con-tinue and strengthen federal efforts toraise academic standards and provideincentives for states and localities toextensively retool their school systemsto improve student achievement.

“Unless we transform the Americanhigh school, we will limit economicopportunities for millions of Americans,”declared Microsoft Chairman Bill Gatesat a Senate Health, Education, Labor

Continued from p. 376

The Knowledge Is Power Program (KIPP) charter school in the Bronx,N.Y., boasts the highest test scores in the area. Although most KIPP schools are not racially integrated, they are reducing

achievement gaps between black and white students.

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and Pensions Committee hearing onMarch 7. 58

Meanwhile, a group of conservativecongressional Republicans has introducedlegislation that would replace most ofthe NCLB achievement and reportingrequirements that determine funding withblock-grant funding that states could getwhether they met NCLB standards ornot. The measure would restore statesand localities to their traditional role asprime overseers of schools, said Rep.Peter Hoekstra, R-Mich., who sponsoredthe legislation. “President Bush and Ijust see education fundamentally differ-ently,” he said. “The president believesin empowering bureaucrats in Wash-ington, and I don’t.” 59

But many congressional Democratsargue that a strengthened federal handin education is warranted, partly be-cause NCLB data now clearly revealsthat the state-run systems of old haveleft so many poor and minority chil-dren disastrously behind.

Rep. George Miller, D-Calif., andSen. Kennedy, key supporters of NCLBand chairs of the House and Senatecommittees that govern it, have bothheld pre-authorization hearings thisyear. Both say they’re committed toincreasing resources for strugglingschools in a new bill, especially bysupporting the hiring and training ofmore and better teachers.

“We know the law has flaws, butwe also know that with common-sense changes and adequate resources,we can improve it by building on whatwe’ve learned,” said Kennedy in astatement.

Retooling NCLB?

E ducation analysts have no short-age of changes to suggest.

President Bush is looking at “tin-kering” with NCLB in a reauthorization,but Democrats are “interested in some-thing broader,” says Cardinali of Com-

munities in Schools. “The [current] lawis too fixated on academics,” he says.After 30 years of experience helpingstudents get additional services theyneed like tutoring and health care, “we’velearned that student services are a crit-ical component,” he says.

“The brutal truth is that there is onlyone institution in America where youcan get to kids in a thoughtful way —the school,” he says. “Let’s make thatthe center” where parents and childrencan get needs met that are critical forlearning readiness. “Are we trying tomake public education something it’snot? No. It’s a holistic view” of whatit takes to educate a child.

One gap the University of Chicago’sKnowles would like to see rectified: InNCLB’s reporting requirements “the unitof analysis is the kid, the school and thedistrict, and there’s a stunning absencethere if we really believe that instructionis at the heart of learning.” Research in-dicates, he says, that individual classroomteachers may be the strongest in-schoolinfluence on student achievement.

However, “Democrats’ strong ties tolabor” helped keep teacher account-ability out of the bill, he says.

In addition, “higher ed has been givenpretty much a free pass,” Knowles says.A future bill should focus attention onwhich education schools are producingthe best-quality teachers.

Low-achieving schools shouldn’t bepunished, but given the tools to dobetter, says Knowles. Supports liketeacher development and well-integratedextra services like social worker, close-ly targeted on high-need schools, area “precondition” for improvement,he says.

Another key: additional flexibilityfor leaders of low-achieving schoolsto hire and fire and set policy andschedules. Principals say, “Yeah, yougive me the hiring and firing of teach-ers and I’ll give you the better results,”and they’re correct, says Knowles.

Reporting data for accountability isn’tthe problem. It’s the very narrowly fo-

cused reporting requirement, manyanalysts say.

“Replace the overreliance on stan-dardized testing with multiple mea-sures,” such as attendance figures andaccurate dropout rates, says the Uni-versity of Rochester’s Hursh.

The federal government should alsosupport strong, unbiased research onwhat improves instruction, especiallyin the middle- and high-school years,which are federally funded at a tinyfraction of the level of elementaryschools and colleges, says Wise of theAlliance for Excellent Education. “Nostate or local district has the moneyfor this,” he says.

OUTLOOKAgreeing to Disagree

T here’s growing agreement thatschools should be educating all

students to a higher standard. How-ever, there’s still disagreement abouthow much and what kind of helpschools would need to do it.

An ideal outcome would be for in-stitutions that are the most lasting pres-ence in cities, such as business groupslike the Chamber of Commerce, localhospitals and colleges to take owner-ship of urban education to drivechange, says Balfanz of Johns Hopkins.A movement in that direction may bebeginning, he says. “For awhile, therewere mainly rhetorical reports,” but todaygroups like the Chamber of Commerceare producing more potentially usefulpolicy work, he says.

“The climate is shifting” toward theconclusion that everyone needs adiploma, says Balfanz. “You can’teven find an employer who says, ‘I’llhire people who aren’t high-schoolgraduates.’ ” So when students drop

380 CQ Researcher

out, “it just feeds the next generationof poverty,” he says.

There’s currently an opportunity torevise NCLB in a way that helps low-achieving schools, says the Universityof Chicago’s Knowles. Nevertheless,“people have already formed hard opin-ions,” and debate could turn solelypartisan, he says.

Lawmakers must aim for a delicatebalance on federal initiatives, says Co-lumbia’s Henig. Federal interventionsmust aim at “making local processeswork,” since local on-the-ground ac-tions are ultimately what make or breakschools, he says.

The University of Pennsylvania’sLytle fears that privatization may beon the verge of overwhelming edu-cation, with potentially disastrous con-sequences for low-income families.

“I think the K-12 education businessis in the process of deconstructing,” hesays. “The middle class is looking out-side the schools” to private tutoringcompanies and Internet learning foracademics. “More and more, for them,schools are amounting to expensivechild care.” Some states are aggres-sively pioneering “virtual” online char-ter schools and charters granted tohome-schoolers, he says.

“The cost side and the efficacy sideof education are on a collision course,and I think Congress will end up en-dorsing fairly radical experimentation”with vouchers, for example, Lytle says.“They’ll say, ‘There’s no evidence thatreducing class size or other expensive

measures helps, so let’s let Americaningenuity work. Where does that leaveurban kids? Out of luck,” Lytle says.“You’ve got to be pretty sophisticatedto make market forces work for you.”

But “there’s been progress in thelast decade with whole-school reform,”says Balfanz. “The big question nowis how we [change] whole school dis-tricts. “It’s a big job but within humancapacity,” he says.

Notes1 Quoted in Judy Radigan, “ReframingDropouts: The Complexity of Urban Life In-tersects with Current School Policy,” paperpresented at the Texas Dropout Conference,Houston, Oct. 6, 2006.2 “The Socioeconomic Composition of the Pub-lic Schools: A Crucial Consideration in StudentAssignment Policy,” University of North Car-olina Center for Civil Rights, Jan. 7, 2005,www.law.unc.edu/PDFs/charlottereport.pdf.3 For background, see Barbara Mantel, “NoChild Left Behind,” CQ Researcher, May 7,2005, pp. 469-492.4 Quoted in David J. Hoff and KathleenKennedy Manzo, “Bush Claims About NCLBQuestioned,” Education Week, March 9, 2007,www.edweek.org.5 Quoted in ibid.6 “The Nation’s Report Card: Reading 2005,”U.S. Department of Education Institute of Ed-ucation Sciences, www.nationsreportcard.gov.7 Douglas N. Harris, “Ending the Blame Gameon Educational Inequity: A Study of ‘High-Flying’ Schools and NCLB,” Education PolicyStudies Laboratory, Arizona State University,March 2006.

