A Rational and Fruitful Discussion of the Achievement Gap

We have posted several posts on the achievement gap in the past along with critiques on the simplistic solutions often offered  --- close down schools, blame unions, etc.  Today, we are pleased to reprint an article by Eric Cooper and Yvette Jackson of the National Urban Alliance for Effective Education with their permission.  Our readers will have the opportunity for a change to read a more insightful and rational analysis on confronting this very series social issue.


The 'Fierce Urgency of Now': It's Time to Close the Gap
Narrowing Race and Culture Gaps Between Students and Teachers

By Eric Cooper & Yvette Jackson
National Urban Alliance for Effective Education


Education Week
Published Online: January 25, 2011
Published in Print: January 26, 2011, as The 'Fierce Urgency of Now'
Vol. 30, Issue 18, Pages 22-23

Reprinted with Permission

The recent national conversation about our K-12 schools has done a remarkable job of reducing complex issues to simple choices: Failed traditional public schools or successful charter schools? Ineffective union teachers or excellent nonunion teachers?

And the list goes on—though not for very long.

The truth is that these conversations are the easy ones and not the ones that will solve the real challenges in underperforming schools. Just below the surface are far more perplexing issues of race and culture that continue to leave students of color behind academically and economically.

To be sure, the nation has made the performance of students of color a priority, at least in terms of tracking and documenting student achievement so that schools can’t hide behind top performers. But the focus on accountability that made closing academic achievement gaps a national priority has revealed another chasm that is harder to measure and equally pervasive.

Teachers in urban classrooms often feel unable to connect with students of color or students from cultures different from their own. This cultural and relationship gap is one of the biggest barriers to helping students of color reach their intellectual and academic potential. The teacher’s role is especially important for students who face daunting family circumstances and primarily depend on school for their intellectual and character development.

We know this because for 20 years teachers have been telling us so, asking for our help, and thanking us when they connect with students in ways that promote student growth and confidence. Students also know this. In survey after survey, students say they want caring adult relationships and teachers who understand them and their communities.

Nearly a decade ago, the No Child Left Behind Act offered hope for pushing through such barriers by pressuring states to revamp teacher preparation, define quality teaching, and put a high-quality teacher in every classroom. But today, just as surely as NCLB remains on the books, its goals for teaching are more an aspiration than a reality—particularly for African-American and Latino students. That is because neither NCLB nor resulting professional development has focused sufficiently on systemic ways to help teachers fully respond to the needs and identify the strengths of culturally and racially diverse students.

Today, far too many students of color sit in classrooms waiting for opportunities that will elicit and nurture their attention, creativity, and intellectual potential. They long to excel beyond the potential that their schools, teachers, and other adults see in them. But while they wait, many will see their skills atrophy, perpetuating the serious issues of underachievement by students of color.

Today, far too many students of color sit in classrooms waiting for opportunities that will elicit and nurture their attention, creativity, and intellectual potential.

We can end their waiting by acknowledging that teachers often do not feel qualified to bridge gaps in experience and background with students in ways that draw out students’ strengths, make connections with them, and maximize their potential. This doesn’t mean that these teachers are “bad” or can’t succeed with some students, but instead that these educators need new strategies and ways of thinking.

There is a lot we can do right away, starting with how we as a nation approach professional development. We must:

• Shift the perspective of teachers and schools so they no longer see students primarily as test scores and put too much focus on their weaknesses. Teachers need practices that help identify, affirm, and build on student strengths, using “dynamic” assessments and observations on how learners approach rigorous content. When students and teachers learn that a relentless focus on increasingly complex content is ultimately more important than the grades students receive, the more successful students become.

• Help teachers who feel unprepared to meet the needs of students of color or economically disadvantaged students. Classroom relationships are especially challenging for many of these teachers. Not knowing what is meaningful and relevant to students and misunderstanding reasons for their underperformance intensifies these challenges.

• Give teachers strategies that connect learning with the lives of their students. This will help students understand concepts and other classroom material and, just as importantly, allow them to demonstrate understanding and build their confidence.

