Read the following numbers: 3, 1, 5, 8, 2, 9, 4. Now look away and try to remember those numbers in that exact sequence for the next 20 seconds, then try to say them outloud again. According to Malcom Gladwell, the author of the book Outliers, if you speak English, you have a 50% chance of reciting that sequence perfectly. But for some reason if you are Chinese, you are more than likely to get it right every time. Why is that? 

If I’m Chinese, why do I have almost a 100% chance of memorizing a set of numbers when a person who speaks English only has a 50% chance of successfully completing the same task (obviously there isn’t a clear reason, but Gladwell opens the reader’s eyes to a mind-boggling theory)? 

As human beings we run on a memory loop that lasts about two-seconds, we try to remember as much as we possibly can in that time span. If you speak English, it takes a lot longer than two-seconds to say “3, 1, 5, 8, 2, 9, 4.” But the Chinese language allows Chinese speakers to fit all seven of those numbers in those two-seconds. 

The “two second” example comes from Stanislas Dehaene’s book The Number Sense. In it, Dahaene explains it by saying:

“Chinese number words are remarkably brief. Most of them can be uttered in less than one-quarter of a second (for instance, 4 is “si” and 7 is “qi”). Their English equivalents– “four,” “seven”– are longer: pronouncing them takes about one-third of a second.”

The success rate of remembering seven numbers is highly dependent on one’s ability to remember in a span of two-seconds and the gap in math between English and Chinese speakers is due to this ability.

Now you might be asking yourself, “what does this have to do with the achievement gap and distance learning?” 

Well it’s “little” things like those that lead to this “achievement gap.” The achievement gap in education refers to the disparity in academic performance between groups of students by ethnicities. For example, the performance gaps between African-American and Hispanic students are at the lower end of the performance scale to their non-Hispanic white peers. The same correlation can be seen with social class. Students from low-income families are significantly lower on the performance scale when compared to their wealthy counterparts. 

Now we’re going to stay on Asian speaking kids and English speaking kids to try to explain the achievement gap a little more clearly. In English, we say “one, two, three” and “eleven, twelve, thirteen.” They’re no similarities between the actual words: “eleven” and “one,” which makes the English number system highly irregular.

Not the case in Asian countries like China, Japan, and/or Korea. Their eleven is “ten-one.” Twelve is “ten-two.” Twenty-four is “two-tens four” and so on. Making it easier for Asian children to learn to count than English speaking children. On average, Chinese speaking children can count to forty by age four, but the average American child can’t count to forty until age five. 

So by the age of five, English speaking kids are already a year behind in basic math skills when compared to Asian kids because of the way they say their numbers. 

But there is more to the achievement gap than languages and numbers. A family’s economic class also plays a significant factor. This is a dilemma that all school districts face, and North Penn is no different. Just like any other district, North Penn has families that can supply their children with higher forms of education and/or are able to be more supportive throughout the education process. The families that are unable to provide this type of assistance however, turn to their local school district to fill in the gap for them. But because of current circumstances of distance learning, those less fortunate families are confronting new challenges that arise when students are not in a school building each day.

“This is a very complex situation. Teachers can help by being careful not to assign at-home projects that require significant financial resources. They also need to be encouragers of students and be catalysts who spur children forward despite the circumstances they may be experiencing. That encouragement and supportive attitude may make the difference to a child who is feeling overwhelmed by what they are seeing on a daily basis as their parents struggle” North Penn Superintendent Curtis Dietrich explained.

In the last few years North Penn has taken new measures to pinpoint the realities of the achievement gap within the school district. 

 “You can’t improve what isn’t measured, that is why this school board, with a very talented and dedicated administration, developed multiple approaches to better understand our district’s underlying root causes of achievement gaps, which emanate from larger societal issues of ethnic, racial and economic inequities” said School Board member John Kassa.

Up until 2017, North Penn School District was the only district in Montgomery County not to take part in the “PAYS” survey. The “PAYS” survey aims to ask questions about students’ attitudes, knowledge and behaviors concerning alcohol, tobacco, other drugs (ATOD), violence and other problem behaviors. and there was no interest in developing a more dynamic 21st century tool, the school climate survey. 

“In 2019, North Penn launched the first-ever district-wide climate and cultural proficiency survey in order to create a baseline for future efforts to measure progress and new data sets for accountability of school leadership” Kassa explained.

Since 2017, the North Penn School Board has made it a goal for students to have access to everything they need in order to be more fair, which are driving points in North Penn School District’s Comprehensive Plan. North Penn is also embedding the work on fairness in every aspect of an educational organization including what are the best policies to tackle the achievement gap issue. Examples of North Penn implementing such policies are: professional development for all staff and using the data to identify targeted approaches to support bridging the achievement gap for all students.