8 Jay P. Greene, “Education Myths,” TheAmerican Enterprise Online, American En-terprise Institute, August 2006.9 For background, see Charles S. Clark,“Charter Schools,” CQ Researcher, Dec. 20,2002, pp. 1033-1056; Kenneth Jost, “SchoolVouchers Showdown,” CQ Researcher, Feb. 15,2002, pp. 121-144.10 Greene, op. cit.11 Brad Olsen and Lauren Anderson, “Coursesof Action: A Qualitative Investigation Into UrbanTeacher Retention and Career Development,”Urban Education, January 2007, p. 5.12 Quoted in ibid., p. 14.13 Ibid.14 Arthur J. Rothkopf, “Elementary and Sec-ondary Education Act Reauthorization: Im-proving NCLB To Close the AchievementGap,” testimony before the Senate Committeeon Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions andthe House Committee on Education and Labor,March 13, 2007.15 For background, see Kenneth Jost, “Testingin Schools,” CQ Researcher, April 20, 2001,pp. 321-344.16 Richard J. Murnane, “Improving the Edu-cation of Children Living in Poverty,” un-published paper, Jan. 25, 2007.17 Ibid.18 For background, see Kenneth Jost, “SchoolDesegregation,” CQ Researcher, April 23, 2004,pp. 345-372.19 Quoted in “Center on Race and SocialProblems Commemorates Brown v. Board ofEducation,” University of Pittsburgh Schoolof Social Work, May 7, 2004.20 Quoted in Brian Lamb, “No Excuses: Clos-ing the Racial Gap in Learning,” transcript,“Booknotes,” C-SPAN, Feb. 1, 2004.21 Paul Tough, “What It Takes To Make aStudent,” The New York Times Magazine,Nov. 26, 2006, p. 70.22 R. Scott Baker, “School Resegregation: Mustthe South Turn Back?” Journal of SouthernHistory, November 2006, p. 993.23 Howell S. Baum, “Smart Growth and SchoolReform: What If We Talked About Race andTook Community Seriously?” Journal of theAmerican Planning Association, winter 2004,p. 14.24 “Divided We Fail: Coming Together ThroughPublic School Choice,” Task Force on theCommon School, The Century FoundationPress, 2002, p. 3.25 Ibid., p. 13.26 Quoted in Lamb, op. cit.27 Ibid.


About the Author

Staff writer Marcia Clemmitt is a veteran social-policyreporter who previously served as editor in chief of Medi-cine & Health and staff writer for The Scientist. She hasalso been a high-school math and physics teacher. Sheholds a liberal arts and sciences degree from St. John’sCollege, Annapolis, and a master’s degree in English fromGeorgetown University. Her recent reports include “Cli-mate Change,” “Health Care Costs,” “Cyber Socializing”and “Prison Health Care.”


28 Terry Ryan and Quentin Suffren, “CharterSchool Lessons from Ohio,” The EducationGadfly, Thomas B. Fordham Foundation,March 15, 2007, www.edexcellence.net.29 Mark Simon, “What Teachers Know,”Poverty & Race, September/October 2004,www.prrac.org.30 Dreyon Wynn and Dianne L. H. Mark,“Book Review: Educating Teachers for Di-versity: Seeing With a Cultural Eye,” UrbanEducation, May 2005, p. 350.31 Jocelyn A. Glazier, “Moving Closer to Speak-ing the Unspeakable: White Teachers TalkingAbout Race,” Teacher Education Quarterly,winter 2003.32 Wanda J. Blanchett, “Urban School Failureand Disproportionality in a Post-Brown Era,”Remedial and Special Education, April 2005,p. 70.33 Christine H. Leland and Jerome C. Harste,“Doing What We Want to Become: PreparingNew Urban Teachers,” Urban Education,January 2005, p. 60.34 Ibid., p. 62.35 Glazier, op. cit.36 Wynn and Mark, op. cit.37 For background, see Wayne J. Urban andJennings L. Wagoner, American Education:A History (2003); Stanley William Rothstein,Schooling the Poor: A Social Inquiry Into theAmerican Educational Experience (1994).38 For background, see Kathy Koch, “Re-forming School Funding,” CQ Researcher,Dec. 10, 1999, pp. 1041-1064.39 Derrick Bell, Silent Covenants: Brown v.Board of Education and the Unfulfilled Hopesfor Racial Reform (2004), p. 88.40 Ibid., p. 91.41 Ruth Curran Neild and Robert Balfanz, “AnExtreme Degree of Difficulty: The EducationalDemographics of Urban Neighborhood HighSchools,” Journal of Education for StudentsPlaced at Risk, spring 2006, p. 135.42 V. W. Ipka, “At Risk Children in Resegre-gated Schools; An Analysis of the AchievementGap,” Journal of Instructional Psychology, De-cember 2003, p. 294.43 The case is Brown v. Board of Educationof Topeka, 347 U.S. 483 (1954).44 For background, see Jost, “School Deseg-regation,” op. cit.; Gary Orfield and John T.Yun, “Resegregation in American Schools,”The Civil Rights Project, Harvard University,June 1999, www.civilrightsproject.harvard.edu/research/deseg/reseg_schools99.php.45 The case is Milliken v. Bradley, 418 U.S.717 (1974).

46 Ipka, op. cit. The cases are Board of Ed-ucation of Oklahoma City v. Dowell, 498U.S. 237 (1991) and Freeman v. Pitts, 498 U.S.1081 (1992).47 Gary Orfield and Chungmei Lee, “RacialTransformation and the Changing Nature ofSegregation,” The Civil Rights Project, HarvardUniversity, January 2006, www.civilrightspro-ject.harvard.edu.; Keyes v. School District No. 1,Denver, Colorado, 413 U.S. 189 (1973).48 Gary Orfield and Susan E. Eaton, “Back toSegregation,” The Nation, March 3, 2003, p. 5.49 Baum, op. cit.50 Ibid.51 Neild and Balfanz, op. cit., p. 126.52 “Divided We Fail,” op. cit., p. 17.53 Tough, op. cit.54 Elaine M. Stotko, Rochelle Ingram andMary Ellen Beaty-O’Ferrall, “Promising Strategiesfor Attracting and Retaining Successful Urban

Teachers,” Urban Education, January 2007,p. 36.55 Patrick Mattimore, “Will Court Put Inte-gration on Hold?” San Francisco Examiner,Dec. 8, 2006, www.exaaminer.com. The cases— argued on Dec. 4, 2006 — are Meredith v.Jefferson County Board of Education, 05-915;and Parents Involved in Community Schoolsv. Seattle School District No. 1, 05-908.56 Richard Kahlenberg, “Helping ChildrenMove from Bad Schools to Good Ones,” TheCentury Foundation, 2006, www.tcf.org/list.asp?type=PB&pubid=565.57 Ibid.58 Quoted in Michael Sandler, “Minding TheirBusiness,” CQ Weekly, April 2, 2007, p. 952.59 Quoted in Jonathan Weisman and Amit R.Paley, “Dozens in GOP Turn Against Bush’sPrized ‘No Child’ Act,” The Washington Post,March 15, 2007, p. A1.

FOR MORE INFORMATIONAchieve, Inc., 1775 I St., N.W., Suite 410, Washington, DC 20006; (202) 419-1540;www.achieve.org. An independent bipartisan group formed by governors andbusiness leaders to promote higher academic standards.

Alliance for Excellent Education, 1201 Connecticut Ave., N.W., Suite 901, Wash-ington, DC 20036; (202) 828-0828; www.all4ed.org. A nonprofit research and ad-vocacy group seeking policies to help at-risk high-school students.

The Center for Education Reform, 1001 Connecticut Ave., N.W., Suite. 204,Washington, DC 20036; (202) 822-9000; www.edreform.com. A nonprofit advocacygroup that promotes school choice in cities.

