The claim that the SAT and ACT drive inequities in higher education feeds the movement against standardized testing and has been at the heart of successful court cases, but this new brief argues that, whether colleges decide to go “test optional” or not, the implications for equity are actually minimal. Read more.
In a landmark 2021 settlement by the University of California (UC), the nation’s most prestigious state university system, officials agreed to eliminate the requirement that students submit college entrance exam scores to gain admission. When then-UC president Janet Napolitano initially proposed suspending the testing requirement in 2020, her statement claimed that eliminating testing requirements would “enhance equity.” Critics of college admissions exams have increasingly argued that testing requirements are bad for equity in higher education, and have often gone even further, painting the SAT and ACT as simply racist. For example, the left-leaning groups that brought the UC lawsuit called the tests “discriminatory,” and their lawsuit cited then-UC regent Cecilia Estolano, who said of the SAT, “We all know it’s a racist test.”
In this inaugural policy brief in the Fordham Institute’s Think Again series (see more about the series here), I tackle the pervasive notion that college admissions exams are responsible for racial and socioeconomic inequities in higher education.
The claim that that the SAT and ACT discriminate relies on statistical analysis of the average performance of students of different racial/ethnic and socioeconomic groups. Gaps in average exam scores are, of course, no myth. The average ACT composite score is about 20, but the highest-scoring racial/ethnic group, Asian students, scores 24.9 on average, while Black students, the lowest-scoring group, have an average score of 16.3. For some, the existence of such a gap is alone sufficient to prove the tests are racist. Yet students of different groups do not all have the same family and school experiences. Black children, for example, are three times as likely as their Asian and White classmates to grow up in poverty. Childhood disparities in access to everything from health care to good schools and teachers mean that—whatever those disparities say about the roots and consequences of American inequality—it would be surprising if all groups of seventeen-year-olds exhibited equivalent levels of college readiness. But as the brief explains, all measures of academic achievement exhibit such gaps.
Far from being instruments of systemic racism, the SAT and ACT are put through extensive measures to ensure that the exams do not discriminate against students because of their racial or ethnic background (or class or gender). The organizations that administer the exams vet them intensely, not just by diverse review panels that alert the test makers to any potential cultural biases, but also through statistical techniques that flag test questions answered differently by students from different backgrounds. This latter process alerts test makers to any questions that, after controlling for students’ overall scores, two groups of students (e.g., students from high-income and low-income families) answer correctly at different rates. Officials at both testing companies implement multiple, overlapping systems designed to ensure that the exams are free of such biased questions before they could affect any student’s score.
The claim that the SAT and ACT drive inequities in higher education feeds the movement against standardized testing and has been at the heart of successful court cases. But in this new brief, I argue that, whether colleges decide to go “test optional” or not, the implications for equity are actually quite minimal.
Editor’s note: This is a modified excerpt of the inaugural policy brief in the Fordham Institute’s new Think Again series of policy briefs, “Think Again: College Admissions Exams Drive Higher Education Inequities,” written by Fordham National Research Director Adam Tyner. Read the brief in full here.
Dear Checker,
Greetings from Arizona! I read your piece last week about your wariness toward universal ESAs like the ones adopted here and in a handful of other states. I share many of your concerns about the potential for misuse and fraud, and the dubious choices parents might make when given control of public education funds. I worry, too, that advocates are being a bit too cocky about the growth of ESAs and a little blithe about accountability. All that said, I’m more sanguine than you. ESAs represent an intriguing development, and their sudden popularity (at least among red-state legislators) is one of the most surprising developments I’ve seen in more than two decades in this work.
Interestingly, the parent advocates, policymakers, and school leaders I’ve met with this week in Arizona sound modest about their expectations for universal ESAs, and quite level-headed. Perhaps that’s because Arizona has been an open-enrollment state for nearly three decades, and half of the state’s students already attend a school other than their designated one. It’s hard not to be struck by how different Arizona educators sound than elsewhere: They’ve spent their entire careers working in a system in which choice, flexibility, and competing for students is unremarkable.
Like you, Checker, I regard the Supreme Court decision in Pierce v. Society of Sisters as a touchstone and can recite parts of it from memory. “The child is not the mere creature of the State,” and parents “who nurture him and direct his destiny have the right, coupled with the high duty, to recognize and prepare him for additional obligations.” The rationale for ESAs has so far heavily leaned on parents’ right to direct their child’s education. But it’s the “duty” that deserves some of our attention.
