A growing body of literature documents an achievement gap between students of color and white students in historically high-performing suburban districts (D'Amico, 2001; Ferguson, 2001, 2002; Gordon, 2000; Viadero, 2002). This gap exists for middle-class minority students as well as for poor students. As researcher Edmond Gordon notes,African American, Hispanic, and Native American students at each social class level tend to do less well than their European American and Asian American counterparts. (2000, p. 2)
Just as we must address the gap in urban schools, we must also work to narrow or eliminate achievement differences in schools in wealthy neighborhoods. For six years, educators in 11 affluent school districts in the suburbs of New York City, Newark, New Jersey, and Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, have been investigating how to remedy the gap.
In 1998, the superintendents of these 11 suburban school districts formed the Regional Minority Consortium and launched an initiative to address the achievement gap within their districts. Each district began the project using action research to build a knowledge base about how the achievement gap manifested itself in the community. Districts then designed strategies to tackle the problem. A cross-section of district personnel, including leaders within each school, teachers, and district-level administrators, met regularly to share their learning and challenges.
Collaborating for Shared Vision
Each district's research team developed a project appropriate to its culture and concerns. Using surveys, interview protocols, and other instruments, team members collected and analyzed data on a sample of students (and sometimes on a sample of parents) representing diverse racial and ethnic groups and varying academic performance levels. This collaborative process helped build a shared vision and a sense of ownership in each district's action research project.
Some district teams examined the school-level context, whereas others looked at what was happening across their entire district. Some teams reviewed their district's existing programs to remedy the achievement gap; others identified learning conditions and teaching strategies that seemed to produce high achievement from students of color in their schools. Many team members studied student performance in mathematics, viewing math achievement as the gatekeeper to academic success (Adelman, 1999; Schoenfeld, 2002; Singham, 2003). Still other districts looked at issues of access to knowledge and information across education stakeholder groups.
Six of the districts—urged on by team members who were eager to “do something”—immediately implemented school practices or policies in response to what their research revealed. An examination of three of these district initiatives reveals how collaborative research can drive meaningful action to narrow the achievement gap.
North Harbor: Creating an Enrichment Program
In the North Harbor School District, research revealed a disproportionately low number of black and Latino students enrolled in high-level math classes for the 2001–2002 academic year. The district's K–12 student population was more than 79 percent white, 13.3 percent Latino, and 3.7 percent black. Although 67 percent of nonminority seniors were taking precalculus or calculus, only 33 percent of the district's minority seniors were enrolled in these classes. The district's action research team members designed a project aimed at understanding how students of color selected math courses, hoping this understanding would help them develop an effective intervention to get more minorities into high-level math. Team members interviewed black and Latino seniors to learn about their math experiences within the district. As the assistant principal explained,They went to this school. They made decisions about their math instruction, and we wanted to know what influenced those decisions, and if they had any regrets.
The interview data revealed that black and Latino students in the district believed that they were not encouraged to excel and take honors classes. As a result of these findings, the research team designed and implemented a math enrichment program for 10th grade minority students, drawing on the work of Uri Treisman (1985, 1992). The program targeted students who showed evidence of capacity for higher-level mathematics but had not enrolled in challenging courses.
Over the course of the 2003–2004 academic year, the chosen students participated in one of several weekly two-hour study groups. Group time focused on teaching problem-solving strategies and study skills. To help students view the program as enrichment and not as remediation, a master teacher led the groups.
An analysis of the effectiveness of this program yielded several findings. First, because the groups met during the school year, with students concurrently enrolled in a math course, the group teacher worked to both strengthen students' overall math skills and help them master work in their current math class. This format helped students succeed in their current math class but did not provide them with the necessary skills to “skip ahead” in the course sequence or automatically place in a higher math class after their year in the study group. Perhaps because of these factors, students said they did not see a direct positive effect from participating in the program. In addition, the research team determined that selecting a study group teacher with strong content knowledge was a necessary but insufficient component of a successful program. The right teacher also needed the ability to reach out to students, encouraging their attendance and helping them see themselves as successful math learners.
At the conclusion of the first year, the research team modified the program on the basis of these findings. The study group is now offered as a summer enrichment program between students' 8th and 9th grade years, providing students who successfully complete the program with the chance to immediately enroll in a higher-level math course. The district offers three levels of mathematics courses in 8th grade and two in 9th grade. Eighth graders who complete the highest-level math course are placed in the upper-level math class in 9th grade, whereas 8th graders who complete the middle- or lower-level course go on to the less advanced 9th grade course. The summer program targets minority 8th graders enrolled in the middle-level math course. Those who complete the program can subsequently take the highest-level 9th grade math course and thus end up on the track to further advanced math. During 9th grade, “graduates” of the summer enrichment program continue to meet monthly as a group for support and encouragement.
The research team selected a teacher to lead the enrichment program who is both highly qualified in mathematics and skilled at establishing relationships with students as they transition from middle to high school. In describing the rationale for selecting the teacher, the assistant principal in charge of the program said, “She will reach out to the kids, she knows them, she will call them and encourage them to come.”
In the spring of 2004, the district invited all minority students enrolled in the 8th grade middle-level math course to enroll in the summer enrichment program; about half of those eligible took part. There has been outstanding attendance in the summer program and the teacher believes that the students will flourish in the higher-level math course during their 9th grade year. By providing study training, peer support, and encouragement from a skilled teacher, the school district is turning research into action to raise minority math achievement.
