What Doesn't Meet the Eye

Implications for Policy and Practice

Findings in this paper have implications for schools and communities as well as for state and federal policymakers. For schools and communities, I offer the following four recommendations.

1. Assume no motivational differences. It seems likely that incorrect assumptions about group differences in effort and interest may lead some schools to underinvest in searching for ways to raise achievement levels among African-American, Hispanic, and some mixed-race students. Teachers should assume that there are no systematic, group-level differences in effort or motivation to succeed, even when there are clearly observable differences in behavior and academic performance.



2. Address specific skill deficits. Racial and ethnic disparities in self-reported understanding of lessons and readings call attention to the fact that gaps in standardized test scores and school grades reflect real disparities in academic knowledge and skill. To help raise achievement and close gaps, schools should endeavor to identify and address specific skill and knowledge deficits that underlie comprehension problems for individuals in particular racial and ethnic groups and respond in targeted ways.



3. Supply ample encouragement routinely. Given the importance that black and Hispanic students assign to teacher encouragement, teachers need to be aware of what students regard as encouraging. Using this awareness, they need to provide effective forms of encouragement routinely. Further, as the other recommendations imply, encouragement should be matched with truly effective instruction and other forms of academic support both inside and outside the classroom.



4. Provide access to resources and learning experiences. In response to differences in family-background advantages, schools could supply more educational resources and learning experiences outside the home. They could provide access to books and computers and extracurricular opportunities for intellectual enrichment.

Even in the well-to-do suburban communities examined in this paper, teachers and youth-serving professionals may need targeted professional development in order to follow these recommendations. Professional development requires resources. To be persuaded to provide such resources, policymakers need to understand the rationale. At least initially, these recommendations may seem to conflict with current fashions in education policy. In fact, however, I suggest that there is complementarity.

For the past several years, policymakers have placed a heavy emphasis on standards-based reforms. Promoted most prominently by the No Child Left Behind legislation, such reforms are the centerpiece of a national strategy for raising achievement and closing achievement gaps. At their core, standards-based reforms entail a heavy focus on content and alignment. Specifically, there is to be alignment between content standards (i.e., the prescribed knowledge that students are supposed to learn), the content of the curriculum, the content tested on state assessments, and the content that teachers are trained through their schooling and professional development to understand and teach. With some notable exceptions, the possibility that relationships might affect whether students actually learn the content that teachers are trying to teach seldom enters the policy discourse.

Nonetheless, findings in this paper concerning the importance of encouragement to black and Hispanic students suggest that teacher-student relationships may be quite important resources for raising achievement and narrowing achievement gaps.

Content, pedagogy, and relationships are three legs of what I call the "instructional tripod." If one leg of a tripod is too weak, it falls over. Professional development activities that equip teachers to attend simultaneously to all three legs of the instructional tripod stand a better chance of helping states to meet their education policy objectives. Attending well to all three will affect a teacher's capacity and commitment to engage students effectively in learning and, therefore, students' preparation to reach prescribed performance standards in the domains of particular content standards that state policies have articulated. (Refer to Appendix: The Tripod Project.)

Previous | Table of Contents | Next