School officials seek ways to close gap: Forum focuses on achievement disparities
By Chris Gosier, Stamford Advocate, September 8 2006

NORWALK -- When she was 5, Betty Sternberg laughed after a grown-up suggested she become a doctor. She was growing up in the 1950s, after all, and everyone knew girls became only nurses, teachers, wives or mothers.

"There were very limited possibilities" in her mind for what she might become, she said.

Sternberg, the new superintendent of Greenwich schools, told the story at a forum last night to illustrate a reason some students consistently fall behind in the classroom: No one ever gave them big dreams and big goals.

"It is that opening of beliefs, of possibilities, of dreams that distinguishes schools that work," she said.

That was one solution offered at the forum organized by The Advocate and Greenwich Time to address wide and continuing disparities in achievement between black and Hispanic students and their white and Asian counterparts in the classroom.

On the Connecticut Academic Performance Test, 50 percent of whites and 54 percent of Asians in Stamford met the state goal in math in 2006, compared with 10 percent of blacks and 12 percent of Hispanics, according to results the state released last week. The test is taken by most high school sophomores.

"There are some very difficult truths we have to confront," said Alex Johnston, executive director of the Connecticut Coalition for Achievement Now, or ConnCAN, an advocacy group. "The hard truth is we are starting from a point where there is an enormous amount of work to do."

He and the other four panelists offered numerous solutions.

Stamford Superintendent Joshua Starr said more communication is needed among teachers and staff.

"The question is, what is it that's working?" he said. More collaboration between teachers is one way to share successful strategies, he said at the forum, held at Norwalk Community College.

Another panelist -- Larry Leverett, executive director of the Panasonic Foundation for improving public schools and a former Greenwich school superintendent -- said implementing the solutions can be a bigger problem than finding out what they are.

"The problem is that perhaps we don't have the will to endorse the belief that all children can perform at very high levels," he said. "We're pretty much suffering from a will gap."

Norwalk Superintendent Salvatore Corda said not all children get the good nutrition, parental attention and other advantages that boost them in school, and that it's sometimes hard for educators to talk about that.

Sternberg said there need to be "courageous conversations" about the tense issues of class and race.

Panelists said schools need support from the community and from parents. Schools must create opportunities for parents who want to be involved in their children's education but find it hard to do so, Corda said.

One parent and substitute teacher in the audience, Gilda Simpkin of Stamford, said in an interview after the forum that there's too much emphasis on "mainstreaming" disruptive students, or keeping them in large classrooms where they slow down work for everyone else.

"It's not politically correct to say this," she said. "I've seen teachers crying, seen teachers throw up their hands" in frustration.

"There are disruptive children, and there are not enough avenues for doing something constructive for those kids," who are sometimes suspended rather than steered to programs that could help them with their learning deficits, Simpkin said.