This is Dropout Nation: Why Reading Matters or Why Atlanta Students Are Failing Math

A book a day keeps kids on good math progress. Photo courtesy of the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette.

If you want to understand the underlying reason why 150 high school students drop out every hour, simply consider the math performance of Atlanta Public Schools’ 4th-graders on the 2005 National Assessment of Educational Progress and their likely performance as 8th graders four years later.

Back in 2005, 43 percent of Atlanta 4th-graders performed Below Basic on the math portion of the NAEP, with students averaging a scale score of  221, seven points below the average for their peers in other large cities (and 16 points below the average for all public school students nationwide). While just four percent of white 4th-graders scored Below Basic, 49 percent of black students scored Below Basic. Sixty-six percent of learning disabled students and 34 of regular classroom students also scored Below Basic.

Four years later, the students — now 8th graders — have gotten taller. Their academic performance, on the other hand, hasn’t gotten better. Fifty-four percent of 8th graders scored Below Basic on NAEP — a full 12 percentage points increase over the past four years; the average scale score of 259 was better than the scores four years ago, but it still trailed the average of 271 for their peers in other large cities and 282 for all public school students). The academic failure is even more pronounced: Eighty-four percent of learning-disabled students and 51 percent of regular classroom students scored Below Basic on the assessment.

Certainly the low quality of math instruction is a major problem for Atlanta students. So are the standards under which they are taught; back in 2005, the Thomas B. Fordham Institute complained that Georgia’s math standards placed “too much emphasis on calculator use and manipulatives throughout” (although middle-school algebra and geometry was considered grade appropriate).

But the biggest problem may be the simplest: The kids can’t read.

There has long been evidence that the stronger one’s reading comprehension, the more likely they are able to handle the rigors of math. A team led by University of Arizona researcher Carole R. Beale, for example, determined that the math performance of English Language Learners progressed as their reading proficiency increased. This is especially true as students reach latter grades, as simple math computations give way to word problems and abstract math concepts such as algebra and trigonometry. If an 8th-grader struggles to read a passage in The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, then  figuring out the answer to “This year, your brother Jack will be 2 years from being twice as old as your sister Jen” will be a gargantuan challenge.

This is evidently true in the case of Atlanta students. Fifty-nine percent of Atlanta 4th-graders scored Below Basic on the 2005 NAEP. Low reading proficiency may also explain why so many Atlanta students are labeled learning disabled in the first place. Poor reading skills can be mistaken for developmental delays, landing students into special ed classes where the chances of improving academically go to die.

Intensive reading remediation is probably the key solution for improving math skills in the long run. Bolstering reading instruction, especially at the early grades, is crucial. A community effort to read to kids (especially in poor neighborhoods home to dropout factories) would help too. The better a child reads, the better he will do in math. And vice versa.

The good news — if you can call it that — is that just 37 percent of Atlanta 4th-graders taking the 2009 NAEP scored Below Basic. It’s time for Atlanta Public Schools to get going on the intensive reading remediation these kids need.

Building School Data Systems: The California Way Not to Do It

If it were only that easy.

Nearly two years ago, in A Byte At the Apple Rethinking Education Data for the Post-NCLB Era, I noted the two decades of struggle California had with developing its school data system. In particular, the California Longitudinal Pupil Achievement Data System — which was supposed to combine nearly all of the state’s disparate databases — had a particularly troubled history. It took five years for CALPADS to make it from legislative intent to begin full development in 2008. It took another year for the system to become somewhat operational. Even then, it wouldn’t be the fully comprehensive data system that policymakers, parents and schools needed in order to improve the quality of education for their students.

These days, CALPADS is serving no use for anyone at all. Because it has been shut down.  As reported yesterday by John Fensterwald, state Superintendent Jack O’Connell put the system on hiatus after months of glitches — largely caused by state bureaucrats and computer giant IBM (which built out the system on the state’s behalf) — that have made it difficult for school districts to provide and access data. As the state education department’s consultant, Sabot Technologies bluntly points out in its assessment: “the overall [technology] architecture is sound… Instead, Sabot finds that the system implementation includes anomalies, errors and defects throughout.”

Certainly this shutdown will further hinder the delivery of timely data about student progress. But, in all honesty, CALPADS should probably be scrapped altogether. Not because of technical issues, but because the data system is too-narrowly focused on helping the state and school district meet No Child compliance, not on providing useful data. Even if CALPADS was fully operational, schools and researchers still couldn’t  track the long-term performance of individual English Language Learner students (or even determine if they are being fully-mainstreamed into regular classes). The lack of a universal identity number for each student means that student progress can’t be tracked once they enter college; it also means that universities can’t easily access high school student data. Even with the state’s decision to finally integrate CALPADS data with that from the state’s teacher data as part of the effort to tie teacher evaluations to student performance, CALPADS problems means this may not happen for at least another year.

The structural problems underlying CALPADS sheds light on an even bigger problem: An byzantine educational governance system — including a state board of education appointed by the governor, a state education department headed up by an elected superintendent and state universities and community colleges led by different boards at nearly every level — that complicates the development of a fully-unified school data system. Thanks to the sparring matches between each of the politicians and bureaucrats (along with the lack of leadership overall by McConnell and Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger), data system integration is even less likely to happen now. Which means that parents can’t get the data they need to make smart decisions in shaping the educational destinies of their children — and teachers can’t use data smartly in shaping their classroom instruction.

This, by the way, isn’t just a California problem. Although Florida has succeeded in developing a truly longitudinal school data system, other states are plagued by similar versions  of California’s unwieldy school governance and paucity of leadership. It will take more than annual surveys by the Data Quality Campaign to shame states into fully addressing those problems. It is another reason why school reformers, grassroots activists (and business groups such as chambers of commerce) must work together to make data quality (and other elements of the reform agenda) a reality.