By DUANE M. ELLING
Jeannie Oakes is presidential professor in educational equity at the University of California-Los Angeles, as well as the director of the university’s Institute for Democracy, Education & Access (IDEA). Her research has examined inequalities in resources and learning opportunities among U.S. schools, and follows the progress of equity-minded reform. Oakes spoke at a January 2004 meeting of representatives from the field of philanthropy who had gathered in Chicago to learn about local efforts to build teacher quality in low-income schools.
Mott: What are your thoughts regarding the overall state of educational equality in U.S. schools, including the forces that shape it?
Jeannie Oakes (JO): In the early 19th century, Horace Mann, the first secretary of the State Board of Education in Massachusetts, was vocal in his belief that public schooling was to become the "great equalizer" of human conditions, a means of eliminating poverty and the age-old discord between the "haves" and the "have-nots." In today’s context, they were to be places where students of all racial, class and cultural backgrounds would come together to share fair and equal opportunities for success in the educational system and, as a consequence, fair and equal life chances. Creating “education on equal terms” was also the intent 50 years ago of the landmark Supreme Court decision in Brown v. Board of Education to desegregate the nation’s schools.
Unfortunately, we know that despite such philosophical and legal progress, many young people in this country are still terribly underserved. Studies show that African American and Latino students often attend public schools that are, on average, as racially segregated as they were before Brown, and that such schools routinely offer fewer educational opportunities and have fewer resources than those in more affluent communities.
Efforts to equalize racially segregated schools through economic means have not fared much better. Reforms seeking culturally and linguistically appropriate education for children of color -- such as multicultural and culturally responsive curriculum and bilingual education -- have been implemented in flawed or superficial ways, or have been frustrated altogether. As a result, racial inequalities persist in funding and in access to decent school facilities, qualified teachers and college preparatory programs. Gaps in schooling outcomes remain, not only in test scores, but also in attainments that affect life chances, such as high school and college graduation.
Mott: Could you take a few moments to discuss the issue of academic "tracking" in the nation’s schools?
JO: The education of elementary and high school students in this country has for many years been “tracked.” That is, students considered to be “bright” or “college material” are placed together into “high ability” classes and take an academically demanding college preparatory curriculum. Meanwhile, kids thought to be of lower ability or not likely to go to college are grouped together in “low ability” classes, as well as general education and vocational coursework. Their studies are more rudimentary and designed to ready them for less-skilled jobs immediately following high school graduation or perhaps for technical training. Although this sorting is less formal now than it was throughout most of the twentieth century, it is still alive and well in today’s schools.
Many in the education and public communities have long thought of this educational sorting as a fair and appropriate way to meet the different interests, abilities and aspirations of students. However, well-intentioned or not, tracking has also become a sinister way of steering low-income young people and students of color into classes where they learn little that prepares them for a life beyond poverty.
Our own studies have shown that segregated schools serving low-income and minority students typically have proportionately fewer academically challenging classes than do schools serving predominantly white, more affluent students, while in desegregated schools, African American and Latino students are assigned disproportionately to low-track classes. We have also consistently found African American, Latino and low-income students to be over-represented in low-ability, remedial and special education classes and programs.
The fact that students of color and those from low-income neighborhoods are also less likely to participate in “gifted” academic programs should not be surprising, given the once-accepted practice of preparing students of different racial, ethnic and social-class backgrounds for their separate -- and unequal -- places in society. These young people were then “grouped” into low track curriculums and while such practices might now be considered taboo, they still occur informally in many communities.
In part, these placement patterns reflect differences in minority and white students' learning opportunities that affect their preparation and achievements. But they also reflect the fact that U.S. schools use white, largely middle class standards of culture and language styles as they screen for academic ability and talent. Teachers and school psychologists sometimes mistake the language and dialect differences of Hispanic and black students for poor language skills, conceptual misunderstandings, or even bad attitudes. An additional hazard for students of color is that schools often confuse cultural differences with cognitive disabilities, particularly retardation.
More blatant discrimination also takes place. In racially mixed school systems, African American and Latino students are much less likely than White or Asian students with the same test scores to be placed in high ability classes.
