Ohio's African-American students scored 28.3 percentage points lower on state tests last school year than did white students, while Hispanic students scored 19.9 percentage points lower.

        The Ohio Department of Education released the data Tuesday.

INFOGRAPHIC

Test results

        For the first time, data for the fourth-, sixth-, ninth- and 12th-grade tests are being published on state report cards by students' ethnicity. The report cards, which are being sent to parents this week, detail how individual schools' test results compare to the district and the state.

        State officials say they hope districts will be able to use the data to reduce that gap.

        “In the past, we've maybe made excuses for why children can't learn,” said Gary Gellert, superintendent of North College Hill Schools, who attributes the gap more to poverty than race. “It's time for the excuses to end. We have to find strategies to address (the gap).”

No more excuses

        Ohio's education gap mirrors a national trend.

        Latino and African-American eighth-graders typically score more than three grades behind white classmates in math and science and more than two years behind in reading and writing, according to a report by the Education Trust, a Washington, D.C.-based advocacy organization for minority and low-income students.

        President Bush's education bill, signed in January, requires schools to reduce the achievement gap between minority and non-minority students. Both the national and local NAACP listed the achievement gap as a prime education concern.

        “Every kid can achieve,” said Edith Thrower, executive committee member and education committee chairwoman of the Cincinnati branch of the NAACP. “There are no exceptions and no excuses.”

        She too said the gap in achievement is more a problem of poverty than race.

        Kati Haycock, director of the Education Trust, said the gap is established by the time students enter kindergarten, with minority and low-income students on average achieving behind white students.

        She said the gap widens as students progress through school, she said. A big source of the problem: low expectations.

        “The truth is we take these kids who have less to begin with and we give them less in school,” Ms. Haycock said. “A lot of the gap is of our own making.”

        “Some parents argue that the tests are biased or not culturally relevant to children,” said Kimberly Reese, president of the Parent Teacher Organization at Silverton Paideia.

        When she was in school, she said a math problem in her textbook used the golf term “par,” which she didn't recognize. She said students of poor or minority backgrounds might not be exposed to some concepts familiar to students of different cultural backgrounds. That could be a hindrance on a test.
       

Reducing the gap

        Some local districts say they're working to reduce the gap. But like the NAACP's Ms. Thrower, many educators say race isn't the only reason for the achievement gap.

        “It's our belief that most, if not the entire gap issue, is more due to socioeconomic differences rather than racial differences,” said Mount Healthy Superintendent David Horine.

        African-Americans perform better in the Mount Healthy City School District than the state average for that population, but the gap still exists in the district.

        Mount Healthy is one of 10 Greater Cincinnati school districts piloting an instructional method for reducing the achievement gap.

        Called the Brazosport technique, the method was developed by the Brazosport Independent School District in Texas and helped close the achievement gap for minorities and economically disadvantaged students in that state.

        Brazosport is an instructional technique that uses data to identify weak areas of student performance. Teachers focus on a particular concept and then assess students. Those students who pass spend time in enhancing their learning, while those who don't are re-taught the material until they master it.

        “We believe students who have come from disadvantaged home environments may just need some more time and some more work,” Mr. Horine said.

        Frost Elementary, which has the largest number of free and reduced lunches and largest minority population of any Mount Healthy school, is the Brazosport site.

        Frost, traditionally the lowest performing school in the district, scored ahead of the district's other elementaries in preliminary reading proficiency tests last fall.

        Clovernook Elementary in North College Hill Schools is also piloting the Brazosport method in one of the district's elementary schools, said Mr. Gellert, the district's superintendent. The district plans to expand the program to all elementaries next year, he said.

        Cincinnati Public Schools, a 42,000-student district that is 71 percent African-American, this year began monitoring how well individual schools will reduce the racial and ethnic achievement gap within their buildings.

        It's part of the district's system of rewarding schools that achieve and giving full make-overs to consistently failing schools.

        “I think sometimes there is a belief that because children are black or poor, they can't learn as well as non-minority students,” said Laura Lumpkin, principal of Westwood Elementary in Cincinnati Public Schools.

        Her school has implemented several challenging programs in the past two years and saw a jump in student achievement.

        “We must have high expectations for students. We have to get parents involved and make sure lessons and instruction are rigorous.”

       E-mail jmrozowski@enquirer.com and ckranz@enquirer.com

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