Study: Good schools hiding big achievement gaps

A new report by the non-profit Education Trust warns that the low achievement of minority and low-income students in high-achieving schools is often masked by the education world's focus on averages.

The study examined math and reading test scores over several years in nearly 2,500 schools in Indiana and Maryland. While overall scores tended to improve in most schools, minority and low-income subgroups often showed little to no improvement on the tests.

Midway Middle School in Maryland is presented as an example of school averages masking achievement disparity within. The mostly white, middle-class public school made impressive strides by getting 82 percent of its students proficient in reading in 2009, compared to only 74 percent in 2005. Those gains put the school solidly in the middle of the pack of the state's middle schools. But if you zero in on the school's black students, the picture looks less rosy: Only 66 percent scored proficient in reading in 2005, and the school made no gains among its black students.

These kids, the study argues, are stuck, and even schools that are improving on average need to make sure they aren't ignoring big achievement gaps that the numbers are hiding.

National education policy focusing on turning around the lowest-performing schools with infusions of money often come with strings attached--like demands the school hire an entirely new staff, or convert into a charter school. The report's author, Natasha Ushomirsky, writes that this focus on boosting schools with the lowest average test scores, while important, ignores populations of minority and low-income students who are languishing at higher-performing schools.

"In concentrating only on those schools with the lowest overall results, we run the risk of overlooking huge numbers of low-income students and students of color who are not getting the education they need," Ushomirsky writes.

(Stock image: Getty)