Achievement Gap

Thank you Marta Mossburg for having the courage to state the obvious ("A failure of values, not economics," Feb. 15). The idea that values are a significant factor in personal achievement has been sneered at by the left for over 30 years. As Ms. Mossburg points out, the facts clearly show otherwise. Unfortunately, I don't believe the current administration in Annapolis is capable of addressing the real problems in the achievement gap. That would be too difficult. It's so much easier to throw money at the problem (other people's money, I might add)

Morgan State University President David Wilson makes a compelling argument that "receiving a quality education at the elementary and secondary level is a civil and moral right" ("Why education should be considered a civil right," May 13). I applaud his altruism, but elementary education is too late to solve this achievement gap. Sadly, kindergartners from low-income homes have an approximate vocabulary of 5,000 words while their peers from high-income homes have a 20,000 word vocabulary.

For the fourth year in a row, Maryland students have topped the nation in the proportion of high school graduates who successfully passed the rigorous Advanced Placement exams, leaping even further ahead of other top states. Twenty-nine percent of last year's class passed at least one AP test, compared to the national average of 18 percent. Maryland's pass rate is double what it was a decade ago. The results suggest that the state's commitment to investing in education over recent years is paying off in bumper crops of students with the kind of advanced, high-level academic skills the state will need to compete successfully in a 21 s t -century knowledge-based global economy, and that's all to the good.

For those who believe Phelps Luck Elementary School paraeducator Donna Schulze is too outspoken or too uncompromising on issues relating to her profession, she's got a message for you: Too bad. "If I see something, I'm going to speak up," said Schulze, 59, who was named this month as the national Education Support Professional of the Year by the National Education Association. The NEA award comes with a challenge - Schulze will be called upon to advocate for its organization's 484,000 education support professional members, and will travel to state, regional and national conferences as an ambassador.

The Anne Arundel County branch of the NAACP has asked the County Council to put pressure on the county school system, in hopes of accelerating an agreement to close the achievement gap between white and black students. Jacqueline Allsup, president of the county National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, said in testimony before the council Monday that while the school system is "moving in the right direction" progress is coming "way too slowly. " Allsup said the school system should concentrate its efforts on elementary school education.

Imagine a report that reached the following three conclusions: In Maryland, 35 percent of males passed Advanced Placement exams, but only 8 percent of females passed them; 70 percent of males who took the AP exams could pass them, but only 28 percent of females could; and nationally, an estimated 79 percent of females who could succeed in AP courses were not even being offered them. The outcry over such differences by gender in achievement and access to AP tests would result in a massive public outcry over obvious systemic failures to educate males and females equally.

Here we go again: Haven't these Move to Opportunity programs destroyed enough neighborhoods ("Closing Baltimore's achievement gap with housing policy," May 30)? It's a crime what the politicians did to Dundalk, Essex and the Patterson Park area, to name just a few. If you are so for this movement of people, move them into your neighborhoods, and those of the judges, lawyers and politicians who approve of this. Stop pushing them on working people. Martin, Fallston

A recent Abell Foundation study has confirmed what educators have long known: That where a student lives has at least as big an impact on academic achievement as such factors as family income, class size and per pupil spending. In fact, attending a school where most of one's classmates aren't poor is one of the best predictors of school success: Even poor students who attend such schools score better on standardized tests than their peers in schools with high concentrations of poverty.

Baltimore County school board members say they're tired of talking about the wide achievement gap between black and white students. They want to do something to narrow it. "We've moved terribly slowly," said Sanford V. Teplitzky, the senior member of the board. "I'm really tired of reading the same reports we've been reading for years. "We need to set it as a priority and that means placing dollars toward it, placing resources toward it, meaning human and others." What will be done is unclear.

BALTIMORE COUNTY schools' public confidence problem just went from bad to worse in the African-American community. School officials were already under fire for failing to make a priority of their efforts to close the staggering achievement gap between white and black students. Now they face a further loss of faith with the departure of deputy superintendent Elfreda W. Massie, the system's highest ranking African-American administrator. There's only one way to start rebuilding the community's trust: Place black achievement issues front and center.

