Weather | Sports | Forums | Comics | Classifieds | Calendar | Movies
LOGAN MABESchool officials say they would join any effort to bridge the achievement gap.
TAMPA - After decades of watching black, Hispanic and poor students lag behind white students in education achievement, Hillsborough NAACP officials said the time has come to find a way to narrow the gap.
"The need has been there all that time," said branch president Sam Horton, who saw the gap up close when he was principal of Jefferson High School in 1977.
"But the mobilization hasn't been there until now."
At a news conference Tuesday, Horton said he wants to see a "universal summit" between leaders in the black community, church groups, parents and school district officials to "put together a program to address these deficiencies."
Hillsborough School District spokesman Mark Hart said school officials are well aware of the achievement gap, which is a nationwide problem, and would be eager to meet with the NAACP.
"There's no doubt an achievement gap exists. The question is how to best solve the problem," Hart said.
If invited to the sort of summit Horton described, Hart said, "we would surely want a seat at that table."
Horton cited statistics from the federal government's Adequate Yearly Progress Report that show:
65 percent of white students last year read at or above their grade level, compared to 32 percent of black students, 41 percent of Hispanic students and 37 percent of poor students.
71 percent of white students scored at or above their grade level in math, compared to 35 percent of black students, 49 precent of Hispanic students and 42 percent of poor students.
"This clearly points out the gap ethnically, but it also points out the gap in terms of economics," Horton said. "The gap exists.
"The question is how do we close that gap? ... It's time for us to be successful. It's time for action, action, action. Collectively, we are responsible."
Scholastic performance in terms of race is not a new issue in either Hillsborough or Pinellas counties.
Both school districts recently were freed from federal oversight of their decades-long desegregation efforts and traded wholesale busing for school choice plans.
Last year's No Child Left Behind statistics for Florida show that 62 percent of white students met state standards in reading.
That compares to 30 percent of black students.
The gap in math is even wider.
Marilyn Williams, an NAACP member who served on the education committee that studied the gap, said black students represent the leading edge of a much greater problem.
"Black and brown children are like the canary in the coal mine," Williams said.
"All children in Hillsborough County are being cheated from a good education. While we're here struggling to improve the education of black and brown children, we're trying to improve education for all children."
Walter Smith, a former president of historically black Florida A&M University, said the achievement problem has not improved since he first took on the issue in 1982.
The chief reason for the continuing disparities, Smith said, is the reliance on standardized tests he described as "culturally biased."
Horton, who called Tuesday's news conference to announce the summit initiative, said he wants to alert the community to the gap and create a groundswell for finding a solution.
"We're trying to be sure we've got the soldiers behind us," said Horton, who plans to open talks with Hillsborough school superintendent Earl Lennard next week.
"We're always interested in what the NAACP has to say," Hart said.
"But how to close the achievement gap issue is something that's being addressed on the local, state and federal levels."
- Logan D. Mabe can be reached at mabe@sptimes.com or 269-5304.