What will do the most to narrow the achievement gap?

More attention to middle schools and tweeners.

Gender specific classes in (at least) math, language arts, and P.E.

Later starting schools. 7:30 is too early for middle schoolers to begin a school day.

Traditional year schools. Single Track Year round schools are just plain silly. What's the point?

Tweaking curriculum maps so that they are more conceptual, and not 'a mile wide and an inch deep'.

Mastering the basics (basic facts & times tables, spelling bees).

The use of technology, i.e., audio books (I PODS), to increase a love for reading.

Utilizing the tested and research proven strategies available in NCLB.

Union teachers having more respect for the law - NCLB.

If you want good teachers to work in ghettos, gang infested areas, broken down and poorly maintained schools, almost no resourses in those areas, well guess what, pay in those areas will have to be greatly increased. Would you teach in a place like that for the same pay or more you could get in a nice sleepy 'burb? Graft and corruption in many large city areas like LA drive out the good teachers. Lots of jobs in the 'burbs and small cities that pay well and teachers are not blamed for or expected to cure every social ill.

Until the government steps in and takes total control of the family and home, there appears to be little we as educators can do to completely close the gap. I fight illiterate and uneducated "young" single mothers daily who do not understand why their children need to behave in class or make a consious effort to learn. Unfortunately, these parents pass on those beliefs to the children I am attempting to teach. Please, please tell me how to combat this growing epidemic!

By the way, no, I do not believe the government needs to take control of the family and home . . . I was merely trying to make a point.

The relationship between student and teacher is a very important one. In all the reading I have been doing the theme of postive relationships always comes up in student sucess. I also feel that we need all the other componets for student to suceed. Smaller class sizes leaves time for teahcers to get to know their studnets on a more individulized level. Parent involvement helps reinforce the expectation that are in the classroom. I feel the back bone of it all is the experienced teacher. This teacher is able to balance every thing that is expected of them.

I believe that what will most close the achievement gap is a commitment by all stakeholders (students, parents, teacher, administrators, community members, state officials, and national officials) to make a strict commitment to a standards-based educational system. If we define what all kids should know and be able to do and hold these high expectaions for all our students, then we are truly creating an equitable system where all students will receive an appropriate education. As a result we will prepare our students for their lives ahead. We have seen time and time again that when we have high expectations, students will meet them. We need to follow through on this promise to them and provide that high level of rigor that they require.

The ONE thing that will most close the achievement gap is the interaction and involvement of parents. Teachers and schools CANNOT do it alone. If the parents aren't involved, the kids will have an almost impossible chance of succeeding.

The wars in education are unending, but they used to be subject specific, you know, hands on vs memorization, whole language vs phonetics, and or physics last or first. Right now, under this administration , we are stuck in NCLB land, and actually all of the states have been left behind. What do I mean? Just as there is no one way to teach reading, or math or english, the trap of no child left behind is that many are not making it. We could talk about specific groups of people, children with disabilities, children of minority origin, children who are gifted, but any real teacher knows that all children are not the same. One of the most interesting advantages technology gave to us, was the ability to differentiate instruction and to bring resources forward that were beyond one person's scope , perspective, or level of content learning. No one party or government agency can corral all of the initiatives that are going on under some mythic umbrella of NCLB or anything else. We work at education. At this point, we are being worked over. There is little respect for teachers in the national media. I wonder if Margaret Spelling has ever taught? I wonder how many people who are crafting these visions, know the real playing field. There is something about having the experience and knowing that children are individuals , and that there are a variety offactors that create the possibility of learning , that makes a difference. One of the funniest things I ever did , was to invite a few CEO's to my real school, to actually have to be in front of a class. A few were terrified about presenting, but some were up to the challenge. I earned a lot of respect that day from those guys. Teaching is an art. One of the most successful was a theoretical physicist. He could teach science to anyone at any level. I used to hold my breath as he introduced himself over technology to audiences that I barely knew while I was working in demonstration, but he KNEW how to teach, he knew his subject and the children saw me, but looked right at him and responded. This was science, this was physics. There is also an S in STEM. Science is significant in our lives. Furthermore, as one of the people in a part of this notebook said. There is a T in STEM... there is, there is. and there is also a respect and training that must be given to teachers and educational professionals so that they can accomplish the task of teaching. . The divides come with the territory, we don't create them. As one of my mentors used to say under her breathe. We don't make the kids, we don't make brains. What we do is to try to find a way to make things happen so that children will learn. We lead them to learning. Bonnie Bracey Sutton

While PBL will take us part of the way there, we must integrate subject matter so that students see the relationships in the subject matter. Students need to see how the arts, literature, math and science fit together into historical context. This, enhanced by PBL will enable students to see the relevance in what they are learning and will "stick" because it will be immediately applicable.

Teachers interact with students daily and directly. Cutting through all of the upper layers of state and local education departments and directing funds to the classroom is the best way to insure a quality education for all students. Improve the number of effective teachers and student performance will also improve. Research ( Marzano) has shown that effective teachers are the key to narrowing the achievement gap. Low performing schools typically have a higher proportion of inexperienced teachers than high performing schools. They also have more teachers teaching out of their subject areas. One group in Chattanooga,Tennessee, the Public Education Foundation, was able to prove that moving highly effective teachers into high poverty schools dramatically improved student performance. Other supporting evidence in the research: In all these successful programs, one strategic requirement emerges: The teacher is "the essential force for improving student achievement." Solmon & Schiff, "Talented Teachers," 2004 "High--quality teachers raise student performance ––indeed, it appears that the most important thing a school can do is to provide its students with good teachers…What does the empirical evidence imply for policymaking? …the importance of teacher quality cannot be overestimated."GoldhaberGoldhaber, "The Mystery of Good Teaching," , 2002 "Study after study demonstrates the importance of the classroom teacher. Estimates suggest that in a single year an Estimates suggest that in a single year an average student with a good teacher can progress more than a full grade level faster than an average student with a poor teacher. The same holds true for disadvantaged students." Hanushek "Making Schools Work," 2003 Beginning third graders in Dallas gained 21 points on a norm--referenced test in math by the end of fifth grade after being assigned three "highly effective" teachers in a row. A similar group dropped 30 points after being assigned three of their school's least effective teachers in a row. Haycock, "Good Teaching Matters," 1998 "Students…have vastly different academic outcomes as a result of the sequence of teachers to which they are assigned." teachers to which they are assigned." William Sanders, director of the Value--Added Research and Assessment Center at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville. "If we don't step up to the challenge of finding and supporting the best teachers, we'll undermine everything else we are trying to do to improve our schools. That's a conscious decision that would threaten our economic strength, political fabric and stability as a nation. It's exactly that clear cut." Gerstner, "Teaching at Risk: A Call to Action," 2004

I was looking for "all the above" answer, and I would just be repeating many of the same comments if I went on. But I feel that since many aspects of federal support have failed us, we need to focus on the local issues such as parental involvement. Why not have an after school homwork club where parents are involved. Often schools have literacy nights for the students, what about a night focused on adult literacy.