GeoBlog

A nearby district with a somewhat larger population faces many of the concerns as you state. One minister brought this issue into discussion around 13 years ago to bring changes in equity matters. The district, area ministers, and others meet yearly to go over data and see some areas becoming better. They acknowledge that there is still a lot of ground to cover.

Our district is very rural and the majority are white students. The concerns are mostly the at-risk students and the special education population. The school hired a social worker full-time to spend most of the time at the middle school. Our middle school is ahead of some others in the development of the RtI policy. Our special ed students are receiving two reading periods instead of one. We are using AimsWeb to assess reading skills to better implement interventions.

You bring up some interesting points. I teach in a small rural district with little to no minority population. Our issues are with students from very low socio-economic backgrounds and special education. I feel it is best to eliminate color from the equation and instead focus on achievement of all students. If strong early intervention procedures are in place, students who are at risk should be afforded the opportunity to improve regardless of ethnic background.

It sounds like your district has tried early intervention procedures but for some reason your students have not shown the desired improvement. That to me means that either the interventions are wrong for this particular subgroup or that there is a deeper issue involved. I don’t know what the deeper issue would be, but we owe it to our students to find out what it is.
Greg M.

Again, I feel like I am in a completely different situation being Canadian and teaching in private schools.

I really don’t think colour is the issue, like Greg said, there is something deeper. The reason I say that is because I have taught at international schools in many countries with perhaps 12+ nationalities in one classroom, which means a rainbow of skin colour and I don’t notice one outperforming the rest. It is true, however, the Korean kids really excel at Math.

What is also true of international schools is that many students are well off, but lots work with UN organizations, so don’t have lots of extra cash.

Something I learned about in a course on how the brain learns is that a feeling of inferiority is more powerful than any successful driving force. This could explain why when the socioeconomic factor is taken out of the equation, there is still the same problem. I can look up this reference if you need it, though I am sure this has already been considered. It is the only thought that comes to mind for this topic.

I appreciate the diversity I experience without facing the difficulties many of you are facing in the US.

To be truthful, the research I have worked with indicates that socio-economic status is a far more reliable indicator of success or failure than race. The only caveat to that has been when students are English Language Learners. That’s not to say there isn’t research out there that says otherwise. But in the state of Iowa (perhaps not a good example of a diverse state), the emphasis is on tackling the SES gap.

Our agency has as one of its core values “cultural competence”, which means the ability to work with a diverse group of people. We hold training sessions with different schools on ways this can take shape in a school setting. The main piece of our training is Ruby Payne’s work on poverty (Ruby Payne’s research has shown, over a lengthy amount of time, that SES is the primary factor in student achievement). In my experience with the training, race comes up as a topic very frequently though. Perhaps it is something that we should be working more explicitly with.

Now, English as a Second Language is a whole different story. I taught in Postville, IA (home of the May Agriprocessors meat packing plant raids), and the language barrier, as well as the migrant status and low SES, were enormously significant. There was literally a 70-point difference in graduation rate between those who spoke English fluently and those who did not. The graduates included Mexican-Americans who had migrated to the area long before, and thus were fluent in the language, were very successful in graduating. This was also true of Postville’s Ukranian and Russian population, who struggled if they were not native speakers, despite being white. I believe the superintendent of the school is writing a book about what the district has tried to do to close that achievement gap, which would be length indeed.

I also work in a largely rural, white populated area, but that is beginning to change. We have more and more students with English as a second language every year, and more minorities. But the population that seems to be growing at a higher rate is those students who live at the poverty level. That seems to have a far greater impact on their success in school than any other factor.

There are several options available to struggling students in our district. Extended day classes are an options for those short on credits; tutoring and summer school is available for those who struggle with basic skills; our alternative school is small and delivers instruction with a projects-based curriculum (it’s a choice program – students are never SENT there), we have an arts magnet school, which seems to attract many struggling students; we have work experience programs for those who need to earn an income; we have a vocational high school for those who desire to learn a trade; and we have an additional ALC for those who would not flourish in the project-based alternative program. These are just some of the programs available at the high school level. I haven’t even mentioned the programs available to the primary or middle school levels.

I have taught at both the high school and middle school level. We do quite a bit of stuff at both levels to help at risk students. The list below is probably not a comprehensive list, just a few ideas that I know of that we are employing to help students in our schools.
•Some of the low test scores were attributed to poor reading skills, so we hired a literacy coach.
oShe provides us with words of the week.
oShe will help teach reading skills in any class, or come in and give a lesson herself.
oShe attends meetings on state testing and provides guidance in content.
•We have classes that are based on our state tests.
oThese classes are standard driven with resources based on the test.
oThey run all year, instead of a semester.
oThere is a content area teacher and an inclusion teacher to help the at risk students in these classes.
•After school tutoring is available, free of charge.
•Announcements are made prior to testing urging students to get rest and eat a healthy breakfast. Snacks are distributed during testing.

I, too, live and teach in a rural area where there is not much diversity. We have noticed through the past few years though of a growing lower socioeconomic population which brings challenges. In Illinois there is a movement towards RTI (also a federal mandate) which means Response to Intervention. We are in the process of creating a plan which will provide identification and added interventions at a much earlier age. We have also added more sections of preschool to provide more opportunity. I know at the high school level, we have concentrated on our freshmen class this year with more support and interventions. If freshmen students fail courses their first year, it quickly develops into a pattern for the rest of their high school years and leads to more dropouts. Some of the interventions have been a structured study and support time for all freshmen, special sessions with the guidance counselor and social worker dealing with different topics, and individual counseling sessions after each grading period. We want them to realize that their education should be important to them and the doors it will open in their future. We also want them to know that we care and are here to help them succeed.

I teach in a low income school district which does not have much diversity. However, the low socioeconomic students are the ones who need the most support. In my district, the teachers are constantly trying to find ways to promote education and make it more valued at their homes. We understand that if an education is not valued or reinforced at home that we will never be successful.

I teach in a very small, rural, and white school. In one word, we do NOTHING to aid minority students. In fact, most of our minority students do very well academically, so we are sort of the exception to the math.

As far as a group that we are trying to help out more is the low-income students, which are pretty much all white in our district. We are offering tutoring to them, sometimes mandatory courses to bring up scores, and financial help in the cafeteria. That is about all we do to help out our students most in need. It doesn’t seem like much when you write it down. Geez.