These Schools have MAJOR Socioeconomic Achievement Gaps

People talk about the achievement gap all the time. Usually, they are talking about comparing different schools. They are comparing schools with wealthy students to schools with poor students.

But there are several schools in L.A. where the achievement gap exists within the school.

At these schools, the wealthier students vastly outperformed the poorer students. (On the CAASPP data, these students are referred to as “Not Socioeconomically Disadvantaged” and “Socioeconomically Disadvantaged”).

There is a hidden trend here. Most of these schools (but not all) have students that come from wealthier families than the rest of the district. The median percent of students receiving free or reduced lunch at these twenty schools is 45%. And the median for the math list is 26%. Compare that to the district median of 78%.

So it would appear that wealthier schools tend to have bigger internal achievement gaps.

But that doesn’t explain everything. In fact, there are still several schools on this list that have very high poverty rates: Braddock, Victory, Humphreys have very poor populations. Statistically, the correlation between wealth and this year’s achievement gap is weak with an r² of .23 (which essentially means – there is a correlation, but there must be other factors to explain the correlation too).

I think that if you add in the math, more trends become apparent.

Here you can see a second trend: Elementary schools dominate both lists.

Why might that be? In elementary schools, the differences afforded you by class may be more stark. The well documented 30 million word gap deeply affects literacy at early ages, creating vast disparities between working class students vs. their middle and upper class peers.

Then, add in the fact that many middle and upper class families choose to send their students to public elementary, and then choose private middle and high schools. There is documented exodus from LAUSD in the 6th grade. I speak from personal experience on this as well, as I had many friends who went to an LAUSD elementary school, but then attended private middle and high schools.

But regardless of these challenges, it is the job of schools to overcome them and close the achievement gap. I point out these schools not because I think they are doing badly, but because I think this is a place for them to improve. And I hope that knowing this data can give them some insight that goes deeper than just their overall scores.

That is why deep data analysis is so important.

Yes, you can know your overall progress by looking at those overall scores. But if you really want to understand the achievement gap, and how to close it, you have to look deeper.

 

One Reply to “These Schools have MAJOR Socioeconomic Achievement Gaps”

  1. Thanks for this!! Keep it coming…

    (from another lausd math teacher with charter experience:)

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