Edmund Gordon, cochair of the College Board's Task Force on Minority High Achievement, has pointed out thatIf those in relatively stable and affluent communities serving kids, where all the odds are not against them, can't crack the problems, there are many who will say it can't be done elsewhere. (cited in Fletcher, 2001)
His statement spells out the challenge that faces the Minority Student Achievement Network. Created in 1999, the Minority Student Achievement Network is a consortium of 15 school districts with high student achievement levels but significant gaps in achievement between white students and their African American and Latino counterparts. And although the districts have greater per-pupil resources than their urban neighbors, they also serve student populations from a wide range of socioeconomic backgrounds.
The Minority Student Achievement Network was created by and is run by educators—administrators and teachers—who have made issues of student achievement their top priority. With a demonstrated commitment to desegregation and to disaggregating achievement data, these districts have pledged to collaboratively discover, develop, and implement ways to ensure the high academic achievement of students of color.
Examining the Achievement Gap
The Network agrees wholeheartedly that the causes of the achievement gap are neither differences in innate ability nor the result of biased test questions (Kober, 2001), and that the gap is both complex and systemic. The group is concerned with one of the gap's least discussed characteristics: African American and Latino students with college-educated parents score less well in 12th grade reading on the National Assessment for Educational Progress than do their white peers whose parents only have a high school diploma (U.S. Department of Education, 1994, 1996, 1999). Many assume that socioeconomic factors contribute to the achievement gap, but research shows that socio-economic factors account for only part of the difference in achievement between students of color and their white counterparts. Racist beliefs and practices contribute to the gap's existence, as do a complex set of variables related to home, school, and community.
- Racism (structural and historical)
- Poverty
- Poor educational leadership
- School structures (such as size and grouping)
- Insufficient school and community support (tutoring and social activities)
- Inadequate early childhood literacy development
- Impersonal education environments
- Failure to establish a cultural context
- Low teacher expectations
- Lack of positive neighborhood influences
- Insufficient parental support
- Negative peer pressure
- Instruction not aligned with student needs
- Assessments inadequate to fully capture students' learning
- Summer setbacks
A democratic society needs all of its people to be full participants and beneficiaries. Our social institutions, especially our public schools, must address disparities in an urgent manner. Schools must work to counteract the historic impacts of discrimination and engage in difficult conversations about race, school, culture, and achievement.
Addressing achievement disparities requires attention to students who struggle academically and to students who are currently underrepresented at the highest achievement levels, particularly in math and science. The Minority Student Achievement Network provides promising opportunities for school districts to work more aggressively to accelerate elimination of the achievement gap by collaborating on research, professional development, and student engagement.
Research
With the help of grants from such organizations as the MacArthur Foundation and the National Science Foundation, the Network has begun an ambitious research program. Practitioners, especially teachers, have a direct role in designing, conducting, and evaluating the Network's research.
The organization's first priority was to conduct an extensive survey of more than 41,000 of the districts' middle and high school students. Carefully disaggregated by grade level, race, and gender, the survey revealed virtually no geographical differences but striking similarities in both race and gender across the 15 districts (see www.msanetwork.orgfor survey results).
Most students placed great value on succeeding academically and reported essentially the same amount of time doing homework. The survey showed, however, significant disparities in students' skill levels, resources available outside of school, rate of enrollment in higher-level courses, and the importance that students place on teacher encouragement. Although all students value teacher encouragement, African American and Latino students see it as more essential to achievement. Consistent with differences in grades and scores, African American and Latino students reported less understanding on average of what they read in school and indicated that they understood the teacher's lesson a smaller percentage of the time compared with white students.
The survey results led districts to design a study of how teacher-student relationships influence achievement, measuring the effect certain classroom practices have on different students' engagement in learning. The Network's research agenda includes both early and adolescent literacy and mathematics. Six districts are also studying the barriers to success in higher-level mathematics for African American and Latino students, examining key mathematical concepts and instructional strategies that are crucial for students' success in higher-level math and identifying strategies for building parent knowledge and advocacy. Summer booster classes and explicit communication plans for parents offer promising opportunities for raising student achievement.
Professional Development
To share its findings, the Network publishes a quarterly newsletter, Network News, and has established a Web site (www.msanetwork.org). With support from the National Education Association and the Shaker Heights, Ohio, Independent Teachers Union, the Network sponsored a teacher conference in May 2002 in Madison, Wisconsin. The conference featured 125 practitioners who demonstrated successful practices related to the Network's research agenda of math, literacy, and teacher-student relationships, as well as experts—including Ron Ferguson, Gloria Ladson-Billings, and Wade Boykin—who analyzed the achievement gap.
The Network is planning a leadership training program for its teachers and administrators. In February 2003, Temple University will sponsor a joint conference of the Minority Student Achievement Network and the Network for Equity in Student Achievement (comprising 30 districts altogether) on the role of counseling in fostering the academic achievement of students of color. As soon as the Minority Student Achievement Network is more firmly established, it hopes to expand to respond to the interest expressed by more than 70 districts that have applied to join it.
Student Engagement
- Working with students at a young age to build their engagement in learning;
- Diminishing negative peer pressure; and
- Reducing teacher bias related to race, class, and achievement (Ash, 2000).
As a result of these conferences, several districts have started cross-age mentoring programs that show great promise.
Students at these conferences spoke with Ron Ferguson, Pedro Noguera, and other experts on the achievement gap and shared with other students their frustrations and proposals. Students at the first conference in Shaker Heights, Ohio, for example, shadowed students at Cleveland Heights and Shaker Heights High Schools and then compared these schools with their own. In brainstorming sessions and special activities, students devised projects to improve minority achievement in their districts. One student expressed the result: I will tell everyone about this experience. I will no longer hide my intelligence from anyone. I, at times, have felt alone, but now I realize that there are so many intelligent minorities who experience what I do. I feel empowered.
Minority Student Achievement Network Districts
Minority Student Achievement Network Districts
Amherst—Pelham Regional School District, Amherst, Massachusetts
Ann Arbor Public Schools, Ann Arbor, Michigan
Arlington Public Schools, Arlington, Virginia
Berkeley Unified School District, Berkeley, California
Cambridge Public Schools, Cambridge, Massachusetts
Chapel Hill—Carrboro City Schools, Chapel Hill, North Carolina
Cleveland Heights—University Heights Public School District, University Heights, Ohio
Evanston—Skokie Consolidated District 65, Evanston, Illinois
Evanston Township High School District 202, Evanston, Illinois
Madison Metropolitan School District, Madison, Wisconsin
Montclair Public Schools, Montclair, New Jersey
Oak Park Elementary School District 97, Oak Park, Illinois
Oak Park and River Forest High School District 200, Oak Park, Illinois
Shaker Heights City School District, Shaker Heights, Ohio
White Plains Public Schools, White Plains, New York
