MAPLEWOOD / SOUTH ORANGE, NJ — A special report at the Oct. 16 Board of Education meeting showed that, despite some small gains, the South Orange-Maplewood School District is still failing to level the academic playing field for students regardless of race. In attempts to ensure that all students have the same opportunities, five years ago the district worked to delevel the middle schools and last year it passed the Access & Equity policy to ensure black students are provided equal access to rigorous college and career preparatory classes in the district.
The bulk of the work done to equalize the SOMSD equality for all students was undertaken back when the U.S. Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights announced Oct. 28, 2014, that it had entered into an agreement with the SOMSD in order to resolve a compliance review, initiated when civil rights organizations filed a complaint Oct. 9, 2014, with the federal Department of Education’s Office of Civil Rights urging an investigation into the district’s practices of tracking and school discipline.
Despite the district hiring SAGE consultants to review and assess the district and the board passing the Access & Equity policy, the Oct. 16 report from interim Superintendent of Schools Thomas Ficarra, Assistant Superintendent of Administration Kevin Walston, and planning and assessment Director Kalisha Morgan showed that the achievement gap is still a chasm and that more must be done.
The student demographic in the report was broken down into three categories, black students, white students and “other” students, which included Hispanic, Asian, Indian, Pacific islander and multiracial. The data analyzed covers three schools years: 2015-2016, 2016-2017 and 2017-2018.
According to the report, the data does show some gains, such as increased participation in accelerated math from fifth to sixth grade for all student groups; more black students on the path to calculus in 11th-grade pre-calculus; a 10 percentage point increase in black students enrolled in honors or advanced physics; a 5 percentage point increase in black students enrolled in honors chemistry, 12 percentage point increase in advanced chemistry and a 13 percentage point decrease in Level 2 participation, as Level 2 is a lower level; and the number of black students in AP social studies in 12th grade more than doubled.
Nevertheless, there were many areas of concern. Black students are not increasing participation in accelerated math from fifth to sixth grade at the same rate as white students. In ninth grade English language arts, less than 50 percent of black students are in honors, compared to 90 percent of white students — a trend that follows through to 10th grade. Similarly, in ninth grade biology, 36.3 percent of black students are in honors, while 89.1 percent of white students are.
In light of the raw data, the administration recommended that the district assess and restructure current levels in math placement for fifth-graders going into sixth grade; all Level 2 math courses; all levels in pre-calculus; and all levels in ninth grade biology and world history. Additionally, the administration recommends reviewing the effectiveness of the 2017-2018 pilot in which ninth grade algebra I, Level 2 was eliminated.
The administration also recommends that the district expand the Minority Achievement Committee Scholars program, and work harder to actively recruit and encourage black students to enroll and persist in higher level courses.
Lastly, the administration identified that there were not enough supports in place for students who wanted to try to work at a higher level. As such, the administration recommends developing schoolwide data teams to better analyze trends; provide additional supports at the elementary, middle and high schools; encourage students to consider summer school as an academic boost; and identify and dismantle barriers, such as the digital divide.
Ficarra admitted that, with only two and a half months with the district under his belt, solving such problems is a challenge, but he said he was going to jump right in and then made several suggestions and comments at the meeting.
During the superintendent’s update, he mentioned that the school district is looking to take its data collection and analysis to the next level; later he stressed that this is an important tool in combating the achievement gap.
“Data is essentially a best practice in education and I am looking to shore up data systems internally so that we can have better and quicker access to the data and using that data, not just to show at board meetings as to how we did in the past, but using and accessing that data to provide for and analyze that the current school district and individual students needs are at the moment,” Ficarra said. “We’re not at that point where we have quick and easy data that we can access to actually inform instruction at the classroom level in immediate and real time. And that is the kind of data we need.”
According to Ficarra, once the district has on-demand access to the data it needs, it can begin looking at ways to improve professional development for teachers and target areas to improve curriculum. He also said that the district could then look at PARCC scores in relation to students’ grades to determine if students are being given proper supports.
“Could we be falling into the trap of saying: ‘See, we were right about the placement because they didn’t do well on the PARCC’?” he asked. “So we want to take a good look at that and see what that data really looks like and how it affects our students.”
He also said that reducing leveling will not only help put students on an equal playing field, but will provide teachers with more time to provide additional supports. Ficarra called the district’s current system “hyper leveling” and “excessive leveling.”
Following the presentation, board members expressed their heartache that these problems persist — with some board members becoming quite emotional and passionate — and their own input on places where the district can improve.
When board member Maureen Jones campaigned three years ago, she spoke about her experiences as a minority student who did not speak English in American schools as a child. She demanded that the district do better.
“We talk a lot about diversity in our community and how everyone moves here for the diversity, but we look at our classrooms, particularly at our middle schools and our high school, and we see a lot of institutional segregation. And how can diversity and institutional segregation coexist?” Jones said. “What I hope that this data does for everyone is that it opens everyone’s eyes to the issues of inequity and the discrepancies that the district is faced with. One cannot look at this data and just say that students of color have to pull themselves up by the bootstraps to do the work or that we need to parse out the data to get the big picture, because we’re seeing the big picture right here in front of our eyes and clearly we see the connection to the achievement gap.
“While the Access & Equity policy has been a first step, we’ve definitely seen some small gains happen with that and we need to keep moving in that direction,” she continued. “There must be a collective effort that every black student can and will succeed because if not, what kind of message are we sending our students of color? What kind of message are we sending our students of color? Imagine walking into a classroom where every day there can be a preconceived notion about you that do about your learning? What does that do to your motivation?
