Front Page  education

Thursday, August 17, 2006

Is Achievement Gap Growing?

By Raam Wong
Journal Staff Writer
    While the achievement gap between white students and most everyone else persists in Santa Fe schools, according to a new analysis, it's still unclear whether the disparity is growing or shrinking.
    The analysis of standardized test data released by the state Department of Education on Wednesday did show some signs of improvement at schools across New Mexico among students who don't speak proficient English.
    So-called English Language Learners performed close to or higher than native English-speaking students on reading tests, while gains were found in math for fifth through eighth grades.
    The results were less clear in Santa Fe, where the Education Department was not immediately able to provide last year's achievement gap data in order to compare it with the figures that were released Wednesday.
    "All I can tell you is, yes, there is a gap, and no, it's not acceptable," associate superintendent Mel Morgan said.
    The report found that across grade levels, significantly more white students are proficient in core subjects than students who are Hispanic, American Indian, low-income or have physical or intellectual disabilities.
    Here are examples of some of the most apparent disparities:
   

34 percent of Hispanic ninth graders were proficient on reading tests, while about 58 percent of whites met standards.
   

30 percent of low-income 11th graders got adequate reading scores, while 63 percent of whites did.
   

7 percent of seventh-grade English Language Learners were proficient in math, while 25 percent of whites were.
    The release of those figures on Wednesday again provoked the same question that has been asked nationwide for years: What is it going to take to help low-income and minority students succeed?
    Finding an answer to that question has taken on increased importance with the federal No Child Left Behind Act, which supporters say is designed to prevent schools from papering over the chronic failure of some students.
    Under the 2001 law, schools must show that an increasing number of students in subgroups based on race, income and other traits are meeting academic standards.
    If any one subgroup can't make "adequate yearly progress," the entire school is tagged as needing improvement and may face penalties.
    Seventeen of Santa Fe's 27 schools did not make AYP last year, mirroring results across New Mexico, where more than half of schools did not make the cut.
    The Education Department plans to send school districts reports on the performance of individual students next week.
    That data, Morgan said, will help administrators and teachers pinpoint the exact content areas that need beefing up.
    Increasingly, educators and researchers have been looking beyond the classroom to social and economic factors that may be holding back some students.
    Education Secretary Veronica García said during a press conference Wednesday that poverty and other hurdles must be addressed before disadvantaged students can make real progress in the classroom.
    "We still have a long ways to go," García said.
    Officials are also worried about closing another kind of gap— that between the number of students who currently make the grade and the 100 percent of students who will eventually have to meet academic standards.
    By 2014, No Child Left Behind requires that every student in the country be proficient.
    That means SFPS, like other districts across the country, has some work to do.
    García explained, "Even our highest-performing groups are not at acceptable levels."