By Jennifer Mrozowski
The Cincinnati Enquirer

Amber Athan, coordinator for the Clifton Literacy Center, reads to (from left) Jamal Hedges, 9; Jasmyne Hedges, 11; and Carolyn Isaacs, 9, during a reading skills session Thursday. ([name of photographer] photo) | ZOOM |

Gaps in performance on national reading tests are the result of disparities in schools - those with money tend to better prepare students, educators say.

Still, after years of flat performance, the nation's fourth-graders improved their reading scores in 2002, according to a major federal report released Thursday.

Experts said the gains on the National Assessment of Educational Progress, known as "The Nation's Report Card," show that a nationwide push to improve the literacy of young children is making a difference.

But the results also showed a decline in reading skills among high school seniors - echoing a pattern of weak performance by the nation's 12th-graders on several recent federal tests. Only 36 percent of seniors read at the proficient level in 2002, and more than one in four had below-basic reading skills. Proficient means students can understand and master challenging material.

There was no change in the performance of eighth-graders. And while black and Hispanic fourth-graders improved their scores, students in these minority groups continue to trail their white peers across the grades.

A little more than five in 10 black high school seniors read at the basic level or better, compared with nearly eight out of 10 whites. About six in 10 Hispanic seniors achieved at that level.

Given the dramatic growth in the nation's minority population, these gaps in achievement "are unacceptably large" and threaten the nation's economic stability, said Mark Musick, president of the Southern Regional Education Board and a member of the board that oversees the federal test.

It's largely a question of resources and not race, according to a Miami University professor who has spent time in elementary school classrooms.

Allen Berger, professor of reading and writing, has spent time researching reading practices in local schools including Cincinnati Public Schools. About five years ago while on a sabbatical, he spent more than a month attending classes at Porter Elementary. He said the school building was inadequate and teaching materials were outdated.

"In August and September, I was sweating like crazy," he said. "In December and January, everyone was wearing heavy winter coats. In one classroom, I was so cold I could barely turn the pages of a book. The materials were old and the books were old and falling apart."

Meanwhile, the Mason school district had up-to-date materials and resources when he taught there, Berger said.

"Some youngsters are at a major handicap," he said.

Still, Berger said, school districts shouldn't lower standards. Rather, schools should devote more resources on training teachers in the best teaching methods instead of spending so much money and time on testing, he said.

Yet with new federal mandates that are heavily dependent on test results, school and state education officials are devoting plenty of time and resources to testing.

The federal No Child Left Behind legislation requires states to track the achievement gap. Those that don't show improvement among all subgroups, such as white students and black students, face sanctions.

In Ohio, the greatest initiative to close the achievement between the highest- and lowest-performing schools and students is through standards-based education, said J.C. Benton, Ohio Department of Education spokesman.

"We have developed clear content standards about what students should know and be able to do in every grade level from K-12," he said. "We now have content standards in English language arts, mathematics, science and social studies. We are working on technology, foreign language and the arts. We're creating curriculum models and assessments that are aligned with those standards."

The achievement gap is being studied in Kentucky, too, said Lisa Gross, spokeswoman for the Kentucky Department of Education. The state has launched pilot projects in six school districts to determine which practices are successful for raising student achievement.

Meanwhile, school principals are growing more data savvy.

But they aren't waiting around for NAEP scores or even state proficiency scores, which often roll in a year or more after the tests.

Christine Robertson, principal at Clifton Elementary in Cincinnati, and Robert Sehlhorst, principal of J.F. Dulles in the Oak Hills School District, assess each student several times throughout the year. Teachers then use those assessments to determine how much extra help to give students at different points throughout the year.

Sehlhorst said schools can't base teaching on "anecdotal happiness," where parents are happy with a child's education and the child seems to be doing OK in class. His school has goals students are expected to meet by the end of each quarter. Those who don't, receive extra help.

That goes for Clifton students, too.

"We literally chart out every child in the class," Robertson said.

The students are then compared to the norm, using a variety of charts and graphs.

"For kids who are struggling with areas, we provide small group intervention," she said.

Other interventions include having students work in pairs or giving them one-on-one tutoring in reading.

"These are quick little assessments, and the interventions are immediately applied to help the kids learn to read," Robertson said. "And it's working."

Fredreka Schouten of Gannett News Service contributed to this report. E-mail jmrozowski@enquirer.com