The Century Foundation, 41 E. 70th St., New York, NY 10021; (212) 535-4441;www.tcf.org. Supports research on income inequality and urban policy.

Citizens for Effective Schools, 8209 Hamilton Spring Ct., Bethesda, MD 20817;(301) 469-8000; www.citizenseffectiveschools.org. An advocacy group that seeks policychanges to minimize the achievement gap for low-income and minority students.

Council of the Great City Schools, 1301 Pennsylvania Ave., N.W., Suite 702,Washington, DC 20004; (202) 393-2427; www.cgcs.org. A coalition of 67 urbanschool systems dedicated to improving urban schools.

Education Next, Hoover Institution, Stanford University; www.educationnext.org.A quarterly journal on education reform published by a conservative think tank.

The Education Trust, 1250 H St., N.W., Suite 700, Washington, DC 20005; (202)293-1217; www2.edtrust.org. Dedicated to closing the achievement gap in learningand college preparation for low-income and minority students.

National Center for Education Statistics, 1990 K St., N.W., Washington, DC 20006;(202) 502-7300; http://nces.ed.gov. A Department of Education agency that providesstatistics and analysis on U.S. schools, student attendance and achievement.

FOR MORE INFORMATION

382 CQ Researcher

Books

Kozol, Jonathan, The Shame of the Nation: The Restorationof Apartheid Schooling in America, Three Rivers Press, 2006.A longtime education writer and activist reports on his

five-year journey to closely observe 60 schools in 11 states.He describes almost entirely resegregated urban schoolswith dilapidated buildings, dirty classrooms and a dearthof up-to-date textbooks.

Rothstein, Richard, Class and Schools: Using Social, Eco-nomic, and Education Reform to Close the Black-WhiteAchievement Gap, Economic Policy Institute, 2004.A research associate at a think tank concerned with low-

and middle-income workers and families argues that raisingthe achievement of urban students requires public policiesthat address students’ multiple social and economic needs.

Thernstrom, Abigail, and Stephan Thernstrom, No Ex-cuses: Closing the Racial Gap in Learning, Simon &Schuster, 2004.A husband and wife who are senior fellows at the con-

servative Manhattan Institute for Public Policy Research arguethat charter schools and the No Child Left Behind Act’s focuson holding schools accountable for poor student achievementcan close the achievement gap for urban students.

Articles

Boo, Katherine, “Expectations,” The New Yorker, Jan. 15,2007, p. 44.A reform-minded superintendent closes Denver’s lowest-

achieving high school, hoping its students will accept theoffer to enroll in any other city school, including some withmainly online classes. Mostly Latinos from the city’s poorestfamilies, the displaced students struggle with losing their oldschool, which has provided many with a sense of community,and with new choices that confront them, as well as theever-present choice of dropping out.

Moore, Martha T., “More Mayors Are Moving To TakeOver School System,” USA Today, March 21, 2007, p. A1.Albuquerque’s mayor is among those who believe they

could run schools better than their local school boards.

Saulny, Susan, “Few Students Seek Free Tutoring orTransfers From Failing Schools,” The New York Times,April 6, 2006, p. 20.The No Child Left Behind Act promises free tutoring for

many students in low-achieving schools, but few of thosestudents’ families know about the option or have been ableto enroll their children in good-quality tutoring programs.

Tough, Paul, “What It Takes To Make a Student,” TheNew York Times Magazine, Nov. 26, 2006, p. 44.A handful of charter schools are making strides against the

achievement gap. But largely because low-income and minoritystudents arrive at school with smaller vocabularies and farless knowledge about how to communicate with adults andbehave in a learning situation, the work requires extra-longschool hours and intense teacher commitment.

Reports and Studies

Beating the Odds: An Analysis of Student Performance andAchievement Gaps on State Assessments: Results from the2005-2006 School Year, Council of the Great City Schools,April 2007.A group representing 67 of the country’s largest urban

school districts examines in detail the recent performance ofurban students on state tests.

Divided We Fail: Coming Together Through Public SchoolChoice, Task Force on the Common School, The CenturyFoundation, 2002.Basing its discussion on the idea that race- and class-segregated

schools have proven a failure, a nonpartisan think tank exploresthe possibility of encouraging cross-district integration of low-income and middle-income students by methods like establish-ing high-quality magnet schools in cities.

Engaging Schools: Fostering High School Students’Motivation to Learn, Committee on Increasing HighSchool Students’ Engagement and Motivation to Learn,National Research Council, 2003.A national expert panel examines methods for re-engaging

urban high-school students who have lost their motivationto learn, a problem they say is widespread but solvable.

Bridgeland, John M., John J. DiIulio, Jr., and Karen BurkeMorison, The Silent Epidemic: Perspectives of High SchoolDropouts, Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, March 2006.Nearly half of high-school dropouts say they left school

partly because they were bored. A third of the students leftbecause they needed to work, and more than a fifth saidthey left to care for a family member.

Levin, Henry, Clive Belfield, Peter Muennig and CeciliaRouse, “The Costs and Benefits of an Excellent Educationfor All of America’s Children,” Teachers College, ColumbiaUniversity, January 2007; www.cbcse.org/media/down-load_gallery/Leeds_Report_Final_Jan2007.pdf.A team of economists concludes that measures to cut the

number of school dropouts would pay for themselves withhigher tax revenues and lower government spending.

Selected Sources

Bibliography


Dropouts and Graduation Rates

“The Graduation Rate Crisis,” St. Petersburg Times,June 20, 2005, p. 6A.Black males are half as likely to graduate in four years as

white high school students in Florida, and only 38 percentof black males actually finish in that time.

Mendell, David, “City Dropouts Target of Grant,” ChicagoTribune, April 18, 2006, p. B1.With many Chicago high-school students dropping out due

to feeling unchallenged in the classroom, the Gates Foundationhas donated $21 million to the city’s public school systemto establish a more rigorous curriculum.

Rubin, Joel, “Mayor Cites Dropout Data to Push Plan,”Los Angeles Times, June 21, 2006, p. B9.In an attempt to take control of Los Angeles public schools,

Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa told state lawmakers that only44 percent of district students graduate on time.

Toppo, Greg, “Big-City Schools Struggle,” USA Today,June 21, 2006, p. 1A.Students in large urban school districts have a less than

50 percent chance of graduating from high school with theirpeers, a new study finds.

No Child Left Behind

Herszenhorn, David M., “City’s Schools Cut Racial Gapin Test Scores,” The New York Times, Dec. 2, 2005, p. A1.New York City has narrowed the gap in test scores between

Hispanic and black students and their white counterparts, out-pacing 10 other large urban school districts.

Weiss Green, Elizabeth, “Local Success, Federal Failure,”U.S. News & World Report, March 5, 2007.Critics of No Child Left Behind say that states have varying

educational standards for students, and few standards matchnational ideas about what children should learn.

Zuckerbrod, Nancy, “Urban Students Do Worse than Nationin Science,” The Associated Press, Nov. 15, 2006.New data released by the government indicate that children

in major cities perform worse than other students on sciencetests given in elementary and middle school.

School Diversity

Biskupic, Joan, “Diversity Programs May Face Ax,” USAToday, Dec. 5, 2006, p. 3A.The Supreme Court appears ready to abolish public school

diversity programs that use ethnicity as a factor in decidingwhere students receive their education.

Rivera, Carla, “Learning to Diversify,” Los Angeles Times,Dec. 11, 2006, p. A1.An increasing number of private schools in the Los Angeles

area are reaching out to minorities and poorer students.

