In the course towards my M.Ed. in Ed Leadership, Diverse Learners, we’ve been asked to consider the data on learning an different racial and ethnic groups at our school. The degree program is through the American College of Education, and so it has a US focus, where it’s typical that historically marginalized groups show an achievement gap. For example it’s typical to see an achievement gap between Black and Latino students, and White students, or students from lower income families and students from higher income families. The idea, of course, is that schools should be working to close that achievement gap through culturally relevant curriculum.
However, while I am at an American style school, our school is not in the United States. I didn’t expect that our data would show the same achievement gap, given that 67% of our students are from Spanish speaking and Latin American countries. I don’t think it’s fair to say that a Latin-American student, (Mexican-American, Colombian-American, Ecuadorian-American etc.) is the same as a Mexican, Colombian, or Ecuadorian student. Yes, some of them may have an American (USA) parent, but they may not have lived in the states. Perhaps more importantly, they are not typically from a low income household.
Indeed looking at our MAP data, there doesn’t seem to be a large achievement gap between white and latino students in our school. The three major groupings in our MAP data were mostly on par, with some out pacing others in different grade levels. Overall, our Asian student population outpaces are white student population, with our Latino student population falling just below our school average. The gaps are so small, I think this is more an impact of the numbers of students in each of the groups, as opposed to our lack of culturally diverse curriculum. More students in a group will have more diversity in outcomes, bringing the average down.
So, if these are not our marginalized groups, then who are they? Do they even exist at an international school?
I asked this question to one my colleagues, Ms. Yolanda Bain-Barker, and her thought was related to language and social marginalization. From her perspective, it was the students that did not speak the dominant social language spoken at the school that are marginalized. In our school that social language happens to be Spanish. Could this be true? If the language of instruction is English, could the language spoken socially have an impact on student learning?
If learning is a social experience, then this does seem to make sense, and not even in an abstract way. In the classroom there are often small groups that work together to accomplish a task. It’s called collaboration and we encourage, or expect, even demand it from a 21st century learning experience. Indeed, with English language learners, our school encourages students to use their native language in discussions to co-construct understanding of concepts without always having to struggle through the language. Even without that specific prompt in the classroom, when students have an opportunity to choose their groups, consciously or not, they may be avoiding some of their classmates based on the limitations of language. Does that force non-Spanish speaking students into predetermined groups? Isn’t this similar to what might have happened to ELL learners in the United States?
For now I can only speculate. I haven’t been able to bring those two bits of data together. I’m a bit of a novice in terms of data juggling, but I hope to change that. It’s a goal of mine to be able to better understand how to compare our demographic data with our learning data, hopefully identifying unknown challenges, while measuring our successes. So, this will have to be a cliff-hanger, to be continued, saved for a a later date. Hopefully, I can sort that out sooner than later.
For now I’m left wondering where else we should be looking. What do you think? Who are the students that might, or are being left behind at your school. Is there an achievement gap between various groups? And what about our measurement tools? Are standardized tests like MAP the best tool to measure the gap? Or is Noam Chomsky right when he says that these methods are artificial and of no value?
I have so many questions.
