Closing Gaps in Opportunity and Achievement Webinar
Tuesday, March 2, 2010 (9:30 - 11:00 a.m. Eastern)

Description: The ARCC, in conjunction with The Education Trust, presented thisWebinar on analyzing achievement gap data. Experts from The Education Trust in Washington, DC, showed how they analyze state, district, and school data with the aim of boosting the achievement of all students and closing the gaps that separate low-income and minority students from other students. The presentation included a discussion of strategies that states can use to help local educators address equity issues and examine opportunities to close achievement gaps. The webinar is of particular interest to staff in state departments of education served by the ARCC.

Presenters:

Resources

Presentations

The full webinar with audio and screen capture is available in Flash format.

Questions and Answers

The following questions were asked during the webinar but could not be answered due to time. Anna Rowan offered the responses to these questions.

Will there be a longitudinal tracking of the student performance at these successful schools to determine if the achievement gains are sustained over time? Perhaps even into postsecondary options chosen by each successful school's students.

When examining these successful schools, were must rely on the data that states make publicly available to us as well as the stories that the educators in those schools tell us about their students. So, in states where additional data are made available, we have been able to look at other indicators such as graduation rates, college readiness rates, or growth data. In the absence of robust data systems linking K-12 to postsecondary, some high schools have taken to more informal, but still useful ways of tracking graduates. At University Park Campus School in Massachusetts, for example, their counselor works to keep in contact with alumni to see how they are faring in college, what challenges they are facing, and find out how they think they could have been better prepared. Current state education data systems are not set up, however, to answer that exact question about longitudinal tracking and digging into data for groups of students from specific schools.

In looking at the data from the achieving schools: 1) Was the same percentage tested each time? 2) Were the standards the same? 3) Were you using NAEP data exclusively? 4) Were all students at the school tested?

For the achieving schools, we are looking at performance on the state assessment (as NAEP data is not available at the school level). We cannot compare each of the high-performing schools to each other unless they are in the same state because of differing state standards and assessments. Each of the high-performing schools met the NCLB requirements for the percentage of students tested.

How do you combat the common argument that students are not performing because we are not holding them accountable? We only hold the schools accountable?

Several states do hold students accountable in the form of high school exit exams. In the high-performing schools that we’ve shared, students know what their responsibilities are and what teachers expect from them. This is communicated to them from day one and reinforced throughout the school year. These schools are high-performing because of the reasons outlined in our presentation: great teachers, a rigorous curriculum, a focus on instructional improvement, and so on. You can read more about these schools here: http://www.edtrust.org/dc/resources/success-stories