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Closing the divide

Indiana district faces hard, slow work of reducing achievement gap

By Valerie von Frank

Results, March 2003

Copyright, National Staff Development Council, 2003. All rights reserved.

When Bettye Poignard was elected to the Ft. Wayne, Ind., school board in the 1980s, the district was being sued over differences in the education black and white students received.

When she returned to the board in 2000, the issue had been settled in the courts, but not in classrooms. Students of color just weren't achieving at the same level as white children. This time, the district faced up to the problem.

"It was recognizing it, admitting it, saying it," Poignard said. "Everybody knew (the disparity) was there, but nobody had really talked about it. Then the system had the courage to say, 'There's all these differences. Why is that?' "

Through evaluation of data, a strategic planning process, a new core curriculum, and a system of accountability, the district has taken large strides in reducing the achievement gap between white students and students of color.

Change came slowly

Ft. Wayne Community Schools has about 32,000 students in a city that earns most of its living from automotive supply industries. Tucked in the northeast corner of Indiana and surrounded by farmland, Ft. Wayne is Indiana's second largest city. Nearly half of the district's students qualify for free and reduced-price lunch and some schools have as much as 80% to 90% turnover in a school year. The school population includes 26% black students, 8% Hispanic, and about 5% of other ethnic and racial groups.

In spite of decades of attention to inequities, though, talk did not shift from problems to solutions until a strategic planning process in 1995-96.

"We said, '100% of students will graduate,' " said Wendy Robinson, deputy superintendent in charge of human resources. "And 'all children will learn.' Not some children or under some conditions. We used words like 'all' and '100%' because we wanted to make it clear that we, as a district, considered that the goal." As a result of the strategic plan, teachers developed a districtwide core curriculum and quarterly exams to measure students' mastery of outlined standards. The district regularly monitors that data, along with data about graduation, dropouts, SAT and state standardized tests, school discipline, student grades, and attendance to identify discrepancies-and achievements.

And there have been achievements. As Poignard said, "It is beginning to happen."

Evidence of a smaller gap

The evidence is in the data:

• The graduation rate climbed from 82% in 1995 to 90% in 2001. The district is disaggregating the data by race.
• The dropout rate decreased from 7.5% in 1993-94 to 2.8% in 2001-02. The African-American dropout rate declined from 10% in 1993-94 to 3.2% in 2000 and the Hispanic rate dropped from 7.1% to 4% in the same period.
• The Indiana Statewide Test for Educational Progress (ISTEP) shows increases in reading, language, and math scores at 6th and 8th grades that have closed the gap over the last four years. For 8th graders, for example, the difference between blacks and whites has narrowed 2.2 percentage points in reading between 1997 and 2000, 1.4 points in math, 1 point in language, and overall, 1.5 points. The gap in 6th graders' reading narrowed 3 points in that time, while the language gap closed by 2 points, and the difference in total battery scores decreased 1.6 points. At the same time, overall scores rose an average of four points for both races in those grades.
• Composite SAT scores for blacks rose from 817 in 2000 to 840 in 2001, with the gap between whites and blacks narrowing 13 points on the verbal portion and 14 points in math.
• In 1999, 22% of students in the lowest 40% of their class took the SAT, compared with 5% in the state and 6% nationally.
• About 80% of high school graduates now go on to some post secondary study, including 79% of blacks and 68% of Hispanics in 2002.

More accountability helps

Changes in achievement, of course, don't come without changes in teaching.

The district's eight-step school improvement process begins with teachers working in grade-level teams to analyze data and plan the following year's instructional calendar. Each teacher must follow the calendar and teach specific skills on specific days unless the team adjusts the calendar because of student needs. Teachers follow Ft. Wayne's instructional models, use the district's quarterly assessments, and arrange tutoring for students who are falling behind. Principals must visit three classrooms each day for about 10 minutes to observe teaching and identify areas in which teachers may need support. Area administrators review principals' logs each month and talk with them about what they learned about instructional practices and needed teacher support.

At Geyer Middle School, principal Barbara Ahlersmeyer said weekly grade-level team meetings in which teachers share lesson plans, discuss professional readings, and brainstorm together have helped improve teaching. "The mood now is hopeful, and we're seeing changes," she said about her high poverty school that typically had ranked last among the district's 11 middle schools.

Grade-level meetings are a districtwide strategy to improve learning. This time to focus on best practices and share information is essential to professional learning and growth and helped transform the culture of her school, Ahlersmeyer said.

Robinson said support for teachers is key. "You have first got to decide what you're trying to get done with the curriculum, then make sure you have a good professional development model to serve that," Robinson said.

Principals or departments submit project proposals to the professional development committee which is composed of teachers' union representatives and curriculum department staff. Teachers can choose from dozens of after-school professional learning experiences that meet their particular needs. Robinson said the district is using more released time and calling on a bank of trained substitute teachers to allow professional learning each year for district-required training in priority areas.

Every employee participates in diversity training, and two dozen administrators have become diversity trainers. Every employee also spends time exploring cultures, discussing challenges, and acknowledging attitudes.

"We were not interested in a kumbaya experience," Robinson said, "where people change attitudes they've had for 20 years. It was an employment issue. You can't work here if your behavior shows you don't value diversity, value kids."

Principals' professional learning included what to look for during classroom observations, such as whether teachers consistently engaged certain groups of students and ignored others and evaluations of students' grades to look for group disparities.

And then, Robinson said, "We ask the kids. They know if the environment has changed, if people are helping them more. ...We need to ask and get a reality check from the kids."

As all the pieces come together, the picture for students of color is improving. "It's not like we have closed the gap completely," Poignard said. "I still think we have a long way to go in terms of how the system deals with the achievement gap. But we have made great strides."

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