Best Practices

The results from the latest MCAS exam offer the reassuring news that most Massachusetts high school seniors have passed the Math and English portions of the high-stakes exam in time to graduate in June. Unfortunately, the results also show that 6,000 students will not graduate with their classmates, and a disproportionate number of them are students of color. Statewide, 30 percent of Latino students and 25 percent of African-American students in the Class of 2003 have not passed the exam, compared with 6 percent of white students.

Why are so many students of color struggling to meet the academic requirements that are essential to their futures, and how can we help them succeed?

The high failure rate for minority students on the MCAS (Massachusetts Comprehensive Assessment System) exam is just one example of the “minority achievement gap,” a complex national problem that defies easy explanations and resists easy solutions. Despite the Bay State’s decade-long investment in education reform, most minority students attend schools that still struggle with
insufficient resources, outdated textbooks and inadequately trained teachers. Those students
need intensive academic support to pass the exam and, to their credit, many school districts and community-based programs are scrambling to provide it.

Extra help for students who are failing is important, but we must not stop there. A deeper and more insidious problem affects minority students who are passing MCAS but still aren’t reaching their true potential. Call it the problem of mediocre expectations. In too many classrooms and too many homes,
minority students simply aren’t expected to achieve at the highest levels. Their teachers don’t expect it, their parents don’t expect it, their classmates don’t expect it and, most disturbingly, they don’t expect it of themselves.

While most educators work hard to help their students achieve, research suggests that many teachers underestimate the academic potential of minority students or accept mediocrity as the norm. While all parents want what’s best for their kids, some minority parents fail to reinforce the connection between
academic excellence and future success or feel powerless to demand high-quality teaching within a rigorous curriculum. And while some students of color are driven to succeed, in order to do so, they must transcend a peer culture that can be overtly hostile to learning.

If we want all students to achieve at high academic levels, we must have high expectations for all of them. And minority students, in turn, must have higher expectations for themselves. When students demand more from themselves and the adults in their lives, those adults usually respond.

The good news is that high expectations aren’t high cost. The Education Trust, a Washington-based education advocacy organization, has documented examples of schools in poor minority and recent immigrant communities around the country that are relentless in their high expectations of students—with impressive results. Here in New England, the Nellie Mae Education Foundation supports a variety of education programs at the middle school and high school levels that demand academic excellence from minority students and offer mentoring, tutoring and other supports to help those students meet the challenge. These are programs that confront mediocre expectations at school, at home and in the minds of young people.

For an example of how a school can rethink its expectations of students, consider Boston’s John D.
O’Bryant School of Mathematics and Science, an urban public school serving a largely minority student population. Only a few years ago, O’Bryant offered an Advanced Placement Calculus course to just a handful of students, none of whom received a score of 3 or higher on the AP exam. With leadership from its headmaster, the school pursued a partnership with Northeastern University’s Mathematics
Department and School of Education. Northeastern and O’Bryant faculty members are now working together to create a demanding math curriculum that includes algebra for all eighth-grade students,
teacher coaching, student tutoring and an intensive summer calculus preparation program on the
Northeastern campus. Last year, 29 O’Bryant students took the AP Calculus exam and most of them
scored 3 or higher. This year, 39 students are enrolled in Advanced Placement Calculus at O’Bryant.

A second program supported by the foundation underscores the important role of parents in establishing high expectations for themselves, their children and their schools. In Hartford, the Connecticut College Awareness Program (ConnCAP) at Capital Community College offers an academic support and mentoring program for more than 100 minority and low-income students from four communities. A key component of the program helps parents complete their own high school, college and professional studies. As ConnCAP Director Steve Perry explains, “When mom has homework
to do, too, it creates an atmosphere that helps her kids do theirs.” In addition, ConnCAP has hired and
trained a group of Parent Advisors to help other parents impose stronger academic demands on their children.

At the Boston Learning Center in Dorchester, the BIFF Project is designed to help students expect more from themselves. The center recognizes that many minority students— young men in particular—are bright, capable young people who underachieve because of a peer culture that devalues academic success. By creating a fictional role model who is both smart and “cool,” the program applies
positive social pressure on minority students and raises their expectations of what they can achieve. After students complete a nine-week introductory course, the program offers regular activities to maintain a sense of community and shared purpose. Currently offered at four Boston middle
and high schools, the BIFF Project understands that academic success begins with student motivation.

It shouldn’t surprise anyone that minority students who have endured years of low expectations at school and home are now struggling to pass the MCAS exam. Those who do pass will send us a powerful reminder of what they can accomplish when we believe in them and they believe in
themselves. But most minority students are capable of much more than just passing the test. We need to show them that we expect much more.

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Blenda J. Wilson is president and CEO of
the Nellie Mae Education Foundation.
Jay Sherwin manages the foundation’s
Minority High Achievement Initiative.