The President’s View

I don’t think there can be an educator in America who isn’t concerned with the achievement gap between white and black students. It is a persistent and nationwide problem.

What is a bit of a surprise is to learn that the achievement gap appears to be narrowing in the Southern states, while it remains persistent, or is even increasing, in the Northern states, including Connecticut.

This emerges from a July 15 report in the New York Times, based on a study by the National Center for Education Statistics. Historically, the achievement gap between America’s black and white students was found to be greater in the Southern states, “where the legacies of slavery and segregation were reflected in extremely low math and reading scores among poor African American children,” the Times writes.

This has changed. Evidently, the widest gaps are no longer seen in the Southern states like Alabama and Mississippi, but in states like “Connecticut, Illinois, Nebraska and Wisconsin.”

Officials who conducted the study offered no explanation for this trend, only to say that it calls for further research.

That Connecticut should be among the states with the greatest “achievement gap” is both embarrassing and inexcusable, and something that can’t be allowed to persist.

The reason stated is “partly because white students in Connecticut score above the national average, but also because blacks there score lower, on average than blacks elsewhere.”

Warren T. Smith, vice president of the Washington State Board of Education said that in the report that the regional variations were not as significant as the factors that remained consistent in all states where African American students are concerned. : “Inequitable distribution of teachers, inequitable funding of schools, institutional racism. That is consistent across the board.”

Clearly we need to do more. At Fairfield, we send student mentors to our local schools; we have a free Bridgeport tuition program, and are dedicated to preparing high school students from the surrounding towns so that they are prepared for college.

For instance, we recently developed a summer immersion program for Bridgeport science teachers from public and parochial schools with a goal of doing what we can to enhance science instruction in the schools, and many of our teaching graduates go straight into the local schools and we know that they are passionate young men and women who love what they do, and are driven to make a difference.

This is a systemic problem and we, as a community, need to take ownership.