Education Week - November 18, 2020 - 3

Vol. 40 * Issue 13 * November 18, 2020

Simple Tool Could Curtail
Racial Bias in Grading
A child's name alone seems to have at least a small impact on a
student's grade.
As an experiment, more than 1,500 teachers were given one of two
pieces of writing from an imaginary 2nd grader. Both papers were
identical-full of large print and youthful misspellings-except that
one piece referred to a brother named " Dashawn, " and the other talked
about the student's brother " Connor. " The name choices come from a
list of racially distinctive names; Connor is more likely to refer to a white
child, while Dashawn is more likely to be the name of a Black child.
About 35 percent of teachers judged the " Connor " paper as being at
or above grade level, compared with nearly 31 percent of those who
gave the " Dashawn " paper the same marks.
David M. Quinn, an assistant professor of education at the University of Southern California, suggests that teachers were influenced
by the subtle signals within the paper that one child was Black and
the other white.
But when teachers were given a set of performance criteria to use
in evaluating the student writing, that disparity disappeared. About
37 percent of teachers said the writing samples met the guidelines
intended to measure how well the imaginary student was able to
recount an event.
Giving teachers a set of specific criteria to judge a child's work,
rather than forcing them to rely on a possibly more vague sense of
grade-level performance, could be a useful tool in reducing the impact of racial bias, said Quinn, in an article for the journal Education
Next, which was also published in the journal Educational Evaluation and Policy Analysis.

Most Seniors Ill-Prepared
For College Math, Reading
This can't be blamed on COVID-19: Little more than 1 in 3 American high school seniors read proficiently, and fewer than 1 in 4 performed proficiently in math on the most recent National Assessment
of Educational Progress, marking widening gaps for struggling students in both subjects.
The results of the latest round of tests, administered before the
start of the pandemic last spring, found the average math score has
been flat since 2015, while the average reading score dropped 2 points
on a 300-point scale. All told, although 61 percent of 12th graders
who took NAEP last year reported they had applied to or been accepted at a four-year college, only 37 percent performed well enough
in both math and reading to be considered ready for freshman college courses in those subjects, according to the National Center for
Education Statistics, which administers the assessment.
What's more, the performance of students who were already struggling declined in 2019 across both subjects in grades 4, 8, and 12,
compared with four years ago. The 10 percent of students struggling
the most has dropped 20 points since 1992, a record low.
Peggy Carr, NCES' associate commissioner, said background
questionnaires given with the tests showed deep uncertainty among
students: " Students were very clear that they didn't know or feel very
confident in some very basic fundamental skills when it comes to
reading-being able to recognize the author's purpose, being able to
identify specific things-or being able to conduct some basic fundamental math operations. "
NCES found more students at all proficiency levels have started
taking advanced-math courses, but that hasn't translated to greater
understanding of those topics: 62 percent of students who performed
" below basic " in 2005 took advanced courses, 81 percent of belowbasic students did so in 2019.
" This is a curious finding, " said Grady Wilburn of NCES. " You
would think that more advanced courses would correlate with students moving out of the below-basic category. However, our results
don't show that relationship. " In fact, the percentage of students
below basic increased in math in grades 8 and 12 and in reading at
all three grades in 2019.

OPINION

4 As Election 2020 Grinds On,

Young Voters Stay Hooked

6 Did COVID-19 Really Drive Teachers to Quit?

16 Families Not Engaging Remotely?

Rethink the Problem

8 Getting Schools Open:

17 The Election Was Traumatizing

9 'Schools Need to Be Bolder' About

20 The New Face of Teacher Demoralization

A No-Win Decision as Virus Cases Surge
Reopening, Public Health Expert Says

12 What to Watch as Biden Administration

Charts Its Own Path on Education Policy

14 Who Could End Up Heading Top Senate

Panel on Education Issues

For Many Students (and Educators)

DEPARTMENTS
2 Briefly Stated
4 What the Research Says
18 Letters to the Editor
19 EdWeek Top School Jobs

SPECIAL REPORT

Self-Directed,
Personalized Learning
Under COVID-19: What
Works, What Doesn't
Education Week explores how
educators are trying to make
personalized learning work in
remote, hybrid, and in-person but
socially-distanced learning
environments.

www.edweek.org/go/
pl-report-2020

GALLERY

DATA

Educators We've Lost
To the Coronavirus

The Schools Named After
Confederate Figures

In this memorial, we remember some of the
dedicated educators lost to their communities
and to the field. Updated regularly.

Since June 2020, Education Week has tracked if
and when the over 200 schools named after
men with ties to the Confederacy changed
their names.

www.edweek.org/go/obits

www.edweek.org/go/confederate-data

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@EducationWeekÅ

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R. McCormick Foundation, Spencer Foundation, Wallace Foundation, Walton Family Foundation, William
and Flora Hewlett Foundation and William E. Simon Foundation.
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Education Week - November 18, 2020

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