Addressing Barriers to Learning and Closing

Addressing Barriers to Learning and block the Achievement Gap New Directions for Student Support Closing We all recognize the urgency arising from the demands do by the No Child Left Behind Act. Many schools are being designated as embarrassed performing. Increasing accountability demands require demonstrating progress for assimilators who are economically disadvantaged, from racial and ethnic minority groups, make believe disabilities, or have limited English proficiency. All schools will be evaluated on criteria designed to distinguish sites that are persistently dangerous. With increasing ccountability tor student outcomes and dwindling budgets, it is essential to rethink use of existing acquire support resources to maximize a schools capability for addressing barriers to student learning and belief. Beyond the Learning Gap Americans increasingly are aware of this learning gap and are seeking ways to address it. The international comparisons confiscate the front-page hea dlines, and officials try to Infer recommendations from how one country performs compared with the performance of another.Policymakers carefully study, state by state, mark offs on the ost recent National Assessment of Educational Progress, as if one could divine a strategy, from the loads, for improving performance. gain ground of all local schools are printed in the newspaper, and school boards and parents discuss why students In some schools score much lower than others. As important as it is to know how well students are learning, examinations of achievement scores alone can never reveal how the scores qualification be improved.We also take in education on the classroom deales on teaching that are contributing to the scores. unfortunately, many olicymakers have ignored this fact, fashioning decisions about the future of education without even the most rudimentary information about what is happening In classrooms. In 1995, faced with low reading and mathematics performanc e on the National Assessment of Educauonal Progress, Californias overseer of public instruction formed two assign forces, one for mathematics and one for reading, to study the emplacement and propose solutions.California, after all, was highly respected for Curriculum Frameworks that guide reading and mathematics instruction in the state. The Frameworks provided a comprehensive outline for what students should learn and guidelines for appropriate Instructional methods. If the Frameworks were so good, why was achievement so low? In meetings of Californias mathematics task force, the give-and-take oft turned to the Frameworks. Were the teaching methods or curricular emphases recommended in the Mathematics Framework perhaps to blame for students low achievement?A debate ensued among members of the task force, a debate that has been reflected more broadly in public debate around the country etween proponents of sort out teaching and those in favor of more traditional teaching metho ds. Some believed that the Frameworks were not working and should tOf2 the discussion was a key fact the state of California had collected no information on the limit to which the Frameworks had been implemented in the states classrooms.This did not stop the state, however, from undertaking a revision of its Mathematics Framework. But on what basis could the Framework be revised? Without knowing what teachers were doing, how could the effectiveness of the Framework be determined? We do not mean to single out California no state that we know of regularly collects and uses data directly related to instructional processes in the classroom. Policymakers adopt a program, then wait to see if student achievement scores will rise.If scores do not go up and this is most often what happens, especially in the short run they begin hearing complaints that the policy isnt working. Momentum builds, experts meet, and soon thither is a new recommendation, then a change of course, often in the opp osite direction. Significantly, this whole process goes on without ever collecting data on whether or not the original program as even implemented in classrooms or, if implemented, how effective it was in promoting student learning.If we wish to make wise decisions, we need to know what is going on in typical classrooms. Fortunately, the same TIMSS that generated a new wave of denote about students achievement also collected a wealth of information about educational factors that might help us understand the different levels of performance in different countries. TIMSS researchers analyzed textbooks asked administrators, teachers, and students about their beliefs and practices and ideotaped teachers teaching typical lessons.The TIMSS video study of teaching, which forms the basis for this book, is especially significant because it provides a penetrating and unparalleled think into classrooms in three different countries. For the first time, we had a full video record of a vox samp le of U. S. classrooms. More than that, we had the same kind of information from Germany and Japan. We could now compare more than achievement scores. We could experiment similarities and differences in the instructional methods that lay behind these scores.