“Certainly, some of the student achievement data isn’t as good as we would like it to be compared to our goals. That is where real leadership needed to occur: do we want to keep-on with the status quo (“hey, all school districts have a gap”), or stretch our abilities and redefine a new “normal”? We chose the latter, better to plan and put the resources in place to do better, or we never will. First, we needed to look in the mirror, so to speak, and face the current reality of the truth, thus concerns that the data presents” said Kassa.

The spread of COVID-19 in Pennsylvania led to Schools being shut down in Montgomery County since the middle of March, and ultimately led to all schools being shut down in Pennsylvania for the rest of the school year. As a result, North Penn, and every other district in the state, had to figure out how quickly they could transition to distance learning. More importantly, how North Penn could ensure that every student had the chance to take part in it. But simply getting it done is one half of the issue, the second half is seeing if distance learning could have any negative effects on students. If so, what group specifically (if there is any), and what can be done to help reprehend the issue. A recent study suggests that there could be an issue with distance learning.

A sociologist from John Hopkins University, Karl Alexander, did a case study on how a family’s wealth can affect their child’s school performance. Alexander and his team tracked the progress of 650 first graders from a public school system in Baltimore. They looked at how the students scored on the California Achievement Test, which grades you on your math and reading skills. A test given at the start of the school year in September, important to note because it is right after summer break. 

Alexander marked the reading scores of the first five years of these elementary school students’ education, and not to his surprise, kids from wealthier backgrounds performed better than kids from the lower end of the economic scale. Although that may not be eye-opening to you, maybe these three main takeaways from Alexander’s case study will. 

1. Wealthier students are exposed to more education during summer break because they can afford to learn in ways less wealthy families cannot. That extra 2 months of extra education piles up over the years. 
2. Less wealthy students lose a lot of reading skills over summer vacation. 
3. His research also figured out how much the achievement gap has an effect on the students’ learning and retention during the year and how much of the actual loss has to do with summer vacation.

Basically in a nutshell, wealthier kids tend to perform better in school than less wealthy kids because they are exposed to more education during times when less fortunate kids are not. In the words of Gladwell from his book Outliers: “poor kids may out-learn rich kids during the school year. But during the summer, they fall far behind.”

“Alexander’s research, spanning over two decades, found that a family’s resources and connections have a direct impact on the income that a child will earn as a young professional. Furthermore, his research sheds troubling light on America’s racial hierarchy in that the children from economically disadvantaged families who tend to achieve the best paying jobs are disproportionately white. His research casts the American exceptionalism story of pulling yourself up by your bootstraps as a mere folklore bearing little resemblance to reality for most. In fact, for most children, this research reveals that power and opportunity are inherited” said North Penn History Teacher Dr. David Hall.

The case study supports the theory that poorer students fall behind in education during the summer because of lack of educational opportunities at home, which is an interesting theory, even raises some questions. Does that mean that during this time where everyone is essentially home schooled, poorer kids will fall even further behind in education because of the fact that they are forced to learn on their own, in their homes? North Penn cannot erase the economic struggles that a family may be going through at the moment, but what they can do, is make sure that every student has the tools necessary to be able to build their future and to successfully complete tasks. 

“It was extremely important to us that we put a chromebook or ipad in the hands of every student in our elementary schools. While our grades 6-12 students already had their chromebooks at home, we moved swiftly to get devices to our elementary students. We also spent a tremendous amount of time working to get internet access into the homes without internet. Providing new learning via technology rather than paper packets was the backbone of our plan and we felt strongly that the divide would widen if we relegated a portion of our population to paper packets” said Dietrich.

It’s important to note that North Penn is doing everything in their power to serve those in need, from providing free meals, to providing internet access by purchasing local hotspots. 

“During the earliest days of the approaching pandemic, we made it a top priority to identify gaps in support for students and families — from surveys, to phone calls and multiple outreach efforts, including identification at the school-level of students and families who may need assistance since counselors and staff are more likely to have those insights. This led to solutions development by our amazing district team on a number of fronts who had to be highly creative and nimble to secure essential resources” Kassa said. 

North Penn students struggling from domestic abuse are also on the minds of the school board members, and they are doing everything they can to help students who need help other than financially. 

“One of the first emails I sent to our district leaders when schools were being shuttered was how we will be addressing such students in need. This is a fragile time for families who may be suffering from domestic abuse and other trauma at home because of the isolation. As a board member for the Network of Victim Assistance in Bucks County, this has been an ever-evolving topic and a significant priority to address, the concern for our students and their family members have increased risk bothers me very much” said Kassa. 

For those very reasons mentioned above, North Penn has invited Laurel House to present on the topic of domestic abuse and their resources to the virtual Safe Schools Committee meeting on Monday April 27th.  

Language acquisition, socioeconomics, and race have always been factors in academic achievement. And while districts like North Penn have already been dealing with these realities, North Penn is now aware of the depth of issues that arise from distance learning. The district is giving those less fortunate families everything from the food they need, to the internet access they need, and the resources they need to successfully take part in distance learning, but it is hard to deny that the process of closing the achievement gap is getting any easier in our current reality.