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Yesterday I wrote about the persistent achievement gap in schools, a and not for the first time. Along the way as I have sought to learn more, I heard about a topic called the Shaker Heights Problem. Shaker Heights, Ohio is a Cleveland suburb with a sizeable middle-class African-American population. Despite eliminating all of the previously assumed causes of the achievement gap between African-Americans and their white counterparts, the gap persisted. This is almost universally true across the US in rich and poor areas, in urban, rural and suburbia.

From a 1998 Washington Post Story:

 

Most troubling to educators is the growing consensus that the achievement gap now seems to largely defy the explanations that were once offered.

Some researchers say that wide income differences between blacks and whites, and school segregation -- once cited as crucial factors in the achievement disparity -- are now believed to play relatively small roles in the current gap. Family structure appears to be even less of a factor, research has shown. And even school spending is no longer seen as decisive, given that the once yawning disparity between the average amounts of money spent to educate black and white students has been all but eliminated in recent years. Also, most research has thoroughly discredited the notion that the gap reflects innate differences between the races.

Five years later John Ogbu, a Berkley anthropologist specializing in minority education issues published a study called "Black American Students in an Affluent Suburb."I found an interesting essay about the book in the San Francisco Chronicle called "Why Fixing the Schools Isn't Enough." The summary is that this is consistent with the multi-generational after-affects of ethnic oppression.

Ogbu points to the Buraku people of Japan as a comparison. They are ethnically identical to other Japanese. During Japan's feudal ages, the emperor designated the Buraku to be the laborers, the lowest class. To this day, the Buraku lag behind their Japanese counterparts in academic achievement. Yet when they immigrate to other countries, where they are seen simply as Japanese and not Buraku, the the gap gradually disappears. Their school achievement rises.

Third-generation descendants of Koreans who had been forced into labor in Japan in the last century are among the poorest-performing students in Japan. But Koreans who immigrated to China in search of a better life are the highest-achieving minority group in China.

Ogbu's book was controversial, and some academics fault the research. Ultimately he concluded that it was the failure of parents, and not the school district, the led to the gap. Even critics of his book seem to agree that the fundamental difference between these students is not at school but the degree to which parents oversee their own children's education instead of leaving it entirely to the school. If I understand these reports correctly, they conclude that what the schools need to do more than reach out to the students is reach out to their parents.

I also found the following National Public Radio stories, also from 2003, to be very informative. If you only listen to one, listen to the second story, which profiles a suburban Ohio High School that has successfully eliminated the gap.

NPR: Ohio School Narrows Black-White Achievement Gap
NPR: Tackling the Achievement Gap at Reynoldsburg High

I don't have any conclusions to draw from all of this, I'm not going to recite everything that LCPS does to close its own achievement gap or make recommendations for what it should do. I'm just putting some resources out there that have been interesting to me and which may interest you also.

Tomorrow I will write about a current LCPS proposal to dramatically change the way in which minority parents receive information from and provide input to LCPS regarding their children's education.