A common talking point among proponents is that ESAs give parents control of their money to customize their child’s education, spending it on private school tuition, tutoring, and other educational products and services. But it’s not “their” money. It’s our money that’s being put under parental control. This is not mere pedantry or a difference of semantics. The cost of education is socialized; we have a shared stake in the education given every child in America and pay school taxes whether or not we have kids in our local school or have kids at all.
This distinction—“their” money versus “our” money—holds the key to thinking about ESAs that may assuage your misgivings, Checker. To my way of thinking, an ESA is not a new form of education funding, it’s a different form of education accountability. States like Arizona, Iowa, West Virginia, and Utah that have enacted universal ESAs aren’t giving parents money heedlessly. They’re making a public policy wager to put accountability into the hands of those who “nurture and direct” the child. They’re betting that parents will discharge their “high duty” with more attentiveness, care, and diligence than the state can possibly provide through its districts and schools.
It’s a reasonable wager. A recent report found fifty-three schools in Illinois where not a single student is on grade level in math; thirty where none read on grade level. Ditto two dozen schools in Baltimore. It’s not “whataboutism” to point to such schools as poor stewards of public funds and wonder if parents could possibly make worse decisions. Nor are such educational catastrophes limited to high-poverty urban schools and districts. Emily Hanford’s recent “Sold a Story” podcast detailed how popular approaches to reading instruction in countless schools failed millions of children, enriching the gurus who peddled them. Time and again in Hanford’s telling, it’s parents, not professional educators, who are alarmed to learn that their children can’t read and refuse to be mollified by bland reassurances to not worry, that they’ll read when they’re ready. Make no mistake, there will be examples—lots of them—of parents spending ESA dollars unwisely. But when ESA dollars are mismanaged, the damage is limited to a single household. When a school spends public dollars unwisely, hundreds of children suffer lasting harm.
I’m in strongest agreement with your concern, Checker, that enthusiasm will diminish with reports that ESA parents are spending public funds on extravagances with a “hazy relationship to K–12 education.” Nothing will derail enthusiasm for ESAs more quickly than a steady drumbeat of stories like the one in The 74 describing public dollars going to kayaks, chicken coops, and trips to SeaWorld. Never mind that, when I was a South Bronx public school teacher, we took kids ziplining, to theme parks, paid for ballroom dancing lessons, and more, all on the taxpayer’s dime. Chicken coops? I visited a school near Tucson this week with a barn, livestock, and students on their way to careers in large-animal veterinary science. It was fantastic.
The simple fact is that motivated opponents, from teachers unions to the media, will be looking for questionable spending of ESA funds, and such examples will not be hard to find. I noted with no small amount of consternation the response when Mike Petrilli posted your piece on Twitter (which you wisely avoid). One ESA advocate responded mockingly with a GIF of Frank Sinatra and sniffed, “Consider me pro-free-swinging, almost-anything-goes universal ESAs, babe.”
Giddiness and arrogance are the kind of thing that will derail ESAs. Choice proponents working to make ESAs a growing and politically sustainable fixture in K–12 education have to give accountability more than a smirk and a shrug. A good friend, Jason Bedrick of the Heritage Foundation, points out that, once enacted, no state has ever repealed an ESA or voucher plan. To which it’s important to add: “yet.” The sudden rise of universal ESAs makes it inconceivable that there will not be an equal and opposite reaction: a concerted effort to paint them as a reckless cash grab. At some point, ESA proponents will need to transition from popping champagne corks and recast themselves as sober and judicious stewards of public funds.
Sincerely,
Robert
Editor’s note: This is an edition of “Advance,” a newsletter from the Thomas B. Fordham Institute written by Brandon Wright, our Editorial Director, and published every other week. Its purpose is to monitor the progress of gifted education in America, including legal and legislative developments, policy and leadership changes, emerging research, grassroots efforts, and more. You can subscribe on the Fordham Institute website and the newsletter’s Substack.
One of the most enduring and important challenges in advanced education (a.k.a. “gifted” education) is how to balance excellence and equity—how, in other words, to have quality programs that maximize the educational outcomes of high achievers, but also better identify and serve low-income, Black, Hispanic, and Native American children.
Accomplishing this is now a major focus of the advanced learning field, and from these efforts have emerged two common strategies. One, wherein leaders work to enroll more marginalized children in available offerings while also improving program quality and breadth, shows real promise. The other, in which school systems eliminate advanced learning opportunities, doesn’t. The latter, in fact, is an imposter—a masking of the problem masquerading as a solution—that rejects excellence and increases inequity by harming many of the underserved children it purports to help.