• Design professional development that is part of long-term learning objectives that are embedded in curriculum, creates high expectations on a daily basis, engages students in the professional development with their teachers, and provides strategies and accountability measures to meet these expectations.

• Provide greater leadership. Too few principals are adequately involved in professional development, and the result is a gap between leadership, support, and lasting momentum.

We must be realistic about the challenges teachers face. It is not easy to believe that a 5th grader who is reading at the 2nd grade level and inattentive is going to be at grade level any time soon without extensive support. But the wrong assumption is that the student doesn’t care or doesn’t want to participate or learn. Instead, it may take a structured conversation with that student, a survey of personal interests, or a connection between learning and the real world. The barriers can be broken down.

If a teacher finds that the student was rarely read to outside of school, then someone should read to him. If that student loves exploration, then someone can read to him about exploration and the academics embedded in the texts. But don’t stop there. Once he’s interested, get him to talk about his interest and then expose him to virtual field trips to prepare a presentation on exploration using multimedia resources.

The next part of this journey unfolds when the students are assigned increasingly complex projects in which they mentor others. In this way, the goal is not the grade or a test score, but sustained effort. This kind of effort helps students and teachers get beyond “stereotype threats”—the destructive forces that encourage students to play down to lowest expectations, particularly widely held beliefs about their intelligence.

Re-evaluating how we address the needs of students of color is not an option. Today, on average, 55 percent of black and brown Americans graduate from high school, while the graduation rate for white Americans is approximately 78 percent. Sadly, many of those students who drop out end up going to prison. Nearly two-thirds of America’s inmates are people of color.

We can do better if we recognize that wide-scale improvement cannot be boiled down to simple choices between options that promise pockets of excellence. There are some 3.5 million teachers in the United States. Real change will mean engaging all of them—and especially those in urban centers who are seeking help.

Only then will we begin to break down barriers to high intellectual achievement that otherwise will condemn another generation of brown and black children to poverty or worse. Unfortunately, for these children, society has created circumstances where failure is an option. This will continue if that is the option we adults allow. We can do more, though we must do it now. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. reminded us of this when he spoke of the “fierce urgency of now.” Collectively we can do it. We must do it.

Eric Cooper is the president and founder of the nonprofit National Urban Alliance for Effective Education, in Syosset, N.Y. Yvette Jackson is the organization’s chief executive officer.

What would Martin Luther King Jr. say about class size and charter schools?

On this, the holiday commemorating Martin Luther King Jr.'s birthday, we should remember that African-American children still suffer from inequitable conditions in our nation's schools - foremost among them, larger classes.

This is despite the fact that class size reduction is one of the very few reforms that have been proven to narrow the achievement gap, as poor and minority children receive twice the benefit from smaller classes than the average student. (See this recent issue brief from ETS, with data revealing the persistent inequities in class size, and pointing out that the achievement gap narrowed substantially in the 1970's and 1980's but stalled in the 1990's -- just as progress in reducing class size stalled nationally as well. )

Yet the corporate reformers who have hijacked educational policy in this nation, including Bill Gates, Arne Duncan, and Michelle Rhee, are all calling for even larger class sizes in our nation's public schools.

Rather than support equitable conditions, they are promoting the further expansion of charter schools, which as the UCLA Civil Rights Project has pointed out, leads to more segregation, not less. See also this excellent article by Jim Horn on the charter school issue, "What would Dr. King say?"

See below; one of the first in-depth televised interviews ever given by Martin Luther King Jr., first broadcast on NBC news on October 27, 1957.

(thanks to Mona Davids of the NY Charter Parents Association for pointing out the Jim Horn article.)

Joel Klein's resignation: it's about time

Many parents will be glad to see Joel Klein leave as chancellor, who had no respect for their views or priorities. In DOE’s own surveys, parents said that class size reduction was their greatest wish for their children, and yet class sizes have risen sharply under his leadership.

He also showed very little regard for the rule of law; and faced multiple lawsuits as a result, including one triggered by his refusal to reduce class size despite receiving more than $2 billion in additional state funds in exchange for promising to do so. He misspent that $2 billion, and stole our children’s futures.

