http://www.delawareonline.com/newsjournal/local/2004/04/25resegregationby.html

Resegregation by tiers?
Lawmakers' new system for motivating students riles many parents

By MICHELE FUETSCH and MIKE CHALMERS
Staff reporters
04/25/2004

Fifty years after the U.S. Supreme Court outlawed school segregation, Delaware is poised to give three-quarters of its black, Hispanic and low-income high school graduates the lowest of the state's three new diplomas.

They are slated to receive "basic" diplomas while the majority of white and more affluent graduates are getting "standard" or "distinguished" diplomas under the state's three-tiered diploma system.

"Though physically they are integrated, it's a public policy that's been put in place to resegregate our schools. That's the effect of this new policy," Wilmington City Councilman Theo K. Gregory said.

"It sorts them to the bottom again," said Melva Ware, a specialist in urban education at the Delaware Center for Teacher Education at the University of Delaware.

Created by the Legislature four years ago to take effect this June, the tiered system awards diplomas based on how high students score on their 10th-grade standardized tests in English language arts, writing and math.

"I just hope that somewhere along the line, parents will stand up and do what's right for their kids and not let this happen," said Claibourne D. Smith, one of two black people on the State Board of Education. "It is so bizarre and bad," he said.

The diploma disparities are stark. And they raise troubling issues for a state that imposed some of the highest academic standards in the nation on its schools but, given the numbers, has apparently failed to educate many minority and low-income students well enough to meet those standards.

Based on data supplied by the Department of Education and analyzed by The News Journal, the diploma projections show that:

The projections are based on test scores and resulting diploma calculations for 7,368 students that the Department of Education says are seniors in public high schools expected to graduate in June if they do not fail or drop out. Exact diploma figures won't be available until after graduation, because students retake the exams to raise their scores and those results won't arrive until late May.

Based on the projections, 52 percent of the graduates are expected to get basic diplomas. Of Delaware's 19 school districts, only Caesar Rodney, Polytech, Delmar and Sussex Technical will award more standard than basic diplomas.

"The penalty is not falling on the districts," Ware said. "It's falling on the kids. If you give them a diploma that sorts them to the bottom ... the penalty has fallen disproportionately hard on the kids."

Moratorium weighed

The diplomas have bronze, silver and gold stickers marking them as basic, standard or distinguished. They were created as an incentive for students to do well, said Sen. David P. Sokola, D-Newark North, chairman of the Senate Education Committee.

"We know that there's a disproportionate sticker on the diploma, but we don't know if there's a disproportionate effect yet" on the students, he said. "You find me an employer, a college that asks for the diploma."

The diploma is not the issue "we ought to be spending all our time on," Sokola said. The diploma disparity reflects problems in the schools that Delaware needs to fix, he said.

The Legislature, however, in response to cries from angry parents, is considering a moratorium on the three-tiered diplomas, pending a review of the state's school accountability and testing program. The state PTA and the Metropolitan Wilmington Urban League are among those who want the tiered system scrapped.

"Eventually, with a good study, they will find it furthers the aura of separation of these kids when, ultimately, you want them to feel that they are just as good as their counterparts," said Hector Figueroa, education director for the Urban League.

The House has adopted the moratorium. The Senate has yet to consider it, and Gov. Ruth Ann Minner opposes it, although she set up two panels to review testing and curriculum implementation in the schools.

"The achievement gap that exists in our public schools unfortunately comes as no surprise," Minner said in a prepared statement. "This is exactly what Delaware's 10-year education reform effort has been about - targeting those students and schools who lag behind and making sure they learn what they need in order to succeed."

The state's school superintendents also want the three-tiered system to end. Robert Andrzejewski, head of the Red Clay school district, said the system will not motivate students as legislators insisted it would.

"One of the worst things you can do to kids with low self-esteem, who are often of low-income anyway, is show them failure," he said. "So many of those students have experienced failure in their lives and there comes a point when they decide they have to save face for themselves, and, unfortunately, that may mean they drop out."

Achievement gap widens

When legislators started talking about a possible moratorium, however, it was in response to parents with children on honor rolls who lacked the test scores to get distinguished diplomas. Legislators have said little or nothing about the racial and income disparities.

"When I mentioned to a state representative in Dover ... that the PTA felt the three-tiered diploma system could act as a catalyst for discrimination, it was something he had not even considered," said Bonnie Mucha, president of the state regional PTA council that covers Christina schools.

But Mucha, Smith and others said it has been clear for years how the tiered diploma system would affect minority and low-income students. "You could just look at the eighth-grade scores," said Mary Pritchett. "You set them up to fail."

Pritchett is a PTA officer and the parent outreach coordinator in a program at A.I. du Pont Middle School in Greenville that is touted as a model for getting minority and low-income students on track for college.

The program, GEAR-UP, is overseen by UD's Ware and actively creates advanced placement classes for minority students, sees they get qualified teachers with high expectations and gives them support.

Since testing began in 1998, several minority leaders have pointed to the widening achievement gap - where black, Hispanic and low-income students perform poorly on standardized tests compared with their affluent and white peers - as the elephant in the room that Delaware has refused to address.

