County's Achievement Gap Narrows in Reading and Math

Minority Progress Is Among Montgomery School Chief's Goals

The achievement gap separating black and Hispanic students from whites and Asians in performance on statewide tests has narrowed in reading and math at every grade level tested, according to an analysis of results released this week by Montgomery County school officials.

Narrowing the gap and elevating achievement for all are the top two goals of School Superintendent Jerry D. Weast. During his nine-year tenure, achievement disparities have diminished in some areas, including primary-grade literacy. But the gap has held or even widened in other areas, including Advanced Placement performance, SAT scores and student suspensions. Even in cases where black and Hispanic scores have risen sharply, white and Asian scores have risen just as quickly.

Montgomery students fared well on this year's Maryland School Assessment test, and minority students made particularly strong progress, mirroring a trend across the state. Proficiency rates rose three points to 82 percent in math and five points to 88 percent in reading from last year. In the six years the test has been given, reading proficiency has risen 17 points and math proficiency 15 points.

An analysis of six-year trends in scores by school system officials shows a narrowing of the gap -- that is, the disparity between the scores of the lowest- and highest-performing racial groups -- across the board. It is perhaps the clearest evidence of gap-closing this decade.

"The scores that have historically not grown . . . are growing at double-digit rates," Weast said, addressing the Board of Education on Tuesday and referring to minority performance on the statewide test.

The MSA test is given annually in grades 3 through 8 to measure students' academic proficiency in reading and math. It satisfies the federal No Child Left Behind law, which requires states to work toward a goal of universal proficiency by 2014.

Among Montgomery fourth-graders, 93 percent of white students were rated proficient in reading in 2003, the top score among racial groups in the first year of the test. Sixty-five percent of Hispanics, the lowest-scoring group, were rated proficient. The gap separating those scores was 28 points.

Five years later, whites still have the highest proficiency rate, 97 percent. Blacks have the lowest proficiency rate, but it has risen to 85 percent. The gap has shrunk to 12 points.

The disparity between the lowest and highest scores has narrowed at all other grade levels, too.

The least progress has been in the upper grades. In eighth-grade reading, for example, the gap between white and Hispanic performance has shrunk from 38 points in 2003 to 26 points in 2008, a 12-point improvement. Hispanic proficiency has risen from 48 percent to 68 percent; white performance has climbed from 86 percent to 94 percent.

The biggest advance, a 24-point reduction in the gap, has come in third- and fifth-grade reading.

Every racial group has improved in proficiency on the MSA test since 2003, with the smallest gains generally coming among whites and Asians, the groups whose scores were highest at the start. Proficiency among blacks and Hispanics has risen 20, 30 or more points in some areas. Black fifth-grade math proficiency, for example, has climbed from 43 percent in 2003 to 75 percent this year.

This year's MSA scores were noteworthy for Montgomery and the rest of the state, and not just for improvement among minority students. Montgomery's eight-point gain -- five points in reading, three points in math -- is the biggest bump since 2004, when county students' scores rose six points in reading and three points in math.

That is significant for two reasons, education experts say. First, scores tend to go up in the first year or two of a new standardized test, as teachers and students learn the test and the content it covers, and scores tend to flatten thereafter. Second, any proficiency gains must build upon already-high scores and follow several previous years of progress.