By Linda P. Campbell
lcampbell@star-telegram.com
Part of the value of big, thick government reports isn't that they can double as doorstops but the hope that someone will read beyond their recommendations to the fine details.
Deep into a recent audit of the Fort Worth schools' curriculum are some findings that aren't so much surprising as they are frustrating.
The auditors found continuing inequities across the district, concluding that "African-American students' needs are not met most frequently" and that their performance "falls behind their peers on every measure, although the gap has narrowed slightly over the last several years."
That's what scores on state standardized tests have shown, but the "how do we change it" has proved more elusive than anyone wants.
The achievement gap between African-American students and other groups has been closing in social studies and science, but not so much in English/language arts.
What the district hasn't done consistently, the report said, is counteract the negative pull that economic disadvantage exerts on kids.
Auditor Holly Kaptain told trustees at a presentation in September that the four demographic factors that "most reliably predict" how students will fare on standardized tests are their family income level; the type of neighborhood where they live; the number of parents in their home; and their mother's education level.
The challenge for schools is to help kids achieve regardless of those factors. It's magnified in a district of 81,500 students when 76 percent of them are economically disadvantaged and 28 percent have limited English proficiency.
Comments the auditors received from administrators and principals illustrated some of the hurdles. (Only positions, not names, were included in the report.)
District administrator: "What I see is a lot of enabling. There are many areas of the city that don't believe the children can do what they can do because they are poor."
Principal: "Some teachers have difficulty relating to kids of poverty."
District administrator: "We've had study after study of the achievement gap. We can slice and dice and analyze data better than any of them. But it's that interaction in the classroom ... that's where we still aren't having those conversations with those kids."
Principal: "We are missing professional development on having the crucial conversations about why students are not succeeding."
Principal: They (teachers) just don't know how to address our African-American kids. I think we struggle with what strategies to use."
Kaptain told trustees that techniques for teaching English language learners can be effective in helping economically disadvantaged students build vocabulary they often lack -- and that forms the essential foundation for everything else.
Researchers for decades have shown that poor kids start school knowing half as many words as classmates from wealthier homes, and if they don't catch up quickly they have less chance of success academically as well as later in life.
"Academic English acquisition does not just happen by default," Kaptain said.
"It's really a critical function of curriculum and expectations," she said.
Even math and social studies teachers have to be language teachers, too, introducing words, explaining them and making sure students can use them in context. This is even more important for kids whose parents aren't as well-educated, don't read to them or aren't engaging them in learning activities outside of school hours.
In a diverse urban school district, the task is huge.
For students who are learning English, language instruction is the focus, but they also need to be learning subject matter in order to keep up with other students.
Students who already speak English are learning subject matter, but they might also need language instruction in order to understand the material and keep up.
Education researchers at the Brookings Institution earlier this month said new common core standards that most states have adopted (though notably not Texas) are likely to reveal an even bigger literacy gap between students in high-poverty schools and their better-off counterparts. The scholars argue it's essential to start "improving teaching to help disadvantaged students learn these more complex literacy skills." (
bit.ly/Smq6fl)
They acknowledge it's a daunting task. But the alternative is unacceptable.
Linda P. Campbell is a Star-Telegram editorial writer.817-390-7867Twitter: @LindaPCampbell
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