Mott: What are the impacts of tracking activities on students’ educational performance and potential?
JO: Over the course of their education, students who are initially similar in background and skills become increasingly different in achievement when they are put into different tracks. In three school districts where we studied ability grouping, Latino and African American students who were disproportionately placed in lower-level courses consistently made smaller achievement gains than classmates with the same abilities who were put in higher level classes.
This placement into low track curriculums often becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy -- a cycle of low expectations, fewer opportunities and poor academic performance. That performance then begins the cycle anew, giving additional justification to the schools to lower expectations and reduce opportunities. Extensive research makes clear that in every aspect of what makes for a quality education, kids in lower tracks typically get less than those in higher tracks and gifted programs.
Among the most consequential effects of homogeneous grouping is that it masks the essential problem of teaching any group of 20 to 35 people. Not all students -- even if they’ve been grouped according to supposed similarities -- will benefit from a single set of academic tasks, materials and procedures. Effective instruction always requires a variety of teaching strategies, and the use of multiple criteria for success and rewards benefits all students.
Unfortunately, conventional grouping practices and the illusion of homogeneity deflect attention from these instructional realities. When instruction fails, the problem is too often attributed to the child or perhaps to a wrong tracking placement.
Mott: What do you feel needs to happen in order for educational systems to address issues of tracking and to better serve all students?
JO: Developing more equitable and effective school systems needs to start with making state and education officials more accountable to students and their parents. We must define unambiguous lines of responsibility at the state, regional and district levels for ensuring that every student has the learning conditions and opportunities required by state standards, including access to higher track curriculums. In essence, the “buck” must stop with the officials who have the control of essential resources.
Next, those in charge have to authentically see students and parents -- and their educational experiences, both positive and negative -- as valuable resources and encourage them to make their views known and to participate in the development of a new system. This shared accountability also requires the development of clear standards or benchmarks against which actors in the system can be measured, including the learning outcomes students are expected to achieve and the resources and conditions necessary to support teachers and students in producing those outcomes. By also incorporating appropriate procedures for responding to failures in the system at the point at which they occur, incentives will be in place to induce better performance by these actors in the future.
We also need to develop valid, fair and useful measures of student learning that sit side-by side with accurate and trustworthy information about the conditions and learning opportunities at the classroom level. This information must allow policymakers and the public to assess whether inputs -- as well as outcomes -- are meeting expectations, and if not, provide them the power and resources to act accordingly.
Mott: So communities are critical players in achieving authentic school reform?
JO: Absolutely. Any serious attempt at education and school reform must include legitimate roles for communities, including parents and students, in holding the system accountable. They can share their own knowledge about the system and the degree to which existing standards for resources and conditions are meeting their individual needs.
Mott: What have been the progress and challenges of equity-minded school reform and in what direction do you see such reform headed?
JO: Over the past several years, we’ve studied efforts to make schools more equitable and have learned that educational inequality is not simply a schooling problem that can be fixed by typical improvement strategies. In addition to the usual tasks of developing, adopting and implementing new structures and practices that “work,” equity reformers must also deconstruct prevailing beliefs about what low-income communities of color want and need from schools and confront the politics of educational policymaking that usually preserve the advantages of wealthier and more powerful communities.
Making schools more equitable -- or, in the words of the education scholar W.E.B. DuBois, taking those “long and many steps along Freedom Road” -- requires strategies that look far more like social movements and grassroots organizing than like conventional approaches to school reform. Such strategies make social activists, including students, parents, teachers, community members, organizers and advocates, the primary agents of reform, rather than the professional education community or their lobbyists in state capitals.
However, we have also learned that research has a key role to play in these more activist education reform strategies, just as it does in more the conventional approaches led by professional educators. Activists pressing for more equal schooling must understand the social and schooling barriers to equality and they have to build their knowledge of what could be done to make schooling more equitable. Then they have to take action on that knowledge and build the power to carry the struggle forward.
Additional Resources
- Click here to view a .pdf version of the April 2004 issue of Mott Memo, that highlights community organizing efforts to improve teacher quality in low-income schools.
- Click here to read about a campaign for nation-wide improvements in educational settings and curriculums.