A veteran Springfield teacher expressed
frustration as she left the Nov. 14 forum on “Closing the
Achievement Gap”: “We’re already doing so much of
what they suggested, but we’re not closing the gap.” A
school official was defensive, claiming that the district is
already doing what it needs to do to close the gap between rich and
poor, black and white. Judith Johnson, president of the District
186 school board, had listened as one of the audience of some 180
people. “This gives me hope,” she said on the way out.
“I am always hopeful that we can solve this
problem.”
There is plenty of cause for frustration,
even cynicism, in the face of the daunting numbers showing that
white students are far outpacing blacks in public schools but that
neither side is setting the world on fire. Ken Page, president of
the Springfield NAACP, declared that the achievement gap is a
policy, designed “to keep African-Americans
subservient,” but the dominant message from the panelists was
one of hope. “We know how to solve the achievement
gap,” said Ray Legler of Learning Point Associates, a Naperville
nonprofit consulting group. “Closing the gap is doable,”
said Kathy Havens Payne, who heads the State Farm insurance
company’s effort to support public education. They convinced me. There is in the American spirit a notion that
any problem that can be identified, defined, and quantified can be
solved. Now, thanks to George W. Bush and his simplistic,
underfunded No Child Left Behind education law, the problem has
come into sharp focus. Children are being left behind all over the
place. Of Springfield eighth-graders, for example, only 53 percent
of white students and 24.4 percent of black students are meeting or
exceeding standards in math. Thanks to NCLB, nobody doubts the
truth of the numbers — and nobody finds them acceptable.
Currently the statistics are seen as an indictment, but, once they
start to move, the percentages rising and the gap narrowing,
progress will inspire more progress. “The data can be our
friend,” Legler says.
Teacher quality is a major factor. “We
need teachers who won’t accept failure as an option,”
Legler says. School structures need to be flexible enough to allow teachers to spend more time with
slow learners. Communities need to take more responsibility for extras
such as lunches and sports so that schools can educate kids. And
schools need more money. Achievement-gap experts agree that money
isn’t the only thing, but it is a crucial gap-closing
ingredient. “In order to do this right, we have to have the
resources,” Legler says. “Good books and science labs
make a difference.” So do teacher salaries. The thing about
the school-funding situation that inspires hope is that Illinois is
so near the bottom, things have to get better. Payne called Illinois the
nation’s “poster child” for school-funding
inequities. The difference in per-pupil spending between the
richest and poorest school districts is an embarrassing $19,361,
among the highest in the nation. And the amount the state
contributes to school funding is among the lowest in the nation.
The situation cries out for school-funding reform, financed by a
tax increase. Surely someday soon a politician will emerge who is
bold enough to speak that truth. As State Farm’s leadership on this
issue demonstrates, the business community is starting to realize
how much of a negative impact poor schools have on economic
competition. “Please understand,” pleaded Payne, “that our
economy will be drastically different three to five years from now if
we don’t do something about education.” China is already
outpacing the United States in the number of students who graduate from
college, and it will open 100 to 150 universities in the next five
years. In math and science, U.S. students lag behind those in much of
the rest of the world. Public attention is key to a solution. This
forum, one of a planned series on the achievement gap, is bound to
foster change through increased awareness. For it we have to thank
Sheila Stocks-Smith of the mayor’s Office of Education
Liaison. By focusing on a few crucial issues and working in
cooperation with the schools, that small office has more than
justified the meager public investment used to create it. It
deserves full funding. Meanwhile, Springfield is quickly becoming
irreversibly aware of school-performance issues. One day soon, a
panelist predicted, we’ll know our school’s report-card
scores as well as we know its football scores.
This article appears in Nov 17-23, 2005.