Will, George F., “Clueless in Seattle,” The WashingtonPost, Dec. 3, 2006, p. B7.The Seattle School District has decided to strike a racial

balance in its better-performing high schools, which are chosenby more students than can be accommodated.

Urban Teachers

Coates, Ta-Nehisi Paul, “Looking Abroad for a Few GoodTeachers,” Time, Nov. 28, 2005, p. 64.Many school districts have begun looking abroad for educators

capable of working in urban schools.

Feller, Ben, “Union Rules Force City Schools to Hire Un-wanted Teachers, Study Says,” The Associated Press,Nov. 16, 2005.As many as 40 percent of teachers in urban school systems

are hired with little or no choice on the part of principals,according to a new study.

Greene, Jay P., “Try Altering Incentives for Teachers,”The Philadelphia Inquirer, May 4, 2006, p. A19.Philadelphia could improve upon its miserable graduation

rate by rethinking the rewards and consequences for goodand bad teaching.

Nather, David, “A Good Teacher: No Substitute,” CQWeekly, April 2, 2007, p. 956.Matching good teachers with struggling students will help

achieve the No Child Lef Behind law’s underlying goals.

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AUG 5, 2010 UPDATE

A n array of forces has slowedlong-sought progress in nar-rowing the minority-student

achievement gap among urbanschools. Those forces include mixedresults in nationwide test scores, threeyears of delay in reauthorizing thefederal No Child Left Behind Act anda pivotal 2007 Supreme Court rulingon school desegregation that, com-bined with a severe recession, hassteered the education debate towardfavoring economic considerations overracial equity.“As a nation we decided long ago

against separate but equal, but the re-ality is we’re moving fast to becom-ing a majority-minority population,” for-mer West Virginia Gov. Bob Wise,president of the Alliance for ExcellentEducation, said in a recent interview.“So we need to focus on each childhaving a quality school no matter wherethey live.” Because the modern econ-omy now requires success by poorchildren as well as by those boundfor higher-paying jobs, Wise said, ed-ucation reform must link both eco-nomic performance and social justice.

The economic pressure on schoolscontinues. A recent study by laboreconomist Anthony Carnevale ofGeorgetown University found thattwo-thirds of the 47 million newjobs he expects the U.S. economyto create between 2008 and 2018will require workers who have atleast some college education. 60

That is a sea change from a half-century ago when nearly two-thirdsof jobs were filled by those withonly a high school diploma.The latest student test scores from

the nation’s urban K-12 schools showsome noteworthy but unspectacularimprovements. According to a new ex-perimental index of urban student per-formance in the reading portion of theNational Assessment of EducationalProgress (NAEP), average reading scoresfor students in large-city school districtsin grades four and eight rose by sev-eral points on the proficiency scale be-tween 2003 and 2009, a change thatnarrowed the achievement gap to 10points when compared with the na-tional sampling. 61

Lagging in MathIn math, according to a March analy-

sis of NAEP scores and state tests by

the Council of the Great City Schools,79 percent of districts increased thepercentage of fourth-graders whoscored at or above proficient between2006 and 2009, with a fourth of thedistricts raising scores by more than10 percent. 62 Yet “despite significantgains in performance and faster ratesof improvement than their states,” theassessment said, “the majority of urbanschool districts continue to score belowstate averages on fourth- and eighth-grade mathematics assessments.”The decades-old assumption that

school districts should actively pursueracial integration was challenged by aJune 2007 U.S. Supreme Court rulingthat invalidated school-attendance-

Fixing Urban SchoolsHere are key events and developments since the publica-

tion of the CQ Researcher report by Marcia Clemmitt,

“Fixing Urban Schools,” April 27, 2007:

A teacher protests on Feb. 11, 2009, before the Miami Dade School Board votes on a plan to cut

$56 million from the budget.

Getty Images/Joe Raedle

PUBLISHED BY CQ PRESS, AN IMPRINT OF SAGE PUBLICATIONS, INC. WWW.CQPRESS.COM

zone plans used in Seattle and metro-politan Louisville to achieve greater di-versity. In a 5-4 ruling in Parents In-volved in Community Schools v. SeattleDist. No. 1, the majority, in an opinionwritten by Chief Justice John G. RobertsJr., said, “The way to stop discrimina-tion on the basis of race is to stop dis-criminating on the basis of race.” 63

Roberts deplored what he saw as an“ends justify the means” approach toachieving integration. “[R]acial classifi-

cations,” he argued, “are simply toopernicious to permit any but the mostexact connection between justificationand classification.”The dissent by the court’s liberal

justices argued that Roberts’ opinionundermined the promise of integratedschools the court set down in its1954 landmark decision in Brown v.Board of Education, a change thatJustice John Paul Stevens called “acruel irony.” Justice Anthony Kennedy,

in a concurring opinion, left openthe possibility of a more modestconsideration of race in drawingschool boundaries.The court’s ruling was hardly the

last word, however. In a June 2010review of school integration effortssince the Supreme Court decision, theCivil Rights Project at UCLA said the“divided decision confused many ed-ucators and it was somewhat unclearwhat did remain legal.” 64 It noted

that “economic pressure is forcingschool districts to make deep cuts inservices, which is another potentialconstraint for integration efforts,” andit called on the Obama administrationto issue new guidance on how racecan be considered.One of the nation’s most troubled

urban districts, the District of Colum-bia, in spring 2010 became the scenefor ratification of a highly innovativeteachers’ contract. For nearly three

years, national attention had focusedon the controversial tenure of D.C.Public Schools Chancellor MichelleRhee. Her efforts at reforming the sys-tem’s bureaucracy and sweeping awayincompetent teachers — she appearedon the Nov. 26, 2008, cover of Timeholding a broom — had put her atodds with the local branch of the Amer-ican Federation of Teachers. Her rep-utation for tough management has at-tracted private foundation money tohelp the D.C. schools, and her futurein the job became an issue in the cur-rent mayoral race.Further roiling the waters was Rhee’s

firing of 241 teachers this summer, in-cluding 165 who received poor ap-praisals under a new evaluation sys-tem based in part on students’standardized test scores. 65

Paying for SuccessBut in June 2010, school officials

and the teachers’ union finalized acontract that, in addition to grantinga retroactive pay increase, requiresall teachers in the system to be eval-uated in part on whether their stu-dents’ test scores improve, and it of-fers sizable pay increases to teacherswho opt for and succeed in a spe-c ia l new pay-for-per formancearrangement. 66

D.C.’s special constitutional statusthat gives Congress a major say in itseducation policies continued to playa role in the district’s efforts to im-prove results. Since 2004, Congress hasfunded the D.C. Opportunity Scholar-ship Program, a unique, federallyfunded voucher option favored bymany conservatives that has given some3,700 students $7,500 per year to at-tend any accredited private school thatwill accept them. 67

But the Democratic takeover of Con-gress and the election of PresidentObama brought a change in priorities.Education Secretary Arne Duncan in2009 rescinded the pending scholar-ships, and Congress declined to


Davis Guggenheim, director of “Waiting for Superman,” a documentary aboutthe public school system in America, and Michelle Rhee, D.C. Public Schools

Chancellor, attend the Silverdocs Festival in Silver Spring, Md.

AFP/Getty Images/Virginie Montet

Chronology2007June 2007 — U.S. SupremeCourt invalidates school-attendance-zone plans used inSeattle and Louisville to achievegreater racial diversity. The 5-4ruling in Parents Involved inCommunity Schools v. Seattle Dist.No. 1 said the Seattle SchoolDistrict’s plan to use race as aconsideration in studentassignments was unconstitutional.

•

2008Nov. 26, 2008 — Washington,D.C., School ChancellorMichelle Rhee appears on thecover of Time.

