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Schools

Schools attempt to mend a gap

Pinellas has launched a number of initiatives to close a stubborn achievement gap that leaves black students behind. But do they work?

By THOMAS C. TOBIN
Published January 22, 2006

If the words sounded harsh, they were meant to be.

Not only had the Pinellas school system failed to close the education gap between black and white students, it hadn't even tried. What's more, a coalition of black civic leaders alleged recently, school officials had no intention of keeping their promises under a 5-year-old settlement in federal court.

Pinellas educators, they said, lacked good faith. They didn't believe black kids could learn. They didn't care.

The words, uttered at a Jan. 12 news conference, blew into district headquarters like a raw January gust.

"I just think they're flat out wrong," school superintendent Clayton Wilcox said last week, feeling betrayed after focusing on the gap during his first year in Pinellas. "We literally have thousands of people working every day to improve not only the education of African-American kids, but other kids as well."

Are Pinellas schools doing all they can to close the achievement gap between black and white students?

That question is front and center as the district faces two legal challenges alleging it has failed to properly educate black students. But the answer is far more nuanced than the categorical statements starting to spring from both sides.

On one front is the 1964 federal lawsuit, still active, that brought desegregation, busing and the school choice plan to Pinellas. On the other is a 5-year-old Circuit Court lawsuit alleging Pinellas has violated Florida's constitutional promise of a quality education for all. Both are class actions, meaning they represent the interests of all current and future black students in the system.

Pinellas has a large and stubborn achievement gap, with black students passing standardized tests at rates 30 to 40 percentage points below their white peers. Graduation rates among black students are alarmingly low. The district doesn't have enough black administrators, and the shortage of black teachers is deemed critical. Black students, who make up 18 percent of the enrollment in Pinellas, annually account for about 45 percent of the district's suspensions.

"At some point, we all have an obligation to deal with this issue," said Watson Haynes, co-chairman of the coalition, known as Concerned Organizations for Quality Education for Black Students, or COQEBS.

"Forty-six percent of African-American students graduate from high school," he said, overstating the Pinellas rate by 3 percentage points. "That means 54 percent are on the street. I've got to be concerned."

In recent years, the Pinellas school system has initiated a number of programs aimed at closing the gap, many of them focused on reading and all intended to focus more attention on struggling students. Wilcox says participation in specialized reading programs is up by 5,000 students over last year.

The district trained more than 10,000 employees in "exemplary" classroom practices last school year, up from about 6,200 the year before.

Add to that a major change in the system's culture, which has teachers assessing student knowledge at frequent junctures, then reteaching concepts that weren't grasped the first time.

Large-scale strategies like that have worked for other urban districts, said Kati Haycock, director of the Education Trust, a Washington advocacy group that pushes for progress on the gap.

While the district's overall numbers look grim, black students have made some gains in recent years. The trend is evident in performance numbers from the more than 50 Pinellas schools where black students make up at least 18 percent of enrollment. In 33 of those schools, the black-white gap in reading test scores shrank over the last three years, sometimes significantly.

Haycock said an upward trajectory for some schools is a good sign if the district can see what's working and apply it on a larger scale.

One factor could be money. The district last year spent more heavily in those 50 or so schools, alloting more than $5,000 a year per student compared with $4,500 per student at other schools, according to a St. Petersburg Times analysis.

Similarly, the district spends more per student in south county, home to most of Pinellas' black population, than it does in north county.

Less clear is whether the district spends money on the right programs and whether those programs are being carried out properly. Last week, administrators told the School Board that one of the reading programs thought to be helping the district reduce the gap is not working after all.

The district spent more than $6.5-million last year on the Early Success Program, known as ESP, which gives 30 minutes of one-on-one reading help each day to about 1,100 struggling first-graders. But a district study that tracked progress over time found that ESP students were more likely to be held back a grade than students who weren't in the program.

As ESP grew from a small pilot to more than 80 elementary schools in the 1990s, it became diluted and less effective, the study concluded. The study has School Board members wondering about the effectiveness of other programs.

When it comes to the gap, "it's not a question of, "Are we doing the right things?' I think we are," Wilcox said. "The question is, "Are we doing the right things right.' "

The district is working on how to better implement its programs, he said.

The ESP saga is exactly what members of the COQEBS fear as they press the district to provide more information.

The group says the district's annual reports on the progress of black students lack much of the information that was required in the August 2000 settlement of the 1964 desegregation lawsuit. Each year, the reports go to a panel known as the District Monitoring and Advisory Committee, or DMAC.

The committee's job is to monitor how well the district complies with the settlement and to recommend changes to the School Board. Its tools include the district's annual reports, which report progress on several issues raised in the settlement, including how schools are addressing the gap and the high rate of black student suspensions.

But the reports don't contain clear goals and measures that could allow the public to track how well the district is doing, according to the COQEBS.

One example: The reports use FCAT scores to measure black student progress. But since the FCAT is not given to all students, the COQEBS has asked for more data, including grade point averages and honor roll statistics.

So far, the group contends, the district's efforts have been incomplete and poorly organized. The result, they say, has been a lack of improvement.

For Wilcox, the DMAC reports are a matter of "process." To focus on them as the final measure of the district's effort for black students is missing a larger, truer picture, he said. More statistics are available elsewhere within the district, he said.

"We're the last people to not acknowledge that we have a problem. We do," said Wilcox, who sees "the elements of change" in this year's 301-page report, soon to be released.

The district, he said, "has a pretty strong history of doing the right thing for kids."

For Haynes and the COQEBS, the annual reports are the public's primary window into how the district is educating black students. So when educators don't include the required information, he said, "they're violating the court order."

Other factors such as poverty and bad parenting help cause the gap, Haynes acknowledged. But the district, he said, isn't doing its part.

When members of the COQEBS asked for more information on the district's effort recently, the district asked them to work through the DMAC.

Responding to what they saw as a cold shoulder, the COQEBS and lawyers for the NAACP Legal Defense and Education Fund formally invoked a provision in the settlement that calls for mediation.

The two sides are expected to meet soon in a first attempt to find common ground. If they fail, the process calls for mediators - and ultimately a federal judge - to intervene.

Wilcox, who has met extensively with the COQEBS, now accuses the group of "throwing stones." But Haynes said the district shouldn't be offended. The group is just trying to get the district's attention and start a productive discussion, he said.

"We're not going to break the window, but we are going to tap on the glass."

[Last modified January 22, 2006, 01:01:11]