Closing the Achievement Gap: No Excuses

by Patricia Davenport, Gerald Anderson

Book by Patricia Davenport, Gerald Anderson

125 pages, Paperback

First published December 1, 2002

Reviews

[Douglass Gaking · Rating 2 out of 5]

This book was written by the creators of "The Eight Steps Process" that many school districts around the country are using in their attempts to improve standardized test scores. This book overviews what the Brazosport, Texas schools did at the district level and at the classroom level to turn their test scores around. The district level part of this book is mostly a cliche, vague self-help program for corporations, stolen from Total Quality Management (TQM) and slightly tweaked to apply to education. The classroom level changes applied by Brazosport were mostly common sense education planning that many districts were already doing. For example, if you spend more time on math and language arts, your math and language arts scores go up. Imagine that. If you collect data from assessments of your students and then use that data to determine what the kids are ready to learn next, you will use your class time more efficiently. Another shocking revelation. Perhaps the most disappointing thing about reading this book is the realization that most school districts that I have observed applying "The Eight Steps Process" are not even using the best ideas provided by this book. After reading this, I get the feeling that for Patricia Davenport, as well as the districts that hire her as a consultant, this is more about marketing than about real educational change. Not much is really changing except that perhaps some people are paying more attention. In the end, with or without this process, politicians will keep pushing schools to teach to the tests one way or another, and education will continue to discourage creativity and higher level thinking. I do not see Patricia Davenport or most of the other so-called leaders in the education movement doing much to change that right now.

[Amanda · Rating 4 out of 5]

A great tool for a school or district to use to improve teaching. The book follows an 8-step guideline that is driven by data and keeps the best interest of the student at its core.