Klein was also an extremely poor manager and kept on reorganizing the department into chaos.

He is leaving us with a legacy of classroom overcrowding, communities fighting over co-located schools, Kindergarten waiting lists, unreliable school grades based on bad data, substandard credit recovery programs spreading like wildfire, and our children starved of art, music and science – all replaced with test prep.

Instead of progress, NYC black and Hispanic students have fallen further behind their peers in all nine other cities tested since 2003 in the national exams known as the NAEPs.The achievement gap has not narrowed in any grade or category. And we are the only city in the nation in which non-poor students now have lower average test scores on the NAEPs than in 2003.

It would be a difficult hole for any successor to dig out of.

As for Cathie Black, it is unfortunate that once again, the mayor has chosen someone with no educational experience, except for sitting on the board of a charter school with teacher attrition rates of 42 -71%, and a student suspension rate of 62%.

Our schools need a chancellor who has a compassionate and deep understanding of how our children should be educated, and I hope that Commissioner Steiner thinks twice before granting Ms. Black a waiver.

Some Sad Statistics

Check out George Will's column in today's Washington Post:


For black children, daunting divides in achievement and family life
by George Will
Washington Post

So what's the story? Have NYC schools made progress in test scores, or not?

Today's Daily News reports on how NYC parents are reacting in the Bronx and in Manhattan to the revelation that the great progress claimed by Bloomberg and Klein in the past was a fraud: "The scores make you want to cry," said Monica Major, a Bronx parent and president of School District 11's Community Education Council. "For years, we've been bamboozled and lied to."

Or as as Diane Ravitch writes in an oped, "When the [state] scores were released, there was a sound of bursting bubbles across the state. What once were miracles turned into mirages.”

Yet in recent days, Bloomberg and Klein have tried to argue that the evidence is still strong that city students have made "dramatic progress" under their leadership.

First, they have repeatedly claimed that since the city's average scores on the state exams have been rising over time, the fact that the proficiency cut scores have now been drastically lowered is irrelevant.

Yet the city's average scores on the state exams are likely just as unreliable as its proficiency levels, since the questions on the test have gotten easier over time.

See an earlier posting, in which Steve Koss discusses a 2007 Daily News expose showing how the increase in "P" (or "probability) values on the field test questions indicated that the state tests had become simpler between 2002-2005. (The chart to the right was originally in the Daily News.)

To prove this, intrepid reporter Erin Einhorn even gathered a bunch of children to take both the 2002 and 2005 math exams, and out our 34 kids, 24 of them did better on the 2005 exam.

As one of them said, "the 2002 questions were more complicated than in 2005... In 2005, they kept it short, simple and sweet.”

Really, the only semi-reliable measure we have of student achievement over this period is the city's performance on the national exams known as the NAEPs. Klein has also made questionable claims in recent days in relation to the NAEPs.

Here is what he said to the Wall St. Journal: "In both fourth-grade math and reading, New York City now performs at the same level as the nation overall," the schools chancellor said."

Is this true? No. In no subject or grade does the achievement level of city students match that of the nation as a whole, including 4th grade reading or math; though the gaps are smaller in that grade than in 8th.

A more meaningful comparison would be to look at in the change in NAEP scores compared to other large cities from 2003-2009, to see whether there has been exceptional progress during the Bloomberg/Klein era .

First I looked at the change in the percent of students at or above basic over this period, in NYC compared to other large cities and to Atlanta, which has made exemplary progress.

Note that compared to other large cities, NYC has done a bit better on average in two categories and worse in two: 8th grade reading and 8th grade math.

In all subjects, however, NYC's gains have been far less than those of Atlanta, (which incidentally has neither mayoral control nor has it been awarded the Broad prize.)

I also analyzed NYC's record in 8th grade reading, to see how our schools have done compared to other large urban districts.

This is what I found: NYC comes in dead last among the ten cities tested since 2003 in this subject -- the only city to make absolutely no progress.

