How Do School Districts Differ in Their Student Achievement? Reaction Paper

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school district achievement are correlated with aggregate socio-economic conditions in the community. The impact of socio-economic class on school performance cannot be underestimated. The phenomenon begins as early as kindergarten: "low-SES children begin school at kindergarten in systematically lower-quality elementary schools than their more advantaged counterparts," (Burkham & Lee, 2002). The differences between Shaker Heights and Cleveland are in large part due to their different community demographics. In Shaker Heights, every single school in the district is classified as a low-poverty school. In Cleveland, the reverse is true: all of the schools are classified as high-poverty schools.

The quality of the staff, in terms of their training and educational background, reflects the socio-economic status of the schools in the district. Rather than having equal staff, the schools in Shaker Heights and Cleveland have differential staff. This means that the students start out disadvantaged due to their family's low income; and are then disadvantaged again by attending schools with teachers who are not as qualified as they are in wealthier neighborhoods. As a result, their test scores are lower and they do not advance as frequently to higher education. The cycle continues. The quality of school resources also varies between low-income and high-income schools. With poorly trained teachers and a paucity of educational resources, the students in Cleveland schools are not given equal access to educational services vs. their wealthier counterparts.

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The government puts pressure on Cleveland schools to improve the test scores of students, but without addressing the root causes. If students do not have teachers who know the material; or the right books and software to teach the material, then it becomes impossible to improve test scores. Even when resources are adequate, wealthy students have greater access to tutoring and other extracurricular aides -- including parental assistance with homework. Students from disadvantaged backgrounds do not have parents who can afford tutoring, or to quit their jobs in order to provide extracurricular help.

2. My state's education website does not have information as organized or as easy to understand as the state of Ohio's data. There are downloadable Excel files for the state's "grading" system results for its schools, which does not give the gamut of information contained in the Ohio briefing forms. However, a brief perusal of the information for the State of Florida does show similar patterns as its counterpart state. The higher income school districts do demonstrate higher outputs in terms of overall school performance and student graduation rates, to name a few of the dependent variables.

The differences between school district can be nearly fully accounted for by income status. School….....

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