Last year, Dropout Nation had cast a skeptical eye on the Broad Foundation’s selection of four districts — Houston, San Diego Unified, Corona-Norco Unified in California’s Orange County, and Cumberland County, N.C. — as nominees for its annual Broad Prize. From where your editor sat, neither of the districts lived up to the Broad Prize’s goal of highlighted what high-performing urban districts should be nor did they go beyond achieving first-generation reform aims of improving graduation rates and basic literacy.
This skepticism was proved correct when it was revealed this past December when data from the most-recent National Assessment of Educational Progress revealed that Houston, which won the Broad Prize, saw a five percentage point increase in the number of functionally illiterate fourth-graders as measured by the federal test of student achievement, as well as excluded 34 percent of fourth-graders in special ed and 30 percent of eighth-graders in special ed ghettos from the exam.
So your editor couldn’t help but be a little pleased today when Broad Foundation announced that Gwinnett County, Ga., and Orange County, Fla., were the finalists for this years’ edition of the award. Not necessarily because both districts epitomize what school operators should be doing in an age when children must attain college-preparatory learning in order to succeed in the economy and society — more on that later — but because Broad acknowledged that it had to do better in weeding out districts doing better by kids from those who are just achieving average results. Yet the data on the two districts selected shows that Broad Foundation may need to raise the bar even higher.
By acknowledging that most of the urban districts considered for the Broad Prize were merely making “incremental” progress instead of aggressively improving student achievement of children — especially those from poor and minority households — in their care, Broad Foundation has sent a message to reformers that they can no longer simply give pats on the back for merely making the grade. The fact that the committee in charge of awarding the prize selected just two finalists (instead of five as it did the last go round) also shows that Broad Foundation is attempting to both raise the bar for success and be more-discriminating in which districts it will pick. Particularly for districts such as Houston which have rested on the laurels of early success in achieving the basic goals of improving student achievement, this should be a wake-up call to them to step up and do better by children.
This isn’t to say that Broad Foundation still doesn’t have some work to do. On one end, it may be time to rethink who sits on the committees involved in selecting finalists and winners of the award. Some on the review committee, for example, have been involved in selecting finalists for four or more years; a few, such as American Enterprise Institute scholar Rick Hess, are retreads. Bringing in some fresh eyes, including Parent Power activists such as Gwen Samuel of the Connecticut Parents Union, Kenneth Campbell of Black Alliance for Educational Options, and Ben Austin of Parent Revolution, would help; so would bringing in other researchers, policy wonks, and even reporters and filmmakers who haven’t previously been involved with the award. Certainly your editor can understand how hard it is to put together a jury to review award data. But it can be done. At the same time, additional data points may also be needed to further weed out which districts should be considered for the award. Suspension and expulsion data on districts considered for the award, for example, could be helpful in determining the true commitment to providing high-quality education to all children.
Ultimately, words are only as good as the actions taken. In the case of the latest Broad Prize selections, both Gwinnett (which had won the Broad Prize four years ago) and Orange have shown some progress, but little else in the way of success, in key areas of preparing kids for success in higher education and beyond.
Both Gwinnett and Orange are doing well in providing high schoolers with advanced math courses they need to prepare for college. The percentage of Gwinnett’s black high school students taking Algebra II increased from 10 percent to 17 percent between 2006-2007 and 2010-2011, according to data from the U.S. Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights, while the percentage of Latino and American Indian high schoolers taking Algebra II increased, respectively, from nine percent and 13 percent to 15 percent and 25 percent in the same period. [The percentage of white and Asian-Pacific Islander high school students taking Algebra II increased, respectively, from seven percent and six percent to 13 percent and 10 percent.] Meanwhile in Orange County, the percentage of black, Latino, and Native students taking Algebra II increased from, respectively, 16 percent, 16 percent, and 22 percent, to 25 percent, 23 percent, and 31 percent. The percentage of white students taking Algebra II increased from 21 percent to 25 percent, while the percentage of Asian students taking Algebra II declined slightly from 24 percent to 23 percent in that same period.
But it isn’t all roses. Neither are doing as well as needed in providing kids with other forms of advanced math, including statistics, geometry, and trigonometry. In fact, both Gwinnett and Orange have seen declines in the percentage of high schoolers taking such courses, which are critical for high-skilled blue- and white-collar work. The percentage of Gwinnett’s black students taking advanced math declined from 16 percent to seven percent in the same period, while only 23 percent Orange’s black children taking advanced math in 2011-2012, the same as it was in 2006-2007.
Gwinnett is clearly doing better than Orange in providing its high schoolers with Advanced Placement courses that are key to helping kids prepare for success in higher education. Between 2006-07 and 2011-2012, the percentage of Gwinnett’s black high schoolers taking Advanced Placement courses increased from three percent to 20 percent, while the percentage of Latino peer taking such courses increased from three percent to 22 percent,; the percentage of American Indian children taking AP increased from zero to 37 percent in that same period. At the same time, more white and Asian kids took AP as well, increasing from eight percent and 10 percent, respectively, to 35 percent and 53 percent. Orange County’s gains in AP participation weren’t nearly as dramatic. The percentage of black kids taking AP increased from just 12 percent to 14 percent between 2006-2007, while the percentage of Latino kids taking the college prep courses increased from 15 percent to 19 percent. The percentage of white, Asian, and Native students taking AP declined, from, respectively, 39 percent, 56 percent, and 35 percent, to 36 percent, 48 percent, and 34 percent, in the same period.
And while both Gwinnett and Orange have increased the percentage of seventh- and eighth-graders taking Algebra 1, the critical course for preparing kids for success with other forms of college-preparatory math, both are still not doing enough to help all middle-schoolers get such learning. Such data does not seem to be considered in selecting candidate districts or finalists for Broad Prize consideration. The percentage of Gwinnett’s Native seventh- and eighth-graders taking Algebra 1 increased from five percent to 27 percent between 2006-2007 and 2011-2012. But the percentage of black and Latino middle-schoolers taking introductory algebra increased from just, respectively four percent and four percent, to six percent and nine percent in the same period. [The percentage of white and Asian middle school students taking Algebra 1 increased, respectively, from 11 percent and 17 percent, to 15 percent and 23 percent.] Orange’s students fared little better. A mere 11 percent of black middle schoolers took Algebra 1 in 2011-2012 versus nine percent in 2006-2007, while a mere 14 percent of Latino middle school students, and 35 percent of Asian peers took introductory algebra in 2011-2012, versus 12 percent and 29 percent five years earlier. [The percentage of white middle schoolers taking Algebra 1 remained unchanged at 23 percent.]
This isn’t to say that neither district isn’t showing progress. You also cannot expect districts that have struggled mightily in past years to provide poor and minority kids with high-quality education to do so overnight. So let’s give Gwinnett and Orange credit for achieving results. Whether or not either district deserves to be a Broad Prize winner? This is an open question — and it offers an opportunity for the selection committee choosing between the finalists to send a message demanding all school operators (and American public education, in general) to push harder in transforming education for all kids.