One of our most troubling problems is the large and persistent gap between the achievement of white, middle-class students and that of poor, minority youngsters. This gap puts minority children at a terrible disadvantage. It also threatens the health of our democratic society. There is no dispute about the seriousness of the problem, but there is plenty about how to solve it.
Minority kids often go to schools with poor quality curriculums where little is expected of them. Should we set higher standards and work with these youngsters to help them meet the standards? Or is this another form of unfairness? Is it better to try to bring the youngsters along gradually by offering them a curriculum that doesn't expect too much of them?
In "High Standards for All" (American Educator, Summer 1994), Jeffrey Mirel and David Angus reveal that this debate on how to achieve equity in education is nothing new--it goes back at least 70 years. More important, they present evidence that minority youngsters are not turned off by high standards. When more is demanded of them, they produce more. Standards, Mirel and Angus say, are the most powerful lever we have to achieve equity in education.
Early in the 20th century, when large numbers of youngsters from white working-class and minority families began staying in school past the elementary grades, educators were somewhat uneasy. They believed equity demanded that they "educate" these youngsters--which meant keeping them in school until they got their diplomas. But educators had serious doubts about the youngsters' ability to master an academic curriculum--what we would now call a core curriculum--of English, history, mathematics, science and foreign languages. If the kids were pushed into these courses, educators believed, they would drop out in huge numbers.
Their solution was to differentiate and dilute the curriculum. And the result can be clearly seen in the high school course-taking patterns that Mirel and Angus follow over a 60-year period, from 1928 to 1990. The number of different courses that were offered skyrocketed from about 175 in 1922 to 2,100 in 1973--as Mirel and Angus say, "curricular expansion run amok." At the same time, the percentage of academic or core courses being taken went steadily downward. In 1928, over 67 percent of the courses taken were academic; by 1961, the number had dropped to 57 percent. This sounds like the phenomenon described in The Shopping Mall High School--when kids are offered a choice between easier courses and tougher ones, they choose the easier.
The impact on working-class and minority children was particularly significant:
"While these curricular decisions sought to promote equal educational opportunity, in reality they had a grossly unequal impact on working-class and black children .... Beginning in the 1930s, these students were disproportionately assigned to non-academic tracks and courses and to academic classes that had lower standards and less rigorous content."
However, that's not the end of the story. Thanks to various reform initiatives, course-taking patterns began to change direction again in the 1970s. Students started taking more academic courses, and the percentage of academic courses has risen steadily until it is now over 66 percent--close to the 1928 high. Minorities have shared in this increase in academic course taking, and it has led to some remarkable changes for African-American and Hispanic students, both in terms of the percentage of academic courses taken and improved achievement, as shown in standardized tests.
For example, in 1982 only 28 percent of African-American students took four years of English, three years of social studies and two years of math and science. By 1990, 72 percent were taking these core courses. Did this increase in the academic course work lead to a big increase in dropouts? Not at all. In fact, the dropout rate for African-American students fell from 18 percent to 13 percent. And SAT scores for these youngsters rose 21 points on the verbal section and 34 points on the math.
The gap that remains between black and Hispanic students and white students is enormous and unacceptable, but the way to close it is to ask more of minority youngsters, not less. Students will not all be able to learn exactly the same material in exactly the same way--though these differences have nothing to do with racial or ethnic background: "The idea that all students should meet high standards (and essentially follow the same curriculum) does not deny that there are educationally relevant differences among individuals in interests and abilities."
Goals 2000 offers states and communities a chance to develop standards and curriculums and assessments that take individual differences in "interests and abilities" into account while pushing all youngsters to achieve their best. As Mirel and Angus warn us, we must be sure that we don't repeat the mistake of 70 years ago and confuse being easy with being fair.