Officials See Progress in Closing Achievement Gap, Though Some Groups Still Lag Behind

The Brookline School Department has given itself a "B" grade for its efforts to close the achievement gap between white and minority students in the last year, though officials admitted the schools must do more to serve some student groups.

"We haven't closed the achievement gaps yet, but we are closing them," Deputy Superintendent Jennifer Fischer-Mueller told the School Committee earlier this month. "We have a lot of work to do."

In the first assessment of its kind in Brookline, the school department graded itself on two top goals – including the elimination of the achievement gap – across a variety of measurements, including test scores, course loads and graduations rates.

The results were mixed. While the department gave itself an A in some areas, including the number of minority and low-income students who graduated in four years, it received a failing grade in several areas as well.

For example, the district found that that percentage of white students who took at least one AP class or higher-level has continued to grow over the percentage of black students who took the elective classes. For other minority groups, however, the gap has shrunk.

The department also made progress in closing the gap between white and minority students for scores on college-entrance exams and the state-mandated MCAS test. The gap widened, however, for low-income students who took the MCAS test.

The report card also showed considerable progress in closing the already-slim gap between Asian and white students. In nearly all categories, Asian students met or exceeded the achievement of their white counterparts, though they continue to struggle in the writing portion of the SAT, a college-entrance exam.

Officials said they saw the report-card assessment as a way to make the volumes of data used by the department more accessible for community members and school leaders. To receive an A on any one category, the department had to meet its goals for three consecutive years. In some cases, the department received a lower grade because it made progress in closing a gap but failed to meet the goal.

Officials also cautioned against reading too much into the report card, noting that some grades were based on a very small number of students and could fluctuate based on the number of students who fall in to that minority group in a given year.

"People go in and out of our population all the time," School Committee member Judy Meyers said.

Arthur Conquest, a one-time School Committee candidate and outspoken critic of the achievement gap in Brookline schools, applauded the effort to publicly gauge progress on closing the gap, but said the evaluation should be performed by impartial outside group.

"There needs to be an independent evaluator who can address the issues at the core of the achievement gap, independent of anybody inside the system," he said.

But Fischer-Mueller noted that most of the data used in the evaluation came from the state and other outside sources, and that skeptics could trace the department's number back to their source to see how they came up with their assessment.

And she also noted the report card only hints at the vast reams of data used for day-to-day administrative decisions in the schools, calling the document "almost useless in terms of our purposes."

Several officials, however, have said the report would be useful as the department begins crafting its budget in the coming year, particularly in discussion regarding high-cost programs aimed at minority students.

"In a time when our budget is facing a lot of pressure, perhaps unprecedented pressure in the last few years, this is something we need to think about," said School Committee member Susan Ditkoff.