Aptly illustrating this dichotomy are two recent news stories about public school districts struggling with insufficient diversity in their advanced education programs. The good example, profiled in Education Week, hails from Manassas, Virginia, a city of about 40,000 that’s part of the Washington, D.C., metropolitan area. The bad example, reported on by the Wall Street Journal, comes from Culver City, California, in Los Angeles County, which also has a population around 40,000.
In recent years, both districts faced significant racial, ethnic, and socioeconomic disparities in their advanced-learner offerings. In Manassas, for instance, Hispanic students and students from low-income families comprised just 22 percent and 26 percent, respectively, of those in the gifted program, despite making up 67 and 65 percent of overall enrollments. In Culver City, Hispanic and Black students made up 13 and 14 percent, respectively, of high schoolers enrolled in twelfth-grade Advanced Placement English, compared with 37 and 15 percent of the total student body.
Because of statistics like these, district leaders “replaced the [freshman and sophomore] honors classes at Culver City High School with uniform courses that officials say will ensure students of all races receive an equal, rigorous education,” reports the Wall Street Journal. The seeds of change were planted at a board meeting last year where teachers presented enrollment data and members saw “anonymous quotes from students not enrolled in honors classes saying they felt less motivated or successful. One described students feeling ‘unable to break out of the molds that they established when they were eleven.’” Culver City leaders say “the goal is to teach everyone with an equal level of rigor, one that encourages them to enroll in advanced classes in their final years of high school.”
It’s easy to empathize with the district. Racial and ethnic gaps in these academic programs is a big problem, but narrowing them is difficult if the goal is for more marginalized children to enroll and succeed in them. The gaps start at an early age, and many of their causes, such as the deleterious effects of poverty and racism, are outside schools’ control. As Culver City Schools Superintendent Quoc Tran told the Journal, “it was very jarring when teachers looked at their AP enrollment and realized Black and Brown kids were not there. They felt obligated to do something.” The easiest response was to eliminate the ninth and tenth grade honors classes altogether, and that’s what they did. The effects were immediate and seemed to directly combat some of the dynamics that lead to misbalance.
But it was the wrong response. “I just don’t see how removing something from some kids all of a sudden helps other kids learn faster,” says Scott Peters, a senior research scientist at NWEA. The Journal adds:
Critics say attempting to teach everyone at an elevated level isn’t realistic and that teachers, even with the best intentions, may end up simplifying instruction. Instead, some educators and parents argue schools should find more ways to diversify honors courses and encourage students to enroll who aren’t self-selecting, including proactively reaching out to students, using an opt-out system, or looking to teacher recommendations.
Quite right. And that’s exactly what’s happened in Manassas, Virginia, thanks to efforts led by Anthony Vargas, the district’s supervisor of gifted and talented and advanced programs since 2019. When Vargas stepped into the role, he was struck by the glaring racial and ethnic gaps in in the programs, much like the leaders in Culver City. But instead of dismantling the offerings, he “embarked on a massive and multistage undertaking to diversify the program, involving extensive research on equitable practices on how to select students, the kinds of enrichment to provide, implementing evidence-based practices districtwide, and gaining the trust and cooperation of the school community, including the school board,” reports Education Week.
Among many changes were eliminating the reliance on test scores alone to select students, showing teachers how to better identify potential, adding more educators to the program and training them, expanding offerings beyond a single elementary school, strengthening instructional programming, creating a continuum of services wherein students can receive enrichment in a single or multiple subjects, and casting a wider and more flexible net. “Most of the work revolved around identifying barriers to [gifted and talented] access and breaking them down,” Vargas told Education Week. “There must be some flexibility to ensure we are making appropriate decisions, especially considering that historically excluded students have testing biases stacked against them.”
Today, advanced education in Manassas is thriving and representation gaps have narrowed. In 2019, 240 children were enrolled in the programs and, as noted above, Hispanic and low-income students comprised just 22 percent and 26 percent of them, respectively, despite making up 67 and 65 percent of the district population. This year, enrollment has grown to 334 students, of which 41 percent are Hispanic and a similar percentage come from low-income families.
