Over the last two years, 15 high school districts throughout the nation formed the Minority Student Achievement Network to work on solutions to the academic-performance gap between racial and ethnic groups. Oak Park and River Forest High School District 200 is one of four local districts in the network.
The organization’s goal is to address the lagging test scores and grades of primarily black and Hispanic students as compared to their white and Asian-American peers from similar backgrounds, administrators say.
“The gap varies from district to district,” said Richard Deptuch, director of instruction at Oak Park-River Forest High School since summer 1999. “Twenty-eight percent of our students are African-American. Other minorities–Hispanics, Asians and Native Americans–make up about 5 percent. For right now, our primary focus is on African-American students.”
Statistical information from the high school indicates there is a performance gap between African-American and Caucasian students, Deptuch said. For example, he said, the ACT average score for Caucasians at the school is 25.33; for African-Americans it is 18.87.
“It doesn’t matter which group qualifies as a minority, the ultimate goal of every school district is to close the gap,” said Deptuch, who is a member of the network’s researcher/practitioner council. “What we want is for the scores of African-Americans, Hispanics and other minorities to be comparable to the scores of any other groups. We want to equalize all measures of achievement for all groups of students.”
The network plans to reach that goal by creating programs aimed at boosting achievement among minorities, said Deptuch, who was a math teacher at the high school for 32 years before being named director of instruction. The network also will initiate research projects that identify causes of the performance gap and act as a national center for the collection and dissemination of information on strategies to improve achievement by blacks and Hispanics.
“We have to crack this as a group,” said Mary Bennett, assistant superintendent for curriculum and instruction at the high school. “We have 15 districts with similar demographics. We have a better chance [of solving the problem] if we work as a unit, sharing information and ideas.”
Participants will examine test and college entrance exam scores, as well as the students’ GPA. The idea is to break down the data and determine the factors that contribute to the measure of achievement being examined, said Bennett, who also is a member of the researcher/practitioner council.
“Let’s say we look at a GPA,” she said. “We don’t understand exactly what that is a reflection of. We have to ask, what are the pieces that went into the GPA instructionally–including teaching styles, learning styles, content, level of interest and peer pressure. Researchers will help us isolate, and examine very discreetly, how these factors contribute to that GPA.”
The network and the high school also are examining the low number of minority students enrolled in honors and advanced-placement courses, Bennett added. “If 28 percent of our students are black, then roughly 28 percent of students in those classes should be black. But in reality, it’s less than 10 percent.”
The reasons vary according to academic, personal, social and motivational factors, said Bennett, who has been an administrator at the school for a little more than a year but who has been in the education field for 33 years.
“African-American and Hispanic students don’t have the same level playing field,” she said. “We need to level that field.”
A freshman at the University of Illinois at Chicago, Antar Jackson was one of a small group of minority students who took honors and advanced placement courses while at the school.
“I experienced isolation,” recalled Jackson, who attended a minority-achievement conference held at the high school this summer. “Most of the time it was me and one other minority student in the class.
“But it was good in another way, because I learned how to work with people of different backgrounds. That’s going to be an advantage in college.”
Educators agreed they have to examine the factors that may contribute to a low minority enrollment in honors and advanced-placement courses.
“We have to ask questions: `How much time do you spend on homework, with your parents, with your friends?’ `When do you do your homework?’ `What do you do after school?'” Bennett said.
In June, students, teachers and administrators from Oak Park Elementary School District 97, River Forest School District 90, and school districts in Evanston convened at Oak Park and River Forest High School for a day-long conference on minority achievement. The purpose was to give students a chance to talk about what works–or doesn’t–for them in terms of academic success.
“It’s crucial to give the kids a voice in this,” said Philip Prale, who has taught history at the high school for six years and is one of several Oak Park and River Forest High School teachers associated with the network.
“And we have to be critical listeners. We have to ask tough questions, and listen to the answers so we can find solutions that help students and teachers.”
Quiana McJunkins, a 1999 graduate of the high school and a freshman at Johnson and Wales University in Providence, R.I., also attended the conference.
“This [conference] is a way for us to communicate what’s going on in the school,” she said. “There is a network of people willing to help, but they can’t do anything if we don’t let them know.”
Michael Pogue, another June graduate and a freshman at Chicago’s Columbia Collegesaid that it’s important for minority students “to learn to take leadership roles. It’s a responsibility that you have to take. You are in charge of your life.”
Poguesaid high school taught him that “things aren’t going to just fall in your lap. You have to be patient and relate your experiences to others. Talking about it is a step in the right direction because we haven’t had many people to talk to” about the needs of minority students.
The academic achievement gap isn’t new. Educators have been searching for answers for at least 10 years but hadn’t made a unified effort to address the problem until recently, Deptuch said.
Allan Alson, superintendent of Evanston Township High School District 202, initiated the formation of a national network that would work together and share information, Deptuch said. Alson presented his idea in February 1999 at a national conference for school administrators.
“Allan talked about forming a network that would give us the opportunity to share information,” Deptuch said. “We’d all been trying to accomplish the same thing, but we’d been working in isolation.”
“Anytime we [educators] would discuss statistics from college boards, we’d see that students of color were not achieving as well as they should,” said Prale, who has taught history at the high school for six years. “We would talk about how to make things work, but we weren’t sharing information.”
The network is a good way to generate research and disperse information, he added. “This is a case where race matters. As educators, it is our responsibility to ask why–and to ultimately come up with ways to help students of color reach their fullest potential.”
