Matt Renwick's List: RtI

• small but growing number of schools are attempting to boost the achievement of low-income students by shifting enrollment to place more low-income students in mixed-income schools. Socioeconomic integration is an effective way to tap into the academic benefits of having high-achieving peers, an engaged community of parents, and high-quality teachers.
• Research supporting socioeconomic integration goes back to the famous Coleman Report, which found that the strongest school-related predictor of student achievement was the socioeconomic composition of the student body (Coleman et al., 1966).
• A 2010 meta-analysis found that students of all socioeconomic statuses, races, ethnicities, and grade levels were likely to have higher mathematics performance if they attended socioeconomically and racially integrated schools (Mickelson & Bottia, 2010).
• nd results of the 2011 National Assessment of Educational Progress in mathematics show steady increases in low-income 4th graders' average scores as the percentage of poor students in their school decreases (U.S. Department of Education, 2011).
• a number of studies have found that the relationship between student outcomes and the socioeconomic composition of schools is strong even after controlling for some of these factors, using more nuanced measures of socioeconomic status, or comparing outcomes for students randomly assigned to schools (Reid, 2012; Schwartz, 2012).
• Rumberger and Palardy (2005) found that the socioeconomic composition of the school was as strong a predictor of student outcomes as students' own socioeconomic status.
• Socioeconomic integration is a win-win situation: Low-income students' performance rises; all students receive the cognitive benefits of a diverse learning environment (Antonio et al., 2004; Phillips, Rodosky, Muñoz, & Larsen, 2009); and middle-class students' performance seems to be unaffected up to a certain level of integration.
• A recent meta-analysis found "growing but still inconclusive evidence" that the achievement of more advantaged students was not harmed by desegregation policies (Harris, 2008, p. 563).
• he findings suggested that, more than a precise threshold, what mattered in these schools was maintaining a critical mass of middle-class families, which promoted a culture of high expectations, safety, and community support.
• istricts have chosen to let school boundaries reflect or even amplify residential segregation.
• Residential poverty tends to be concentrated, and successful school integration requires either a district with enough socioeconomic diversity within its boundaries or a group of neighboring districts which, when combined, have enough diversity to facilitate an interdistrict integration plan.
• A weighted lottery is the simplest way for schools to ensure that they enroll a diverse student body while still relying on choice-based enrollment.
• ndividual success stories and a review of research suggest that it is possible, by offering all students a single challenging curriculum, to reduce the achievement gap without harming the highest achievers (Burris, Wiley, Welner, & Murphy, 2008; Rui, 2009).
• In the middle grades, students at City Neighbors start their day with half an hour of highly specialized, small-group instruction called intensive. Intensive provides an opportunity for extra support or enrichment in different subjects, allowing teachers to meet different students' needs while still teaching most of the academic time in mixed-ability classrooms.

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• "Data drives every decision that we make," Benson said. Every Friday, she gathers the school's five teaching assistants, and they assess every child in kindergarten, first and second grade, ensuring that they're able to catch children before they fall further behind.