Meanwhile, recent results on the NAEP Science tests are cause for concern about the achievement gap here in NY. In a recent article in The New York Sun, Diane Ravitch tells us, “The low scores of white students explain the relatively small performance gap, compared to other big cities, between different racial groups, about which the city’s Department of Education has boasted. The achievement gap is smaller not because minority students are doing well in the city, but because white students are doing so poorly.”

That the gap has narrowed because white scores have decreased is clearly not good news. Ravitch concludes (and I suspect that many educators would agree) that students “are not progressing because the department is committed solely to test scores and not to learning. … Students are spending endless hours practicing to take tests and taking tests, but are not gaining the knowledge, vocabulary, and understanding that come from the study of science and history and other neglected subjects.”

Ravitch’s has long been critical of the anti-content programs instituted by Klein, which emphasize skill development and test prep over a focus on content knowledge. Her conclusion that students in NY are “not gaining knowledge [and] vocabulary…” reflects that position.

If students are not getting the knowledge and vocabulary development they need, that’s bad news. What is heartening, however, is what happens next. Because another educator – Dr. Kathleen M Cashin – has apparently shared Ravitch’s concern. Cashin heads up the public schools in NY’s Region 5, and Region 5 has made significant educational gains in spite of Klein by focusing on knowledge deficit concerns and by implementing the content intensive programs that Klein has ignored, and that Ravitch and others have championed.

In fact, according to an article in today’s Times, Cashin’s schools have “consistently posted the best total gains on annual reading and math tests, outpacing other regions with similar legacies of low achievement.”

How has Cashin and her teachers done it? Mostly by bucking the Klein system. (She ignores the Leadership academy; she promotes educators, and — most importantly! – she uses UFT Teacher Center for professional development).

But more specifically Cashin has recognized, like Ravitch, that kids – and poor kids in particular – “need to expand the knowledge base, expand the vocabulary, expand the experience base, and that only comes with good and rich curriculum.”

Most likely, Cashin and Ravitch are both responding to the research Tough highlights in his Times article, the landmark research of Hart and Risley, who have documented the ways that language and knowledge deficits can plague children of poverty. Tough implies the deficits must be addressed in order for these kids to succeed, but he never quite tells us how the charters address them (he focuses instead on the behavioral modification aspects of the charters). But Chasin does address these concerns in her public schools. As she says, schools need to “expand the knowledge base, expand the vocabulary. In fact, the “good and rich curriculum” that Cashin has implemented was developed by E.D. Hirsch and the Core Knowledge foundation, with the findings of Hart and Risley in mind. Says the Times, “responding to research showing that impoverished children often lack vocabulary and basic facts, [Cashin] has adopted a curriculum called Core Knowledge, which teaches basics like the principles of constitutional government, events in world history and well-known literature.”

So then, in the article on Cashin, perhaps we find a solution to difficulty raised by Hart and Risley and highlighted by Touch. It is also the solution most consistently advocated for by Ravitch.

Public schools like those in Ms. Cashin’s Region show us that public schools can succeed in narrowing the achievement gap, and they can do so with union teachers. When it comes to the achievement gap, what we need in NYC are not necessarily more charter schools, but leadership that responds to the best in educational research, and less top-down management from Joel Klein.

The Civil Right Act 1964: Opportunities for All

By Phyllis C. Murray

The civil rights movement in the United States “freed” a lot of people from the. manacles of discrimination. The history books attest to the following: “While the Civil Rights Act of 1964 was originally conceived to protect the rights of Black people, the bill was amended prior to passage to protect the civil rights of everyone, and explicitly included women for the first time and it became illegal to compel segregation of the ‘races’ in schools, housing, or hiring..” And if we can read further: “Title VII of the Act, codified as Subchapter, VI of Chapter 21 of Title 42 of the United States Code, outlaws discrimination in employment in any business on the basis of race, color, religion, sex or national origin. Title VII has been supplemented with legislation prohibiting pregnancy, age, and disability discrimination.” Wikipedia
Encyclopedia

Eventually, the segregated public schools, colleges and universities began to more toward becoming inclusive microcosms of the nation. And slowly the Civil Rights Act removed the restrictive covenants which excluded individuals by race, religion, or national origin from communities nationwide. Therefore, today we may note that most Americans and even aliens have benefited for the civil rights movement. I say most because today, the Civil Rights Act has not assured FULL equity and access in education, housing, employment to its African Americans citizens. Surely, more legislation and litigation are needed.

Martin Luther King said the following: ” It is precisely because education is a road to equality and citizenship that it has been made more elusive for Negroes than many other rights. The warding off of Negroes from equal education is part of the historical design to submerge him in second class status.”

Martin Luther King was assassinated. And so were all of the brave men of good will who fought against discrimination: John F. Kennedy: Robert F. Kennedy, Medgar Evers, Michael Schwerner, Andrew Goodman, and James Cheney. The Turbulent Sixties left the nation devoid of an avenue for positive change in race relations. And surely the I/thou dynamic of Philosopher Martin Buber ( which King spoke of in his address to the United Federation of Teachers in 1964 }seems lost as the American populous divides on issues of equity and access in education, housing, medicine, foreign policy and government. Hence, the Gap widens, daily.

And the award this week for the best response to the New York Times magazine piece by Paul Tough, What It Takes To Make a Student, goes to Leo Casey for Out, Out, Damn Fact!……