•

2009-2010Educational reforms have beenmade by 28 states under the ad-ministration’s $4 billion stategrant education initiative, Raceto the Top. The number of re-forms is triple that of the previ-ous two years.

2009 — Education SecretaryArne Duncan rescinds pendingscholarships under the D.C.Opportunity ScholarshipProgram, and Congress declinesto reauthorize.

2010 — Obama administrationunveils its blueprint to overhaulNo Child Left Behind Act. . . . Inthe District of Columbia in June,school officials and the teachers’union finalize a contract that, inaddition to granting a retroactivepay increase, requires all teachersin the system to be evaluated inpart on whether their students’test scores improve, and offerssizable pay increases to teacherswho opt for and succeed in aspecial new pay-for-performancearrangement. . . . Civil RightsProject at UCLA reviews schoolintegration efforts and calls onthe Obama administration toissue guidance on how race canbe considered in publiceducation. . . . Washington, D.C.,School Chancellor Rheedismisses 241 teachers.

•

2011Thirty-seven states provide lessfunding to local schools than inthe 2010-2011 school year.

January — Newly electedRepublican governors andlegislators in states includingWisconsin, Ohio, Indiana, Idaho,New Jersey and Florida proposebills to lower costs and improveeducation by ending teachertenure, limiting teachers’collective bargaining rights,instituting merit pay and firingteachers based on student-achievement test results.

March — USA Today reportspossible evidence of cheatingon standardized tests atWashington, D.C., schools.

May — Georgia Bureau ofInvestigation reports that 178teachers and principals inAtlanta conspired to changestudent-achievement test scores.

November — U.S. Departmentof Education data show thatmany districts don’t providehigh-poverty schools withresources equal to thoseprovided to schools in wealthierneighborhoods.

•

2012March — For the fourthconsecutive year, many teachers inthe Los Angeles and San Franciscoschool districts receive warningsthat their jobs are at risk.

May — A committee of the Illinoislegislature supports requiringschool districts to provide morefunding for charter schools;Chicago Teachers Unioncampaigns against the proposal. . . .Schools nationwide performpoorly on a science-achievementtest, but black and Hispanicstudents slightly narrow the gapbetween their scores and those ofwhite students. . . . FederalCommunications Commissionannounces it will inform phone

reauthorize them. An Education De-partment report found that the vouch-er program had not demonstrated muchimpact on test scores, though gradu-ation rates for students in the programtopped those of other students in D.C.Public Schools. 68

Virtually every tool in the school re-form grab bag — from charter schoolsto new teacher-accountability rules todropout-prevention efforts — will beaffected by the long-delayed reautho-rization of the Elementary and Sec-ondary Education Act (ESEA), knownsince 2002 as No Child Left Behind.The law has long been the center ofdisputes over reliance on student testscores. Its deadlines for improving stu-dent proficiency are seen by many asunrealistic, and critics have consideredits funding levels inadequate. The billhas run into a new set of obstacles inthe Obama era.

A Call for FlexibilityIn a March 15, 2010, “blueprint” to

overhaul No Child Left Behind, theObama team argued that the law had“created incentives for states to lowertheir standards; emphasized punishingfailure over rewarding success; fo-cused on absolute scores, rather thanrecognizing growth and progress; andprescribed a pass-fail, one-size-fits-allseries of interventions for schools thatmiss their goals.” It called for greaterflexibility in methodology to turnaround some 5,000 schools labeled asunderperforming.

But the reauthorization, though thesubject of a dozen or more hearingsthis year in the House and Senate, hascontinued to divide Congress. Onereason is the attention devoted toObama’s competitive $4 billion stategrant education initiative, called Raceto the Top. It is viewed by some ashighly successful in providing incen-tives to states to enact reforms.Though only Delaware and Tennesseehave won grants so far, 28 states havemade reforms in 2009 and 2010, ortriple the number during the previoustwo years, according to EducationWeek. 69 Yet in a surprise twist, theravages to state and local budgetswrought by the current recessionprompted the House to pass an emer-gency jobs bill that would shift fundsfrom Race to the Top to preserve cur-rent teacher salaries.In another division among educa-

tion reformers, the teachers’ unionswant to make the rewrite of the lawless “punitive” toward teachers and morecognizant of family income disparities.“Today, students’ success in school de-pends in large part on the zip codewhere they live,” National Education As-sociation president Dennis Van Roekeltold Congress. “Students who strugglethe most in impoverished communitiestoo often don’t attend safe schools withreliable heat and air conditioning; toooften do not have safe passage to andfrom school; and far too often do nothave access to great teachers on a reg-ular and consistent basis.” 70

Former Gov. Wise worries that ifthe reauthorization is not complet-ed this year, the nation must con-tinue with the existing No Child LeftBehind, which he sees as inflexibleand short on help for high schools.The law “focused on where the prob-lems are, and a light has beenshined on the fact that students ofcolor or low economic status arenot making it,” Wise says. “But thelaw does not have adequate reme-dies. It’s like a compact disc in aniPod world.”

— Charles S. Clark

JUNE 5, 2012 UPDATE

A s state and local governmentscontinue to grapple with crip-pling funding shortages — and

draconian cuts in federal spendingloom — lawmakers and school dis-tricts look for economical ways toboost student achievement. Someargue for competition-based strategiessuch as closing schools and firingteachers based on test scores and al-lowing privately run charter schoolsto vie for public funding. Critics ofsuch market-oriented reforms, how-ever, argue that such measures won’tsolve the problems facing high-povertyurban schools.Many states have cut their contribu-

tion to local school districts since theeconomic crisis began four years ago.


companies that they must follow a15-year-old rule requiring them togive schools bargain prices somore can afford good Internetaccess.

2013January 1 — Urban schoolscould face major cuts in federal

Title I funds if Congress doesn’tresolve a budget stalemate.

Chronology (Cont.)

In the 2011-2012 school year, 37states were providing less funding perstudent to local schools than they didin 2010-2011, according to the Centeron Budget and Policy Priorities(CBPP), a liberal, nonprofit researchgroup. Thirty states provide less local-school funding than they did fouryears ago, and 17 have cut per-studentfunding by more than 10 percent sincethe recession began in 2008. Four states— South Carolina, Arizona, Californiaand Hawaii — cut per-student fundingby more than 20 percent, according tothe CBPP. 71

Next year, the U.S. Department ofEducation (DOE) could suffer a 7.8 per-cent cut in its funding — most ofwhich supports state and local edu-cation initiatives — unless Congressresolves a budget stalemate that beganin 2011. Last fall, with congressionalRepublicans and Democrats unable toagree on a combination of spendingcuts and tax increases to reduce thefederal deficit, Congress agreed to allowthe hefty DOE cut and other budgetreductions to take effect on Jan. 1,2013, if the legislative standoff con-tinues. With House Republicans, in par-ticular, continuing to declare that taxincreases are off the table for deficitreduction, a deal to avoid the manda-tory cuts — including at least a $3.5 bil-lion reduction in education funding —seems out of reach for now. 72

More than a third of those cuts —about $1.3 billion — would come di-rectly from federal funds for schoolsin low-income areas — known asTitle I schools. Most Title I schools,which have large numbers of eco-nomically disadvantaged students andothers at high risk of dropping out,are in urban areas. 73

Funding CutsA DOE study concluded last year

that Title I funds are being used tocompensate for cuts in state and localeducation funding for high-povertyschools instead of merely supple-

menting those funds. As a result, theDOE concluded, poor school districtsare spending substantially less per stu-dent than wealthier districts. 74

For example, DOE found that indistricts with both Title I and non-Title Ischools, more than 40 percent of Title Ischools spent less money per student onstaffing than non-Title-I schools did. 75