For example, despite six years of state-mandated testing and accountability, test data shows that the achievement gap between black and white students in 10th-grade math widened between 1998 and 2003 by 9.3 percentage points.

"A moratorium makes sense simply because we're not prepared to help those kids meet the standards yet, and that's clear," said Smith, the state board member.

"You cannot ignore the dynamics of a system that's put unqualified teachers in the classroom," he said. "And if they're not in a classroom with a qualified teacher and an aligned curriculum, they don't have a shot."

Victims of integration?

Smith and others criticize Delaware for not doing more to get certified math teachers in every middle school math class. They say that black, Hispanic and low-income students often get unqualified teachers, in part because of low expectations for such students.

Gregory, the Wilmington councilman, is less forgiving. He said that lingering racism in the schools has made black children victims of integration. They sense they are not wanted, and it hampers them academically, he said.

"Not only are steps not being taken to include them, steps are being taken to exclude them," Gregory said.

Advanced placement and honors classes are examples that he pointed to. There are sometimes only one or two minority students in a class, which was the case at A.I. Middle before GEAR-UP created two honors math classes filled with minority students.

Rep. Bruce Reynolds, R-Country Woods and chairman of the House Education Committee, is a former teacher and a critic of the diploma system, although he voted for it. Like Sokola and others, he recalled that the only alternative advanced at the time the diploma system was created was an exit exam to receive a diploma.

Reynolds said he hopes the disparities will make Delaware policy-makers consider the causes behind the achievement gap. "I do still believe it is more a socioeconomic factor than just race," Reynolds said.

When income and race are considered together, the diploma projections show, 83 percent of low-income black students would receive a basic diploma, along with 76 percent of low-income Hispanic students and 60 percent of low-income white students.

But Smith and others, including state Secretary of Education Valerie Woodruff, said a student's income should not affect educational quality. "It shouldn't matter what your family makes," Woodruff said. "If it does, shame on us." The same applies to complaints that parents are not involved, Woodruff said. "The children can't help it if their parents aren't there."

Whatever the diploma outcome, Woodruff said, those working on school reform will hold to the promise that it must benefit all children.

Still, Smith said, for those who have put energy into the reforms, the diploma numbers are "a bitter pill to swallow ... and a major, major disappointment to many parents who really expected us to be doing better than we have done."

Reach Michele Fuetsch at 324-2386 or mfuetsch@delawareonline.com.

Reach Mike Chalmers at 324-2790 or mchalmers@delawareonline.com.

2004 GRADE 12 STUDENT DIPLOMA TYPE

BY DISTRICT

 
GRADUATES BASIC STANDARD DISTINGUISHED
   

 

 
Appoquinimink 366 171 47% 160 44% 35 10%
   
 
Brandywine 739 328 44% 294 40% 117 16%
   
 
Caesar Rodney 433 194 45% 198 46% 41 9%
   
 
Cape Henlopen 282 145 51% 122 43% 15 5%
   
 
Capital 339 189 56% 123 36% 27 8%
   
 
Charter School of Wilmington 233 6 3% 176 76% 51 22%
   
 
Christina 982 598 61% 320 33% 64 7%
   
 
Colonial 418 242 58% 150 36% 26 6%
   
 
Delmar 122 43 35% 63 52% 16 13%
   
 
Indian River 377 207 55% 138 37% 32 8%
   
 
Lake Forest 213 117 55% 79 37% 17 8%
   
 
Laurel 117 87 74% 26 22% 4 3%
   
 
Milford 229 111 48% 102 45% 16 7%
   
 
New Castle County Vo-Tech 733 458 62% 263 36% 12 2%
   
 
Polytech 226 99 44% 119 53% 8 4%
   
 
Red Clay Consolidated 807 430 53% 309 38% 68 8%
   
 
Seaford 207 123 59% 70 34% 14 7%
   
 
Smyrna 189 97 51% 80 42% 12 6%
   
 
Sussex Technical 264 89 34% 139 53% 36 14%
   
 
Woodbridge 83 63 76% 19 23% 1 1%
   
 
TOTAL 7,359 3,797 52% 2,950 40% 612 8%
   

 

BY RACE

 
GRADUATES BASIC STANDARD DISTINGUISHED
   

 

 
American Indian 23 10 43% 10 43% 3 13%
   
 
Black 1,990 1,513 76% 446 22% 31 2%
   
 
Asian 215 64 30% 100 47% 51 24%
   
 
Hispanic 318 225 71% 89 28% 4 1%
   
 
White 4,822 1,993 41% 2,306 48% 523 11%
   
 
TOTAL 7,368 3,805 52% 2,951 40% 612 8%
   

 

BY INCOME

 
GRADUATES BASIC STANDARD DISTINGUISHED
   

 

 
Low-income 2,023 1,496 74% 485 24% 42 2%
   
 
Not low-income 5,345 2,309 43% 2,466 46% 570 11%
   
 
TOTAL 7,368 3,805 52% 2,951 40% 612 8%

Copyright © 2004, The News Journal.