What Doesn't Meet the Eye

Conclusion

There is much that does not meet the teacher's eye but that nonetheless affects how ambitiously and effectively students learn. African-American and Hispanic students in MSAN districts have fewer family-background advantages on average, compared to whites and Asians. In addition, they have lower grade-point averages and report less understanding of their lessons. They have lower homework-completion rates than white classmates but report spending virtually the same amount of time doing homework. Skill gaps and differences in home academic supports—not effort or motivation—appear to be the primary explanations for why they complete less homework and get lower grades than whites. Conversely, part of the reason that Asians complete more homework and get higher grades than other nonwhite groups is that they devote more time to their studies.

Perhaps the most interesting finding here is the distinctive importance of teacher encouragement as a reported source of motivation for nonwhite students, especially African-American students, and the fact that this difference is truly a racial difference, mostly unrelated to measures of SES. The special importance of encouragement highlights the likely importance of strong teacher-student relationships in affecting achievement, especially for African-American and Hispanic students. It also highlights the importance of trying to understand racial and ethnic differences in how students experience the social environments of schools and classrooms.²⁷

Across the nation, standards-based reforms have been catalysts for a growing number of professional development initiatives to prepare educators to teach new content standards. However, if the aim of these efforts is to raise achievement and narrow gaps, focusing on content and pedagogy alone may be insufficient. A key implication of the findings in this paper is that even in well-to-do suburbs, professional development strategies might wisely attend to all three legs of the instructional tripod—content, pedagogy, and relationships—not just one or two. In this way, such strategies may better prepare teachers to inspire the trust, elicit the cooperation, stimulate the ambition, and support the sustained industriousness are required in order to find success with the No Child Left Behind legislation.

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