What’s The Gap
A reflection and response to “We Know that Student Efforts Matter, Let’s Start Acting Like It”
In Eva Moskowitz’s March 2023 article, “We know student effort matters, so let’s start acting like it” she shared data about student achievement:
“Among SA [Success Academy] scholars who did not meet proficiency on the 2022 New York state tests, for example, virtually half failed because of careless errors—not because they didn’t know the material!”
The claim that Moskowitz is making throughout her article is that effort is the gap that is ailling achievement in Success Academy schools. Based on the data that she presents, that seems right, at SA schools. What I want to make sure is not glossed over is that there are many other factors that are not named that have major impacts on achievement.
Two of the factors that I want to highlight are content knowledge and opportunity. In Moskowitz’s article she makes the claim that students are not struggling with knowledge, but they are not being careful when using and executing this knowledge. A teacher’s content knowledge is extremely important to the success of the students in their classrooms. When a teacher has deep content knowledge they are able to support the complete story and context of the content.
In math this means, students are engaging in math in a conceptually VS procedurally (step by step). The best example that I can use to highlight this concept is my experience as a student.
Dividing a fraction by a fraction.
I learned how to find the answer (procedural). Keep Change Flip (KCF). When I have talked to others they used something similar…the butterfly method.
I did not learn what it meant to divide fractions, but I could find the answer….most of the time. Sometimes I would make careless mistakes. I wonder if Moskowitz looked at my work if she would claim there was an effort gap or content gap?
I am not certain that my teacher did not understand the concept, but I do remember hearing, “This concept is confusing…to solve these problems KCF.” My teacher might have understood the concept, but not fully (content knowledge gap) or she might not have believed that my class could not learn/understand the concept (opportunity gap)
The opportunity gap is the other factor that is partially named in Moskowitz’s article but not explicitly named.
Insisting can feel uncomfortable and even “mean” when teachers first try it—usually because they don’t believe their students can meet the expectation.
Moskowitz says “they don’t believe their students can meet the expectation” and that is a huge idea behind the opportunity gap. The opportunity gap comes from the 2018 research from TNTP called, “The Opportunity Myth”.
In this study, the authors focus on grade-level standards and teachers’ beliefs that students can access them. Moskowitz highlights another perspective on this gap; a lack of belief that students can do the work associated with the rigor of the standards.
Like Moskowitz, we must collect, analyze and interrogate our data to determine what is the root cause leading to gaps in instruction at our school. There are no quick fixes in our work. If we keep searching for the silver bullet, we will continuously steer our students and teachers in the wrong direction.
