UNEVEN PERFORMANCE is the tarnished sign of education reform in Massachusetts. Again yesterday, the state took its customary position at or near the top of the nation's list for overall student performance. But it brushed bottom in terms of the achievement gap between low-income students and those who are better off.
The National Assessment of Educational Progress tested the abilities of eighth-graders in 45 states to write informative and persuasive essays. Students in only two states - Connecticut and New Jersey - outperformed the Bay State's young scribes. But Massachusetts ranked third from the bottom on a key indicator of equity: relative performance by students who receive free and reduced lunch. These students, many of them minorities, scored on average 28 points below other test takers. And the achievement gap in writing between white and black students remains as wide today as it was a decade ago.
It doesn't help to walk across the hall to the math department. Education Week recently ranked Massachusetts as having the worst achievement gap of all 50 states when measuring the math skills of eighth-graders.
This spring, the Patrick administration will release its master plan for public education - the so-called Readiness Project. The report must offer strategies to address these pernicious gaps, including troubling performance differences in gender. Sixty percent of girls scored in the top categories on the NAEP writing test, compared with just 32 percent of boys. Though middle school girls often develop faster than boys, the gulf in writing ability shouldn't be so vast.
The NAEP report should also make good reading for the state Board of Education. In February, it unwisely rejected a charter school application in Brockton from SABIS, a management system with a good record of closing the achievement gap in Springfield.
There are encouraging grades, as well, in the NAEP report card on writing. Nationwide, average scores rose significantly over 1998 and 2002. Similarly, the achievement gap between black and white eighth-graders narrowed slightly. Of local note, Boston ranked second in a list of 10 major urban school districts. In fact, black students statewide outperformed their black counterparts in all but a few states.
But the fact remains that minority students in Massachusetts are competing for local jobs and college seats with white middle-class students, not minority students from Arkansas or California. Massachusetts is often tops in education. But the achievement gap remains a shameful asterisk.
