Teaching to All students...
Excerpts taken from Equality in the American High School Curriculum by Jeff Mirel & David Angus and published in American Educator (Summer 1994). Jeffrey Mirel is associate professor of leadership and educational policy studies and a fellow at the Social Science Research Institute, Northern Illinois University, DeKalb. He is the author of The Rise and Fall of an Urban School System: Detroit, 1907-1981 (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1993). David Angus is professor of education and chair of the program in Educational Foundations at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor. Material for this article was taken from a book they are currently writing entitled Conflict and Curriculum in the American High School, 1890-1990 (Teachers College Press).
Teaching to the minimums:
"All children, like all men, rise easily to the common level. There the mass stop; strong minds only ascend higher. But raise the standard, and, by a spontaneous movement, the mass will rise again and reach it.--from Horace Mann's First Annual Report (1837)"
To whom are we teaching? Read the conclusion of their report:
"First, it is clear that equal educational opportunity was not achieved by lowering academic standards through curricular differentiation, tracking, shortening courses from two semesters to one, and giving academic credit to previously extracurricular activities. Indeed, the students most harmed by these policies were the children of working-class and minority families. Critics who argue that national standards and national assessment will damage the educational prospects for poor and minority students simply are ignoring the historical record. In the past, poor and minority students have been the most frequent casualties of such standard-lowering policies as allowing less rigorous courses to meet academic requirements for graduation or diluting content in academic courses while keeping course titles the same. The second-class education that resulted from these policies undoubtedly contributed to social, racial, and gender inequality. We believe that clearly articulated national content and performance standards and well designed national methods of assessment can make such policies more difficult to implement and thus make an important contribution to equality of educational opportunity."
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COMMENT- Interesting excerpts from an interesting paper. They provide additional evidence to support their claim that a more rigorous curriculum is just as important for disadvantaged students as academically oriented students. Read the four paragraphs attached below:
"The Impact of "Excellence" Reforms on the Dropout Problem and Minority Students"
"Any demand for more rigorous curricula and higher academic standards inevitably must confront the question, won't such curricula and standards increase the dropout rate in general and have a negative impact on the educational opportunities of poor and minority students in particular? As noted earlier, for more than half a century, educational policy makers have made decisions based on the presumption that tougher course requirements automatically increase the dropout rate, especially among poor and minority students. Moreover, these policy makers assumed that the only way to keep the dropout rate from soaring was to make the high school curriculum less challenging and more entertaining. Consequently, these educational leaders routinely condemned efforts to raise academic standards because of their fear that such measures would contribute to greater educational inequality.
"Is that specter of higher dropout rates validated by findings on the effects of academically oriented reforms? The short answer is no. Between 1973 and 1990, when higher standards and tougher graduation requirements were widely enacted and the percentage of academic course-taking jumped by almost 10 percent, the national dropout rate declined from 14 percent to 11 percent. These numbers are even more impressive for minority students. Between 1982 and 1990, African Americans and Hispanics increased their academic course-taking to a greater extent than whites and Asian Americans. In 1982, only 28 percent of African Americans and a quarter of Hispanic students took a regimen of four years of English, three years of social studies, and two years of math and science. By 1990, the percentages had nearly tripled to 72 percent and 70 percent respectively. The share of minority students taking three years of math and science has risen even more dramatically, from 10 per cent to 41 percent of black students and from 6 percent to a third of Hispanic students. During the same period the dropout rate for black students fell from 18 percent to 13 percent while the dropout rate for Hispanic students remained unchanged at about 32 percent./19/ These data should put to rest the ritualized invocation of the threat of increased dropouts every time someone suggests that U.S. schools demand more from their students."
"Not only are more minority students taking an increasing percentage of tougher academic courses, but they are performing better on national standardized exams, as well. During the late 1970s and 1980s, SAT scores for both blacks and Hispanics rose significantly especially among students who took the most advanced academic courses. Between 1976 and 1993, black students' scores on the verbal section of the SAT rose 21 points and in math increased 34 points. During the same period, Mexican-American students' scores rose 21 points on the verbal section and 18 points in math, while Puerto Rican students' scores rose three points and eight points respectively. In addition, since 1988, the number of minority students taking Advanced Placement Tests has grown at "record rates" according to the College Board. The number of black students taking the tests grew from under 10,000 in 1988 to more than 15,000 in 1993, and the number of Latino students soared from just over 10,000 to just under 30,000 in the same period./20/"
"In short, demanding more academic course work from students appears to have contributed to improved student outcomes especially among minorities, and it has not led to increases in the dropout rate among these groups."