Study: Gap exists between black, white student scores

By Mary Carey
Staff Writer

Published on April 04, 2008

Black students in Amherst scored higher in math on MCAS tests than their counterparts in 23 of 25 comparable communities, but the gap between white and black student achievement was still wider in Amherst than in most of those communities, a new study has found.

The Boston Black Parent Alliance, which conducted the study, found that similar districts, based on average home values, had widely varying levels of success improving black students' math test performance and closing the achievement gap between black and white students.

The antidote, the group suggests, is a sense of "urgency" on the part of school districts and public. The districts have to have a plan with measurable goals and improvement strategies based on scientific research to close the gap, and parents have to monitor the district's efforts to implement it.

"If parents don't step up and ask questions, it seems likely that the achievement gaps will continue unclosed as they have for years," Justin Sallis, the alliance's executive director and author of the study, concludes in an executive summary.

And the pressure cannot come only from minority parents, the alliance says.

Researchers compared black students' math MCAS scores in 57 communities, divided into three groups based on median home value. Amherst, with a median $301,500 home value based on 2005 data, is in the middle group that includes homes ranging from that value to a median value of $423,000 in Melrose.

Black students' math test performance in Amherst was second only to Braintree's among the 25 districts in the moderate home value range.

But the gap between black and white math test achievement in Amherst was the third widest after Easton and Melrose.

By comparison, black students in Chicopee, which was in the lower home value category, had the highest proficiency rate. The achievement gap in Chicopee was also the narrowest among the 16 communities in the group, which also includes Springfield and Holyoke.

Jere Hochman, Amherst Regional Public Schools superintendent, said the district is evolving from what the alliance calls a Category 1 approach, which is having no publicly available plan to close the gap. It is moving toward Category 3, in which there is a clear plan that teachers can easily describe and explain how they personally implement it.

Amherst has not traditionally emphasized that the state's standards and expectations of testing should be incorporated in curriculum planning, Hochman said. Now it does, although he can't foresee that "teaching to the test" would ever fly in the district.

A challenge is to implement a Category 3 plan "without depriving our African-American and all students of the Amherst curriculum characterized by projects, field experiences and research," Hochman said.

In some respects, communities in the wealthier category with a median home value exceeding $424,000 would be more apt comparisons with Amherst, Hochman and others said.

"If they had put the middle and wealthy communities in one group, we'd look fantastic," Hochman said.

Area colleges are a factor, said University of Massachusetts math professor Nathaniel Whitaker, founder of a well-regarded Saturday math enrichment program in Amherst for black students from grades 3 to 10, called AIMS, the Academic and other Initiatives for Maximum Success.

"We have a lot of advantages being in the five-college area and having many of the parents who are connected with the colleges. That has a huge impact on the scores," Whitaker said.

Sallis, the study's author, agreed that the presence of the colleges is significant.

"There are a ton of resources in the area, and those are the kinds of things that could be leveraged into explicit plans for closing the achievement gap."

Whitaker is a member of the group Amherst Committee for Excellence, which has advocated for the kind of data-driven, scientifically based approach to closing the gap. "I think that this is great that the parents accumulated this data," he said. "I think that the more info we have, the more likely we can understand why this gap exists," Whitaker said.

Recent studies suggest that children are taught too many math topics too superficially in elementary schools, "a mile wide and an inch deep," and that not enough time is spent making sure children have good "number sense," such as fractions and decimals, Whitaker said. "More well-off parents will make sure that their kids have this, but those from lower economic groups may not as often," Whitaker said. "I have seen kids that I teach on Saturday in the fifth grade not even know their times tables."

Catherine Sanderson, co-founder of ACE who stepped down from that group to run for School Committee, said the Boston Black Parents Alliance findings square with data she helped compile for a committee formed by Hochman last year to evaluate MCAS scores and other data and suggest improvements to the math curriculum in Amherst's schools.

Among the committee's conclusions were that Amherst should use math textbooks for sixth-, seventh- and eight-graders, something that is not done now. Teachers largely rely on worksheets, Sanderson said.

"Having a book is a wonderful idea for a lot of reasons," Sanderson said. "All kids are going to be learning the same material. Textbooks (are) a resource that is particularly useful at home for children whose parents don't have high levels of proficiency in math or money for tutors. A textbook is an equalizer."

The committee also suggests that Amherst investigate teaching all eighth-graders algebra.

"The kinds of kids who take eighth-grade algebra don't look like the kids who don't, in terms of race, gender and income. That's why we need every kid taking eighth-grade algebra."

Mary Carey can be reached at mary.carey@att.net.