By Mike Wereschagin
TRIBUNE-REVIEW
Tuesday, September 11, 2007
Though yawning achievement gaps exist between black and white students in Pittsburgh Public Schools, who the teacher is might be the best predictor of how well students will do, according to a two-year study of student performance presented to the school board Monday night.
The report, which included test scores in 199 math teachers' classrooms, found average test scores varied as much as 59 percent from the top teacher's classroom to the bottom, regardless of the students' race, according to the study led by Robert P. Strauss, a professor of economics and public policy at Carnegie Mellon University.
"These ... are not random effects," Strauss said. "In Pittsburgh, the teachers who are successful are successful with black kids and white kids."
Still, black students in Pittsburgh Public Schools lag twice as far behind their white classmates as they did in the mid-1990s, according to the study.
As students get older, the achievement gap grows, Strauss said.
In math, white students score about 3 percent higher than the statewide average in Pennsylvania System of School Assessment tests. Black students score about 10 percent below average. By 11th grade, that 13 percent gap increases to nearly 20 percent, the study found.
Similar gaps exist between students from poor families and those from middle- and upper-income families, according to the study, which cost the district $25,000.
According to the U.S. Census Bureau, the median household income for Pittsburgh's white families -- $45,327 -- is more than $21,000 higher than the median household income for the black families.
"Poverty is a factor that affects achievement; however, race is a larger factor," said Linda Lane, the deputy superintendent. "And there's a lot of variation in African-American achievement from one school to the next. We do know there's a difference, but we don't always know what that difference might be."
School board member Randall Taylor proposed continuing the study to see what teachers in high-achieving classrooms are doing differently.
"If their father's in jail, or their mother's on drugs, that still doesn't take away from the fact that we have to educate them," Taylor said.
Strauss, however, cautioned against reading too much into the different classes' test scores, saying more research was needed.
"There are differences, but I don't know which way it cuts," he said. "I'm not saying, to one of these teachers in the lower quadrant, 'Off with her head.'"
Mike Wereschagin can be reached at mwereschagin@tribweb.com or 412-320-7900.
http://www.pittsburghlive.com/x/tribune-review/pittsburgh/print_526792.html
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