South Hills: Detracking Math
The South Hills School District's research also revealed black and Latino students' lower representation in high-level math courses within the district's middle and high schools. In the 2001–2002 academic year, the district's population of 2,058 students was approximately 60 percent white, 22 percent Asian American, 11 percent black, and 7 percent Latino. The South Hills action research team analyzed standardized test scores, classroom demographics across subjects, and other assessment data. It found that black and Latino students were less frequently selected for accelerated math classes in elementary, middle, and high school and that the district's process for recommending students for such classes was ambiguous, inconsistent, and heavily reliant on individual teacher judgment. The team members discovered from student interviews that a key barrier to black and Latino students' math achievement was teachers' early labeling of many minority students—as well as students' self-labeling—as weak in math. South Hills chose to radically level the playing field by detracking its math courses so that all students would have access to a high-level mathematics curriculum.
To assess students' behaviors and attitudes, the research team interviewed randomly selected representative pairs of black, Latino, white, and Asian American students in grades ranging from elementary school through high school, with one student in each pair identified by teachers as “good” at mathematics and the other identified as “having trouble.” Interviewers asked students about what kind of support—or lack thereof—they perceived they had gotten from teachers and the school as they progressed through math courses. Those identified as having trouble all recalled being told by teachers that they were inadequate in math; researchers concluded that these students had subsequently lived out a self-fulfilling prophecy. The deputy superintendent who led the research team stated thatEvery student [identified as having trouble in math] told a story of a teacher who told them they were not good in math. And “it's true,” they would tell us, “I'm in a low math class.” Of all the things we did, it was the interviews with these kids that led us to this idea that we cannot allow our kids to believe that they're mathematicians or not when they're 8.
The interview data also revealed that black students suffered from a sense of racial isolation as well as feelings of inadequacy.
In response to these findings, South Hills School District began eliminating ability grouping in mathematics and initiating differentiated curriculum and instruction from the elementary grades on. In 2002, the district started providing all 3rd grade teachers with professional development on differentiating their instruction to suit a range of student abilities and learning styles. The following year, the district eliminated ability grouping in the 3rd grade. South Hills is continuing to operate on a schedule in which all students at one grade level (5th grade, for example) receive differentiated math instruction for an academic year; in the successive school year, the next set of students in the 5th grade study math with differentiated instruction but without formal ability grouping. Currently, the district has phased out grouping in the 3rd grade and has provided 4th grade teachers with the necessary professional development to detrack that grade in the following year as well.
To alleviate feelings of racial isolation among black and Latino students, the district is implementing the Northeast Foundation's “Responsive Classroom” model to support students' sense of belonging and to help them develop trusting relationships with teachers. Responsive Classroom is an approach to teaching and learning in which teachers get to know children and parents individually and make them partners in the education process (Denton & Kriete, 2002; Kriete, 2002). These techniques have led to more nurturing teacher-student relationships—a sign of hope for long-term elimination of the gap (Ferguson, 2002). South Hills is committed to an ongoing evaluation of students' feelings of inclusion and belonging.
Rolling Brook: Uncovering an Overlooked Resource
The research process led Rolling Brook Public School District—which has a predominantly African American population—to reexamine and bolster access to a summer Advanced Placement (AP) Academy that the district already had in place in its high schools. The AP Academy's mission was to prepare students for honors and advanced placement courses. But surveys of students and faculty about the academy revealed that those it aimed to serve knew very little about the program. Faculty members were confused about the academy's mission and the process for recommending students; students had such scant knowledge of this program that the intervention was nearly invisible.
To remedy the situation, members of the action research team made presentations about the academy at faculty conferences, and teachers who participated in the academy actively discussed it within their academic departments. These measures made both students and faculty more aware of the AP Academy and led to growth in enrollment. The AP Academy has now become a recognized and respected institution within the Rolling Brook district.
Feedback from students who completed the AP Academy signals that the intervention provided participants with the skills and confidence necessary for them to excel in more challenging courses, thus expanding their education opportunities in secondary school and beyond. One student claimed that without her summer academy experience,[I would not have taken] honors U.S. history and honors chemistry. Before the AP Academy, I thought classes above Regents [basic-level courses in the district] would be difficult and that I could not do the work.
Lessons Learned and Future Directions
The first four years of work reinforced the consortium leaders' belief that mathematics attainment is a powerful gatekeeper to future academic success. After the fourth year, the consortium decided to focus future action projects on improving mathematics access and achievement for middle school students of color.
In our work with the consortium, we have learned that drawing diverse district- and school-level practitioners into the action research increases both their ownership in the findings and their commitment to implementing remedies emerging from that research. The direct involvement of teachers, school- and district-level administrators, support staff, and counselors in investigating achievement gap realities creates a sense of urgency to act on the findings, particularly to change harmful practices. Interdistrict collaboration also increases administrators' motivation to enact change: Cross-district relationships that strengthen bonds and trust among superintendents intensify those superintendents' commitment to equity and excellence.
When the practitioners who will actually carry out changes designed to shrink the achievement gap initiate action research, they feel more responsible for making those changes work. The Regional Minority Consortium experience proves that a shared commitment to equity can identify and begin to dissolve barriers to high achievement for all.
