‘Dirty little secrets in education’
10-month investigation reveals inequities
in educational system

Dire consequences

The gap in achievement between white students and their black and Hispanic counterparts is one of the tragedies of American education.

Despite a major push in the past two decades to narrow the divide, the average black 17-year-old does math only as well as the average 13-year-old white student. About six out of 10 poor and minority fourth-grade students don't have even a basic grasp of reading.

Educators and researchers have zeroed in on teacher quality as a key tool in narrowing the student achievement gap.

In groundbreaking research during the 1990s, former University of Tennessee professor William Sanders found that Tennessee students who were taught by weak teachers three years in a row scored as many as 50 percentile points lower on tests than students who had the most effective teachers.

And a study completed this year by Stanford University economist Eric Hanushek and two other researchers offers compelling evidence of the influence teachers have. They found that the achievement gap between poor and middle-class kids in Texas would close if all students had above-average teachers for five years in a row.

"The simple story is that family background is important, but that high-quality teachers can work to close the gap," Hanushek said.

Indeed, poor kids start school behind. New research by University of Michigan professor Valerie Lee found, for instance, that the most impoverished kindergartners posted math scores 60 percent lower than children from the richest families.

But Lee's research also revealed that, once in school, poor and minority children attend lower-quality schools — with larger classes and teachers who are less prepared — than their white and more affluent peers.

"We think of education as the great equalizer," Lee said. "But we have the very best (teachers) going to the richest."
The consequences of a substandard education are enormous, given the nation's fast-changing demographics.

By 2050, for instance, Hispanics will make up almost one-quarter of the population, up from 12.4 percent in 2000.
"It's important not to have such large numbers of people feeling like they're second-class citizens, and like they are alienated and like their own kids don't really have a shot," said Ronald Ferguson, a Harvard economist and an expert on the achievement gap. "Folks are starting to worry (about) who's going to be paying taxes in 2040."

Good teachers don't stay

Attracting and retaining qualified teachers is one of public education's biggest challenges. It is a particularly difficult task for the nation's poorest and lowest-performing schools.
Before receiving a $600,000 grant to hire new teachers three years ago, East Baton Rouge Parish Schools, where 71 percent of students are black, were forced to fill teacher vacancies with "anybody who could fog a mirror,'' said Superintendent Clayton Wilcox.

In Pensacola, Fla., Spencer Bibbs Elementary School loses about a third of its teaching staff every three years, said Principal Linda Scott. The average experience level of teachers at the almost all-black school? 1.9 years.
In Chattanooga, Tenn., it was an unspoken practice to transfer teachers about to be fired from suburban schools to inner-city schools, said Ray Swoffard, assistant superintendent of urban education for Hamilton County Public Schools.

"What kind of message does that send?" Swoffard asked.

The problem of recruiting good teachers is particularly acute in places like Pahokee Middle-Senior High, where Karen Harvey's two sons go to school. Ninety-six percent of the students there are black and Hispanic and almost as many are poor. Half drop out.

The school was one of seven in the county to earn an "F" rating from the state for the 2001-02 school year. Only 15 percent of its students perform at grade level, said Principal Reed Bain.

Faced with seven failing schools, Palm Beach County officials scrambled last summer to move the best teachers to the lowest-performing schools by offering them an extra $10,000 to transfer.

"It shamed the board," said Dr. Debra Robinson, a West Palm Beach internist and an outspoken member of the Palm Beach County School Board. Otherwise, she said, "we wouldn't have been talking about $10,000 to get higher-performing teachers to these 'F' schools."

Officials found 160 top-ranked teachers among an 11,000-member work force. But only 10 agreed to move, and none went to Pahokee. Officials plan to try again next year.

Karen Harvey hopes the school's lousy rating will force the board to do more. She recalled helping her kids with homework one recent evening when her nephew, who attended school in West Palm Beach before moving to Pahokee this school year, glanced at math homework that her eighth-grade son was doing.

"Oh, I had that in the fifth or sixth grade," Harvey's nephew said.

The memory still rankles Harvey.

"Why isn't my son being taught at the same rate as kids on the coast?" she asked. "That's cheating my son."

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