This transformation represents lives changed. The Education Week profile offers the case of a sixth grader named Grayson. Before Manassas did the hard work to improve advanced education, he was denied admission to the program because his test scores fell slightly below the strict cut-off. But after the changes were implemented, teachers took a closer look at his abilities and realized he would benefit. “My son has blossomed since then,” said his mother Keisa Reid. “He’s turned out to be a rockstar in the program,” added Vargas.
Racial and ethnic gaps in advanced education exist in school districts across the country, and leaders must decide how to address them. It’s tempting to take the quick and dirty route like Culver City and eliminate the programs that lack representation. The results are immediate and features like “equal instruction for all” can sound noble. But it’s a mirage. Too many students, including those from marginalized backgrounds, won’t be challenged and won’t reach their full potential. Children like Grayson are more likely to wilt than blossom. Widespread blossoming only happens when leaders like those in Manassas, Virginia, do the hard work and devote ample resources to transforming advanced education. More leaders should follow its example.
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QUOTE OF NOTE
“Before I could effectively communicate with the stakeholders the new GT plan I had in mind, I had to dive deep into our district’s current programming, share the disparities in our demographics [between GT students and the district’s overall student population], show what the research is saying, and seek out other school districts with similar demographics to see how they are tackling the many challenges of creating a more equitable GT program.”
—Anthony Vargas, the supervisor of gifted and talented and advanced programs in Virginia’s Manassas City public schools, quoted in “A formula for creating more equitable gifted and talented programs,” Education Week, Elizabeth Heubeck, February 6, 2023
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THREE STUDIES TO STUDY
“Individual, collective, and contextual aspects in the identification of giftedness,” by Robert J Sternberg, Gifted Education International, OnlineFirst, February 11, 2023
“Giftedness is typically thought of as an individual characteristic. But the development and labeling of an individual as ‘gifted’ is always a collective process and takes place embedded within local, sociocultural, and temporal contexts. The view of giftedness as individual is deceptive and results in faulty practice, such as the bestowal of huge advantages in development and labeling upon children whose parents have more substantial financial and other resources. This article applies a pentagonal implicit theory of giftedness to the analysis of individual, collective, and contextual factors in development and labeling and concludes that giftedness should never be viewed merely as an individual characteristic. Doing so not only distorts reality but creates procedures that tend to pass identification and development of ‘giftedness’ inequitably through successive generations of families by virtue of the families’ resources.”
“Developing scientific, transformational, eloquent, artistic, mathematical, mechanical, emotional, relational, and social talents through problem solving: A conceptual, practical, evidence-based analysis,” by C June Maker, Randy Pease, and Robert H Zimmerman, Gifted Education International, OnlineFirst, February 6, 2023
“Building on the definition of steamers (a tasty hot milk-infused drink), we defined STEAMMERS as ‘a blend of diverse talents, going beyond domain-specific to domain-integrated abilities. Like steamers, they have a rich and colorful “flavor”!’ They are passionate about solving problems they and others face by honoring and blending diverse perspectives and disciplines. Gifted children and young people have the potential to become STEAMMERS, making outstanding contributions to themselves, their communities, and their world. The underlying principle is to design learning experiences beyond traditional conceptions of STEM, STEAM, and other similar combinations of disciplines in ways that uncover, ignite, cultivate, and extend these potentials. Using Real Engagement in Active Problem Solving (REAPS), an evidence-based teaching model, enables educators to recognize, cultivate, and extend the talents of the STEAMMERS we need for our future. Here, we present our new concept, describe practices, and give evidence showing how it accomplishes these purposes.”
“Educator Perceptions Following Changes in Gifted Education Policy: Implications for Serving Gifted Students,” by Jaret Hodges, Rachel U. Mun, Javetta Jones Roberson, and Charles “Tedd” Flemister, Gifted Child Quarterly, Volume 65, Issue 4, October 2021
“Policy changes are an ever-present part of education. In 2019, legislators upended over two decades of gifted education policy in Texas with the removal of direct funding for gifted education. In its wake, the removal of funding shook educator morale and created uncertainty as to the future of gifted education in the state. In this article, we report on a survey administered to gifted education educators in Texas. A descriptive framework in conjunction with Bayesian analysis and multiple imputations is used to analyze the survey results. Our findings provide evidence that though educator sentiment is largely negative toward the changes to gifted education in Texas, educator outlooks on the future of gifted education in the state are relatively high.”
