Closing the Achievement Gap
Teaching For All Students to Learn
How do teachers reconcile the difference between the bell-curve effect in student achievement, and the mandate from the government in No Child Left Behind that teachers must "close the gap" and enable all students to succeed academically? The New Teacher Project is one group that is attempting to do so, one teacher at a time.
The Bell Curve
Everyone is familiar with the concept of the bell curve and the distribution of normal intelligence across a spectrum. There will always be those who are at one extreme or the other, those who are brilliant and those who have a low IQ and struggle. The majority of people will fall where the bell curves, or somewhere in the middle.
The implication of this is the same as for the statement about any average test score. In order for 80 percent to be average, there needs to be just as many above 80 percent as there are below 80 percent. Any teacher will tell you that in one classroom alone, whether with 8 students or 28 students, there is variability between the highest student and the lowest student.
No Child Left Behind
So how do teachers reconcile the accepted and well demonstrated fact of the bell curve with the requirement of today's teachers to leave no child behind and have all students able to pass a standardized reading and math test with a certain level of achievement? Teachers, law makers, parents and others have debated this and will continue to debate this.
The bottom line is the fact that for better or worse, something needs to change in the classroom. All students need to be able to read and solve basic math problems on the same basic timeline as other students across the country. Schools across the country are scrambling to meet adequate yearly progress, and whether teachers, parents or others think that it is possible to do this, it must be done.
The New Teacher Project
The New Teacher Project is one non-profit organization that is striving to make a change in the classroom in order to cause the achievement gap to disappear. The group was created by teachers in 1997 with the mission to create alternate routes for teacher certification in order to add outstanding teachers to today's classrooms. They work with school districts across the country and create programs for the individuals deemed highly qualified in their field that will bring them into the classroom and make an impact on students in high-needs areas.
Will the New Teacher Project and others like it make enough of a difference in today's classrooms to be able to close the achievement gap? Time will tell, and hopefully in the meantime, more and more students will graduate from high school able to read, write and function in today's society.
Closing the Achievement Gap
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