The “findings confirm an unfortu-nate reality in our nation’s educationsystem,” said Education Secretary ArneDuncan. “Many schools serving low-income children aren’t getting their fairshare of funding,” and “in far too manyplaces Title I dollars are filling bud-get gaps rather than being extra.” 76

As a result of the financial crisisand related government budget strug-gles, severe financial troubles haveplagued many urban schools.In Ypsilanti, Mich., for example,

schools face a debt expected to reach$9.4 million by the end of this schoolyear, despite previous spending cuts.Reductions in school support staff, forexample, have already gone “beyonda point where work can be complet-ed effectively,” according to a deficit-elimination plan prepared by districtofficials. 77

While many states promised to re-store the education funding once thefinancial crisis waned, some have de-cided instead to use the money fortax cuts.Lawmakers in Kansas, for instance,

slashed school funding by nearly $700per student since 2008, resulting in —among other things — large-scale lay-offs and school closures in Wichita andother urban schools. “We couldn’t takeanother year like the last three,” WichitaPublic Schools Superintendent JohnAllison said recently. 78

So when he heard that the statewould have a $300 million surplus thisyear, he said, “We thought, ‘Finally,things are going to start getting back tonormal.’ ” Instead, lawmakers last monthused the surplus to reduce the top taxrate from 6.45 percent to 4.9 percent

— the largest tax cut in state history.Critics said that by 2018 the tax cutwould convert this year’s surplusinto long-term budget deficits total-ing $2.5 billion. Education spendingwas increased by only $58 per stu-dent for next year. 79

In some districts, staff and resourcecuts are accompanied by a continu-ing atmosphere of worry and uncer-tainty that has eroded morale. In theSan Francisco and Los Angeles schooldistricts, for example, state law re-quires teachers who are at risk ofbeing laid off within the next year toreceive advance warning in March. By2012, as budget woes continue, someteachers had received a warning forfour years running.Uncertainty saps energy needed to

operate schools properly, teachersand administrators say. “I’ve seen teach-ers who have cried,” said Phyllis Brad-ford, senior director of human re-sources for the Los Angeles UnifiedSchool District. “Others have movedout of state. . . . It’s a very depress-ing time.” 80

Alternatives SoughtLooking for budget savings and an

alternative to what they view as fail-ing urban public schools, some law-makers have embraced proposals toboost charter schools and other alter-natives, such as vouchers to help fam-ilies place their children in privateschools, including religious schools. Awave of Republican governors and statelegislators who swept into office in2010 have been the principal, but notsole, backers of such plans.In 2011, for example, newly elect-

ed Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker, a Re-publican, shepherded a substantial ex-pansion of Wisconsin’s school-voucherprogram through the legislature. Theprogram began as a low-income-onlyprogram for Milwaukee but was sub-sequently expanded to include Racine,the state’s fifth-largest city. Among otherchanges, the expanded voucher pro-

gram eliminated an enrollment cap;raised the income cap for eligible fam-ilies to 300 percent of the federal pover-ty level while allowing families to con-tinue receiving voucher support if theirincome rises after a student enrolls;and allows Milwaukee students to usevouchers at schools in the surround-ing county. 81

In Pennsylvania, newly elected Re-publican Gov. Tom Corbett tried butfailed last year to form a statewidevoucher program. Pennsylvania school-choice proponents, who have advo-cated for vouchers for the last twodecades, expressed frustration after thestate’s Republican-controlled House ofRepresentatives failed to approve Cor-bett’s plan. “It’s beyond disappointing,”said Dawn Chavous, executive direc-tor of Students First PA, a nonpartisangroup pushing to provide more alter-natives to traditional schools. “We’regoing to keep fighting. I’m not goingto go anywhere.” 82

In Philadelphia, school-system lead-ers announced this year that looming“severe, long-term deficits” estimatedat $1.1 billion by 2017, plus slowprogress in improving learning, makeit imperative to close many neighbor-hood schools, restructure school-districtadministration and promote charterschools over the next five years. 83

“In spite of progress” in academics,”we are not improving nearly fast enough”compared to cities such as San Diegoand Boston, school district leaders saidin a report. 84 And while “efforts to re-duce violence are paying off” — withviolent incidents dropping from 3.7 per100 students in 2007-08 to 2.6 in 2001-2011 — violence “continues to plagueour schools.” 85 One key to improvingthe schools while balancing the budget,the leaders said: “Promote equal accessto quality choices for parents by ex-panding high-performing district andcharter programs.” 86

But many local activists dub theproposal a stealth maneuver to priva-tize public schools and diminish the

district’s power under the guise of sav-ing it. “No one would debate that thereare financial problems in the district,”said the Rev. Mark Kelly Tyler, pastorof Mother Bethel AME Church, in SouthPhiladelphia. “But is it so bad that theonly answer is to shutter 64 schoolsand remove the remaining 20 percentto charter schools?” 87

In Illinois, a legislative committeebacked a plan in May 2012 to requireschool districts to direct more moneyto charter schools. The measure,which has not yet been voted on bythe full legislature, is intended to pro-vide “equal funding for our charterschools, equal funding with the pub-lic schools,” which is “an issue of fair-ness,” said Rep. Daniel Burke, D-Chicago, the measure’s sponsor. 88

The Chicago Teachers Union hasstrongly opposed the legislation, how-ever, arguing that traditional publicschools, “funded almost entirely by taxes,”may actually have fewer available re-sources than the many charter schoolsthat “receive private money from cor-porate privatization proponents.” 89

Meanwhile, researchers continueto examine whether promoting mea-sures such as charter schools andvouchers makes budgetary sense orimproves learning. Findings are mixed.For example, statewide achievementscores in Illinois, released in De-cember 2011, showed that one chainof nine charter schools in Chicagobeat the district average, but scores atother charter chains fell well belowdistrict averages. 90

By contrast, in one of the largeststudies of its kind, the Center for Re-search on Education Outcomes (CREDO)at Stanford University found in 2009that Chicago and Denver charter-schoolstudents outpaced their public-schoolcounterparts on the National Assess-ment of Student Progress (NAEP),which is often called the “nation’s re-port card.” In Arizona, Ohio and Texas,charter-school students lagged public-school students’ achievement, while in

Washington, D.C., public- and charter-school students showed similar achieve-ment levels, the study found. 91

Groups such as the conservative ThomasB. Fordham Institute, an education-policy think tank in Washington, sup-port charter schools partly because,theoretically, they are more likely tooperate like businesses, facing bank-ruptcy and quick closure if they failin their educational mission. Howev-er, a 2010 Fordham analysis found that72 percent of the charter schools —and 80 percent of traditional publicschools — that were low-achieving in2004-2004 were still operating, and stillperforming poorly, five years later. 92

Critics of urban public schools oftencharge that public school systemssiphon money that could be used forstudent learning and that charter schoolscan reverse that pattern. However,Michigan State University Professor ofEducational Administration David Arsenand University of Utah Assistant Pro-fessor of Educational Leadership andPolicy Yongmei Ni, found that, at leastin Michigan, charter schools spendtwice as much per student on ad-ministration as traditional public schoolsand 20 percent less on instruction. 93

Cheating ScandalsIn the current wave of school re-

form plans that began about a decadeago — including the federal No ChildLeft Behind Act (NCLB), signed intolaw in 2002 — many seek to holdschools and, increasingly, individualteachers accountable for low studentachievement by imposing sanctions iftest scores or other measures don’timprove.Under NCLB, sanctions include ex-

panded opportunities for parents tomove their children to higher-performingschools. And if students’ standardized-test scores continue to lag, schoolscould experience mass staff firings andreorganization.How well such methods work is a

matter of increasing debate, however,


especially in the wake of several ad-ministrative scandals in which schoolsin several cities were suspected of al-tering students’ test scores, presumablyto avoid sanctions.Throughout the 2000s, the Atlanta

school system had gained nationwideattention for repeatedly raising testscores. But in 2008 and 2009, the AtlantaJournal-Constitution reported that, basedon the paper’s statistical analysis, manyof the increases were so unlikely thatthey raised suspicions that the districthad manipulated test results.In July 2011, the Georgia Bureau of