Then I looked at the achievement gap issue between racial and ethnic groups, which Bloomberg and Klein's repeatedly claimed to have narrowed over the past few years. At one point, Bloomberg even went before Congress and boasted that he had cut it in half. Is that true?



No, of course not; In NYC schools, according to the NAEPs, the achievement gap is still very substantial, in all subjects and grades, from 23 to 35 points depending on the category.

But have these gaps narrowed over time? Well, the black-white gap has shrunk by one or two points in 4th grade reading and 8th grade math, which is relatively small in relation to the overall size of the gap; and the gap has increased slightly in the other two categories.

In terms of the white-Hispanic gap, Bloomberg and Klein's record is even worse. In three out of four categories, the gap has increased; and it has grown much larger in 8th grade reading and math.

So, when you look at the NAEP scores, the progress made in NYC under Bloomberg and Klein compared to other large cities is only a little better in some areas, and in some areas, like 8th grade reading or the Hispanic achievement gap, far worse.

Closing the Achievement Gap? Black & Hispanic Students Disappear from City's Top High School

As reported today in the NY Times and the Post, a grand total of 7 black students scored high enough on the Specialized High School Admission Test (SHSAT) to be offered admission to Stuyvesant High School. The total for Hispanic students was an equally dismal 17. The under-representation of black and Hispanic students at Stuyvesant has been pointed out for a number of years (see 2006 and 2008 NY Times articles).

During my tenure as a parent and PA officer, there was much consternation about it, but of course nothing that either the PA or the school itself could do (most notably, a mentoring program for students already at Stuyvesant) could improve the dismal admission statistics. These are basically a reflection of the quality of preparation in the lower grades. No doubt the test is culturally biased, but that alone cannot explain the low numbers. And it certainly cannot explain the continuing drop in admissions, as there is no reason to believe the test has become any more culturally biased over the years.

According to the “DOE spokesman" interviewed by the Post reporter, “the demographics of those taking the test and receiving offers has stayed relatively constant in recent years.” The statistics on the DOE's own website tell a different story.

The state statistical reports for Stuyvesant (here and here) indicate that the school had 83 “Black /African-American” students in 2003-4; 75 in 2004-5; 66 in 2005-6, 66 in 2006-7, and 61 in 2007–08; the corresponding numbers for “Hispanic or Latino” are 96, 86, 99, 99 and 93. These classifications are probably somewhat fluid, but there has undoubtedly been a huge fall-off. Incidentally, the shrinking number of black students is even more dramatic when viewed against the backdrop of ever-larger freshman classes (between 2004 and 2009, the freshman class grew from about 700 to almost 1000 students).

Of course, the city's response to the continuing slide in the number of black and Hispanic students who “ace the test” (shorthand for making the cut-off for admission to Stuyvesant) has been more test prep rather than more instruction. Instead of teaching more math, science and English in K-8 (including correct verbal expression and critical reading of books and essays rather than isolated passages), DOE set up a Specialized High School Institute, which gives promising candidates “extra lessons and test-taking tips.” Predictably, the approach hasn’t yielded results. Although it seems that most people who can afford the often substantial fees have given in to SHSAT test-prep frenzy--"cram schools" in Flushing are given much of the credit for the explosion in Asian enrollment at Stuyvesant, while Kaplan and its clones are considered virtually obligatory for everyone else--there's little reason to believe test prep will make a real difference for a child who isn't already adequately prepared in the subjects the test covers.

The stories behind the statistics are instructive and heart-breaking. The 2006 New York Times article cited above reported on two kids in the city's free SHSAT test prep program, which was held at Stuyvesant. (I have edited identifying information):

[A girl], 12, said the very act of striding through Stuyvesant’s gleaming hallways made her feel smart. “You can be like, ‘I could be here, I could be in these desks in a year or two,’ ” she said during her lunch break one day. For [a boy], 12, who got an “overall excellence” medal at his sixth-grade graduation, the experience has been humbling. His teacher at [PS XXX] had called him a “walking dictionary,” but in the first seven pages of “To Kill a Mockingbird,” a book he read for the institute, he found 71 new vocabulary words.

