Strategic democracies: how schools narrow achievement gaps of economically disadvantaged racial minority elementary students.

Abstract

Research on achievement gaps has typically followed policy in prioritizing high poverty, high minority schools where the overall proficiency rates are alarmingly low by state and federal standards. Many factors explaining achievement gaps in such schools do not apply to schools that maintain racial and economic achievement gaps, but nevertheless report overall satisfactory academic proficiency rates. I argue that narrowing achievement gaps in academically satisfactory schools will require different solutions. A review of diverse and relevant literature revealed the potential value of a framework informed by the political and democratic structure of public schools, which in turn led to a provisional model for narrowing achievement gaps, the Schools as Democracies model. This QUAN → QUAL sequential mixed methods study explored the Schools as Democracies model. The study focused on Minnesota elementary schools. First, the quantitative strand found that schools situated in smaller districts or systems were more likely to narrow racial achievement gaps and often had high racial minority enrollments. This was interpreted as validating the initial model, which framed the inquiry of the subsequent qualitative strand and focused on four traditionally districted elementary schools that narrowed achievement gaps in literacy for their Black or African American enrollments. This qualitative investigation surfaced data that plausibly related particular practices and values to relatively greater outcomes for each school’s racial minority enrollment. Ultimately, these practices and values were framed by a reformulated model, the Schools as Strategic Democracies model.