LearnmoreMN Blog

Separate but equally important?

By Dale A. Blyth, Ph.D., February guest blogger

In my earlier post this month I spoke of the necessity of equal learning opportunities in not only the formal but also the informal and non-formal learning approaches available to young people beyond the classroom. For more on that inequality theme you might want to read recent blogs by John Kuhn.

But today I want to ask whether all three types of learning opportunities are separate and equally important? Do the inequities in these informal and non-formal learning opportunities really matter? Briefly consider results from four studies:

• One found 75% of Nobel-prize winning scientists (PDF, 23 KB) first got excited and engaged in science in informal and non-formal ways — not in the classroom.
• Another estimates that over 25% of the achievement gap in 9th grade test scores can be explained by differences in learning opportunities before they started school (inequality in early childhood learning opportunities) while almost half can be explained by difference due to summer learning loss (PDF, 328 KB) (inequalities in informal and non-formal learning opportunities over the summer from first to sixth grade). The gap actually closed during the school year.
• Another study that beeped youth at different times during the day and asked whether they were concentrating and motivated (two important conditions for learning) found that youth in schools were concentrating slightly more but not very motivated, youth with friends were highly motivated but not concentrating, and only youth in non-formal learning opportunities were both concentrating and more motivated.
• Finally, when elementary and middle school youth who are typically on the wrong side of the achievement gap became engaged in quality non-formal afterschool learning opportunities, over two years their math achievement scores improved more than three times as much as seen in a study that lowered student teacher ratios in math classes.

Each approach to learning adds to both the learning process and its outcomes.

We often think about formal educational opportunities as the “engine” of learning — and rightly so. But what research shows us is that we need a car not just an engine if learning is to go anywhere.

Perhaps if we recognized that informal learning opportunities provide the structure that learning needs for an engine to deliver its power we would invest more in it.

Perhaps if we recognized that non-formal opportunities put wheels on learning that allows it to go, we would think more about the ways communities, including schools, support youth programs, camps, and other community learning opportunities beyond the classroom.

And, perhaps most importantly, if we recognized that a young person’s engagement and passion for learning provides the very fuel needed to drive learning anywhere, we would pay more attention and allocate more resources to understanding, assessing and improving how youth become engaged youth in their own learning in all these approaches.

Just like for effective transportation, we need a complete vehicle and road system to get anywhere. Learning requires more working “parts” than just an engine — no matter how powerful — that play separate but equally important roles in moving learning along. These parts need to come together in comprehensive systems as a recent report on supporting youth success (PDF, 1.9 MB) notes.

One final point on the “separate and equally important” idea — it also applies to what we must measure and monitor for success. Just as one cannot keep a car working and moving forward by only assessing the odometer that tells you how far it has gone (like achievement tests do for learning), if we want to close gaps in learning outcomes, we must find separate but important measures that tells us how our learning vehicle is working and how far it is getting in its journey.

While this must include assessing the effectiveness of the formal engine of schooling, it also includes monitoring the support from the people in our youths’ lives to make sure the appropriate lubrication is there and the “pressure” is there for performance. It includes a fuel gauge that monitors whether the young person is on empty or full of a passion for learning. It might mean assessing our communities to ensure they have multiple on ramps to learning through a systematic approach to informal and non-formal community learning opportunities.

Perhaps in the end it is important to simply recognize that a successful learning journey takes more than good schools. It takes many separate but equally important parts that come together effectively and interesting places to go. Perhaps as John Kuhn argues in the blogs noted earlier that it is time to recognize poverty and its effects on learning are not inevitable. Isn’t it time for policy “mechanics” to recognize that it requires more than tuning up schools to close the learning opportunities gap.

Can our youth succeed with unequal learning opportunities?

By Dale A. Blyth, Ph.D., February guest blogger

The idea of equal educational opportunities in America has been a driving force for a long time. From the Brown vs. Board of Education decision that separate schools are inherently unequal — to a variety of present day efforts to improve schools, we continue to believe educational opportunities are the key to a better future. Education still benefits from its image as the great equalizer even if schools are decreasingly seen as delivering on that goal.

Today these efforts more often are denoted by the poor result — the achievement gap — than by the cry for equal opportunity. And unfortunately Minnesota is a leader in almost all the wrong ways in this area with the second worst achievement gap in the nation. It is not just that our white students do better but that our minority students do worse.

What would happen if we shifted back to a social justice approach that emphasized the importance of equal opportunities — but with an important twist. What if we called for equality in LEARNING opportunities?

Why shift from “education” to “learning” language? Because our society has shifted to a 24/7 array of learning opportunities related to technology, media and fundamental changes in our economy and way of life. In the report A New Day For Learning there is a call to rethink the learning day as well as the time and places where learning occurs. We must begin to shift from an emphasis on education as formal schooling only and learners only as students. Instead we need to recognize that learning takes place in many ways, at many different times, and in many different places. We need to move from only caring about the equality of opportunities for students in school and begin to think about equalizing opportunities for children and youth as active engaged learners in families, schools, programs and communities.

Youth as engaged learners with equal access to an array of learning opportunities should become our driving goal. Youth certainly need opportunities to become engaged in school as students focused on learning content and skills. But they also need opportunities to become engaged in informal settings with parents, mentors, peers and community members in learning about new places and ideas such as visiting museums or engaged in community service. And just as important, and perhaps an area where we can make more systematic progress, are opportunities to become engaged in non-formal settings such as youth programs where youth choose what they want to learn and can develop a sense of mastery, belonging and confidence that they are important actors in their own learning and that what they do matters.

Perhaps dramatically increasing the percentage of youth at age 14 who are constructively engaged in their own learning through multiple learning opportunities is just as important a goal as reading by third grade.