How can a few weeks of "extra lessons" and "test tips" possibly prepare these kids for the SHSAT, much less the Stuyvesant curriculum? Consider, by contrast, the experience of several kids I know, who moved to New York after going to school overseas, took the SHSAT without much preparation or even familiarity with that sort of test, "aced it" and did well at Stuyvesant. Most did not even speak English in the home, but all were well-prepared to learn what Stuyvesant can offer.

When the Post reporter called me for comment last night, I practically fell off the couch on which I was dozing. The under-representation of black and Hispanic students at Stuyvesant is an old story, but a drop in the black student population from 2%-3% to less than 1% is astonishing. No matter how much BloomKlein may crow about increasing scores on dumbed- down and easily gamed tests, the proof of the pudding eventually is in how many kids get admitted to good high schools. A competitive-exam school such as Stuyvesant is not for everyone, nor would I suggest it is the only avenue to academic success. But I don't see how the administration can claim to be making progress on the racial achievement gap when the number of black kids who qualify for the city’s top high school has fallen to insignificance under their watch.

How much of the achievement gap is in our heads?

The overwhelming perception in Malaysia is that Chinese schools outperform national schools, and that Chinese students outperform others. This isn't something we (by which I mean Malaysians) like to talk about, but reading this report on a study of self-esteem and stereotyping in America, I couldn't help but think of the situation here.

Problematically, I think these perceptions of Chinese superiority have some basis. Maybe Petaling Jaya is an outlier, but amongst the primary schools, Chinese schools generally do better when going head to head with national schools. Over 90% of Chinese parents choose Chinese vernacular schools, and I think it's well-established by now that a lot of these parents do this purely because national schools aren't delivering the quality of education they want.

The issue of Chinese students is a trickier one, especially because I'm not sure what data is publicly available on this. The anecdotal evidence I have strongly suggests that the Chinese are disproportionally represented among top performing students.

It does not help public perception at all that our government tends to further this, with officials' not-so-subtle lamentations about how Malay students need more help to compete against their peers. This perception has been around since independence -- Tunku and Tun Dr Ismail both talked a lot about how the Malays would need help to compete against the Chinese academically and professionally. Tun Dr Mahathir took this rhetoric to another level, both in his statements and his policies.

But a lot of academic literature suggests that it is precisely these kinds of stereotypes which become self-fulfilling prophecies. Because we think the Chinese are more academically-inclined, Chinese students perform better. Because we think the Malays need help, they become demotivated in school.

Even if we aren't consciously aware of these effects, I wouldn't be surprised to find them here. Other studies which have attempted to account for stereotyping often find such unconscious effects. A common experiment is to make students read a passage about stereotyping (e.g. in the US one might ask a class to read about how East Asian men often outperform other demographics on mathematics tests), and then make them take a test where that stereotype applies. When the stereotype has been "primed," students from the underperforming groups (such as white males or women, in our example of supposed East Asian aptitude for maths) do poorer compared to a control group, where no stereotypes have been primed.

It would be interesting to see if we can carry out a counterpart to that American study here. The study I mentioned earlier showed that simply encouraging black students to think about themselves positively through a writing exercise slashed the white-black achievement gap by 40 per cent. A follow-up study two years later shows that the benefits remain.

Living in Malaysia, you can't help but be exposed to all sorts of stereotypes everyday. I think a lot of us are constantly primed for exposure to particular stereotypes, especially in urban areas. It would be interesting to study how much of this achievement gap we perceive between different demographics can be narrowed purely by accounting for and neutralising these stereotypes.

