By: Anjalé D.
Welton (and Christopher Thomas)
Race to The Top (RTTT) serves as the Obama Administration’s declaration
for states to rapidly design school reforms that support the needs of persistently
low performing schools with the assumption that
competition for federal funding will promote the design of innovative state level
policies aimed at bolstering student achievement and equitable outcomes (U.S. DOE, 2009). Incentivized reforms such
as RTTT have far-reaching aims to address the achievement gap. Predictably
not unlike any previous reforms that are hurriedly placed on the national
policy agenda, RTTT outlines the solutions to the achievement gap without a
sophisticated recall of how we arrived at the so-called gaps in student
achievement in the first place. There are serious implications for student equity given RTTT has
made such an impact on the policy agenda for state grant recipients in such a
short period of time.
In the summit of its implementation scholarly debates emerged (and
still continue) as to whether No Child Left Behind’s (NCLB) emphasis on
disaggregating data to reveal gaps in achievement among certain student groups
either provides the visible evidence to force educational leaders to face
inequities or further reifies deficit perspectives about certain students
groups’ academic abilities (Gutiérrez, 2008; Leonardo, 2007; Milner, 2012). McKenzie and Scheurich
(2004) coined the term equity trap to describe deficit oriented thinking and
practices in education. Similarly, school reforms should be mindful of falling
in a deficit-based “gap trap” as focusing on gaps in achievement suggests that
certain subgroups of students—typically racially minoritized groups, students
with disabilities, children living in poverty, and English Language
Learners—are the root cause of these gaps, versus exploring systemic and
structural as well as policy-based explanations for disparities in achievement
(Guiterrez, 2008; Leonardo, 2007; Milner, 2012). Simply put, school reform
initiatives that function within an achievement gap framework acknowledge “the
symptoms, but not the causes of the achievement problem affecting” these
surveilled student groups (Leonardo, 2007, p. 269).
Particularly,
current reforms, like RTTT, fail to provide a critical analysis of the
underlying causes of disparities in achievement among student groups. Rather,
RTTT is undergirded by deficit-based understandings of the root causes of
educational inequities that may generate structures and practices that could be
harmful to students from historically marginalized backgrounds (see Milner,
2012). For example, the RTTT application criteria sends a federally backed
deficit-based message about students’ academic capacities by compelling states
to use prescriptive definitions for terms such as “high-need LEA,”
“high-minority school,” “high-poverty school,” and “high needs students” (U.S. DOE, 2009, p. 12-14). In addition to the above
deficit-based categories for certain institutional types and student groups, the federal criteria is also definitive about how states should
approach closing the achievement gap awarding up to 30 points to state
applications that demonstrated “significant progress in raising achievement and
closing gaps” (U.S. DOE, 2009, p. 7)
Ultimately, despite the federal policy’s effort
to “encourage and reward States that are creating the conditions for education
innovation and reform,” the way in which RTTT delineates specific approaches
for targeted subgroups and institutions and its narrow articulation of the
achievement gap causes one to question whether state recipients will have the
flexibility to consider equity and develop truly
equitable learning conditions for students upon implementation (U.S. DOE,
2009, p. 2). Because of the stealthy achievement gap language in the policy
text, leaders tasked with implementing RTTT could misleadingly interpret that
they will be “awarded” for instituting simplistic deficit based student
categories when measuring student performance. For example, Illinois a round
three Race to the Top recipient included the following language in its state
grant application:
The systems and resources
developed by this Plan are particularly critical to closing the achievement gap
and dramatically improving performance in Illinois' lowest performing schools.
As a result, for the Black, Hispanic, and Low-Income subgroups, the
State's goals are more aggressive, both in the timing and trajectory of student
outcomes. (State of Illinois, 2011, p. 7)
Unfortunately, Illinois’ RTTT application provided only
limited snapshots of student performance data to substantiate why the above
highlighted subgroups would require an aggressive approach for improving
student outcomes. As research has shown technical, outcomes based solutions
such as the one articulated in the example from Illinois are mere quick fixes
that only in the end reproduce inequities and even exacerbate gaps in student
achievement (Holme, Diem, & Welton, 2013; Welton, Diem, & Holme, in
press). It is
problematic for incentivized school reforms such as RTTT to declare equity as a
goal when its use of an achievement gap framework only searches for students’ shortcomings
and never the assets they may offer to school and their own learning (Milner,
2012).
While data-informed decision-making using standardized measures
does give a glimpse into educational disparities, data presented in this manner
provides only a narrow, simplistic version of the story. Ultimately, complex
counternarratives to the achievement gap framework are needed that acknowledge
systemic and structural explanations for the proverbial gap in achievement.
Note: This blog entry is adapted
from research on the implementation of Race to the Top and evaluation systems
in collaboration with Christopher N.
Thomas from the University of San Francisco.
References
Gutiérrez,
R. (2008). A "gap gazing" fetish in mathematics education?
Problematizing research on the achievement gap. Journal for Research in
Mathematics Education, 39(4), 357-364.
Holme, J.
J., Diem, S. D., & Welton, A. D. (in press). Suburban school districts and demographic change: The technical,
normative, and political dimensions of response.
Educational
Administration Quarterly.
Leonardo,
Z. (2007). The war on schools: NCLB, nation creation and the educational construction
of whiteness. Race Ethnicity and Education,
10, 261-278.
McKenzie,
K. B. & Scheurich, J. J. (2004). Equity traps: A useful construct for
preparing principals to lead
schools that are successful with racially diverse students. Educational
Administration Quarterly, 40(5), 601-632.
Milner, H.R.
(2012). Beyond a test score: Explaining opportunity gaps in educational practice. Journal of Black Studies, 43(6), 693-718.
State of
Illinois (2011). Race to the Top application for Phase 3 funding CFDA Number: 84.395A.
Retrieved October 22, 2013 from http://www.isbe.net/racetothetop/PDF/phase3_app.pdf
U.S.
Department of Education (2009). Race to the Top Program Executive Summary. Retrieved October
22, 2013 from http://www2.ed.gov/programs/racetothetop/executive-summary.pdf
Welton,
A.D., Diem, S.L., & Holme, J.J. (in press). Color conscious, cultural
blindness: Suburban school districts
and demographic change. Education and
Urban Society.
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