The Achievement Gap is a big deal.  It is a national problem reflected throughout Minnesota and here in Saint Paul.  It will take the combined efforts of parents, educators, community members, and local nonprofits and business to get it closed. 

NEAT hosted a forum on the Achievement Gap in Saint Paul in November to help broaden our understanding of the local issues.  This report presents the findings from our investigation.  The conclusion of this report contains recommendations for individual parents and parent groups, and identifies systemic issues that can be worked on at a broader level through the infrastructure provided by NEAT. 

Our hope is that parents groups, site councils and principals will use this report to guide school-based efforts.  Please make copies of this report for the members of your parent group(s) and site council and schedule time on an upcoming agenda to discuss how you see the indicators playing out in your school.

When you see systemic issues echoed in your own experience, please contact NEAT.  By combining our efforts, the parents of Saint Paul can make a substantive contribution to closing the Achievement Gap.

Your voice can make a difference.

Background

NEAT began a journey last spring that involved over 30 people in an Action Planning conversation about “What could / should a citywide parent association be doing?” which set two key priorities:

• Engaging Parents – Take a bigger role in engaging parents in their roles and responsibilities in supporting student achievement.  Find ways to connect with unengaged parents and improve student-teacher-parent communications
• Diversity & Language Barriers – Engage parents in community-based efforts to reduce the Achievement Gap and find ways to address the structural barriers for our non-English speaking parents

This fall, NEAT hosted two public forums to support these efforts.  The September EMBRACING DIVERSITY forum and the November event, “The Achievement Gap in Saint Paul.”  The Embracing Diversity report was distributed in late October. 

Saint Paul Public Schools is making progress toward closing the Achievement Gap as demonstrated by gains in student achievement.  At the same time, we see the district struggling with the same issues playing out at the state level. 

Both the district and the Minnesota Department of Education are making genuine efforts to report student achievement data; however, both have a long way to go in helping people find meaning in the data.  They can show us tables, charts and graphs until we’re blue in the face, but it won’t do us any good – we won’t be able to be full participants in working toward the solutions – until we understand what it all means.

The central struggle is to "find meaning in the data" in a way that answers two fundamental questions:  "How do we use the data to improve student achievement?" and "How do we know that what were spending the money on is working?"  We see the district using the data to improve student achievement (otherwise they wouldn’t be making gains), but the “meaning” of the data, the interpretative steps of “What does the data show?” and “What are we going to do about it?” aren’t readily accessible to parents and the public.  What’s more, thus far any public conversations about “What are we going to do about it?” have been limited to school-based reform.

This investigation into the data includes both school-based and community-based variables that contribute to the Achievement Gap and demonstrates the importance of basing reform efforts on what the data shows about both. 

Children’s Defense Fund of Minnesota is the “go to” place for information about children’s well-being in Minnesota.  They produce a newsletter that we urge everyone to subscribe to.  In addition, NEAT is in the process of reframing the “Use the Data” portion of its Web site to include both.  The data provided in this report will be updated at our Web site as we find new and better sources of information.