A bar raised for all
Baltimore County attracts national attention for its efforts to increase the level of every student's achievement.
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Special education students also have to pass. "What I like is that we raised the bar," says Wally Gunther, who team-teaches several algebra classes where about half the students have special ed status. "They're achieving higher than they ever had before. But the HSA is very hard."
The other big push in high school is literacy. Starting next year, the district will give students who need it extra courses in language arts. Many teens grew up with "whole language" instruction and lack knowledge of grammar mechanics, says Meg O'Hare, coordinator of the advisory groups that represent each segment of the sprawling district. The initiative adds more skills instruction to the current focus on literature. The low English HSA scores will be "corrected in time," she says, "but we need to make sure that every school is ... using a good curriculum."
Gaps aren't just an issue at the low end of the achievement scale. There's an expectations gap at the high end. "A lot of teachers have felt only a certain kind of student fits into [advanced courses]. We've really tried in our county ... to redefine what all that means and to open the door wider to nontraditional students," says Dorothy Hardin, principal of Pikesville High School, a large campus nestled in a prim neighborhood north of Baltimore. While most teachers are supportive, "I've had some who've left because I don't want people to define levels by what they assume from a person's background."
On the elementary level nationwide, the portion of African-American students in gifted and talented courses rose from 3.8 percent in 2000 to 6.5 percent in 2004. The portion of Hispanics also rose, to 11.1 percent, but both groups are still behind the 14.4 percent rate for whites.
A program called AVID nudges high school kids with average grades to challenge themselves in more advanced college-preparation courses.
Ella White Campbell, chair of the minority achievement advisory group, says community collaboration has yielded improvements. But she adds that it requires constant vigilance. In schools with high concentrations of minorities, she says, disciplinarians are often hired as administrators, when the children would be better served by curriculum specialists. Some school board members who complain that there's not enough parent involvement don't realize, she says, how difficult it is for single-parent families, or students who live in group homes or foster care.
District leaders are hopeful because their strategies to close achievement gaps are research-based and evaluated before being fully implemented. Barbara Dezmon, head of the Office of Equity and Assurance, produced a massive minority achievement report for the district last year that was commended statewide and by the NAACP. But as much as they rely on data, "those lines on a bar graph represent children ... that are put in our care," she says. "Often the failure isn't the child's." It's the responsibility of the school system, she says, to adjust as best as it can to the needs of the children.
