UW researcher surprised by 'magnitude of grimness' of Wisconsin achievement gap

Jesse Opoien:

Without trying to pin it on one magic solution -- what are some of the potential solutions that are being discussed?

There's plenty of research that says you get the most bang for your buck in investing in the early childhood grades. That probably still holds true. But at the same time, if you invested in high quality preschool and then let chips fall where they may, many of those positive effects will eventually deteriorate.

My sense is that the efforts to identify high-performing schools, high-quality schools regardless of what sector they're in -- public, charter or private -- identifying the characteristics of high-performing schools regardless of sector, and trying to replicate them.

The other thing we've known for a long time is the single biggest within-school factor or influence on student achievement, in this order, are the quality of the teacher and the quality of the principal. Investing in ways of identifying effective teachers and helping them get better is almost always a good investment. It's hard work, but it's a good investment.

The other thing in terms of causes worth mentioning: there's plenty of research that shows we have inequitable distributions of teacher quality. The higher the poverty rate, the more likely students are to be taught by a younger, less effective teacher. We can look at ways of trying to incentivize the most effective teachers to teach in the neediest schools. There are some positive signs here, but it's nothing that's going to be fixed over night.

Related: the rejected Madison Preparatory IB charter school.

Posted by Jim Zellmer at November 11, 2013 12:25 AM
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