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WRITING WORTH READING
“Virginia reviewing AP African American studies class rejected by Florida,” WRIC, Dean Mirshahi, February 21, 2023
“The war on merit turns into systemic injustice,” National Review, Asra Q. Nomani, February 21, 2023
“U.S. probe into racial bias in Henrico Schools [in Virginia] prompts overhaul of gifted program,” Richmond Times-Dispatch, Anna Bryson and Sean McGoey, February 20, 2023
“4 states to review AP African American studies class amid Florida’s ban,” Axios, Sareen Habeshian, February 18, 2023
“To increase equity, school districts eliminate honors classes,” Wall Street Journal, By Sara Randazzo, February 17, 2023
“Proposal would expand Running Start to sophomores,” Washington State Journal, Alexandria Osborne, February 13, 2023
“DeSantis says maybe Florida can do without College Board, AP classes and SAT test,” Miami Herald, Jeffrey S. Solochek and Ana Ceballos, February 13, 2023
“He completed high school at age 9. Next up? Maybe rocket science.” Washington Post, Praveena Somasundaram, February 8, 2023
“The report of gifted education’s death is greatly exaggerated,” Education Week, James R. Delisle, February 8, 2023
“Success! Cobb teacher named Georgia’s Gifted Program Teacher of the Year,” Cobb County School District, February 8, 2023
“A leader who’s busting down barriers to gifted education,” Education Week, Elizabeth Heubeck, February 6, 2023
“A formula for creating more equitable gifted and talented programs,” Education Week, Elizabeth Heubeck, February 6, 2023
In an effort to expand educational opportunity, several large urban school districts—including Boston, Chicago, New York City, and Washington, D.C.—have increased school choice within traditional public school systems through intradistrict open enrollment. But do such programs, which allow students to choose schools throughout the district, actually improve outcomes? In a recent working paper, researchers from MIT and the University of Chicago investigate the consequences of transporting students to non-neighborhood district schools.
The causal study, one of only a handful to consider the relationship between school commute time and academic performance, analyzes both the integration effects and the academic effects of transporting Black and Hispanic students to district schools throughout Boston and New York City. In addition to offering school choice within traditional public school systems, these two urban districts share key features. First, both foot the bill for transportation costs for students attending non-neighborhood schools: Boston choice middle schoolers ride yellow buses, and choice high schoolers in both cities receive monthly public transit passes. In addition, both districts have historically been sites of conflict over school integration. Although integration is not an explicit aim of their choice programs, the researchers still sought to determine whether they mitigated the enduring influence of residential segregation on school segregation.
The study uses Boston data for all applicants for sixth and ninth grade district schools from 2002 to 2013, and New York City data for all applicants for ninth grade district schools from 2012 to 2016. It tests the effects of two factors: first, whether the student attended a non-neighborhood school (a yes/no variable), and second, the student’s commute length in minutes. To measure integration, the researchers use same-race peer enrollment and minority isolation (that is, attendance at a school with at least 90 percent Black or Hispanic students). A combination of statewide end-of-year math and English language arts test results, SAT scores, and college enrollment data serve as measures for academic outcomes. Since students who were already more academically motivated could have been more likely to seek out a non-neighborhood school, the researchers designed their methodology to account for the possibility of such selection bias.
In both Boston and New York, traveling to a non-neighborhood school clearly boosted integration. The largest statistically significant effect was on Black students in Boston, where non-neighborhood enrollment led to Black students experiencing a nearly 17 percent drop in minority isolation. In New York, the effect was largest for Hispanic students, for whom minority isolation decreased by almost 8 percent. On the other busing measure, traveling to school for an additional twenty minutes also led to greater integration, particularly for Black students, whose same-race peer exposure decreased by approximately 6 percent in Boston and 7 percent in New York.
The effects of commuting on test scores and college attendance, however, were minimal. Perhaps-surprising exceptions were for Black students in Boston and Hispanic students in New York, for whom twenty additional minutes of travel time decreased college attendance by 6 percent and 4 percent, respectively. (The troubling finding that Black students in Boston simultaneously experienced the greatest gains in integration and the largest drop in college attendance merits further investigation.) In the study’s final step, the researchers use what they call a value-added model to ascertain that the small effects on education outcomes are due to negligible differences in the quality of the students’ neighborhood and choice non-neighborhood schools—rather than a result of factors like fatigue from long commutes.
