Higher Education as a National Resource

There were a few main points in this article that I really agreed with. The first was that federal financial-aid should be given to the students directly, not to the institutions themselves. A big factor in choosing where to go to college is money. If universities are the sole recipient of federal grants, the university plays a substantial role in terms of finances and the choice students make on whether or not to attend that university. For example, if the University of Iowa gives a student money and University of Illinois doesn't, even if the student may not like Iowa as much as Illinois, they might go to Iowa because it ends up being less expensive. If the same amount of money that Iowa gave the student was given directly to the student, instead of to the university, that student could have put the money towards going to Illinois instead. Then the student has more control over where they go. If a student wants to go to a certain school, they should be able to put money towards that school instead of having it offered from another school that s/he might not like as much.

The other point I really agree with and support is in the conclusion, where it's written that "colleges and universities, the states, and the federal government all [need] to work together to continue America's great [...] higher education system" (37-38). They all need to contribute, the responsibility and obligation is on all of them. The federal government needs to put their money where their mouth is because they talk about how important higher education is in our society, but have not given the financial resources to actually do it. The state governments should provide more financial aid, and colleges and universities themselves should make attending their school more affordable. Especially with inflation and the recession, all parties need to work towards making a college education attainable for more people. The diversity of public and private institutions is one of America's strengths, now we just need to use them to their full potential to get back in the game.

What does "achievement" imply?

I feel that the actual concept of an achievement gap is not defined very well. This gap is based solely on the differentiation between test scores of white and black students. I do not believe that these statistics alone are strong enough support to generalize achievement levels relative to race. I question what exactly the term “achieving” entails as far as education, intelligence, and race are concerned. In response to Wisconsin being the only state in which the black-white achievement gap was larger than the national average in the tests for both math and reading, I believe that every sample has outliers. I am sure there was also a state in particular that had the smallest achievement gap in comparison to the national average. An average includes all data- highs, lows, and in-betweens. I think there should have been more explanation toward what exactly “doing what is necessary to close these gaps” entails. Regarding the public schools in Milwaukee missing federal achievement targets for five years straight, I feel that Milwaukee is one particular example that does have a high African American population, and it is common knowledge that the Milwaukee Public Schools system is not the best of the best as far as education is concerned. It should not come as a surprise that some of these “achievement targets” fall short, given the environment of Milwaukee. I believe that some of these statistics are not as strong as they could be due to other variables. Correlation does not mean causation. Just because the students are African American and residing in a particular state does not mean their average will be automatically lower than the white achievement scores. The article does not directly say this, but I feel it is basically insinuated, seeing as though no further evidence or support is provided. I don’t think that these studies are being very clear or precise. The sample sizes of student populations are not as comparable or consistent as they could be. I definitely agree with Mr. Smith’s skepticism and statement, “Certain things are consistent: inequitable distribution of teachers, inequitable funding of schools, institutional racism. That is consistent across the board, so if you expect to find a different gap in North or South, you’re not going to find that.”
Personally, I feel as though results from standardized tests are extremely difficult to form strong conclusions on, seeing as though it is challenging to judge exactly what a standard test actually measures. I have taken plenty of standardized tests, and I couldn’t count the number of students who filled in the little bubbles at random so they could be done and lay their head down on their desk until the next part of the test began. Standardized tests are not reputable samples from which to draw conclusions. Many students don’t care about them, because to the student, there is no incentive in which to actually try and do well. In my experience, standardized tests have always been viewed as missing out on class work time as well as a waste of time in general. I agree that certain tests are more rigorous than others, further altering results. The study does not acknowledge open enrollment numbers or other factors that could affect test results. I believe that there is the potential for open enrollment to have a relationship with the achievement gap. Overall, I find it insufficient to form conclusions based upon standardized test results and so called “achievement gaps,” especially with the immense number of variables that affects these claims.

An Interesting Article About Teaching

If any of you are interested in teaching, this is an interesting article about what makes a great teacher. From our in class-writing, it seems pretty clear what makes a bad teacher. However, this article seems to suggest that defining a good teacher is much more difficult.

Useful Links

If any of you are interested in learning more about the achievement gap, here is a link to the study that the New York Times refers to, and here is a link to a study about the 'excellence' gap. Both provide interactive, state-by-state comparisons.

Response to Articles About Racial Gap

After reading these articles, I was shocked at the statistics. I didn't realize Wisconsin really had the widest gap between black and white students in academics. Stereotypically, I would have assumed the South would have had the largest gaps. I was also surprised that the principals in Wisconsin were even shocked. I felt as if these three articles merely just stated the same thing, that Wisconsin and more specifically, Milwaukee, had the largest gap. I don't feel as if there was a real explanation or an effort to discover why Wisconsin more than any other state. The last article mentions open enrollment, but does that really explain why our gap is much wider than others? I don't know what else to say besides I agree with Shawn in that we need to focus on the education programs mainly in the Milwaukee area along with Madison where the African American populations are highest.

Gap Wisconsin

At the beginning of the semester, I went to the Morgridge Center for Public Service to find an opportunity to become involved in community work. Volunteer opportunities in Madison are plentiful, especially in reference to tutoring. A special program for tutoring, Schools of Hope, is one of the largest volunteer programs. The program sounded fine, as I quickly turned into the application, and waited.

A few days later, my phone rang and an interview was set up. The interview was intended so I could be become more accustom to the mission of the program. Schools of Hope is a volunteer opportunity for students to be tutors at schools with a large minority population in the student body. The goal of the program was to improve the racial gap in academia. I learned that Wisconsin had one of the worst academic racial gaps in the entire nation.

I was shocked. Wisconsin. Really?

Reading the articles confirmed this incomprehensible fact. Wisconsin has a lot of work to do to improve its academic institutions. Improvement of urban schools should be the first problem addressed. The majority of Wisconsin's African American residents live in the Milwaukee or Madison areas. Improving these two school districts would improve the gap numerically.

But that is just a number. A conscientious effort should be made to improving racial discrimination within the classroom. Although subtle, something is prohibiting some of Wisconsin's citizens from achieving an average education. The problem should be investigated further, and poses many questions. Questions that need to be answered.

Something interesting was the degree of shock that was implied when the largest gap did not come from the South. I feel that those problems are in the past, and now racial discrimination should be viewed as a national problem.

Response to A Conversation with Lisa Delpit

The most interesting part I took from this Q&A was that teachers can't just "give us the secrets". For example, it is not a teachers job to tell us the answers, but to lead and guide us to find the answers for ourselves. Lisa tells us that it is the teacher job to make the map and provide it. If the students cannot realize this for themselves, especially younger students, sometimes parents or other outside sources are brought in to evaluate. The teacher may be at fault, but is it right to let an outside source evaluate? Through Lisa's experiment with the class that was lectured to by one teacher and split into discussion groups by another, we see that we cannot rely on outside sources to evaluate a teacher's methods. The students all talked about how the lecture was interrupted by their teacher himself where the outside source saw it as being more involved with the students; but did the students really learn? The students felt gave the split up discussion class high marks, while the outside force saw it as lazy teaching. This shows that evaluations show more or less be left up to what the students themselves have learned and not how they were taught. Also, another main point I took from this article was that no matter what your social status is the way you're taught should not be effected. There should be a more personal, maybe even a cultural, reason to shift the lesson.