Released on = June 14, 2006, 12:58 pm

Press Release Author = Mark Kerr / WestEd

Industry = Education

Press Release Summary = School reforms to close the academic achievement gap among
our nation\'s children cannot fully succeed unless supplemented by reform in the
social and economic institutions that affect children\'s ability to learn, according
to a WestEd Policy Perspectives paper by Richard Rothstein, Research Associate at
the Economic Policy Institute.

Press Release Body = School reforms to close the academic achievement gap among our
nation\'s children cannot fully succeed unless supplemented by reform in the social
and economic institutions that affect children\'s ability to learn, according to a
WestEd Policy Perspectives paper by Richard Rothstein, Research Associate at the
Economic Policy Institute.

\"We exclusively target schools for reform because we wrongly assume that schools
must be the sole cause of persistent achievement gaps,\" says Rothstein. \"But the
achievement gaps between middle and lower income students, and between black and
white students, cannot be eliminated unless we also tackle the causes of these gaps
which lie outside the schoolhouse door.\"

Rothstein identifies six areas of reform, in addition to school improvement, that
could help narrow the achievement gap:

1. Greater Income Equality: Support higher incomes for adults working in low-wage
jobs to ensure minimally adequate physical and emotional security for their
children.

2. Stable, Adequate Housing: Decrease mobility in lower-class neighborhoods to avoid
disrupting children\'s learning, and create mixed-income housing to increase positive
peer influences for poor children.

3. School-Community Clinics: Increase access to high-quality health care to address
health problems that impede learning.

4. Early Childhood Education: Provide high-quality infant/toddler and pre-school
programs so that low-income children enter school ready to learn.

5. After-School Programs: Replace excessive television watching common in low-cost
day care arrangements with after-school programs that can improve children\'s
physical, social/emotional, and academic skills.

6. Summer Programs: Provide lower-class children with summer experiences similar to
those of middle-class children, such as recreational reading, organized sports
leagues, traveling, attending camp, and visiting museums.

Funding these reforms would be more effective in narrowing achievement gaps than
concentrating resources solely on traditional, stand-alone school reform efforts
such as smaller class size and higher teacher pay. As Rothstein says, \"Schools, no
matter how good, cannot carry the entire burden of narrowing our substantial, and
growing, income inequalities and social class differences.\"

A free copy of this Policy Perspectives paper is available at www.WestEd.org/reforms.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Richard Rothstein is a Research Associate at the Economic Policy Institute in
Washington, D.C., and a former education columnist at the New York Times. He is the
author of Class and Schools: Using Social, Economic and Educational Reform to Close
the Black-White Achievement Gap (Teachers College Press, 2004), from which this
Policy Perspectives paper was excerpted, and of The Way We Were? The Myths and
Realities of America\'s Student Achievement (Century Foundation Press, 1998). He can
be contacted at .

ABOUT WESTED
WestEd, a national nonprofit research, development, and service agency, works with
education and other communities to promote excellence, achieve equity, and improve
learning for children, youth, and adults. WestEd has 14 offices nationwide, from
Washington and Boston to Arizona and California. Its corporate headquarters are in
San Francisco. More information about WestEd is available at WestEd.org.

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Web Site = http://www.WestEd.org/reforms

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San Francisco, CA 94107