We must find ways to shift the debate from a narrow focus on equal educational opportunities through schools designed to close a test score gap, toward the far larger problems of inequality in access to quality LEARNING opportunities — opportunities that are a mix of informal, non-formal and formal. Such a debate must come to recognize and address the inequalities in access to and the value of engagement in summer, afterschool and the variety of community learning opportunities beyond the classroom. It is these inequalities that are both a major cause of the achievement gap as well as a major source of young people’s disengagement from the learning process.

It is this OPPORTUNITY GAP that we must close from cradle to career if we are to not only close the achievement gap but support success for all youth in college, work, citizenship and life.

Calling it as I see it

Why the use of the term “achievement gap” makes a bad situation worse

By Nekima Levy-Pounds, May guest blogger

For years, we have invariably used the term “achievement gap” to describe educational disparities between white and black youths in Minnesota. It occurs to me that this term fails to accurately articulate the truth of why children of color are falling through the cracks within our public education system. For one, the term “achievement gap” is deficit-based language that implies that blame for children’s failure to “achieve” falls upon their own shoulders and is a result of their unwillingness or lack of motivation to work hard in school. (It is the Horatio Alger “pull yourself up by your bootstraps” myth in disguise.) However, for many children who struggle in school, external circumstances like chronic poverty and marginalization often hinder them from obtaining equal opportunities to achieve success.

For example, a child who has attended school in a wealthy suburban area typically receives advantages to which a poor child would not ordinarily be privy. The child in the wealthier community will likely gain access to more highly qualified teachers, newer textbooks, access to the latest technology, smaller class sizes, privately-financed extra-curriculars and inside knowledge of the unwritten customs and rules of mainstream society.

Meanwhile, a poor child of color is forced to contend with less qualified teachers, used or even no textbooks, lower teacher expectations, over-crowded classrooms, and a lack of racial diversity and cultural competence amongst teachers. Further, the recent report entitled: "Double Jeopardy: How Third- Grade Reading Skills and Poverty Influence High School Graduation" (Annie E. Casey Foundation) establishes that “children whose families live in poverty often lack resources for decent housing, food, clothing, and books, and they often do not have access to high quality child care and early education... .”

Rather than labeling the cumulative effects of these conditions as an “achievement gap,” I prefer the analysis provided by Carter G. Woodson, who wrote a book describing these issues in 1933, aptly called, The Mis-Education of the Negro.  Thus, I see the educational disparities as the result of “mis-education” or an “opportunity gap” experienced by poor children of color. In order to tackle these issues effectively, we have to provide equal access to educational opportunities, teachers qualified to teach poor children of color and language that accurately identifies the issues. In essence, the “achievement gap” rhetoric is a misnomer that sets us back, rather than pushes us forward in creating equal opportunities to succeed for all children.

Seeking educational equity in our state

By Kathleen O'Donnell, guest blogger

As education reform catches fire and gains focus in the Minnesota philanthropic community (see In tough economy, nonprofits refocus and Giving Forum), where is innovation being nurtured? What are the essentials to getting and maintaining educational equity in our state?

The 2009 season of The Minneapolis Foundation’s Minnesota Meeting public affairs forum focused on equity in education. Dozens of corporate and foundation sponsors helped us convene three events to foster constructive dialogue on different aspects of the issue. View a summary of a few of the recommendations generated throughout the series. Visit Minnesota Meeting.com to view all three events, download fact sheets, and read event summaries. The statistics in Minnesota speak for themselves. What do you think?

The Minneapolis Foundation’s new strategic plan (over and above donor-directed grantmaking) includes a focus on promoting social, economic, and racial equity in our community. One of the key areas towards which the Foundation will target resources to help achieve equity is through grantmaking, partnership, and leadership activities that help transform education. Learn more about The Minneapolis Foundation’s strategic plan, in particular the focus on transforming education.

What do you think the next steps should be? Where are the greatest opportunities? How should Minnesotans embrace the charge to do “whatever it takes” to ensure the success of all of our children — and thereby our future economy?

The Role of the Black Community in Educating Black Children

By Josie Johnson, March Guest Blogger

In her March 12, 2008 column, “Evidence shows classmates’ color is not a key factor in achievement” Katherine Kersten stated in her charge of “social engineering” that the various academic plans to offer parents and students choice and to close the achievement gap were based on a belief  “that Black children can’t learn adequately unless they are sitting next to white children.”

That premise has confused many educators, parents and ordinary citizens for nearly 54 years —  the belief that busing is a means of placing Black children next to white children so they can learn. Educators, parents, and policy makers offer many theories about learning and learning environments. However, none of the theories or plans is based on an osmosis theory.

In my judgment, what Black children need is an equal opportunity to be educated. Black parents and other community people must find the energy, strength, unity and commitment to remind Black children of their education history. Black children need an environment of safety and teachers who respect them and support their learning process and progress. This process must include spiritual leaders, community partners and the children’s homes.

The learning process includes Black adults being involved in all that affects Black children. That includes the emotional health of Black children.

Evidence suggest that educators, parents and others must agree that the time has come, again, to address the following issues more directly:

• The quality of education Black children are receiving;
• The experiences of Black children at the end of their school day;
• The extents to which Black children are prepared to compete for the benefits of society others enjoy and,
• The extent to which Black children, today, feel inferior while attending majority white or majority Black school.

As we continue to develop and promote plans to educate our children we must develop a sense of “peoplehood” that embraces the entire Black community. In other words, we need a consciousness that requires all Black adults to be concerned about all Black children, and all Black adults acting responsively for the safety and welfare of the Black community.

This attitude will benefit all people and the whole community.