Quantifying and Exploring Elementary School Excellence Gaps Across Schools and Time

Despite considerable reform activity surrounding K-12 education over the last 20 years, racialand socioeconomic disparities among students who achieve at advanced levels have receivedlittle attention. This study examined how excellence gaps, defined as differences in performanceat the 90th percentile of subgroups, change over time and their potential antecedents. Weanalyzed Measure of Academic Progress achievement data in reading and mathematics from acohort of approximately 60,000 students from third to fifth grade in 742 elementary schools.Multilevel modeling results indicate Black/Hispanic and White/Asian excellence gaps wererelatively stable in reading. However, excellence gaps in mathematics increased during theschool year and across time, and higher achieving schools demonstrated larger excellence gapsthan lower achieving schools.

Quantifying and Exploring Elementary School Excellence Gaps Across Schools and Time

Despite considerable reform activity surrounding K-12 education over the past 20 years, racial and socioeconomic disparities among students who achieve at advanced levels have received little attention. This study examined how excellence gaps, defined as differences in performance at the 90th percentile of subgroups, change over time and their potential antecedents. We analyzed Measure of Academic Progress achievement data in reading and mathematics from a cohort of approximately 60,000 students from third to fifth grade in 742 elementary schools. Multilevel modeling results indicate that Black/Hispanic and White/Asian excellence gaps were relatively stable in reading. However, excellence gaps in mathematics increased during the school year and across time, and higher achieving schools demonstrated larger excellence gaps than lower achieving schools.

Lessons learnt: Observation of Grade 4 reading comprehension teaching in South African schools across the Progress in International Reading Literacy Study (PIRLS) 2006 achievement spectrum

The evidence of the huge challenges of literacy development faced by South African learners is primarily gleaned from the results of learners’ external assessments. There is little research which explores, in-depth, the strategies used by teachers to teach reading literacy and reading comprehension specifically. Questions remain about what is going wrong and, most importantly,what can be changed to rectify the poor outcomes of learners. To gain insight into the poor achievement of Grade 4 learners, in South Africa in the Progress in International Reading Literacy Study (PIRLS) 2006, six case studies were undertaken. Each school case had a different class average achievement profile ranging from low to high on the PIRLS achievement scale.This article presents findings from the observation of Grade 4 reading comprehension lessons in six schools. The comparison of observations of teaching practices aligned to higher achieving schools, against those of lower performing schools, indicates the discrepancies in the quality of teaching reading comprehension across the schools, and reveals potential foci for teacher development. The value of comparative lesson observation for these purposes is highlighted.