Critical review of the Goddard article

Trust Race

The Power of Trust: Elementary School Evidence of Forces Influencing the Relationship between Academic Achievement and Race

The racial and socioeconomic disparity that exists in academic achievement in United States' public schools has long been an issue of controversy and debate. Linked to larger historical issues of racism, segregation, and what amounts to practical though not official disenfranchisement, this complex problem has seen many solutions proposed only to persist for generations. Yet although the ramifications and implications achievement gap that occurs in schools might be incredibly far-reaching and complex, the actual source of the problems might be far simpler than has been previously suspected. Current research has shown that the direct interpersonal relationship that exists between student and teacher has a great deal to do with academic achievement, to the point that the observed socioeconomic and racial effects on achievement are rendered quite largely if not entirely nonexistent.

Trust in Michigan's Public Schools

In a study that took a broad and random sample of a state's entire public education system, thus leading to what can be fairly well generalized findings, it was found that the factor of trust between student and teacher was powerful enough to mediate the effects of race and socioeconomic status (Goddard et al. 2009). The authors even suggest, in what seems to be their main contention here, that the issue of trust is itself at the heart of the observed effects of race and socioeconomic status on academic achievement (Goddard et al. 2009).

The contributions of this research to an understanding of the academic achievement gap and the underlying interpersonal functions that perpetuate the disparities in achievement based on race and socioeconomic status are quite varied and extensive. The pure data collected in terms of measurable academic achievement, the racial makeup of the schools studied, and the socioeconomic status of the school body constitutes a major contribution in and of itself, providing clear and exhaustive figures that can be used in a multitude of analyses (Goddard et al. 2009). The method for measuring faculty trust of students as well as the comparative analysis of the various factors studied -- that is, the basic research methodologies employed -- were also highly informative. The authors' findings were, however, the largest contribution to current knowledge in the area made in this text; the suggested role of trust in the academic process is much larger than had been suspected (Goddard et al. 2009).

Concurrent Research

Goddard et al.'s (2009) findings are nicely supported and supplemented by other contemporary research. A recent study found that there is a link between the worsening health of the American populous in general and the academic achievement gap (Fiscella & Kitzman 2009). Students who are under-served academically are also likely to face greater health issues throughout their life-spans, the data shows, perpetuating cyclical issues related to socioeconomic status and productivity (Fiscella & Kitzman 2009). The trust improvements suggested by Goddard et al. (2009) would interrupt this cycle and potentially reverse any existing damage.

A study with an intent and research question more closely aligned to that which was pursued by Goddard et al. (2009) came to similar results, namely that the level of academic optimism that existed in schools was directly correlated to levels of academic achievement, even when controlling for racial and socioeconomic factors (Smith & Hoy 2007). All of the elementary schools used in this study were urban, making the results of this study less confidently generalized than the conclusions reached by Goddard et al. (2009), yet faculty trust was included as an identified feature of academic optimism and thus the relationship of these two studies is made clear and the reliability of Smith and Hoy's (2007) study greatly increased. This study also did not take race into account, making it again less comprehensive and slightly less meaningful than Goddard et al. (2009).

Comparisons of race and of racial attitudes to academic achievement abound in the literature, and one interesting study found that the racial self-perception and identification of African-American males was highly related to academic achievement (McLaughlin et al. 2009). That is, different definitions and associations existed with these students' racial self-identities, and these differences correlated to different levels of academic achievement (McLaughlin et al. 2009). Though the specific item measured and analyzed was entirely different in this study, like Goddard et al. (2009) this shows that perception and attitude can counter the negative effect on academic achievement that minority status is generally observed to have, even when this perception is solely in the mind of the students (McLaughlin et al. 2009).