For a Progressive President, a Very Nonprogressive Educational Policy

(Cross-posted on the Social Issues blog)


The progressive language implicit in many of President Obama's programs was no where to be found in the educational policy that he unveiled recently in his speech on education. Rather than an imaginative vision on what we need for public schools in a complex 21st century democracy, President Obama fell back on the language of neoconservatives for things like rewarding teachers and more school choice at least through more charter schools. Essentially, his proposal for new mechanisms for making changes in the educational system lacked any discussion on what these changes were meant to accomplish. For example, a recommendation for more charter schools is a rather neutral suggestion. The real question is: for what purpose and to what end? That requires a much deeper conversation about the public purposes of education for a democracy that is constantly reinventing itself. For some, it is an opportunity to introduce new ideas and innovative approaches. For others, it provides an avenue for choices within our public school system that can meet the diverse needs, aspirations and talents of our children. For still others, charter schools have been seen as a path to privatization and the dismantling of the public schools and teacher unions.



But more importantly, lurking behind President Obama's educational policy are the silent assumptions that have controlled the national debate for decades. A genuine national discussion on educational reform requires that we start to discuss that which has been undiscussable, namely, that the language of the market place has become the language of education. Students are talked about as the human capital that keeps the national economy competitive. But, as educational critic, John Goodlad, has constantly pointed out from surveys taken to determine parents' desires for their children, parents' visions are not limited to seeing their children as human capital or workers for a competitive market force. They consistently say that they want their children treated as whole human beings, nurtured in their growth, inspired in their dreams, and empowered in their civic voice. Of course, the usual retort here is that such goals are not inconsistent with the goal of producing a working force for the labor market. That is true. And so is the response by parents whose children have been marginalized in the schools. They very rightly are demanding that their children succeed in a competitive labor market at the same level that the children of the more privileged have succeeded. Both of these responses are legitimate. But the force of the arguments is to silence the national conversation that we should be having. In a public school system that serves both democracy and capitalism, the language of the market place prevails and all other discourses are on the edge. It is that conversation that the public needs to have. Nations are guided by the stories they tell about themselves. What story are we telling ourselves about the public purposes of our schools?


Readers who are interested in looking at the issues associated with "Schooling as if Democracy Matters," may want to read our Volume 3 Number 1 issue of the journal.

The Obama Effect?

At the Journal, we have long been concerned with the effects of race and poverty on NCLB test scores. Our current issue addresses this theme in depth, while Jonathon Kozol, subject of our second issue, has famously criticized NCLB and its relation to economically and racially disadvantaged areas--and criticized leadership that ignores those findings. See his book The Shame of the Nation (267)

Famous Harvard and Princeton studies on race and performance backed up Kozol's criticism with an even more surprising finding that “it is the targets of a stereotype whose behavior is most powerfully affected by it. A stereotype that pervades the culture, like "ditzy blondes" and "forgetful seniors" can make people painfully aware of how society views them--so painfully aware, in fact, that knowledge of the stereotype can affect how well they do on intellectual and other tasks.”

The effects of these findings, when regarding African-Americans, may see a drastic change from President Obama’s election.

In this article, researchers at the Vanderbilt Owen Graduate School of Management administered a standardized test to a mixed group of blacks and whites four times during the process of Obama’s run. The further the president got, the better the minority subjects of the study did. They were told that the exam was “created by the Massachusetts Aptitude Assessment Center, and is used as a diagnostic tool to assess verbal problem-solving ability”—a ruse meant to activate the stereotype that blacks don’t do as well as whites on aptitude tests.

After Obama’s election, among students who watched the speech, the achievement gap was roughly equal.

The possible consequences of this study, though it will require follow-up studies to confirm the hypothesis, are incredible. Obama’s example as a black man in power might serve as a psychological reinforcement to the black children of America who disproportionately attend underfunded, poverty-ridden schools that underperform on standardized tests. A picture of a black President might be worth a thousand motivational words. In the spirit of the Obama campaign, we will hope.

Tuskegee and the Obama Effect

By now you've all heard the fascinating news of a study (New York Times: "Study Sees An Obama Effect As Lifting Black Test-Takers") that seems to demonstrate an Obama effect on the black/white gap in test scores. In short, a team led by a Vanderbilt University researcher administered a series of 20 questions (drawn from verbal section of the GRE) shortly before Obama's nomination and again after his acceptance and then again after the election. Black performance on the test improved after Obama's acceptance, and rendered the black/white gap in test performance nonsignificant.

