Year after year, decade after decade, Board of Education members, Montclair School District administrators and parent activists have sought to narrow this gap.
Tremendous amounts of property tax-generated funding has been spent to reduce and eliminate the academic disparity. Specialized approaches have been implemented, and then replaced by other specialized approaches. Specialists have been hired to work with students in need of assistance.
Yet, in 2013, this achievement gap persists.
Seeking to significantly narrow the gap, Schools Superintendent Penny MacCormack is assembling a community group that will develop solutions to achieve academic parity.
Ronald Brown, a former Board of Education president and longtime head of Montclair's Martin Luther King Jr. Scholarship Fund, and Thomas Reynolds, president of the Montclair Branch of the NAACP, have been tapped by MacCormack to chair the Achievement Gap Advisory Panel.
Reynolds and Brown will select the panel's approximately two dozen members.
"This is really important work," MacCormack told The Montclair Times. "The achievement gap is something this community deeply cares about and wants to address, and that's the work of this panel."
Brown and Reynolds said they were anxious to get started with their new roles.
"It's going to be a lot of work," Reynolds said. "But it's what's going to have to happen if we're going to be honest about educational diversity in Montclair. We have to make sure we provide students with what it takes to succeed."
Reynolds said the panel's focus won't be limited to the classroom but would extend to the community.
"Education doesn't happen in just the few hours that kids are in the classroom," he noted.
Brown is looking forward to a quick start.
"I hope that the Achievement Gap Advisory Panel will hit the ground as though we were running in the Penn Relays," he stated in an email.
Brown said he would like the panel members to think about the district's students with a vision expressed by the late Nelson Mandela.
"We were born to manifest the glory of God that is within us," Brown quoted from a Mandela speech. "It's not just in some of us, it's in everyone."
According to MacCormack, Brown and Reynolds will head a panel that will examine why some black students from economically disadvantaged households and some special needs students have fallen behind their white and other minority classmates.
Fresh approach
The panel members will take a fresh look at the achievement gap, identify its causes and make recommendations on how the district can rectify the disparity.
"Part of the panel's work will be to investigate all sorts of avenues and ideas for the 'whys,'" MacCormack said. "We would like all the panel members to come with an open mind."
She said other members of the panel are expected to be named within several weeks. Brown and Reynolds will likely be formally introduced to the Board of Education during its public meeting on Monday, Dec. 16.
The group could hold its first meeting as soon as January and could present its findings and a formal set of recommendations within six months.
According to MacCormack, the gap prevents some students from fulfilling the vision that the district and the community has of graduating young people who are college- or career-ready.
Earlier this year, the district reported that 80 percent of students showed proficiency or advanced proficiency in the most recent round of state-mandated student achievement tests.
However, the same report showed that, in selected test categories, some economically disadvantaged black and special needs youngsters lagged 20 to 50 percentage points behind their fellow students.
MacCormack said that her review of the state's student assessment data for the district reveals that the gap "is not widening or necessarily narrowing, but is kind of being stagnant."
Commitment to all students
"We're interested in making sure that all of our students achieve at high levels, and to be able to have that gap start to narrow," MacCormack said.
Board of Education President Robin Kulwin said that with the naming of the panel, closing the achievement gap in Montclair will now become a communitywide effort.
"It's not going to be just her [McCormack's] vision. This is going to be a joint effort with leaders in the community," Kulwin said. "People are stepping up to do really serious important work. We're anxious to hear from them."
The Board of Education president said the move reaffirms the district's commitment to make sure that all students have the same opportunities to develop and grow in the classroom.
"We talk about the achievement gap as being a priority," Kulwin said. "I think this shows Penny MacCormack is really committed to addressing the achievement gap.
"It's not just lip service," she said.
Contact George Wirt at wirt@northjersey.com
No comments:
Post a Comment