At least for Boston and New York, these findings complicate the argument for intradistrict school choice. On the one hand, allowing students to travel throughout the district advances progress toward the inherently worthy goal of increased school integration. Choice also comes with its own value; students in both districts can, for instance, select themed schools, which could affect student engagement in ways not necessarily captured in the study. On the other hand, considering the slightly negative academic impact of these commutes, along with annual transportation costs of $1,020 per Boston student and $1,300 per New York student, the authors urge us to ask whether these funds could be more productively spent on improving neighborhood school quality. Given these tradeoffs, district leaders must decide how best to allocate inevitably finite resources to serve their students’ needs.
SOURCE: Joshua Angrist, Guthrie Gray-Lobe, Clemence M. Idoux, and Parag A. Pathak, “Still Worth the Trip? School Busing Effects in Boston and New York,” National Bureau of Economic Research Working Paper Series (July 2022).
Recent national test data paint an alarming picture of middle school math achievement post-Covid, with eighth grade math scores on the latest National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) having the largest decrease of any other subject or grade.
As a former math interventionist for fifth through eighth graders, I am well aware of the challenges that accompany the more rigorous middle school math material. Curriculum for these grades is geared toward developing more sophisticated reasoning skills, and many students struggle to adjust to this new level of difficulty—alongside the many other challenges that a typical junior highschooler faces.
Districts have been pouring time and resources into various middle school math interventions for decades, but we haven’t seen big gains in this subject in these grades. Is there a cost-efficient way to actually improve these students’ math outcomes?
A recent study analyzes a four-year math intervention program called Changing the Odds (CTO) designed by local policymakers, math specialists in the San Diego Unified School District, and a team at the University of California San Diego. It was implemented in four low-performing schools in San Diego, and emphasizes continuous improvement, data-driven decision making, and professional learning communities (PLCs)—collaborative groups of teachers who share best practices across schools.
One of CTO’s primary tenets is the use of diagnostic testing and formative assessments to track student progress. All district teachers received assessments from the Mathematics Diagnostic Testing Project, but those participating in the program received additional training on how to best use the data. They were also encouraged to provide multiple formative tests and daily learning checks throughout the year to gauge comprehension.
Then in same-grade PLCs across the four schools—a second tenet of the program—teachers used student data to identify gaps in learning and adjust their upcoming lessons. PLCs occasionally met for day-long planning sessions where they analyzed student data and collaborated on upcoming lessons, while a substitute teacher covered the classes of attending math teachers.
The last major component of the CTO program was a grant-funded resource teacher who worked with the math teachers in all four schools on curriculum and pedagogy. In the first year, the resource teacher worked out of the district headquarters and would visit the schools individually. But in years two, three, and four, the resource teacher rotated among the four schools full-time, designing lessons with teachers and co-teaching classes.
Researchers at UCSD used a difference-in-difference analysis to compare the change in math achievement in the four CTO schools to the change in four academically and demographically similar schools from the same district. On average, they found that there was a statistically significant increase (0.11 standard deviations) in math achievement for CTO students, compared to the control students—which translated to an increase of over 4 percentile points per year on the math standardized test.
Even more interesting is the program’s affordability. The total yearly cost of the program was estimated to be just over $200,000, including various labor expenses, supplies, and the resource teacher’s salary. Divided amongst the four schools, the additional cost of $50,000 for each was about half of the average full-time teacher’s salary, or less than 1 percent of the school’s total personnel salaries.
Many district leaders might roll their eyes when they hear that they should be implementing the latest new middle school math intervention program, and understandably so—they’re a dime a dozen. But this program is not reinventing the wheel. Prior research tells us that data-informed teaching, collaborating with peers, and having an additional resource teacher will lead to increased achievement. But this study shows skeptics that all of these things can be done in a cost-efficient way.
We must also recognize, however, that not every district has a local university willing to throw its time and resources at the local public schools. Additionally, the sample size in this study was small, so results cannot be generalized. For districts that do have the opportunity to partner with outside organizations, though—such as testing companies and universities—and for middle schools whose teams want to find a way to improve their math achievement without breaking the bank, a program similar to Changing the Odds could be a sustainable option.
SOURCE: Betts, Julian R., Andrew C. Zau, Karen Volz Bachofer, and Dina Polichar, Changing the Odds: Student Achievement After Introduction of a Middle School Math Intervention, National Bureau of Economic Research Working Paper (January 2023).
On this week’s Education Gadfly Show podcast, Dale Chu joins Mike Petrilli to discuss whether Donald Trump and Ron DeSantis are focusing too much on divisive culture war issues in their education platforms. Then, on the Research Minute, Amber explains how higher test scores and college aspirations affected the long-term life outcomes of Massachusetts high schoolers.
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