The Matthew Effect, Plinko, and the achievement gap
This was written by Jared Joiner, a graduate of Montgomery County Public Schools who is now working towards a masters degree at the Harvard Graduate School of Education. It refers to a Century Foundation report called “Housing Policy is School Policy," that said low-income students do beter in school when they are given a chance to live in better neighborhoods and attend schools with wealthier classmates. Richard D. Kahlenberg, a senior fellow at The Century Foundation, wrote about the report on this blog in response to a piece I had posted.
By Jared Joiner
The argument for integration of low-income students into more affluent schools is that it offers an opportunity to level the playing field and provide high expectations to students who are not traditionally held to the same schooling standards as the white upper and middle class.
However, as a Black male who attended Montgomery County Public Schools (MCPS) for high school, I am not convinced that a culture of high expectations extends beyond honors, AP, and IB classrooms.
I remember that when I enrolled in ninth grade, my guidance counselor dissuaded me from enrolling in honors classes. Had my mother (an MCPS teacher) not understood the system, I probably would have avoided the rigorous content and high expectations that year, and I ultimately might have been ill-prepared to successfully complete the IB program.
Frankly, it seems impossible to close the achievement gap without breaking down the barriers that reinforce differences in social capital among students.
Despite the achievement benefits documented by the Century Foundation’s study, closing the achievement gap will not occur simply from forcing socioeconomic integration in every school.
Regretfully, there is no “magic bullet” that will solve the country’s education problems. Rather, the problems in American education are the result of more pervasive problems that weave through every layer of society.
The challenge of adequately serving all students is best demonstrated in literacy research. Until we address the contexts that breed the achievement gap, it will remain difficult to reverse what Keith Stanovich calls “the Matthew Effect” (the rich get richer and the poor get poorer), whereby students who struggle in school early on fall further and further behind as time goes on.
The importance of early exposure to print and school-readiness skills in the primary years was established, nearly 30 years ago, in Shirley Brice Heath’s (1983), Ways with Words. Heath shows that learning does not begin in school, but rather is determined by events prior to school. The differences in toddlers’ and infants’ language and literacy environments contribute to their incredibly varied school experiences and performance.
The struggling that the children in the study did in school did not reflect a lack of innate ability, but instead that their home environments cultivated a different set of skills that were not compatible with learning practices in the primary grades. While these skills were potentially applicable to higher-order academic tasks in the later grades, many of these students would already be designated as needing special education services; an illustrative case of the Matthew Effect at work.
As these findings were thoroughly documented in literacy research, studies in neuroscience have clarified the extent to which the brain is shaped through interaction with the environment (see Mareschal & colleagues, 2007 for a thorough discussion of developmental research to date).
Like a game of Plinko, this “epigenetic” view of development holds that genetics sets the puck in motion, but environmental interactions (the pegs) determine the path and ultimate resting place. This bears on learning because, as the newborn mind makes meaning from the world with her sensory processing abilities, the brain undergoes a process of reorganization based on this experience.
Both literacy and neuroscience research illustrate how the developing mind does not exist in a vacuum, or as a vessel waiting to be filled with knowledge. Rather, the environment begins guiding the mind’s development at conception; so when a child enters kindergarten, she has already participated in five years of learning from cradling in arms, riding in car seats, and socializing in daycare. Moreover, this learning has been embedded within social, familial, and community contexts that form the unique lens though which an individual views and interprets the world.
The education reform conversation needs a fundamental change. Just as we need to stop discussing socioeconomic status as an intractable barrier, we should also refrain from treating teacher quality as a monolithic category.
Obviously, the quality of a teacher will affect student learning. However, if a student brings the requisite culturally derived “ways of ‘saying-writing-doing-being-valuing-believing’” (Delpit, 1992) necessary for success in school, a teacher’s job is decidedly easier.
Similarly, we cannot use poverty as an excuse to limit students’ potential (Jean Anyon provides harrowing examples of this in schools), but we do know that students who experience a mismatch between the culture of school and culturally appropriate practices outside of school may require individualized pedagogy. Such pedagogy must be more responsive to, and support the success of, all students.
So, it’s not that socioeconomic status determines school performance. Rather, it’s a complicated interaction between contextual student characteristics, like non-mainstream language and literacy exposure, and the pedagogy implemented by teachers that determine scholastic achievement.
Many policy-based interventions might be served by keeping these findings in mind. That is, the implementation of early-childhood interventions coupled with more economic heterogeneity and a culturally responsive pedagogy in schools, might do wonders towards closing the achievement gap.
Anyon, J. (1981). Social class and school knowledge. Curriculum Inquiry, 11(1), 3-41.
Delpit, L. (1992). Acquisition of literate discourse: Bowing before the master? Theory into practice, 31(4): 296-302.
Heath, S.B. (1983). Ways with Words: Language, life and work in communities and classrooms. New York: Cambridge University Press
Mareschal, D., Johnson, M., Sirois, S., Spratling, M., Thomas, M., & Westermann, G. (2007). Neuroconstructivism: Volume 1. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Stanovic, K.E. (1986). Matthew effects in reading: Some consequences of individual differences in the acquisition of literacy. Reading Research Quarterly, 21(4): 360-407.
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| November 20, 2010; 8:00 AM ET
Categories: Achievement gap, Guest Bloggers | Tags: achievement gap, brain development, brain research, closing achievement gap, guest bloggers, plinko, the Matthew Effect, the matthew effect
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