Linda Darling-Hammond

Linda Darling-Hammond

The results on the Smarter Balanced assessments, the centerpiece of the California Assessment of Student Performance and Progress, or CAASPP, were released on Sept. 9 and showed the vast accomplishment gaps that decades of education reforms have failed to close. In a series of interviews, EdSource Executive Manager Louis Freedberg interviewed several leading experts near the continuing gap — and what additional reforms are needed to narrow or close it. Part four of the series is with Stanford University professor Linda Darling-Hammond, who too is president and CEO of the newly established Learning Policy Institute. She as well serves equally chair of the California Commission on Instructor Credentialing and is the senior enquiry advisor to the Smarter Balanced Assessment Consortium, which designed the assessments.

Were you encouraged or discouraged past the results on the Smarter Balanced tests, or is this what you expected?

I did not have particular expectations. I am not surprised at the trends we are seeing. I take it as a baseline, and that is how the state should approach it. The more important data volition come next year and the twelvemonth afterwards as people become used to these kinds of assessments, piece of work to make the investments in instructor professional development, and students use the opportunities they take to make upwards the gap, as well as move ahead. That will be when the real important results will begin to occur.

Why after decades of reforms do we still such large achievement gaps?

The "one-time" reforms focused on exam-based accountability, which emphasized tests of low-level skills that drove curriculum, specially in the almost loftier-need schools that were threatened with sanctions if students did non show higher test scores each yr. While flush schools did not feel as much of a need to teach to the test, lower-income schools did. As a consequence, the curriculum split grew wider between those who were education for college-order skills and those drilling on lower-guild skills.

In improver, the onetime reforms featured testing without investing, so the spread in access to dollars, qualified teachers, technology resource and other materials for learning grew wider and wider between rich and poor schools. Schools serving poor children spent much less than schools serving wealthy ones. (The spending ratio was 3 to i between high- and depression-spending schools in California before they received extra funds nether the Local Control Funding Formula).

Why is the gap on the Smarter Counterbalanced assessments wider in some instances than on the California Standards Tests students took until 2013?

The Smarter Balanced assessments are focused on higher-order thinking and problem-solving skills including inquiry, investigation, and communication, which were not emphasized in the old standards or assessed in the old California Standards Tests. Schools that were teaching to the erstwhile standards and tests accept a lot of work to do to transform curriculum and teaching to these new goals. There is likely more than work to do in some schools than in others.

In addition, the new tests required students to feel comfortable with the utilise of applied science, as the tests are computer-based and often require keyboarding skills and use of dissimilar kinds of reckoner-based tools. Then students in lower-wealth schools that did not take all-encompassing technology access and who do not have technology at home had another claiming in taking these tests. Their scores are probable to exist artificially lower on this first round of testing than their actual skill levels.

Will the reforms that California has put in a place help narrow the achievement gap?

The fact that the country has put a couple of billion dollars into engineering and professional evolution for the new standards, and has put in identify the new LCFF formula that is get-go to give more resource to schools serving students with greater needs, will begin to level the playing field over the next few years. I would expect to see a reduction in the achievement gap because of all of these factors. But we have a lot of work to do, and these data show simply how much.

Given the stiff relationship between socioeconomic background and education outcomes, are there limits on what schools tin do?

I think we all know it is a multi-faceted job, and schools are non the only important component. It is also true that schools can do a lot if they are given the resource to create customs schools, and if students accept access to health and social services, and before- and later-school intendance.

There are districts that accept been making the right kinds of investments that did unusually well on the Smarter Counterbalanced tests, similar Sanger Unified (in the Central Valley). Then we can practise a lot. We should also be thinking about reducing poverty, increasing employment, improving health care, ensuring that food security is a given in our state. But investing strongly in education is a large part of the story.

Should policies that reduce inequalities at the front end end be role of an overall education reform strategy, instead of trying to mitigate their bear on once a kid gets to schoolhouse?

Equally a nation and a state, we demand to take the investment in our citizens seriously in terms of employment, in terms of health services, and housing. There was a time in 1960s and 70s when nosotros had a g national strategy that was replicated in California that was nearly bringing prosperity to all families. That translates into improved educational outcomes. Equally much every bit investments in education try to compensate for the growth of poverty, it would be much better to address the welfare of families directly, and then to invest in education besides.

To get more reports similar this 1, click here to sign upward for EdSource's no-cost daily e-mail on latest developments in education.