January 23, 2003
Speaker series tackles issue of academic achievement gap
The achievement gap is a very real thing to Steve Fink.
For one thing, the co-director of the UW’s Center for Educational Leadership sees its roots every day during his morning workout. He flips the television onto CNN at 6:30 a.m. Pacific time and watches while working up a sweat, as the network broadcasts the ceremonial opening bell of the New York Stock Exchange. The business leader or celebrity who opens virtually every day of trading is white and most often a white man.
“I decided to start keeping data because it was striking to me that it seemed to be mostly white people who were ringing the opening bell,” Fink said recently from the center’s offices near Northgate Shopping Center. After more than a year of compiling data, his hunch was confirmed. “It’s stunning. It’s something like 98 percent were white. So that is an example of what I call the economic hardwiring of inequity.
“If you look at where the economic power in this country lies, it lies in the hands of white people. If you were from another country watching the opening bell and you knew nothing about the United States you would think that we are a country of all white people.”
Fink says this hardwiring plays out all the time in the nation’s school systems too. The power, he says, belongs to white, upper or middle class, native English speakers. And those are the students who are succeeding. Too many students of color, and students living in poverty are not achieving to the same level as their white, middle class counterparts.
“If you look at the voice that holds power in school systems, if you look at your PTAs, if you look at your parent advisory groups, it’s generally people of privilege,” he said. “It’s not your disenfranchised. It’s not people on the lowest end of the socioeconomic scale. It’s not people who are living out of cars. It’s not people who are in cycles of domestic violence.”
Consider Washington, for example. The Washington Assessment of Student Learning is given to students in the fourth, seventh and 10th grade. At least 20 percent more white students pass the exam than their African American, American Indian and Latino classmates. That is the achievement gap.
The Center for Educational Leadership is working to bridge the gap and Fink thinks it can be done. His optimism stems from a few success stories around the nation.
“There is ample and growing evidence that we can create the type of conditions that will help us close if not completely eliminate the gap,” he said. “Most of the evidence lies in individual schools that have had some success.”
Some of those success stories will be on campus offering a case study of their own experience working toward elimination of the achievement gap during a six month seminar series that got under way last week. The series is targeted to district leaders from across the state with the hope that the conditions needed for success can be created across entire school districts. Currently there are few good example of a district-wide success story, Fink says.
Alan Bersin, the superintendent of the San Diego Unified School District, opened the series by telling the 48 school administrators in attendance that school leadership is a moral endeavor requiring a fearless approach.
Other speakers in the series will likely echo Bersin’s message.
Larry Cuban, an emeritus professor at Stanford University’s School of Education, will speak next in the series that resumes on Feb. 21. Prior to becoming a professor, Cuban served for seven years as a district superintendent and 14 years teaching high school social studies in urban schools.
The list also includes Pedro Noguera, a professor in Harvard University’s Graduate School of Education; Eric Smith, the superintendent of Anne Arundel County Public Schools in Maryland; Barbara Byrd-Bennett, the CEO of the Cleveland Municipal Public Schools; and Vicki Phillips, superintendent of the School District of Lancaster, Pa.
“Every one of the people we’re bringing in here has a fire burning in their belly for social justice, for equity, and for tackling the seemingly intractable problems,” he said. “And they have all had some success.”
For more information about the District Leaders Seminar Series call the Center for Educational Leadership at 206-221-6881 or send e-mail to edlead@u.washington.edu. Visit the center online at http://www.k-12leadership.org.
