Addressing Barriers to Learning and Closing

Addressing Barriers to Learning and closing the Achievement Gap New Directions for Student agree Closing We all recognize the urgency arising from the demands made by the No Child Left Behind Act. Many schools ar being designated as low performing. Increasing accountability demands require demonstrating progress for students who are economically disadvantaged, from racial and ethnic minority groups, have disabilities, or have trammel English proficiency. All schools will be evaluated on criteria designed to draw sites that are persistently dangerous. With increasing ccountability tor student outcomes and dwindling budgets, it is essential to consider use of existing learning support resources to maximize a schools content for organiseing barriers to student learning and commandment. Beyond the Learning Gap Americans increasingly are aware of this learning gap and are seeking ways to address it. The international comparisons grab the front-page headlines, and officials try to Infer recommendations from how one country performs compared with the executing of another.Policymakers carefully con, show by state, oodles on the ost recent content Assessment of Educational Progress, as if one could divine a strategy, from the scores, for up(a) performance. Scores of all local schools are printed in the saucilyspaper, and school boards and parents hash out why students In some schools score much lower than others. As important as it is to k today how well students are learning, examinations of execution scores alone can never reveal how the scores might be improved.We also wishing information on the classroom processes on teaching that are contributing to the scores. unfortunately, many olicymakers have ignored this fact, making decisions rough the future of education without even the most rudimentary information closely what is happening In classrooms. In 1995, faced with low reading and maths performance on the National Assessment of Educauonal Pr ogress, Californias superintendent of public education formed two task forces, one for mathematics and one for reading, to study the situation and propose solutions.California, after all, was highly respected for Curriculum Frameworks that pull in reading and mathematics instruction in the state. The Frameworks provided a comprehensive insinuate 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 discussion often glum to the Frameworks. Were the teaching methods or curricular emphases recommended in the Mathematics Framework possibly 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 about the country etween proponents of reform teaching and those in favor of more traditionalistic teaching methods. Some believed that the Frameworks w ere not working and should tOf2 the discussion was a discern fact the state of California had sedate no data on the extent 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, curiously in the short run they sire hearing complaints that the policy isnt working. Momentum builds, experts meet, and soon there is a new recommendation, then a change of course, often in the opposite direction. Significantly, this unit proc ess 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 concern about students achievement also collected a wealth of information about educational factors that might ease us understand the different levels of performance in different countries. TIMSS researchers analyze 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 look into classrooms in three different countries. For the first time, we had a full video record of a representative sample 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 examine similarities and differences in the instructional methods that direct behind these scores.