Making Success a Reality for Even More Students.

I have spent the better part of my 31-year career in education teaching and working in communities with diverse student populations. During that time, I have seen some gains. However, as a nation, we should all be concerned that the achievement gap between our minority and majority students seems to be growing. That's why this issue of The School Administrator, with its focus on multiculturalism, is so important.

Several years ago, while serving as a district superintendent in New York, I was involved in the state takeover of the Roosevelt school system on Long Island. Roosevelt is a small district of several thousand students in a predominantly minority community. At the time of the takeover, few of the high school students were enrolled in the challenging Regents-level track that leads to New York's version of the advanced high school diploma. Actually, only one percent of Roosevelt students were graduating with a Regents diploma, compared to a statewide average of more than 40 percent.

One of the first decisions of the oversight panel established by the state was to require teaching of the Regents-level curriculum to all students. That decision raised understandable concerns, since many teachers were not prepared to deliver the more challenging curriculum. Many students had not taken the prerequisite courses. The prevailing sense was that the students would not successfully meet the challenge.

What happened that first year in Roosevelt is one of the best examples I've seen of what students can do when given the opportunity. More than 200 students passed Regents examinations at the end of the year. Only a dozen had passed the year before. Nonetheless, some pointed out that more than a thousand students had taken the test and fewer than 30 percent had passed. Overly concerned with failure, some individuals would opt to not allow students to try at all.

We are engaged in a similar experience in Fairfax County, Va., where I now serve as superintendent. Last year, we discovered that only half of the students taking Advanced Placement courses were actually taking the AP test. Nonetheless, all students who took the course received additional credit and their transcripts reflected the fact that they had taken it. We also found a significant discrepancy between the number of majority and minority students taking AP courses.

This school year, we decreed, with support of our board of education, that all students taking AP courses would be required to take the AP test. We were able to deal with the equity issue by having the district pay for all of the tests that were taken--about $73 per AP test.

Many foresaw a drop in participation. However, just the opposite has happened. We will have a record number of students taking AP courses and will more than double the number of AP tests taken. Of course, we can anticipate that the number of students getting scores lower than three will also be greater. So what?

The moral of both of these stories is that we must raise our expectations for all students--minority students in particular--if we are truly serious about "raising the bar." Failure is permissible. It's not our goal, but it is permissible.

We will see significant reductions in the achievement gap if we allow more minority students to enroll in the algebra courses, Advanced Placement and International Baccalaureate programs, Regents-level courses and our more challenging curriculum. Many might fail, but many more will pass. As educators, we need to make success a possibility and a reality for even more of our students.