Coloring with 'Brown'

0 Comments | Deseret News (Salt Lake City), May 16, 2004 | by Elaine Jarvik Deseret Morning News

Leo, Jessica, Rosa, Francisco -- the list goes on and on. In fact, almost all of the friends Yadira Arzaba started West High with four years ago have long since dropped out. As for Yadira herself, who moved to Utah from Mexico when she was 7, this year she's taking physics.

Yadira's is the story we like to hear, but her failing friends represent the more accurate and troubling statistic: Not only are dropout rates among ethnic minority students higher compared to their white counterparts, but minorities also have lower standardized test scores, lower grades and lower rates of participation in rigorous courses such as advanced placement.

It's a national disparity that has been dubbed the "achievement gap." And on the 50th anniversary of Brown v. Board of Education, the landmark U.S. Supreme Court case that outlawed segregation in America's public schools, some people argue that the gap is proof that not enough has changed.

In 1954, segregation was a black and white issue, literally and otherwise. These days, inequality may be more subtle and may include other "students of color," as well as students whose lives are complicated by poverty.

Opening literal doors was the crux of Brown v. Board. What the past 50 years have have proved, however, is that an "equal education" isn't just about minorities and whites being in the same building.

Look at the numbers, says William Smith.

Smith, who is African-American, is a associate director at the Center for the Study of Race and Diversity in Higher Education at the University of Utah. He is also the father of a high school senior in the Salt Lake City School District, and there are statistics about Utah schools that don't sit well with him:

Dropout rates for Utah ethnic minority students outpace those for whites. In 2002, a third of all American Indians and slightly more than a third of all Hispanics and African-Americans failed to graduate, compared to 11.6 percent of white students.

Results of Utah's core curriculum tests for 2003 measure what percentage of students are "proficient" in subjects like language arts and math. While 82 percent of whites scored in that range on the language arts portion of the tests, only 53.1 percent of Hispanics, 60.9 percent of African-Americans, 63.5 percent of Pacific Islanders and 65.3 percent of low-income students did. National Assessment of Educational Progress tests show similar disparities.

The state does not keep track of student GPAs by ethnicity, but a look at GPAs of Salt Lake City School District 10th graders in 2002 shows that the average math GPA for whites was 2.9, for Hispanics was 2.1 and African-Americans was 2.3.

Of seniors taking AP tests in Utah in 2003, 0.2 percent were African-American. If blacks were equally represented, 0.5 percent of the AP tests -- more than double the current rate -- would be taken by blacks. Hispanics are similarly underrepresented: 2.8 percent of the tests were taken by Hispanics, but 5.2 percent of Utah high school seniors are Hispanic. Stated another way, 7.5 percent of African-American and 10.6 percent of Hispanic 12th-graders took AP exams, compared to 20 percent of white seniors.

"There are students in all groups who don't like education. But why is it a skewed curve for students of color?" Smith asks about the achievement gap. If you don't believe in "genetic racism," if you don't believe that certain races are inherently smarter, he says, then there has to be another explanation.

So what is it? Discrimination or language or laziness? Learning styles? Culture? Curriculum? Expectations? All of the above and more?

As principal Bob Pliley of Escalante High says, "There are so many roots and entanglements."

Pliley is an outspoken man who is not afraid to take a hard look at himself and his profession. What bothers him, he says, is that students think only "bright" students can succeed in school. "Effort is a hell of a lot more important than talent or ability," he argues.

Yes, some students, whatever their color, aren't capable of rigorous academics, he says -- and then adds this kicker: "We principals and teachers and counselors are arrogant to think we can tell just who those students are.

"Maybe it's that we educators give (ethnic minorities) permission not to do well academically. And we don't give the Caucasians that kind of permission," suggests Pliley, who has also served as principal at East High in the Salt Lake City School District. "It's almost as if, with the white kids, I say, 'I'm not going to let you be lazy, I'm not going to let you not come to class.' " Sometimes, he says, he might say to a Hispanic girl or a Navajo boy, "You have a full plate, you have a lot to overcome," letting those difficulties serve as an excuse.

Expectations are one of the factors Freddie Cooper will look at as she embarks on an investigation of why fewer ethnic minorities than whites take AP classes. Cooper, an education specialist with the State Office of Education, is project director for a federally funded AP incentive program.