Campaign targets gap in success

The National Black Caucus of State Legislators has identified Ohio as a target state to improve the white-black achievement gap.
YOUNGSTOWN -- A state senator from Cleveland and a group of local educators and community leaders are planning a campaign to reduce the gap between white and minority student performance.
State Sen. C.J. Prentiss, D-21st, met Wednesday afternoon at the Youngstown Board of Education offices with about 50 parents, teachers, school district staff and representatives from various community organizations to talk about narrowing the achievement gap.
"In Ohio and nationally, people are finally seriously saying that we're going to have to address this gap," Prentiss told the group.
"Unless we fight collectively, it won't happen," she added. "We must organize."
Data
The disparity between how whites and minorities achieve in school became a focal point in Ohio this spring when the state released student test scores broken down by race for the first time.
The data showed that 43 percent of white fourth-graders passed all five parts of the state proficiency test, compared to 11.5 percent of black pupils and 20.8 percent of Hispanic pupils.
The trend exists across all grade levels. In the Youngstown schools, for example, 43.2 percent of white 12th-graders passed all parts of the proficiency test, compared to 13.8 percent of black 12th-graders.
The gap also exists in suburban schools. In Boardman, 66 percent of white sixth-graders passed all parts of the proficiency test, compared to 14.3 percent of black sixth-graders.
"This is not just an urban issue," Youngstown schools Superintendent Ben McGee said. "It's a national issue. It's an Ohio issue."
Improvement efforts
State and national efforts to close the gap have been heating up. The State Board of Education recently established a task force to examine the disparities. President Bush's No Child Left Behind education act of 2001 requires that the disparities be reduced.
And Prentiss, president of the Ohio Legislative Black Caucus, is leading the Close the Gap Ohio Campaign.
A former classroom teacher, Prentiss is meeting with educators and community leaders in large cities across Ohio to establish grassroots campaigns to reduce the gap in scores.
At Wednesday's meeting, which included representatives from Youngstown State University, the Youngstown-Warren Regional Chamber and the local chapter of the NAACP, Prentiss said the community must make sure that every classroom has a high-quality teacher.
The community also must demand that teachers better connect culturally with their students and that school districts offer intervention programs to failing children.
She said a major problem is that many students don't attend such programs. "We need to figure out why not," she said.
Prentiss is chairwoman of the elementary and secondary education committee of the National Black Caucus of State Legislators, which has identified Ohio as a target state to improve the achievement gap.