Despite unprecedented national and state reforms over the past decade, the achievement gap between black and white students remains essentially unchanged in California, while the gap between Latino and white students has closed slightly but still remains alarmingly high.
That's the depressing aspect of the state's latest test results which, with some exceptions, got buried when they were released two weeks ago. At the time, state Superintendent of Public Instruction Jack O'Connell hailed the "steady progress" that students from all racial and ethnic backgrounds have made, pointing to the 17 percentage point increase of students scoring at a proficient level.
But a major goal – arguably the major goal – of the 2001 federal No Child Left Behind legislation, and the billions of dollars spent on implementing it in California, was specifically to close the achievement gap. As a 2003 document on the U.S. Department of Education website noted, President George W. Bush pushed Congress to enact the legislation to "close the achievement gap between disadvantaged and minority students and their peers."
The fact that has not occurred raises fundamental questions about the effectiveness of the reforms instituted so far.
The achievement gap has a special, and urgent, relevance for California. Unlike in most states, where black and Latino students constitute the minority of students, in California they constitute the majority. Black and Latino students make up nearly 60 percent of California's 6.2 million student population, and students from ethnic backgrounds other than white make up over 75 percent.
"It is not just an issue of the achievement gap," said Arun Ramanathan, executive director of Education Trust West, the Oakland-based advocacy and research organization focusing on the achievement gap, in a telephone conversation yesterday. "The issue of pervasive low achievement touches on the future of the state of California."
These are the facts: In 2003, there was a 31-point gap between the percentage of white and black students scoring at a proficient level on English Language Arts. By 2010, there was still a 30-point gap. In math, the gap in 2003 was 28 points; in 2010, it was 27 points. Currently, only 32 percent of blacks are scoring at a proficient level in math, compared to 59 percent of whites.
Among Hispanics, the gap has narrowed slightly but is still far from being closed. In 2003, there was a 33-point gap in English Language Arts and has now narrowed to 29 points. In math, the gap has shrunk from 24 to 20 points. When tested last spring, 39 percent of Latinos were performing at a proficient level, compared to 59 percent of whites.
Ramanathan says the major problem is that despite an intensive focus on more tests and making schools more "accountable," California's school system has not adapted to the needs of a changing student population. "We've run the same kind of education system in the state, while the kids in the system have changed dramatically," he said.
Charter schools such as the Knowledge is Power Program have shown that kids benefit from longer school days and years, for example. But California is going in just the opposite director, as I showed in a recent California Watch report.
California also is missing in action when it comes to preparing kids for school. "It is criminal that we don't provide universal preschool," Ramanathan said.
Ramanathan is not ready to abandon the No Child Left Behind law. "We would not know there was an achievement gap without some of the standards-based reforms that have been constructed," he said. "There has been a gradual increase in student performance."
"We have a system of all boats rising equally," he said, referring to the fact that test scores for every racial and ethnic group have risen over the past decade. "But when you have so many students entering school so far behind, you haven't made the fundamental systemic changes you need to make to meet their needs and to prepare for California's future."
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