The achievement gap between black and white students is widening in Wisconsin. The gap between the two for fourth grade reading proficiency increased by 8.4 percent between 2003
and 2010, while the gap in high school graduation rate increased by 12.4 percent, according to the Wisconsin State
Journal. Clearly, the school system is doing something wrong, providing an environment in which
black students don’t have the same opportunities to succeed.
The education system in this country is and always has been an uneven playing field, a track with two
different starting lines or whatever other sports-based analogy you’d like to make. It consistently and
systematically fails to provide a good education to racial and ethnic minority students.
Some people are committed to fighting this injustice. The Urban League of Greater Madison has
developed a blueprint for a charter school that would attack the achievement gap head on. Madison
Preparatory Academy would be a junior high and high school for low-income minorities. The proposed
school has same-gender classrooms, longer school days and a longer school year, more minority
teachers, required uniforms, a college prep curriculum and even report cards that tell parents how
involved they are in their child’s education. Madison Prep is a serious and uncompromising
effort to demand success from students that most public schools overlook and let down.
The Department of Public Instruction has been critical of the proposed Preparatory Academy, mainly
its model of same-gender classrooms. They have raised the topic of gender discrimination and recently
demanded that the Urban League find scientific evidence that gender separation in the classroom
is correlated with academic success. Until this issue is resolved, the DPI is withholding approval and
funding.
By creating obstacle upon obstacle for the supporters of Madison Prep, the Department of Public Instruction
is making a serious mistake.
Finding effective ways to close the gaping racial, ethnic and economic divide in academic achievement
is no simple matter. School districts should be encouraging innovation and creativity and supporting any
reasonable initiative to even the playing field so we can start finding out what works and what
doesn’t. Closing the achievement gap will depend largely on trial and error and the experience gained
from it, and for this to happen, schools need to start trying. Instead, the DPI is
throwing the brakes on a serious initiative to break away from a flawed model of public education and
build a school that demands success.
I strongly approve of the DPI’s efforts to ensure that Madison Prep does not discriminate by gender and
that it doesn’t sacrifice gender equality in its efforts to solve socio-economic inequalities in education.
However, the Urban League has complied with these conditions and now proposes a school that
includes boys and girls in separate classrooms. The DPI’s call for scientific evidence asks supporters of
the Preparatory Academy to prove their proposal will be effective before they have a chance to
implement it. The DPI asks for too much. If educators already knew of ways to close the achievement gap that had been proven effective, we wouldn’t be in this situation in the first place. Yes, Madison Prep
is in many ways an experiment, but it is an experiment that needs to happen.
Superintendent Dan Nerad referred to the achievement gap in the Wisconsin State Journal as the “most significant social justice issue
in America,” and he’s right. Inequalities in education amplify and perpetuate this country’s already
serious socio-economic inequalities in a vicious cycle that is specifically hard on racial and ethnic
minorities. Looking at the statistics and line graphs, it is as obvious that educational
inequalities are the exception to an American dream that does not hold true for all Americans. I would
say that these inequalities invalidate the American dream of equal opportunity for all.
There are all kinds of things that government and society can do to address this injustice. For one, we
could get rid of the outrageous system of funding schools with local property taxes, which keeps public
schools in rich neighborhoods well-funded and recently renovated, while those in poor neighborhoods
continue to lack good facilities and essential programs. Here in Madison, the DPI could at least stay out of the way when a group of concerned citizens takes the matter
into their own hands in an effort to provide children with the education that they deserve and the
opportunity to follow their dreams.
Charles Godrey ([email protected]) is a sophomore majoring in math and physics.
