| Bridge achievement gap early, Multnomah County study urges |
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Original Source | The Oregonian By the time African American students reach third grade, most are behind in their studies compared with white kids in Portland. They rarely catch up. A new local study suggests the best way to narrow the gap is to nip it in the bud before it begins. The idea isn't new, but the study of Multnomah County school data recommends what would be a shift in addressing the achievement gap: focusing more on prevention than intervention -- and starting the prevention even earlier. The researchers looked at the gap in a different way: They found that African American students here remain about 8 points behind white students on achievement tests no matter what the grade. The gap remains largely constant, suggesting that African American and white students learn and improve at the same rate. The conclusion: Get to African American children early and those gains will likely hold steady throughout their school career. "Imagine you had a race with two runners who both ran at the exact same pace," said John Tapogna, the study's analyst and managing director at economics and policy firm ECONorthwest. "But you started one five seconds earlier. If you let them both run for exactly four minutes to see if they could get to a certain finish line, only one would get there." In most cases, Tapogna said, the students are keeping pace, but aren't catching up. Students at some schools are making progress in certain areas, but no schools in the county are narrowing the gap in both reading and math. Charles McGee, president of the Black Parent Initiative, said his group initially commissioned the report to highlight schools that are narrowing the gap and use their successful initiatives in other schools. Typical achievement gap measures look only at how many kids are meeting state benchmark scores at specific grades -- usually fewer African American students vs. white students. The new report carried that a step further by using the scores to track students' progress over time -- and found similar improvement rates for African American and white students. The report clearly elevates the potential impact of early childhood education, said Multnomah County Commissioner Jeff Cogen . "Everyone has heard about the achievement gap," said Cogen, who will be part of a coalition that makes formal recommendations for solutions to the gap. "This is different information than we've had before. The notion that African American kids are starting out behind and staying more or less the same amount behind tells me we need to focus our efforts early." City and county leaders must try to boost early childhood programs such as Headstart, he said. McGee said it's also important to mobilize African American families around education. "Our response has to be holistic," McGee said. "It's everything from how I raise my child to how I support my child. The school system cannot and will not do everything we need done for our children." The study also highlights several schools that are making progress in narrowing the gap and those that haven't made much progress. At Southeast Portland's Grout Elementary School, for example, African American students' math test scores are increasing faster than their white counterparts. Principal Susan McElroy said the school has used a visual and hands-on approach to math for more than a decade. She said that has specifically helped the school's African-born students who often don't understand English. "We make very concrete those abstract ideas," McElroy said. "One of the strengths of our work is that it transcends language." In Portland, district officials plan to continue focusing on whether students meet or exceed state benchmark scores, keying on students making crucial transitions from kindergarten to first grade and from eighth to ninth grade, for example. Zeke Smith, Superintendent Carole Smith's chief of staff, said the new analysis gives a more complex story than the district's data alone, but that "our job is to close the gap no matter what happens before they get in the door." Kimberly Melton: 503-294-7641; This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it |