What are we trying to do here?

A fascinating article was sent my way by way of a colleague at school.

The article takes a look at the No Child Left Behind act six years after its inception. The meat of the article can be broken into two sections. The first major section looks at the causes of the achievement gap between rich and poor, black and white students. The second section explores the possible cures that seem to be working to close these achievement gaps.

In the causes section, the article sites two major studies that show that the major factor that seems to cause these achievement gaps center around differences in child-rearing strategies. More well-off parents seem to treat children as "apprentice adults", allowing them to challenge the adults' authority while being given opportunities to explore and attempt various experiences (piano lessons, team sports, etc) where lower income children are allowed more freedom to create their own social groups but less freedom in challenging the authority of parents - "natural growth". The other study explores the greater vocabulary that the middle-class parents use with regards to their children as well as the less-frequent "discouragements" that they show their children.

The second part of the article - the cures section - looks at the radical changes in education that appear to actually be successful in educating lower-income students. Many current attempts - primarily charter schools - appear to be unsuccessful unless they take drastic steps to attempt something vastly different from what is being done in more traditional school settings. The most successful charter schools focus on increasing the instructional time for lower-performing students, teaching them much more than simple academics - in particular on intriguing SLANT method, and providing their academics with very, very focused instruction.

Reading an article such as this one really makes me question what we're doing at school as we attempt to close that very achievement gap. It looks like solving a massive problem such as this one will take something a little more radical than what we're attempting.