Isn student performance influenced by factors that are largely beyond the control of schools and teachers, thus making it unfair to hold them accountable?
Most Americans, lay people as well as K-12 educators, think that the level of academic achievement is determined largely by factors beyond a school’s control. The origin of this belief can be traced back to James Coleman’s 1966 report – “only a small part of [student achievement] is the result of school factors, in contrast to family background differences between communities;” and the work of Christopher Jencks in 1972 – “the character of a school’s output depends largely on a single input, namely the characteristics of the entering children.” This understanding is reinforced for the public at-large when their metropolitan newspapers issue their annual “Report Card on the Schools,” revealing that wealthy communities almost always have the highest test scores. The implicit conclusion of these analyses, is that when it comes to student achievement, teaching doesn’t matter very much.