“So we really need to think about that because what this data shows us is: 1, black students are capable; 2, choices and opportunities need to be presented because we all know what every parent wants for their child in the classroom — whether that parent is black, white, Christian, non-Christian, Jewish, straight, gay, multiracial, biracial, immigrant, non-immigrant, whatever it is — what every parent wants for their child in that classroom is a fair shot and that’s what we need to give our students, particularly our students of color,” Jones concluded.
First Vice President Chris Sabin said the district needs to bring SAGE back to continue working with the school district to fix these issues. He also demanded that the district maintain momentum, without constantly starting and stopping plans and actions.
“We need to recognize that we are not serving a segment, the black population, correctly. I moved back to Maplewood and South Orange and the district that my kids were in was doing way better with its population than we are right now, and it really makes me question my decision to move back here, because this is not the place that I want to say that kids are,” Sabin said. “We can’t continue to live like this.”
Second Vice President Madhu Pai said that the small gains should not be ignored, but she also questioned what is going wrong in the district that the board is only seeing small gains. She stressed the importance of working with younger children to ensure they have the skills and confidence needed to succeed in higher level courses.
“By the time students get to college and even the latter grades of high school, adjusting the achievement gap is entirely too late,” Pai said. “Clearly, from the numbers, either we’re not promoting the higher level classes enough — and that might be the case — but we’re also not making students feel confident in their abilities that they can take on these more rigorous and challenging courses and they shouldn’t have to feel that way, because we haven’t given them what they need in the earlier grades.”
But BOE member Annemarie Maini disagreed vehemently with Pai, saying the issue is not with confidence. Specifically, Maini pointed to the data regarding ninth grade biology classes.
“In grade eight, every single child is in the same course and then we get to the ninth grade and we are recommending that 90 percent of our white students are capable of a biology honors class and 70 percent of our black students are only capable of a college prep biology class,” Maini said. “So this recommendation is not children making their own choice here. This is what the school is telling them; it’s something that we’re doing.”
Maini questioned why students who did not request higher level courses were not found and questioned about these choices.
“Anyone who looked at these data or looked in those classrooms and didn’t question what was happening — that’s not on the students, that’s on us,” Maini said. “This is what institutional racism, institution segregation, is. All students before were in the same class and somehow, one year later, we have such a divide just based on race, which can’t be.”
Donna Smith agreed with Maini, pointing out that biology is a course where students should easily be able to level up, as, unlike courses like physics, it does not require heavy math.
“It doesn’t make any sense, so obviously we need to provide more support to our students in the choices they are making and, while yes, in the past it may be that it was due to institutional racism, now we’re at the point where we say that is going to stop.”
Smith also criticized the very existence of Level 2, which she called “a path to nowhere.”
Johanna Wright had similar concerns, criticizing the continued vernacular of “college prep,” when those classes certainly do not prepare students for higher education, she said.
“‘College prep’ would have a parent believe their child is getting something that is preparing them for college. It is not,” Wright said.
Student representative Josie Sandor spoke out, as well, saying that teachers feel pressured not to recommend that their students attempt to work at higher levels as, according to Sandor, those recommendations are often met by the guidance office with a rejection. She also added that there must be more support in place for students, especially increased access to the library as not all students have internet access at home.
“I talked to various students and teachers around the school and all of them said kind of similar things when it came to Access & Equity,” Sandor said. “Students are finding it easier to go down a level than it is to access higher level classes. There’s a racial dynamic that’s problematic that allows for white students and white parents to have easier access to these classes, compared to students of color, which ends up defeating the purpose of the Access & Equity policy and instead just continues to broaden the achievement gap.”
Wright brought up similar concerns, adding that, moving forward, the district should really look at the raw numbers to get a better picture of what is happening.
“Our children are fighting; they want to move up,” Wright said. “We have teachers who are saying, ‘I would love to see this kid in the higher level class,’ and you have a guidance department that told them they cannot be moved. I don’t know what that sounds like to you, but I know what it sounds like to me. And we all sit here and we should all be ashamed.
Board member Susie Adamson pointed out that the Access & Equity policy certainly has removed barriers to higher level courses — for white students.
“We opened up access to a lot more white students to take higher level classes, which is terrific, but not the intention of the policy,” Adamson said, adding that she wants the next step to be identifying specific ways to rectify this. “It’s just unconscionable the lack of progress we have made. I don’t consider these as gains that are even worth applauding ourselves for.”
President Elizabeth Baker argued that the district needs to keep pushing itself to go further. She questioned whether it might be in students’ best interests to push for all students to reach algebra I in ninth grade.
“The work of Access & Equity is at the heart of the work that must be done in the district,” Baker said. “This is critical school climate work we need to do more of.”
Stephanie Lawson-Muhammad said that, while she believes every member of the BOE has students’ best interests at heart, they need to do better in the district to break down a system that was created many years ago.
“We’re here because we care. But at the end of the day, we sit in a district that was built with a moral compass that I think we can all question, because we didn’t get hyper-levels — which don’t exist in surrounding districts — by accident. It was specifically engineered,” Lawson-Muhammad said. “This community was nearly ripped apart five years ago over discussions to delevel the middle schools. Ripped apart. Neighbor against neighbor. And now we look at that and say: Did the world end? Did our middle schools crumble around us?”
She stressed that a large portion of the change needs to happen in the district’s culture.
“Kids aren’t registering for class because they don’t feel welcome in class. They’re in a school where they know they’re not welcome. And you want to know how I know that? Because when I go to open house and I sit in my kid’s classes, in honors classes, I hear parents tell teachers how now there’s more students in these classes who really shouldn’t be here because they don’t have the knowledge to be in these classes, but we’ve opened access,” Lawson-Muhammad said. “Just tell teachers that they actually have to care about the kids in their room and see them as viable students and encourage them. It’s not that hard.”
OCR update shows persisting problems added by Yael Katzwer on
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