WASHINGTON — At a time when a national debate rages over whether charter schools are better than traditional public schools in abating the achievement gap, a conference on Monday sought to refocus attention on strengthening the family.
“(Family) is a stronger correlate of achievement than any of the other factors,” said Dr. Michael Nettles, senior vice president of the Policy Evaluation and Research Center at the Educational Testing Service (ETS). The Princeton, N.J.-based ETS hosted the event titled “The Family: America’s Smallest School.”
“So the socioeconomic status and condition of people’s lives is the biggest predictor of performance on assessments and tests that are administered to gauge achievement,” Nettles said. “It’s also the biggest predictor of gaps in achievement and quality of life.”
Monday’s conference, held at the Willard InterContinental Hotel in Washington, covered a range of topics from the standpoint of how various interventions, programs and policies can better enable families from low-income and diverse socioeconomic backgrounds to get more involved in their children’s education in a way that assures better academic outcomes.
Much of the discussion focused on the benefits of providing access to quality early-childhood education to children from low-income families.
“The issue isn’t just access. The issue is quality,” said David Sciarra, executive director of the Education Law Center, a Newark, N.J.-based organization that advocates for access to an equal and adequate education under state and federal laws. “Unless programs are very high quality, we’re not going to get where we want to go. We are not going to close the achievement gap unless we decide as a matter of national policy to get all kids, particularly children in poor communities, access to the kind of programs I just described.”
But there are some areas where government interventions have had a difficult time making a difference. One such intervention is the Building Strong Families (BSF) project, begun under the Bush Administration and overseen by the Administration for Children and Families (ACF) within the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.
