News: Interview
Belinda Williams
How To Close the Student Achievement Gap

Belinda Williams knows it takes more than one-shot improvements.

For 25 years, Belinda Williams has worked to find the best ways to improve low-performing schools--through the regional educational lab at Brown University, at Research for Better Schools in Philadelphia, and at the Center for Health, Achievement, Neighborhood, Growth, and Ethnic Studies (CHANGES) at the University of Pennsylvania. Now she's focusing on the NEA Priority Schools Initiative, which looks to effect true change in low-performing schools (see page 12). Williams spoke recently with NEA Today's Dave Winans.

NEA's Priority Schools Initiative is looking to close the student achievement gap. How do you see that getting accomplished?
The first thing to understand is the difference between improving achievement and closing the gap. Improving achievement might involve putting in a new program, or some strategies for parental involvement--or even introducing standards or reducing class size or transitioning to site-based management.

All of those are important. But if they're introduced in a fragmented way, what you typically find is just some slight improvement in achievement. The gap between children who are socioeconomically disadvantaged and their more advantaged peers continues and is perpetuated.

What big picture changes do you see?
The research and theory on human development suggests that we need to integrate strategies that are based on how all people learn, not what they learn.

Those human development components or elements include understanding culture, which I define simply as the daily experience of an individual or a group of human beings--where they live, where they go, what they care about, what interests them, what they learn, which abilities get developed. Just what goes on in their lives that's meaningful to them on an interpersonal, as well as knowledge acquisition basis? That knowledge is essential.

Second, it is essential to understand the distinction between the abilities developed in the student's environment and the abilities that are measured on the achievement tests administered in school. The tests only measure a limited set of school-related language and abilities, not necessarily potential for learning or intelligence.

Decisions are often made about students in low-performing schools without a clear understanding of this distinction. Those decisions often result in program placements that define and restrict the child's entire educational experience. Children may receive a watered-down educational program, when what was required was more time to learn the standard curriculum and/or more meaningful instruction--that is to say, instruction more connected to the students' experiences and knowledge.

What strengths and abilities have these students developed?
Often, children who are socioeconomically disadvantaged develop strong leadership abilities, because they have developed a sense of autonomy very early because the family is large or their parents' time is focused on providing the essentials for survival. Such children might learn earlier than other children to take care of themselves.

Quite often, when children, particularly males and specifically African American males, arrive at school, those strengths are unfortunately perceived as aggressive behavior. That perception can set up a very negative chain of events, resulting in a disproportionate number of suspensions, referrals, special education classifications, and dropouts.

How can these translate into academic strengths?
If teachers view their knowledge of students' experiences and language development as powerful opportunities to develop lessons to teach the standard curriculum, then integrating this knowledge with other reform strategies can strengthen instructional decision making and student engagement.

Then there's resilience. Currently, schools and even various intervention models are based on and limited to addressing elements of poverty, like limited school vocabulary and language experiences, poverty itself, dysfunctional families, drugs, crime, and abuse.

That perspective ignores other research that helps us understand what enables some individuals to go on and be successful in spite of all those challenges. These kids are resilient--and if recognized and supported in and outside of school, they have the tenacity to succeed.

So how can we help these students meet with success?
I define their strengths in terms of what they bring from their environment--what they know, what they do, and what they care about. Build learning around things they care about or that matter. That's the way to engage children who come from a different experience in the teaching and learning process.

So there's no single panacea.
Right. Research would suggest that to improve our neediest schools, there needs to be more than a superficial directive that says "focus on teaching and learning." How human beings learn has to be central to that focus on teaching and learning.

Resources

• For more information about NEA's Priority Schools Initiative, visit www.nea.org/issues/lowperf/priorityschools for a copy of Making Low-Performing Schools a Priority: An Association Resource Guide.

• Myths and Realities: Best Practices for Language Minority Students by Katharine Samway and Denise McKeon, Heinemann Press, www.heinemann.com, or 800/793-2154.

• We Can't Teach What We Don't Know: White Teachers, Multiracial Schools by Gary R. Howard, Teachers College Press. 800/575-6566.

• Educating Language Minority Children by Diane August and Kenji Hakuta, National Academy Press. www.nap.edu, or 888/624-8373.