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AUGUST 2004

"All Children Can Achieve at High Levels"
Allan Alson Tells Superintendents at TC

by Dorothy Davis

"The achievement gap will be closed when we can no longer predict achievement level by race," said Allan Alson, Superintendent of the Evanston Township High School in Illinois, and President of the Minority Student Achievement Network (MSAN)(www.msanetwork.org).

The wiry, keen-eyed Dr. Alson, who sported a dark, neatly trimmed beard, spoke recently in New York to a rapt audience of his peers at the 63rd Annual Superintendents Work Conference at Teachers College, Columbia University. The focus of the event was "Closing the Achievement Gap." Although the topic was serious, Dr. Alson was warmly received by his fellows, who often laughed in recognition at some of their shared experiences as he described how, after thirteen years of rigorous effort in Evanston, he is having continuing success closing the gap. Following are some excerpts from his talk:

"My first day as Superintendent I said, 'The issue about achievement of students of color, minority students, is most important and will stay strong as long as I'm here.' Any one of my teachers now would say, 'This is goal number one, we are expected to work on this issue.'"

"It didn't start out this way. I had an older faculty. Both blacks and whites said 'Why do we have to do this?' I had to talk about strategy, went to churches and community groups a lot. I had to create forums where teachers could learn this."

"I hope we're all off the statement 'All children can learn.' That equals minimum standards. 'All children can achieve at high levels,' reveals the complexity of what we do."

"There is such a thing as residual racism, which leads to a lack of confidence, diminished resilience, reduced motivation and engagement. Students of color tend to come to school feeling inferior. We have to break through that. We have to acknowledge what baggage they come to school with. We do have to say we're sorry."

"Recently MSAN surveyed 41,000 Middle and High School kids. Kids of color in a much more pronounced way said they must have a closer relationship with teachers. They said 'I don't care what you know until I know you care.'"

"Teacher expectations are really critical. In a very explicit way teachers should say in the classroom, 'I won't let you fail, and here's how I'm not going to let you fail.' Teachers have to give explicit, timely, persistent feedback on work, let them know what they have to do to succeed step by step to goal, say, 'I'm here to tutor you, and I will direct you to community resources to help you.'"

"We have a number of comprehensive school reform programs:

"There is something called Summer Setback. Kids in situations of poverty don't have the advantages of others, who go to museums, travel in the summers. These same kids are most likely to come to school with deficiencies. Some gains made during the school year are lost in the summer. How many teachers spend the first quarter of the year reviewing? We've been using looping. I have classes of lower achieving kids staying with the same teacher. This is making a huge difference. The teacher knows every one of the kids, their learning styles, parents, where they were in June."

"We are pushing hard to improve math achievement. We got rid of consumer math, have a lot of double period classes, smaller classes, booster classes. These seem to be making a significant difference."

"We have whole school faculty groups. Teachers are grouped who share the same kids, can confer about individual kids, use data from test scores, grades, attendance, create action plans about what they want to improve."

"Every department has a teacher released from one class to give support to first year teachers. Second year teachers have to take a course on understanding racism.

"We should treat kids as if they are our own. When we make decisions, who's in front of us: a picture of our own child, or somebody else's child? If it's our own we're likely to make different sorts of decisions."#

For further information about the superintendents conference and its 63-year history visit http://conference.tc.columbia.edu.

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