Education assistant

Agenda

Building Blocks of a World-Class Education System

Problematic Comparisons

Real causes of US underachievement

Comparison of India and China

Goals for Improving Chinese Education

Next Week’s Assignment

Question: What are some key elements of a world class school system?

Write a complete sentence related to these elements and then place them in a list in terms of their importance

Disadvantaged students

Health care

Early childhood

Curriculum

Assessments

Post Secondary pathways

Teachers:

School Leadership

Some answers

Improving Supports to Address Problems Faced Outside School

Access to high-quality healthcare and childcare

Ensure students will be able to profit from a high-quality education with access to good jobs

Resources focused toward students from less-advantaged backgrounds

Attempt to get the best teachers into the schools with students who need the most support

Improving Pathways to Postsecondary Success

Issue qualifications showing courses and grades rather than simple high school diplomas

Provide effective systems of vocational education that enroll at least 40% of students

Emphasize training in real-world settings

Encourage the involvement of industry and apprenticeships

Teachers

Improving Teachers

Recruit teachers from the top ranks of graduating high school classes

High-quality teacher education programs that only accept the best candidates

Teachers develop a mastery of the subject they teach

At least one year is devoted to on-the-job training for teachers

Teachers receive training in research methods

Teacher salaries are competitive with high status professions

Career ladders are available for teachers to increase pay, authority, and status throughout their careers

More experienced teachers serve as mentors for younger teachers

Teachers meet regularly to collaborate on teaching techniques and lesson designs

Continuous professional development is emphasized

A large portion of a teacher’s day is devoted planning and preparation rather than instruction

Leadership

Improving School Leadership

Choose leaders who can: recruit highly capable staff, incentivize staff, and create a growth mindset within schools

Recruit principals who have demonstrated themselves to be high-quality teachers

Train principals on the job

Provide access to mentors for new principals

Provide principals the opportunity to regularly visit other schools to observe and learn

Improving Accountability and Governmental Systems

Develop coherent standards that are competitive with other high-performing countries

Emphasize a deep, conceptual understanding of subject matter

Develop strong curriculum frameworks that are connected across grades

Administer between one and three summative assessments during a student’s K-12 schooling

Have policy-makers who are accountable for the success of the educational system

US issues

Watch this 1-minute video clip

What are some key issues with US education?/poor schools are poor because their property taxes related to poor schools.

Why are comparisons sometimes problematic?

What are some issues related to Chinese schooling?

US Stagnation

“The United States’ standings haven’t improved dramatically because we as a nation haven’t addressed the main cause of our mediocre PISA performance — the effects of poverty on students,” Dennis Van Roekel, president of the National Education Association, the nation’s largest teachers union, said in a statement. – “American 15-Year-Olds Lag, Mainly in Math, on International Standardized Tests,” by Motoko Rich, New York Times, December 3, 2013

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More US issues

American performance isn’t just weak among our poorest, lowest-performing students. Our affluent students are mediocre, too. And despite our great wealth, our rate of production of high achievers is barely half that of several other countries. How does “poverty” explain that? One must assume that poverty is diminishing the performance of students who aren’t poor.

High poverty schools in the US

High-poverty schools in the U.S. posted dismal scores on the PISA tests, akin to countries such as Kazakhstan, Romania and Cyprus.

Wealthy schools, by contrast, did very well on all three tests. Students in the most affluent U.S. schools — where fewer than 10 percent of children are eligible for subsidized lunches — scored so highly that if treated as a separate jurisdiction, they would have placed second only to Shanghai in science and reading and would have ranked sixth in the world in math.

Childhood poverty rates are higher in the United States than in any other industrialized country, and this rate is on the rise. As of 2014, 33 percent of all people who live in poverty were children -- more than 15.4 million, or 21 percent of all children in the United States. Another 15 million (21 percent) reside in low-income families. Between 2000 and 2014, the number of children living in poverty increased from 11.6 million to 15.5 million, or by a factor of 33 percent (U.S. Census Bureau, 2014 -- source: Table 3).

US History of Inequality

Americans often forget that as late as the 1960s most African-American, Latino, and Native American students were educated in wholly segregated schools funded at rates many times lower than those serving whites and were excluded from many higher education institutions entirely.

Some Progress From 1970-1990

The end of legal segregation followed by efforts to equalize spending since 1970 has made a substantial difference for student achievement. On every major national test, including the National Assessment of Educational Progress, the gap in minority and white students’ test scores narrowed substantially between 1970 and 1990, especially for elementary school students. On the Scholastic Aptitude Test (SAT), the scores of African-American students climbed 54 points between 1976 and 1994, while those of white students remained stable.

Concentration of Minority Students in Poverty

Two-thirds of minority students still attend schools that are predominantly minority, most of them located in central cities and funded well below those in neighboring suburban districts. Recent analyses of data prepared for school finance cases in Alabama, New Jersey, New York, Louisiana, and Texas have found that on every tangible measure—from qualified teachers to curriculum offerings—schools serving greater numbers of students of color had significantly fewer resources than schools serving mostly white students.

US issue--Concentrated Poverty

In 2009-2010, 9 percent of all secondary students attended high-poverty schools (where 75 percent or more of the students are eligible for free or reduced price lunch), but 21 percent of Blacks and Hispanics attended high-poverty schools, compared to 2 percent of Whites and 7 percent of Asians (Aud et al., 2012, Figure 13-2).

