By snoadmin
William Jeynes, professor of education at Cal State Long Beach, recently presented his findings on achievement gap research before the National Press Club in Washington, D.C. Jeynes sat down with the Daily Forty-Niner to discuss his presentation.
Q: How did you become interested in the study?
A: I think the achievement gap is probably the No. 1 issue in education. Probably over the last 45 or 50 year, more effort has been put into trying to understand it and reduce it than any other educational issue. And I think because it has been on the front burner for so long and after 40 or 50 years of research, we’re still at square one struggling to resolve it, so that often baffled me.
Q: So how did you go about collecting your information?
A: Well, basically, I did it on my own. What in essence happens is the government goes out and retrieves data … the name of the data is National Educational Longitudinal Study (NELS). The government goes out and asks questions from students all over the country. Then what you can do is look into the data set, determine the variables that you are interested in and do your analysis. Now there are all kinds of huge advantages to that.
First of all, who has the money to go out and take a nationwide random sample of students? I could do a sample of, say, some Long Beach high school, but the natural response would be, OK so that eliminates the gap for Long Beach high schools, but how do you know that applies to the rest of the country? How do we know those high schools [in Long Beach] are typical of American high schools?
That has always been a problem facing researchers: to be able to generalize to a wider population. So what the government did was put out millions of dollars to, in essence, put together questions that researchers would be interested in, then [the researchers] would do the random sample.
It has another advantage, too, because it’s a data set of such reputation no one questions it. There’s no “that’s only Long Beach kids.” It’s everyone.
Q: Do you think those factors are more important than the schools themselves, the environment, the lack of resources?
A: Absolutely. I’m all for equalization of funding, but the research has been consistent that family factors are far more important than school factors. Now that’s humbling to admit as an educator. I’d love to say that schools are the main factor, but they are not; I’d be lying.
Q: What about the teachers and their effectiveness?
A: They do have some effect, but the reality is, if you go up to individual teachers who have had experience in the classroom and ask them about the students that are struggling in their classes, a lot of times teachers feel quite helpless. They know that there are particular students that have great potential, but they come from such a messed-up family background that there is only so much they can do.
To their credit, a lot of teachers will try to act as surrogate parents. But there is only so much they can do.
I used to be coordinator of student teaching. I would work with a lot of student teachers, go and evaluate their teaching.
I remember going to a school where there was a second grade boy and over half the class discipline was directed at him. He was a handful. He was bothering everyone, teasing, hitting everyone. My student teacher was wondering, “What is it with this kid? He’s only seven years old and he’s acting like a juvenile delinquent.” Then we come to find out in those short seven years, he had lived in five different home situations.
And during the course of the school year, there even was one day he had been living with his grandmother and she had had it with him. During the regular school day she drove up to the school, took out all his things, left them at the curb and drove off. She refused to say goodbye or anything. She didn’t even hug him, say goodbye or anything – just drove off. He didn’t even know where he was going to live that night.
So family factors are important. I mean, expenditure does have a little effect, but the amazing thing is that it doesn’t seem to be having that much effect now. About half the states in the country require equalization of funding, but the achievement gap is almost the same as it was before the equalization.
Also, if you look at the fifty states, plus the District of Columbia, and look at the expenditure per student and match that with achievement, Washington, D.C. spends the most per student. But they are last in achievement.
Utah spends the least but they are usually about fifth in achievement. It’s unquestionable that there are some schools that have it much better than others. But our research shows you can have the best schools in the world, but if you come from a situation where there’s strife, arguing and divisiveness, it’s hard to do well in school.
Q: You mentioned in your paper that our educational leaders should be doing more to advocate the religious aspect in schools. How much and where do you draw the line on something like that?
A: The way I think of it is that Bill Clinton made a very pivotal speech in 1995 … he said that we are telling our students nowadays to leave their religion at the front door of the school – and that’s wrong.
For example, in Westminster about 15 or 20 years ago, a student was climbing the jungle gym, was at the top and fell, hitting his head on each layer of bars as he went down. A number of people came running, including a first grade boy who was a schoolmate.
The boy said, let’s pray for him. He started to pray, and here comes the principal and the teacher who tell the kid he can’t do that here. He wasn’t [even] suspended – he got expelled. I know his relatives and the kid became an atheist. He said the reason why is because if God is that bad, then it must be evil to follow Go if prayer and God are that bad … I would go so far as to say – and I know this might be controversial – but I really believe that there is such intolerance to regarding religion in our schools that if teachers were to say, “Write an essay about someone you look up to, some historical figure,” I know of literally dozens of cases where a student wanted to write about Jesus Christ but the teacher disallowed it. That’s not right.
That’s discrimination in my book, and I would further argue that our nations’ attitude toward religion in public schools is one the greatest examples of institutionalized racism in this country.
Q: So do you think by not encouraging religious faith, schools discourage faith?
A: I think by the examples I just gave you, we are not neutral. I think public schools discourage religious faith. You can talk about the fact that a lot of schools don’t even allow Christmas carols anymore. You know, children are not dumb and they can tell when their faith is not welcome. Whatever they derive strength from, we should encourage [it] so they can do well.
Q: You mentioned in your paper how this family and faith idea would help foster racial harmony. Yet most of our schools, churches and neighborhoods are segregated along racial and certainly economic lines.
A: I think that the color of our skin and fact that people emphasize it so much just shows how superficial our society really is.
Q: So where will this research about family, faith and education lead to next? What’s down the road for you?
A: I got a strong response at the press conference, largely from the U.S. Department of Education. They want me to come back. They’re going to sponsor another press conference and invite some members from congress who might be interested. And this is quite humbling … The following day, the dates are still tentative, I have been invited to speak at the White House. That’s really exciting. Again, because it’s one of those topics [achievement gaps] that’s the main topic in education.