Now that sequestration is upon us, our nation's leaders continue to debate which federal programs provide the best bang for the buck. When they ask how effective Head Start is, many legislators have cited the Head Start Impact Study. It concludes that although Head Start consistently closes the achievement gap and prepares many of America's poorest and neediest children for kindergarten, by third grade most children across the nation outperform and outscore children who attend Head Start.

The College Board reports that Maryland high school students again led the country last year in their pass rate on Advanced Placement tests. Even better, the board reported that more African-American students earned passing scores than ever before. That Maryland has been able to increase the number and diversity of students taking AP classes while continuing to see rising test scores is a hopeful sign as the state stands poised to adopt a more challenging curriculum. Last year, 29.6 percent of Maryland high seniors passed at least one of the AP exams, which are offered in 34 subjects including chemistry, calculus, English literature, history and foreign languages.

The Maryland State Department of Education unveiled Monday a new way of assessing accountability of each school in Maryland under the waiver that it received from the federal No Child Left Behind act. The new measure, the School Progress Index, aims to cut in half the percentage of students who do not score at a proficient level on the state's assessments by 2017, school officials said. It replaces the system of measuring school targets called adequate yearly progress. The index will offer a "snapshot" of each individual school.

After making it to the last round of the inaugural federal Race to the Top district competition, the Baltimore City and Baltimore County school systems fell short of securing grants that would have strengthened individualized learning and helped close the achievement gap. U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan announced Tuesday that 16 districts, out of 327 applicants, were chosen to share roughly $400 million in funding to implement district-level initiatives....

When Marylanders cast their ballots on Election Day, they said "yes, you can" to same-sex couples who want to get married, to young people whose families immigrated here illegally and who hope to receive in-state tuition, and to casino operators who want to expand their operations here. Now, as we move forward from this election, it's time to say "yes, you can" to another group of Marylanders who are no less deserving of affirmation: public school students from underserved communities.

Baltimore County schools should work to more quickly eliminate achievement gaps and ensure that discipline policies are applied consistently to all groups of students, according to recommendations made by the transition team appointed by Superintendent Dallas Dance. The report, presented to the school board Tuesday night, also urges the school system to review staffing levels and find more funding to renovate aging schools, among other recommendations. In his own report on his first 100 days, Dance said curriculum and school infrastructure will be the major focus over the next school year, along with having "tough, honest conversations.

The growing number of black and Hispanic students in the Anne Arundel County schools are not achieving on a par with their white peers - and a group of local educators, parents and clergy has spent the past year looking for a way to close that gap instead of watching it increase. The group's 36 pages of findings released Friday, called the Minority Student Achievement Report, call for more multicultural training for teachers, less reliance on standardized tests, which can be culturally biased, more support for students as they move from grade to grade, greater recruitment of minority teachers and more community support for learning.

The U.S. Department of Education has awarded more than $12.2 million to Maryland's four historically black colleges and universities, Sens. Ben Cardin and Barbara A. Mikulski said Monday. The money is aimed at strengthening academic resources, management capabilities, and infrastructure at Coppin State University and Morgan State University in Baltimore, Bowie State University and the University of Maryland Eastern Shore in Princess Anne. The federal grants include: •$3,890,115 for tutoring and counseling programs, an endowment, job training in underrepresented disciplines and faculty development and community outreach at Morgan State; •$3,001,959 to address the achievement gap for first-generation college students, increase enrollment, and begin to implement a strategic plan to improve educational offerings at Bowie State; •$2,774,743 to improve retention and graduation rates, academic programming, and minority participation in fields of science, technology, nursing, information technology, and geography at Coppin State; and •$2,535,354 for University of Maryland Eastern Shore to work toward becoming a leader in doctoral research by building upon access to education, recruitment and retention, engagement in research and development and addressing the achievement gap. matthew.brown@baltsun.com twitter.com/matthewhaybrown Text NEWS to 70701 to get Baltimore Sun local news text alerts

Baltimore City and Prince George's County's school boards will vie for the 2012 title of "Urban School Board of Excellence" this year, as both are named finalists for the national award, due to presented in October. The two will compete against Nevada for the honor. According to the National School Boards Association, the finalists for the 2012 Council of Urban Boards of Education (CUBE) award were selected by an independent judging panel--and were judged based on excellence in school board governance, building civic capacity and closing the achievement gap, and demonstrated success in raising achievement.