In Montclair, NJ, a meeting to discuss ways of closing the achievement gap:
Recently released district statistics have shown an approximate 35-point spread between African-American and white students in standardized test scores, with math scores showing an even greater gap.
The many initiatives and specialized programs created by the public school district through the past several years have not narrowed the gap as much as proponents hoped they would. As a result, administrators are now in the process of taking a fresh look at both the problem itself and the perceived causes behind the problem...
The meeting’s agenda included an overall program review by Terry Trigg-Scales, director of curriculum and instruction for the district...Trigg-Scales cited a recent report published by the national Educational Testing Center in November 2003 titled “Parsing the Achievement Gap.” Fourteen factors have been identified by ETS as indicators of low performance in school, among them physical factors like low birth weight and exposure to lead poisoning in older homes, parental involvement in a student’s progress, class size, school safety and teacher quality.
Although school districts have little or no control of some of these factors, Trigg-Scales emphasized that in Montclair, programs had been developed for those factors that could be addressed by schools.
“Parent availability has been found to be critical,” she said. “In this district, we have youngsters who are dropped off at school at 7:30 in the morning and not picked up till six in the evening.” Under such circumstances, Trigg-Scales said “before and beyond school” programs have become highly important to students’ progress. Likewise, parent classes like the districtwide Mega Skills program, which teach parents how to support their children’s academic achievement, serve to bolster parent/child interaction.
Not a bad thing, but where's the discussion of what schools do have control over? Why shouldn't time and money go to changing class sizes, tightening school discipline so that students feel safe, and removing bad teachers so that good ones can be hired? Why weren't those mentioned in this article?