For all the time, money and brainpower spent on improving the academic performance of America’s public school children, some things never seem to change. African-American students consistently lag behind their peers in reading.
Annual measures from the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) show that children from every other race and ethnic group read at higher levels, on average, than Bblack students at every point of assessment: fourth, eighth and twelfth grades. The results have been consistent since the NAEP measures began, in 1992, and I’m sure results wouldn’t have been much different had they started decades earlier.
Since the U.S. Department of Education became a stand-alone agency in 1980, we’ve had six presidents and nine secretaries of education. We’ve had one initiative after another, from National Goals to No Child Left Behind to Race to the Top to Common Core State Standards, and guess what: Too many African-American children still can’t read at grade level. And now, in 2013, the gap is wider than ever.
Can anything be done?
I say yes, but we have to search for solutions where we haven’t spent much time before, in places that can make a real difference in improving the reading skills of all children: America’s schools of education.
Not all children learn the same way, but all children deserve to be taught in such a way that allows them to succeed. Maybe some schools of education understand that, but school districts and principals eager to hire teachers with the skills to teach reading effectively have little way of knowing which schools are producing the best candidates.
Schools of education today operate independently, sending graduates into the workplace without all the skills and knowledge they need to maximize the achievement of all students. Some schools of education train teachers this way; some schools train them that way. There are neither industry standards, best practices nor transparency. That puts an enormous burden on potential employers, and works to the detriment of students in the classroom.