Investigation accused 178 Atlanta teach-ers and principals of engaging in a“conspiracy” to change students’ testanswers. In what has been called thebiggest school-cheating scandal in U.S.history, 82 of the people named inthe Bureau report confessed to thescheme, in which teachers and ad-ministrators erased students’ wrong testanswers and replaced them with cor-rect responses. 94

The Georgia Bureau of Investigationfound that administrators rather thanteachers were apparently the drivingforce behind most of the cheating. Sev-eral teachers who tried to blow thewhistle on the scandal found them-selves the subject of intimidation and,in one case, even an ethics investiga-tion led by school administrators. 95

Opponents of basing high-stakes de-cisions about schools and teachers pri-marily on standardized-test scoresargue that the practice itself invitescheating. “When test scores are all thatmatter, some educators feel pressuredto get the scores they need by hookor by crook,” said Robert Shaeffer, aspokesman for National Center for Fair& Open Testing, which opposes heavyreliance on standardized tests forschool decision making. “The higherthe stakes, the greater the incentive tomanipulate, to cheat.” 96

While Atlanta remains the mostheavily substantiated case of wide-spread cheating, various analyses in

the past two years have suggested thatother districts also have cheated onthe tests.A March 2011 USA Today investi-

gation, for example, concluded thatpatterns of erased-then-replaced testanswers at some Washington, D.C.,schools suggested that teachers andadministrators may have changed stu-dents’ answers to produce higherscores. At some D.C. schools that had

been touted as nationwide models forlearning improvement, students’ testshad astonishingly high numbers oferasures in which wrong answerswere changed to right answers — farmore than would be likely to occurby chance, according to the paper. 97

Questions about the D.C. tests remainunresolved.Investigations, mainly by news-

papers, have turned up possible ev-idence of cheating in Baltimore,Dallas, Detroit, Houston and LosAngeles, as well as some non-urbandistricts. 98

Adding ValuesMeanwhile, efforts are expanding

to hold individual teachers account-able for students’ academic improve-ment, such as by offering merit paybased in whole or in part on standard-ized test scores.In April 2011, for example, the Los

Angeles Unified School District pub-licly released school-by-school resultsof its new so-called value-added mea-

sure of school and teacher performanceand announced that it would soontake the more controversial step oftelling individual teachers how they’dperformed on the new measurementsystem. The value-added system com-pares progress of an individual stu-dent in a given year to the student’sprogress in previous school years, asmeasured by standardized tests. Teach-ers are then scored on how well theircurrent students perform, compared tohow those same students performedin past years. By comparing each stu-dent only to his or her own past

Thousands of teachers, school workers, students and parents participate in a“State of Emergency” rally in downtown Los Angeles on May 13, 2011,

to protest proposed education budget cuts.

Getty Images/Kevork Djansezian

achievements, the method takes intoaccount such factors as poverty orlearning disabilities, which an individ-ual teacher can’t control, supporters ofvalue-added rankings say. 99

Many other analysts, as well as teach-ers’ unions, argue that the test-basedvalue-added measures are too narrowto use as a basis for evaluating teacherpay and promotions. In Los Angelesand New York City, for example, tensenegotiations continue between theschool districts and teachers and theirunions over whether the measuresshould be used as a primary evalua-tion tool. 100

Test ResultsRecent test scores on student

achievement show mixed results, bothfor the nation as a whole and for low-income and minority students, whomake up a large part of the urban-school population.On the most recent NAEP, only

32 percent of eighth-graders scored ata “proficient” level in science and only2 percent at an “advanced” level, forexample. However, a longstanding sci-ence achievement gap between whiteeighth-graders and black and Hispan-ic eighth-graders has slightly narrowedrecently, as black and Hispanic stu-dents have raised their scores at aslightly faster rate than white students.Between 2009 and 2011, white stu-dents raised their average sciencescore on the biannual test by 1 point,compared to three points for blackstudents and five for Hispanics. 101

Meanwhile, NAEP has undertakenan experimental, voluntary program thatgathers detailed data from a group ofurban districts as part of a project todetermine whether NAEP can be usedfor district-to-district comparisons. In theexperimental program, math scores inparticipating districts — all of themurban — improved somewhat in 2011compared with 2009, but readingscores did not. Urban districts contin-ue to lag far behind rural and subur-

ban districts in NAEP scores, however,and most of the math-score increase inurban areas came from higher-incomestudents. Still, most of the urban dis-tricts have improved in both math andreading since the early 2000s. 102

“We’ve been able to close the gapbetween [large cities] and the nationby between 25 percent and 36 per-cent” since 2003, said Michael Casser-ly, executive director of the Councilof the Great City Schools, a coalitionof the city’s largest urban school dis-tricts. “It says to us that many urbanschool districts in aggregate appear tobe moving in the right direction.” 103

But progress is far too slow, saidother analysts. “There’s nobody who’sperforming at advanced levels,” saidMark Schneider, a vice president ofthe American Institutes for Research,a Washington-based social-science re-search group that has been involved inNAEP and other federal education pro-grams. “This is just really, really, reallydepressing.” 104

One surprise in the findings was At-lanta’s results. While Atlanta cheated onthe state tests, its performance on thenational test — untainted by cheating— was well above average. On NAEP,Atlanta schools made significant con-tinuing gains throughout the past decade,including in 2011, demonstrating that— despite the scandal — “what yousaw by way of reform in the schooldistrict was real,” said Casserly. 105

— Marcia Clemmitt

Notes

60 Written testimony of Anthony P. Carnevale,director, Georgetown University Center onEducation and the Workforce, U.S. SenateCommittee on Health, Education, Labor andPensions, Feb. 24, 2010, http://help.senate.gov/imo/media/doc/Carnevale.pdf.61 Council of the Great City Schools, press re-lease, May 20, 2010, www.cgcs.org/pressrelease/TUDA_Reading2010.pdf.

62 “Beating the Odds: Analysis of Student Per-formance on State Assessments and NAEP,”Council of the Great City Schools, March 2010.63 Linda Greenhouse, “Justices Limit the Useof Race in School Plans for Integration,” TheNew York Times, June 28, 2007, p. A1.64 Civil Rights Project, University of Califor-nia at Los Angeles, www.civilrightsproject.ucla.edu/research/deseg/school-integration-three-years-after-parents-involved.pdf.65 Bill Turque, “Rhee dismisses 241 D.C.teachers; union vows to contest firing,” TheWashington Post, July 24, 2010, p. A1, www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/07/23/AR2010072303093.html.66 Bill Turque, “D.C. Teachers’ Contract Pass-es Its Final Hurdle; Council Unanimously Ap-proves Pact that Bases Pay on Results,” TheWashington Post, June 30, 2010.67 “Opportunity Denied,” editorial, The Wash-ington Post, June 23, 2010.68 “Evaluation of the DC Opportunity Schol-arship Program: Final Report,” U.S. Depart-ment of Education, June 2010, http://ies.ed.gov/ncee/pubs/20104018/pdf/20104018.pdf.69 Chad Adelman, “How Race to the Top CouldInform ESEA Reauthorization,” EducationWeek,June 28, 2010.70 Testimony before Senate Health, Education,Labor and Pensions Committee, March 9, 2010.71 Phil Oliff and Michael Leachman, “New SchoolYear Brings Steep Cuts in Funding for Schools,”Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, Oct. 7,2011, www.cbpp.org/files/9-1-11sfp.pdf.72 Jamie Baxter, “We Must Avoid Sequestra-tion: Savage Cuts in Education FundingWould Cripple Our Schools,” Post-Gazette.com(Pittsburgh), May 3, 2012, www.post-gazette.com/stories/opinion/perspectives/we-must-avoid-sequestration-savage-cuts-in-education-funding-would-cripple-our-schools-634125.73 Ibid.74 Ruth Heuer and Stephanie Stullich, “Com-parability of State and Local ExpendituresAmong Schools Within Districts: A Reportfrom the Study of School-level Expenditures,”U.S. Department of Education, 2011, www2.ed.gov/rschstat/eval/title-i/school-level-expenditures/school-level-expenditures.pdf; “The Po-tential Impact of Revising Title I Compara-bility Requirement to Focus on School-levelExpenditures,” U.S. Department of Education,November 2011, www2.ed.gov/rschstat/eval/title-i/comparability-requirement/comparability-policy-brief.pdf.75 “The Potential Impact of Revising Title IComparability,” ibid., p. 3.


