Last week the JournalNews and the Echo ran a series of stories about the efforts in our school district and others to address the issues of racial equity and diversity in our schools. I appreciate all the time and effort that reporters Lindsey Hilty, Megan Gildow and Linda Ebbing put into the series, and I commend their editors for devoting what I know are scarce resources to this important subject.

It’s important because it’s the subject people don’t want to talk about. The racial achievement gap is the big unmentionable in today’s education system. The truth is: Our students of color – African American and Hispanic children – do not do as well in schools as white students. Often people want to explain that away by talking about socio-economic levels, parenting, early childhood experiences and other factors. But even when you adjust for those factors and compare groups of students from similar circumstances, the students from racial minority groups don’t do as well in school as their white peers.

Addressing this is difficult for administrators and teachers. It means turning upside down everything we were taught about teaching, especially that we should be “color blind.” Now, we have to learn to be aware of our biases, understand how they can create a learning barrier in the classroom, and what we can do to remove that barrier. We have to understand and believe that teachers’ and administrators’ expectations for minority students can have a direct effect on those students’ achievement.

We aren’t doing this as a feel-good effort. Federal laws, especially the No Child Left Behind Act, require us to measure – and improve – the academic performance of specified subgroups. But even more importantly, it’s the right thing to do. It’s also good for all our students. The research shows that when you increase the achievement of subgroups of students, all scores go up, for all students.

As the series of articles detailed, our school district is part of the Consortium on Racial Equity, which is working with Miami University to remove racial barriers in schools. This year the team from our district included, in addition to myself, our school board president, Dr. Mark Morris, and selected administrators and teachers. We have spent many, many hours learning about these issues, talking about them – which, I can assure you, can be very uncomfortable – and developing a plan that will bring this effort into our classrooms, beginning this fall.

We will start at Central Elementary, which is our most diverse school. Its principal, Dick Wood, is part of our racial equity team in the consortium. I want to emphasize, Central Elementary is already rated “excellent” by the state, just like our other four elementaries. But not every subgroup there has achieved the state standards, and it faces the same racial achievement gap that all our schools face. So we will be working with our staff there to remove any racial bias from our teaching, our practices, our policies and procedures…everything we do that impacts students. At the same time, we’ll be preparing to bring this same effort to every school in our district. 

It is not something, though, that we can implement from the top down. It has to be done in a way that all of our employees and schools can embrace. I am very optimistic that can be accomplished, because I know the employees of the Fairfield School District and their desire to always do what is best for all of our students.

Published in the Fairfield Echo, May 29, 2008.