SLIDE 1 The Achievement Gap Initiative At Harvard University Toward Excellence with Equity Harvard University and the Tripod Project for School Improvement See: www.agi.harvard.edu and www.tripoded.com
What Schools and Communities Can Do To Move Toward Excellence with Equity
SLIDE 2 Sure as Sunlight
There is a child here in your caring who may someday cure all cancer but you’ve got to lay the groundwork so that it can come to pass. She is a child who has not blossomed so you cannot see her brilliance but as sure as there is sunlight she is here now in your class. I cannot tell you what her name is nor her height, nor weight, nor color,
- nly that she is potentially
a history-making lass.
Latent potential waiting to be harvested.
SLIDE 3 SCHOOL AND LIFE SUCCESS
TESTED OUTCOMES Reading Skills Math Skills Reasoning Skills Academic Knowledge AGENCY-RELATED FACTORS Growth Mindset Conscientiousness Future Orientation Persistence
SLIDE 4
ALL AGES AND STAGES ARE IMPORTANT!
SLIDE 5
Birth to 3: 80% of brain development!
SLIDE 6
Ages 3 to 5: pre-school socialization and school-readiness skills
SLIDE 7
Ages 5 to 9: school socialization, learning to read and do basic arithmetic
SLIDE 8
Ages 9 to 14: reading to learn; trying on identities and imagining possible future selves
SLIDE 9
14 to 18: settling on an academic and pre- career pathway
SLIDE 10
18 to 22: transitioning from adolescence into the adult world
SLIDE 11
22 to 30: finding a career track, adult routines and separating from parents
SLIDE 12
- Parents
- Teachers
- Peers
- Employers
- Community
KEY ROLES:
Parents/Family Teachers/School (PreK-18) Employers Peers Community
SLIDE 13 One Conception of the Goal: Excellence with Group Proportional Equality
SLIDE 14 Achievement distribution for group A Achievement distribution for group B Excellence with Equity => A and B have the same high distribution.
SLIDE 15
The Importance of Early Childhood
SLIDE 16
- 25.00
- 20.00
- 15.00
- 10.00
- 5.00
0.00
White Black Hispanic Native American White Black Hispanic Native American Males Females
U.S. Cognitive Gaps in Early Childhood
(As a percentage of scores for white females)
At 1 Year Old At 2 Years Old
MALES FEMALES
Source: AGI Calculations using Bailey Test score data from the U.S. national Early Childhood Longitudinal Study, Birth Cohort.
SLIDE 17 Age
0 1 2 3 4 5
Many children fall behind early and never catch up. 17
Cognitive Skills Average racial and ethnic gaps equal 3 to 4 years of learning by age 17*
*This refers to the gap between blacks, Latinos, and Native Americans, compared to whites, on the National Assessment of Educational Progress.
SLIDE 18 Age
0 1 2 3 4 5
Our aspiration:
17
Cognitive Skills
One higher curve for all groups
SLIDE 19
Saturate the community with parenting information & supports. Make life the program! Help families experience positive reinforcements from every direction for doing the things that matter.
SLIDE 20
Boston Basics Videos
SLIDE 21 Socio-Ecological Saturation
Retail Shopping Barbers, & Beauticians Health Centers & Pediatricians Hospitals Faith Based Organizations Schools, Museums, & Libraries Community Centers Child Care Settings Housing Developments
SLIDE 22
For school-aged children:
We need to teach ways that develop not only academic skills and knowledge, but also agency.
SLIDE 23
Agency is the capacity and propensity to take purposeful initiative. The opposite of helplessness.
SLIDE 24
TEN GUIDELINES FOR TEACHING TO CULTIVATE AGENCY
SLIDE 25 Care
Be attentive and sensitive, but avoid a tendency among sensitive teachers to coddle students in ways that hold them to lower standards and undermine their agency.
SLIDE 26 Confer
Encourage and respect students’ perspectives and honor student voice, but also stay focused on instructional goals; avoid extended discussions that have no apparent purpose and thereby fail to model self-discipline and effective agency.
SLIDE 27 Captivate
Strive to make lessons stimulating and relevant to the development of agency. If some students seem unresponsive, do not assume they are disinterested. Some students—and especially those who struggle—purposefully hide their interest and their effort.
SLIDE 28 Consolidate
Regularly summarize and check for understanding, because consolidation helps to solidify learning and models your agency as a teacher, even when students seem reticent or disinterested.
SLIDE 29 Clarify
Clarify by clearing up confusion: take regular steps to detect and respond to confusion in class, but in ways that share responsibility with students for doing the thinking. Clarify with lucid explanations: strive to develop clear explanations—especially for the material that students find most difficult—including lucid examples of how the skills and knowledge you teach can support effective agency. Clarify with instructive feedback: give instructive feedback to help scaffold student agency in correcting their own work and building their own understandings.
SLIDE 30 Challenge
Challenge by requiring rigor: press students to think deeply instead of superficially about their lessons; set and enforce performance goals that require students to use reasoning and exercise agency. Challenge by requiring persistence: consistently require students to keep trying even when work is difficult—to give their best efforts and produce their best work—knowing that few things could be more important for developing agency.
SLIDE 31 Classroom Management
Strive to achieve respectful, orderly, on-task student behavior in your class by teaching in ways that clarify, captivate, and challenge—in support of agency—instead of imposing control by intimidation and coercion.
SLIDE 32
- - How important do you think agency is compared to
the knowledge and skills that standardized tests measure?
- - Should both agency and academic skills be
promoted as essential outcomes?
- - How are agency and academic outcomes
interrelated?