76 Quoted in Alyson Klein, “Poor Schools Short-changes on Funding, Ed Dept. Says,” Educa-tion Week blogs, Nov. 30, 2011, http://blogs.edweek.org/edweek/campaign-k-12/2011/11/for_years_advocates_for_poor.html.77 “Narrative Section, Deficit Elimination Plan,”School District of Ypsilanti, December 2011,www.ypsd.org/downloads/financial/2011-2012_deficit_elimination_plan_20111214_111811_7.pdf.78 Mike Alberti, “States to residents, localities:forget promises to restore funding,” RemappingDebate, www.remappingdebate.org/article/states-residents-localities-forget-promises-restore-funding.79 Ibid.80 Quoted in Christina Hoag, “California’sFourth Year of Teacher Layoffs Spurs Concerns,”The Associated Press/ABC News, May 5, 2012,http://abcnews.go.com/US/wireStory/califs-4th-year-teacher-layoffs-spur-concerns-16285889#.T616a1JzaUk.81 “2011-2013 Legislative Session,” “AccurateInformation About School Choice,” SchoolChoiceWI.org, www.schoolchoicewi.org/stgov/detail.cfm?id=10; Patrick Marley and JasonStein, “Senate OK’d Budget Goes to Walker,”Journal Sentinel online (Milwaukee), June 16,2011, www.jsonline.com/news/statepolitics/124004679.html, and Amy Hetzner and ErinRichards, “Budget Cuts $834 Million fromSchools,” Journal Sentinel online (Milwaukee),March 1, 2011, www.jsonline.com/news/statepolitics/117192683.html.82 Quoted in Jan Murphy and Charles Thomp-son, “State House Rejects School-voucherProposal,” PennLive.com/The Patriot-News(Harrisburg), Dec. 14, 2011.83 “A Blueprint for Transforming Philadel-phia’s Public Schools” (Draft), School Districtof Philadelphia, http://thenotebook.org/sites/default/files/BlueprintPublicPresentation_4_22_12.pdf.84 Ibid., p. 4.85 Ibid., p. 5.86 Ibid.

87 Quoted in Julianne Hing, “The Remakingof Philadelphia Public Schools: Privatization orBust,” Color Lines, May 11, 2012, http://colorlines.com/archives/2012/05/the_remaking_of_philadelphia_public_schools_privatization_or_bust.html.88 Jim Broadway, “Bill to Give More Cash toCharters Moves Forward,” State School NewsService/Catalyst Chicago, May 9, 2012, www.catalyst-chicago.org/notebook/2012/05/09/20105/bill-give-more-cash-charters-moves-forward.89 Quoted in ibid.90 Rosalyn Rossi and Art Golab, “Chicago Char-ter Schools Produce Wildly Uneven Results onState Tests,” Chicago Sun-Times, Jan. 1, 2012,www.suntimes.com/news/education/9145306-418/story.html.91 “Multiple Choice: Charter School Perfor-mance in 16 States,” Center for Research onEducation Outcomes, 2009, http://credo.stanford.edu/reports/MULTIPLE_CHOICE_CREDO.pdf.92 David A. Stuit, “Are Bad Schools Immortal?”Thomas B. Fordham Institute, December 2010,www.edexcellencemedia.net/publications/2010/20101214_AreBadSchoolImmortal/Fordham_Immortal.pdf.93 Emily Pfund, “Study Finds Michigan CharterSchools Spend Twice as Much as Public Schools,”Central Michigan Life, Central Michigan Uni-versity, April 26, 2012, www.cm-life.com/2012/04/26/study-focuses-on-michigan-charter-schools-finds-charter-schools-spend-twice-as-much-as-public-schools.94 Patrik Jonsson, “America’s Biggest Teacher andPrincipal Cheating Scandal Unfolds in Atlanta,”The Christian Science Monitor, July 5, 2011,www.csmonitor.com/USA/Education/2011/0705/America-s-biggest-teacher-and-principal-cheating-scandal-unfolds-in-Atlanta; and “SchoolCheating Investigation: Atlanta Journal-Constitu-tion Flags Improbable Test Scores in Analysis,”Associated Press/Huffington Post, March 25, 2012,www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/03/24/schools-cheating-investig_n_1377767.html.

95 Jonsson, ibid.96 Quoted in ibid.97 Jack Gillum and Marisol Bello, “When Stan-dardized Test Scores Soared in DC, Were theGains Real?” USA Today, March 30, 2011, www.usatoday.com/news/education/2011-03-28-1Aschooltesting28_CV_N.htm.98 “School Cheating Investigation: Atlanta Jour-nal Constitution Flags Improbable Test Scoresin Analysis,” op. cit.99 Jason Song and Jason Felch, “L.A. UnifiedReleases School Ratings Using ‘Value-added’Method,” Los Angeles Times, April 12, 2011,http://articles.latimes.com/2011/apr/12/local/la-me-0413-value-add-20110414; for back-ground, see Marcia Clemmitt, “School Reform,”CQ Researcher, April 29, 2011, pp. 385-408.100 Fernanda Santos and Anna M. Phillips,“With Release of Teacher Data, Setback forUnion Turns Into Rallying Cry,” The New YorkTimes, Feb. 26, 2012, www.nytimes.com/2012/02/27/nyregion/teacher-ratings-produce-a-rallying-cry-for-the-union.html.101 Sarah D. Sparks, “Most 8th Graders FallShort on NAEP Science Test,” Education Week,May 10,2012, www.edweek.org/ew/articles/2012/05/10/31naep_ep.h31.html?tkn=VPXFO3wzO2s%2Bbex2WwFqNNnCfYtzrpCNzSmA&cmp=ENL-EU-NEWS1,k, and “The Nation’s ReportCard: Science 2011,” National Center for Edu-cation Statistics, May 2012, http://nces.ed.gov/nationsreportcard/pubs/main2011/2012465.asp.102 Christina Samuels, “Urban NAEP Scores ShowMath Scores Up, Reading Mostly Flat,” Educa-tion Week blogs, Dec. 7, 2011, http://blogs.edweek.org/edweek/District_Dossier/2011/12/urban_naep_scores_show_math_up.html; andJoy Resmovits, “City-level National Tests ShowSlight Math Growth, No Change in Reading,”Huffington Post, Dec. 7, 2011, www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/12/07/urban-schools-test_n_1132775.html.103 Quoted in Resmovits, ibid.104 Quoted in ibid.105 Quoted in ibid. Update

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