Panel discusses racial gap in education

It seems so long ago that racially segregated schools existed – a time when black and white… It seems so long ago that racially segregated schools existed – a time when black and white people rode on separate school buses, a time when they couldn’t even use the same drinking fountain.

But while students are no longer divided based on the color of their skin, an urgent problem separating them still exists: academic performance.

Six panelists sat before students and professors Friday in the Frick Fine Arts Building to discuss the racial achievement gaps for students in grades kindergarten through 12.

The achievement of young students falls apart when teachers fail to provide them with further explanation on subjects the students still might not understand, even after having had learned them in class, said Mark Roosevelt, Pittsburgh public school superintendent.

“Who is teaching whom?” he questioned.

Roosevelt referred to a study that showed results of algebra students of first-year teachers scoring 30 percent lower than those who had experienced teachers.

If some students don’t understand what has been taught, the teacher still moves on to another lesson, Roosevelt said, which is a major problem.

“How do you get help immediately?” he said. “Not at the end of the year, not in summer school, not next year, but how do you get help immediately for kids who fall behind?”

Teachers need to take refresher courses and update their knowledge of what they teach, said Helen Faison, director of the Pittsburgh Teachers Institute.

“We conduct all kinds of studies and all kinds of data, but we fail to use it,” Faison said, adding that teachers must take advantage of known research.

But teachers’ awareness is not the only thing that will help the achievement gaps shrink.

Students’ literacy is crucial in order to close these racial achievement gaps, said Shirley Biggs, a Pitt associate professor of education.

“Good readers read. Poor readers don’t. Good readers achieve. Poor readers don’t,” Biggs said, quoting a familiar saying.

“For me, that helps to make the case for the fact that we have an achievement gap that’s very persistent,” Biggs said, adding that students becoming engaged in reading shows that improvement can be expected in the future.

She added that in a conducted study, 13-year-olds who consistently engaged in reading outperformed 17-year-olds who did not read regularly.

Roosevelt said literary and math goals need to be implemented early on.

“I think the most important word would be ‘rigor’ rather than ‘equity,'” he said. “Rigor is effort. It means rigorous curriculum from pre-K to 12th grade.”

Roosevelt said fourth graders need to enter the grade on a fourth-grade literary level, and students need to be prepared to take Algebra I in eighth grade.

“If you work back from these goals, you can start defining what it is you have to do,” he said.

While proper academic levels are vital in closing these racial achievement gaps, Chalin Askew, a Taylor Allderdice High School junior, said students are in great need of schooling that teaches all values.

As a chair of the African American Executive Board of the Centers of Advanced Studies, Askew, 16, said that when he was asked to speak on how reforms will impact gifted black students, he gave a simple “I don’t know.”

“[The answer was] able to rise so quickly because there have been so many times in our history we have left the black quite forgotten,” Askew said. “It is a topic and component I face daily, as I enter the classroom, as I leave the classroom.”

But Askew said that these reforms will affect students in different ways, and it is important to recognize the classification of students.

The goal-oriented group (the athlete and the gifted student), and the goal-deficient group (the juvenile delinquent) have different values and standards of education.

These groups’ situations at home will greatly affect how they perceive the significance of learning.

“Education is the foundation of humanity,” Askew said.

Askew added that parents and teachers must always encourage students to achieve the best in education.

A positive and prospective outline for a child’s future requires a competitive, but helpful atmosphere in the classroom. It must promote self-confidence and respect.

“Most Americans believe you are either born smart or born dumb,” Roosevelt added. “If that’s the case, there isn’t much we can do about it. But if the opposite is true, which I fundamentally believe it is, you can work to be smart.”

But it could take between 65 and 780 years to close racial achievement gaps in math and science if effects of reforms in the future mimic those of the past, according to the analysis of gap closure rates for fourth, eighth and 11th graders on the National Assessment of Educational Progress.

Becoming more aware of desegregation and diversity in society also plays a major role in reducing the racial achievement gaps, said Stanley Denton, an assistant professor of education and a diversity fellow at Point Park University.

“The desegregation experience has been one with some successes and many failures,” Denton said. “At one point, if you spoke out against desegregated schools, you were considered a racist.”

Denton remembered his childhood when buses picked up black children from the school to drive them to cotton fields about 20 minutes away enabling them to contribute to their families’ incomes.

White schools provided the black schools with their old hand-me-down textbooks, about 10 years old.

Denton said a book with a front and back cover and all of its pages was a prized possession.

But despite all the structural obstacles of inequality and segregation, Denton learned the importance of attaining a valuable education and pursuing his dreams.

“What are you going to be when you grow up?” Denton’s elders asked him on Sundays at church.

“As long as I said that I was going to be a something, that was acceptable,” Denton said. “And the implicit message was, ‘You are going to be a something.'”

He added the importance of asking, What have we gained? What have we benefited from? And what’s the best paradigm?

“Mr. Roosevelt can’t do it by himself,” Denton said, adding that parents and teachers need to get involved in the transformation of the lives of our children.

Pitt assistant professor of Africana Studies Kwame Botwe-Asamoah agreed.

An issue very critical to his heart, the role of parents in children’s lives, is essential in improving their learning abilities and growth.

He suggested an example of a child whose parents build a basketball court in their backyard. The child would play basketball all night long, taking too much time away from his education.

“What kind of teacher is that?” asked Botwe-Asamoah.

“No one can do everything, but everyone can do something,” Denton repeated an admired quote. “And if everyone does their something, everything will get done.”