With their backpacks and coats scattered along a hallway at Independence Elementary School, a crowd of 5th graders waited for their class to start. It was 8:15 a.m., 45 minutes before school would officially begin, but they were ready for math club.
The door swung open, and the pupils, overwhelmingly black and Latino, rushed inside. “Faster, people, faster,” shouted 10-year-old Rebekah Qualls as 14 classmates scrambled to the carpet in front of the chalkboard for extra practice calculating perimeter, area and volume.
Later, after the morning bell rang and the rest of the pupils arrived, the class practiced reading skills as their teacher, Vickie Witt, met in small groups with pupils struggling to understand how to summarize a story. This individual attention, practiced schoolwide, is part of what’s behind the school’s rising test scores and the relatively small achievement gap between minority students and their white peers, educators say.
“Think about it,” said Witt, who has a class of 20 pupils. “I know what my kids don’t get … I am trying to meet their individual needs.”
The Bolingbrook school, which currently has about 670 pupils, is 40 percent black and 17 percent Hispanic. It stands apart from schools across the nation where sizable, decades-old test score gaps remain between African-American and Latino students, and their white counterparts, even in racially integrated schools. Nationwide, black 4th graders scored 31 points lower than white pupils on the 2003 National Assessment of Educational Progress.
For the first time this year, the performance of racial and ethnic minorities, poor and special education students,groups arguably long overlooked, have consequences. The federal No Child Left Behind Act requires that these subgroups, in addition to the schoolwide population, meet certain goals. If even one subgroup fails to meet the standards, the school is considered academically troubled.
Although some schools’ numbers are in dispute, the Tribune has verified that at Independence, 75 percent of white pupils met standards in reading, compared with 60 percent of African-Americans and 57 percent of Latinos in 2003 state tests taken in the spring. The gap was smaller for math scores, with 87 percent of white pupils reaching the goal compared with 75 percent of blacks and 86 percent of Latinos. Overall scores have steadily increased during the last few years, and the gap has narrowed.
While a difference still exists, it is one of the smallest among the state’s racially integrated schools. What’s more, it is considerably lower than at peer schools with similar low-income and racially diverse populations, such as Dewey Elementary in Evanston, where 88 percent of white pupils and 48 percent of black pupils met reading standards. At Irving Elementary in Oak Park, 94 percent of white pupils passed the state math test compared with 62 percent of black pupils.
“I would love for it to not make a difference of black versus white. That is possible; it is just a lot of work,” said Independence Principal Faith Dahlquist. “We don’t set the kids aside and say the African-American students are going to get this or that. But we do try to look at who is struggling and what that child needs.”
Teachers at Independence give pupils different books based on their reading levels. Older pupils work with 1st graders from bilingual families. Teachers come in early to tutor students and stay after the final bell rings, without pay.
Parents and teachers list other reasons for the success: academic goals set by students, extraordinary staff dedication, strong parental involvement and curriculum changes based on test-score data.
They do it all while spending $6,881 for each pupil, lower than the $8,181 average expenditure per student statewide.
Dahlquist can’t remember the last time the school bought new desks or furniture. Around 1996, the janitor obtained stacks of library chairs that a Chicago school was tossing out. To make the school look more inviting, Dahlquist personally removed a chain-link fence surrounding the school parking lot.
Educators have long debated reasons for the achievement gap. Some say there are lower expectations for minorities and negative peer influences. At least part of the chasm may be linked to family educational background and income level, the most reliable predictor of test scores.
At Independence, about 26 percent of the pupils are low-income, and of that group, slightly more than half are African-American, 28 percent are Latino and 17 percent are white. But 60 percent of the low-income pupils met reading standards and 79 percent passed the math test.
Ronald Ferguson, a Harvard University economist who studies the achievement gap, said differences in socioeconomic status is part of the problem, but the gap remains even among students with similar family income levels. He commended Independence’s focus on helping students one-on-one.
Dahlquist, nicknamed “Data Queen” by her staff, also attributes the improvements to constant analysis of standardized test scores, reading assessments and other evaluations. “We try to base all of our decisions not on `we think this is happening,’ but on data,” she said.
In 2002, when the data showed that only 41 percent of 3rd graders passed the state writing test, teachers put extra emphasis on writing. This year, 74 percent passed the test, and a recent visitor to the school found a 3rd-grade classroom practicing expository essays.
Teacher Jeri Duran reminded pupils to indent paragraphs. “That is one of the things they’ll mark you down for on the ISAT writing,” she said as they wrote an essay on the perks of living in the White House.
Sometimes, the data may land a pupil on a school “watch list” of those scoring lower than expected on a district test or reading evaluation. The struggling kids then get tutored before or after school, meet with a reading specialist during the day, or get paired with a peer tutor.
Olah Mehmood’s 3rd-grade daughter, Sarah, landed on the list at the beginning of last year. “She was in the warning and I was terrified,” Mehmood said. But a few months later, the 9-year-old was reading at the top of her class. “I was so amazed that I went to take a picture,” her mother said, crediting the extra tutoring after school.
First-grade teacher Maggi Jenkins splits her class into groups and then listens to each pupil read during regular class time. The groups change weekly depending on student progress, a challenge with 27 students in her class.
On a recent day, four pupils took turns reading to her while, in other parts of the room, pupils used PowerPoint to read words on a computer and huddled in pairs to read with each other. Her pupils range from Level 3, reading books with five words on a page, to Level 18, reading complex stories with plot, multiple characters and more than 20 words per page.
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Indeed, at a mid-September conference of 160 teachers from about 30 districts, the instructor asked which teachers knew their students’ reading level. Only the two Independence teachers raised their hands.
“The rest of the teachers were like, it’s only September,” Witt said. “We were surprised we were the only ones.”
Pupils also know their reading and writing levels. Jenna Cawthon, a 5th grader, pointed to a chart in her folder that shows she is writing at a Level 4–“you understand stuff but you don’t get it that well,” she said–but her goal is to reach a Level 5 or 6 by the end of the year.
Dahlquist said having pupils chart their own progress gives them a sense of empowerment and investment in their education. Last year, she met with every 3rd grader as they explained their goals.
She also celebrates the pupils’ achievements. She has done cartwheels for a 1st-grade class that met its reading goal, and dyed her hair purple for another.
Last week, after the former Valley View school district superintendent heard about the school’s progress, he sent a bouquet of flowers and balloons.
“Congratulations on your successes!” he wrote on the attached card. “You know that this is what it’s about.”
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Bolingbrook school shows low score gaps
Independence Elementary has one of the lowest test-score gaps between its white and minority pupils. Teachers attribute the low gap to individual evaluation of student needs.
SCHOOL DEMOGRAPHICS
For 2002-03 school year
Black: 40%
White: 37%
Asian*: 6%
Hispanic: 17%
Student population: 642
Low-income households: 25.5%
Mobility rate (Percent of students who move in or out of a school during the year): 16%
Funding per pupil: $6,881
%% ALL TEST RESULTS (For 2002-03 school year)
GROUP MEETING/EXCEEDING CHANGE FROM
STANDARDS FROM 2001-02
READING
White 75% 7%
Black 60% 11%
Hispanic 57% 11%
MATH
White 87.3% 5%
Black 75.3% 7%
Hispanic 86% 9%
TOTAL 69% 6%
%%
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*Includes Pacific Islander
Sources: Illinois State Board of Education, ESRI, GDT
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