The achievement gap wins one - The Boston Globe

The achievement gap wins one - The Boston Globe.

THE TOP priority for state education officials in 2008 is to close the academic achievement gap between white and minority students. But given a chance to do so last month, the state Board of Education retreated...

The one school that got shot down - the International Charter School of Southeastern Massachusetts - was the largest and boldest. Its rejection raises thorny questions about just how hard the Patrick administration is willing to push to achieve equity in education... 

Acting Commissioner Jeffrey Nellhaus recommended approval of the SABIS proposal, but Board of Education chairman Paul Reville voiced sharp concerns. And the board listened to Reville, rejecting the Brockton SABIS school by a 7-2 vote. But when the board jettisoned SABIS, it also unintentionally abandoned minority families in more than a dozen communities. SABIS is one of the few educational systems in the state where minority students not only perform on par with white students, but outperform them, as well. That accomplishment, combined with the fact that there is little charter school activity in Southeastern Massachusetts, should have balanced out other concerns with the application. 

By high school, minority students in Massachusetts lag their white counterparts by more than 30 percentage points in math and English on the state's high-stakes Massachusetts Comprehensive Assessment System test. But that is not the case at the Springfield SABIS school, where 94 percent of black 10th graders and 84 percent of Hispanics scored in the proficient or advanced categories on the English section of the 2007 MCAS. That compares with 77 percent of white students statewide. In math, the school's minority students are catching up nicely to their white counterparts. The board erred when it rejected an opportunity for minority students to traverse the gap that swallows so many...The 1,500-student SABIS school in Springfield has a waiting list of 2,677, the longest of any of the 61 charter schools in the state, according to the state's Charter School Association.