Milwaukee Reading Gap is the WORST in the Nation

Probably not directly relevant to ECASD except that what happens in the state
in education anywhere has an effect everywhere on state education
policy (no school district is an island etc.)

Reading gap is nation's worst

Average ability of state's black students ranks lowest

By ALAN J. BORSUK
aborsuk@journalsentinel.com

Posted: Sept. 25, 2007

The average reading ability for fourth- and eighth-grade black
students in Wisconsin is the lowest of any state, and the reading
achievement gap between black students and white students in Wisconsin
continues to be the worst in the nation.

Those are among the facts found in a mass of testing results released
Tuesday by the U.S. Department of Education, the latest results from a
long-standing federal program called the National Assessment of
Education Progress. It is the closest thing to a nationwide
standardized testing program for reading and math ability.

The gap between blacks and whites was worse in Wisconsin than, say,
Louisiana? Yes.

The average score for black fourth-graders in reading was lower than,
say, Washington, D.C., or Alabama? Yes.

"I find it very distressing to look at this," said Elizabeth
Burmaster, Wisconsin superintendent of public instruction. "There
isn't anything more important (in education). This is the civil rights
issue of our country."

"It's upsetting to me," said William Andrekopoulos, superintendent of
Milwaukee Public Schools. "This is the very reason why I've been
talking about improving instruction over and over again."

Overall, Wisconsin students did better than the national average in
all four sets of results released in Washington: fourth-grade reading,
fourth-grade math, eighth-grade reading and eighth-grade math. And
compared with the last round of testing two years ago, the average
scores in Wisconsin were up in three of those areas. Eighth-grade
reading was the exception.

Nationwide, overall scores were up slightly in all four areas. U.S.
Secretary of Education Margaret Spellings said the new data showed
that the No Child Left Behind education law was working, and critics
said the data didn't show much at all.

Some declines in eighth-grade reading results, both nationally and in
Wisconsin, brought calls from education leaders for increased
attention to getting middle school students to be capable and involved
readers.

But the most dramatic results from the standpoint of Wisconsinites
were the achievement gap figures, fresh evidence of the huge issues
affecting the lives of African-Americans in Wisconsin, issues that
include rising poverty, loss of blue-collar jobs, high rates of
single-parent and teen-mother births, and severe crime.

White fourth-graders in Wisconsin had an average reading score of 229
on a scale of 1 to 500. Black students had an average score of 191.
That 38-point gap was two points larger than the gap in Nebraska and
three points larger than for Connecticut, the two states closest to
Wisconsin on this measure. The national average for black students was
203.

The 191 score in Wisconsin was lower than the 192 in the District of
Columbia and Tennessee, with every other state coming in higher.

For eighth-grade reading, the gap in scores for Wisconsin was 39
points. Michigan, at 31 points, was the only other state over 30. The
average score in Wisconsin for a black eighth-grader of 231 was five
points lower - a wide margin in these scores - than the second-lowest
score, Michigan's at 236.

For Hispanic students, the average fourth-grade score in Wisconsin was
208 and the average eighth-grade score was 247, meaning that in both
cases there was a substantial gap, but it was not as severe as the
black-white gap. The Hispanic-white gaps in Wisconsin were more in
line with national averages.

The same was true for the differences between students who qualified
for free and reduced-price lunch in school - the general definition of
a low-income student - and students who did not qualify. The Wisconsin
gaps were large, but generally in line with national patterns.

In fourth-grade math, the black-white gap was greater in Wisconsin
than in any other state, but less than the gap in Washington, D.C.,
and the average score for black students was slightly above the scores
in Nebraska and the District of Columbia.

For eighth-grade math, only Nebraska had a bigger gap than Wisconsin -
the District of Columbia wasn't listed because it has too few white
eighth-graders to be calculated. The average score for black students
in Wisconsin was slightly higher than the averages in Nebraska,
Michigan, the District of Columbia and Alabama.

This is not the first time Wisconsin has had the largest black-white
gaps in one or more of the areas tested. Much the same was true in
2003 and 2005, the last years in which comparable results were
released.

Daria Hall, assistant director of K-12 policy for the Education Trust,
an influential education advocacy group based in Washington, said some
other states were reducing their achievement gaps significantly, while
Wisconsin's results showed little change.

"Minnesota closed its gap by 10 points (in eighth-grade reading) from
1998 to 2007," she said. "In Wisconsin, the gap increased by four
points."

She said that in fourth-grade reading, the gap in Texas went down 14
points over nine years. In Louisiana, it was 12, and in Oklahoma and
New York it was 11. Wisconsin's gap narrowed by only three points.

"It's just a very strong signal to policy makers and to educators in
Wisconsin that we need to get serious about supporting kids of color
in the state, and a lot of that has to do with supporting MPS," Hall
said.

The Education Trust had found that Wisconsin school districts with
high minority enrollments have $1,000 less to spend per student than
the whitest districts in the state, she said, "so that means that we
really need to look at how schools are funded," Hall said.

"We've also done analyses to show that in the highest minority schools
in the state, there are far more novice teachers, teachers with less
than five years of experience. We need to get serious about ensuring
that kids of color have at least their fair share of qualified
teachers."

Wendell Harris, chairman of the education committee of the Milwaukee
chapter of the NAACP, said, "I know we've got to do better in school,
there's no question about that."

But, he said, "really, from my standpoint, (it's) families. . . . We
can't keep making excuses for parents."

Harris said many parents live amid difficult circumstances, but "we
have to do our best to try to get our children educated whatever our
own circumstances are."

He added, "We have to become more willing to hold everyone accountable
and not just the teachers."

Burmaster said the high and rising level of poverty in Wisconsin was a
big factor behind the gaps. She said she wanted to know whether other
states had the same proportions of students from low-income homes as
Wisconsin.

"It's not just an achievement gap," she said. "It's an economic gap.
It's a gap in health. It's a quality of life gap. All of those things
influence student achievement."

Andrekopoulos has come to stress how teachers teach and what goes on
in classrooms increasingly in his five years as superintendent of MPS.
He said the key goal of a strategic plan for MPS approved by the
School Board in July was better instruction, and MPS efforts in the
last couple years have focused strongly on improving teaching,
especially in low-performing schools.

He also said he hopes efforts to assure that the highest quality
teachers are taking on the most challenging classrooms will show
results, in part with changes in how teachers are hired and placed
that will have to be part of a new contract with the teachers union..

"If you have quality instruction in the classroom, you're going to
reduce the achievement gap," Andrekopoulos said. "We have a lot more
work to do, there's no question about that."

The national test is given in every state to samples of students
regarded by experts as statistically reliable. Both public and private
school students take part. About 350,000 students nationwide took this
round of tests in early 2007. That included about 5% of fourth-graders
and about 4% of eighth-graders in Wisconsin, Burmaster said.