A new study from Kansas University shows that schools with bigger class sizes and more African-American students offer fewer subjects to their students and provide a narrower curriculum than schools with lower class sizes or predominantly white or Asian-American students.
The study took a look at some of the mechanisms by which federal law has created or exacerbated inequity in our public schools. It confirms earlier work that reached much the same conclusion.
In February 2013, we reported on testimony before the US Department of Education by a student from Dyett High School in Chicago. In her testimony, Aquila Griffin showed that students at a high school in a predominantly white neighborhood offered more Advanced Placement classes, more arts classes, and more foreign languages than Dyett, which is in a predominantly African-American neighborhood.
The US Department of Education, a few months earlier, had acknowledged the development of narrower curricula in schools that were being punished under No Child Left Behind. US Secretary of Education Arne Duncan “explained that No Child Left Behind places too much weight on one test, leading to a narrow curriculum.”
So, while the new research, presented at the 109th annual meeting of the American Sociological Association on Aug 17, doesn’t really provide any insight that is new, it does confirm earlier reports and adds another variable to measure just how narrow the curricula at some schools has become.
According to the new report, the farther away from the National Assessment of Educational Progress tests the state’s own tests are, the narrower the curriculum is assumed to be. Researchers measured how different the state’s accountability tests were from the NAEP tests. If the scores students received on the NAEP didn’t correlate well with the scores they received on the state’s tests, researchers concluded that the tests weren’t measuring the same skill set.
“If a state’s assessment is more comparable to the NAEP, that means the state expects its students to have mastered more skills,” said Argun Saatcioglu, a KU associate professor of education. “If a state’s assessment becomes less comparable, in that the exam measures fewer skills and hence is less demanding than NAEP, then the state’s proficiency scores are likely to rise.”
Under NCLB, states and schools are often under pressure to get their scores up. One way to do that is to lower the standards, but that leads to the inequity that has been widely reported.
There’s good reason to replicate research in education
Finally, although I don’t wish to downplay the importance of this study—the work teaches a lot about why our schools are as unequal as they are—I want to say a word or two about the dearth of research in the education field that serves to confirm other research. In most scientific fields, for instance, study after study is conducted before people in those fields accept a finding. In education, studies are often published that don’t simply prove previous research but support a brand new idea that may never be tested again.
There is much to gain from meta-analyses in education, and we try to reference these as often as possible in our stories. There is also a great need to publish corroborating evidence in support of other people’s theories in education. At the very least, someone else needs to re-run experiments independently, in addition to approval by a journal referee. If this doesn’t happen more often, researchers run the risk of having absolutely no effect on policy.
More studies like the one cited above are also needed. “Facts Are More Important Than Novelty: Replication in the Education Sciences,” researchers titled a report released earlier this year, here. Here’s what Matthew C Makel and Jonathan A Plucker write:
Despite increased attention to methodological rigor in education research, the field has focused heavily on experimental design and not on the merit of replicating important results. The present study analyzed the complete publication history of the current top 100 education journals ranked by 5-year impact factor and found that only 0.13% of education articles were replications. Contrary to previous findings in medicine, but similar to psychology, the majority of education replications successfully replicated the original studies. However, replications were significantly less likely to be successful when there was no overlap in authorship between the original and replicating articles. The results emphasize the importance of third-party, direct replications in helping education research improve its ability to shape education policy and practice.