I'm the first to admit the potential for an Obama effect. Every time I hear him speak I think of the power of a role model, and dream of possible studies that could uncover such an effect.

But in this case, I'm not so sure what's being captured is an effect of Obama on the confidence of black students in their academic performance. Here's why:

(1) The students taking the test at each administration were different students. If the same kids took the test repeatedly, obviously we'd expect their scores to increase.

(2) According to the lead researcher, in a personal communique with me, while the pool of potential participants was constructed at time 1, the actual sample at each time was based on volunteers offered a monetary incentive to participate (what size incentive? I don't know).

There are more critical pieces of information missing as well:

(a) Whether the reasons for participation vs. non-participation differed by race, and are correlated with test-taking ability.

and

(b) Whether the rates of participation were similar for both racial groups.

What we do know is that ever since the Tuskegee Study of Untreated Syphilis (TSUS), African Americans are less likely than Whites to volunteer for participation in research. Given the known gaps in achievement, if they knew anything about what the study required they may've also simply lacked the confidence to participate. This is completely understandable. The question is, could it influence the findings in this study? Are there other plausible explanations for the change in test scores observed in the study?

Yes. Let me suggest just a few.

(1) A disproportionate effect of the economy on black's financial status. The study took place during a year of steady decline in the economic standing of many Americans. Is it possible that the money offered for participation wasn't enough to offset the concerns of higher-achieving black students about research (or to offset the opportunity costs associated with participation)? But that by time 2, the money was simply worth more (e.g. more effective as an incentive) and induced greater participation of black students? I'm positing that during the period whites were both less affected by changes in the economy and overall less averse to volunteering to take a test.

(2) An effect of Obama on black's trust in society, including researchers. So at time 1 the black students in the pool are generally more suspicious and only the lower-achievers are affected by the monetary incentive enough to overcome that suspicion and take the test. At time 2, they're feeling more goodwill towards the world, and higher-achieving black students are willing to participate.

(3) Maybe higher-achieving black students, when asked twice to do a study, tend to do it? I don't know if nonrespondents at time 1 were asked again.

These are just three ideas about how sample selection could bias these results. I have many more. What about the gender composition of the samples? ( Black men have lower test scores on average and are generally less likely to participate in studies. )

I want to quantify the good feelings we're all having in the post-Bushie world too. I get the motivation. But I don't think we should get too carried with feel-good stories on studies that have not yet undergone peer review.

What Does it take to Eliminate the Achievement Gap for African American Students?

In our winter 2007 issue, the Journal of Educational Controversy had a special section on Washington state politics. Among other articles, we published the position papers prepared by the Multi-Ethnic Think Tank (METT) in Washington State. The Multi-Ethnic Think Tank is an umbrella group that comprises individual think tanks - African American, Asian and Pacific Islander American, Hispanic American, Native American and Low Socio-Economic think tanks. It is a community inspired coalition aimed at making a difference for the education of its children who are struggling in our public schools. For a personal critique, read Thelma Jackson’s separate article, “Educational Malpractice in Our Schools: Shortchanging African American and Other Disenfranchised Students” in our journal’s Volume 2 Number 1, Winter 2007 issue on the theme, Jonathan Kozol's Nation of Shame Forty Years Later.

For readers who are interested in learning about the state's response to these ongoing community concerns, we have an update. During the 2009 legislative session, the Washington State Legislature is considering the problem of the achievement gap. A statewide advisory committee, which included some prominent METT members like Thelma Jackson, was created following passage of House Bill 2722 in the 2008 legislative session. Its charge was to investigate the African-American student achievement gap and recommend solutions to the problem. The committee has now presented its report, "A Plan to Close the Achievement Gap for African American Students," to the legislature. In a press release on the website of the Office of Superintendent of Public Instruction, Mona Humphries Bailey, committee co-chair, says "We want to make sure that our State's 57,700 African American students are no longer left behind. We want to make sure that the system cares about them and that it sees them in all their individuality and potential." A copy of the report can now be read online.