More than 40 years ago, famed sociologist James Coleman demonstrated that a students’ achievement is more highly related to the characteristics of other students in the school than any other school characteristic (Coleman et al., 1966)

Concentration of Poverty that Schools Compound

Community poverty also matters. Some neighborhoods, particularly those with high concentrations of African-Americans, are communities of concentrated disadvantage with extremely high levels of joblessness, family instability, poor health, substance abuse, poverty, welfare dependency and crime (Sampson, Morenoff, & Gannon-Rowley, 2002). Disadvantaged communities influence child and adolescent development through the lack of resources (playgrounds and parks, after-school programs) or negative peer influences (Leventhal & Brooks-Gunn, 2000). For instance, students living in poor communities are more likely to have dropouts as friends, which increases the likelihood of dropping out of school.

Global Rating of US Poverty

A 2005 United Nations report found that the U.S. had the highest rate of child poverty among all 24 Organization for Economic and Cooperative Development (OECD) countries exceeded only by Mexico (UNICEF, 2005). The report further found that variation in government policy — particularly the extent to which the government provides social transfer programs for low-income families — explains most of the variation in poverty rates among countries.

More UN reports

A recent follow-up report examined five dimensions of child well-being — material well-being, health and safety, education, behaviors and risks and housing and environment — in 29 developed countries, and the U.S. ranked 26th (UNICEF, 2013). Maybe it is not a coincidence that the U.S. also ranks 22nd in the world in high school graduation rates (OECD, 2112, Chart A2.1)

Gender Inequality

One of the biggest inequalities that perpetuates the cycle of poverty is gender. When gender inequality in the classroom is addressed, this has a ripple effect on the way women are treated in their communities. When girls are welcomed into the classroom, they can build skills, gain knowledge, and socially grow during their formative years. This establishes a foundation for lifelong learning.

An uneven story of progress, threatened by COVID-19

While women in the U.S. were surpassing men in earning doctoral degrees in the early 2000s, the number of illiterate women in low-income countries was actually increasing by 20 million between 2000 and 2016)—although this trend was primarily the result of decades of exclusion from education as girls aged into adulthood. During this same period, access to education for successive cohorts of girls began to increase as the era of the Millennium Development Goals ushered political attention to address gender gaps in education. Indeed, in just under two decades, gender gaps in education closed tremendously. Between 2000 and 2018, the number of primary school aged girls out of school fell by 44%, and by 2019 nearly two-thirds of countries had achieved gender parity in primary education. However, progress has plateaued over the last decade. Conflict in Northern Africa and Western Asia have made the region furthest from parity in primary education, and gender gaps in secondary education persist in sub-Saharan Africa.

Support for Disadvantaged Students Lacking

Only a quarter of education systems use a wide range of measures to support disadvantaged schools.

Disadvantaged schools – those enrolling high proportions of students from low socio-economic backgrounds – still exist in many education systems, and they often experience problems in terms of academic performance and school climate. To reduce the differences in performance between schools, top-level authorities can use several policy options: redressing the imbalance in the socio-economic composition of schools, providing targeted support to disadvantaged schools and encouraging good teachers to work in these schools.

While more than half of all systems allocate additional financial or non-financial support to disadvantaged schools, measures to improve the socio-economic composition of schools and incentives to attract teachers to disadvantaged schools are less common.

Reducing academic segregation

Standardisation policies (linked to different levels of school autonomy and the use of accountability tools), financial and pedagogical support for disadvantaged schools, or support for low achievers and additional opportunities to learn, cannot, on their own, offset the impact of the stratification policies.

Nevertheless, given the important role of academic segregation in explaining levels of equity in both primary and secondary education, early public investment reducing such academic segregation has the potential to have a lasting impact.

https://eacea.ec.europa.eu/national-policies/eurydice/sites/default/files/equity_2020_0.pdf

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China, India and China Comparisons

Review this video

What are some key interviews/points?

To what extent does that change your point of view about what are the important areas for improvement for the US, India and China?

India’s Right to Education Act

The Right to Education (RTE) Act guaranteed free education for all Indian children up to age 14, marking a watershed moment in the country’s history.

Its passage enabled enrolment at the primary level and promoted standards for school infrastructure. However, the law’s exclusion of upper secondary education and slow implementation prevent RTE from having widespread impact. India is still home to more than 30 million out-of-school children; 40% are adolescent girls.

Gender inequality and cultural norms continue to impact girls’ access to education. Limited access to local secondary schools subject girls to potential harassment, violence or sexual assault on the long trip to and from campus. Families fearing for their daughters’ safety don’t believe their education is worth the risk or added cost.

Assignment for Next Week

Contemporary Issues in American & Chinese Education

Choose 2 countries of interest

Find at least 2 scholarly articles to support your comparisons

Have your writing peer-reviewed prior to submission and include the feedback you received at the end of your paper (after the references)

Also include the name of the person who provided the feedback

Be prepared to share your findings with your group and the class next time!

Reading for Next Week

Beyond PD: Teacher Professional Learning in High-Performing Systems

Executive Summary (pp. 3-8)