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Standard & Poor's Identifies 203 School Districts for Narrowing Achievement Gaps in 13-State Analysis

Posted on: Tuesday, 23 August 2005, 15:00 CDT

NEW YORK, Aug. 23 /PRNewswire/ -- Standard & Poor's School Evaluation Services announced today that it has identified 203 school districts in 13 states for significantly narrowing the gaps in achievement between black, Hispanic or economically disadvantaged students and their higher-performing classmates while simultaneously raising the average proficiency rates of the student groups being compared, such as black students and white students.

To be recognized in Standard & Poor's analysis, school districts must: * serve all grades K-12; * enroll 30 students, on average, per student subgroup being compared, per grade; * reduce the achievement gap in overall reading and math proficiency (RaMP) rates by at least 5 percentage points between the 2002-03 and 2003-04 school years; and * simultaneously raise the RaMP rates of both of the subgroups being compared over this same period.

"Closing the achievement gap is one of the most persistent challenges in American education today," said William Cox, executive managing director of Standard & Poor's School Evaluation Services. "Given the complex nature and extreme difficulty in closing these gaps, Standard & Poor's believes it is important to pay tribute to those school districts that have made progress in this area."

Standard & Poor's developed this analysis to recognize those school districts that have made significant improvement in reducing achievement gaps and to illuminate school districts that may serve as appropriate benchmarks for educators in other school districts in the state that are searching for ways to narrow their own achievement gaps while raising the performance of all of their students.

Achieving proficiency in reading and math for all students -- not just some -- by 2014 is one of the goals of the federal No Child Left Behind law.

For the purposes of this analytical report, academic performance was determined by using RaMP, which is the aggregate percentage of students within school districts scoring proficient or better on the state's reading and math tests.

Cox said he also hoped that Standard & Poor's analytical report sheds light on the power of using data to probe for diagnostic insights that can help improve educators' decision making.

Among the findings: * The 203 school districts that significantly narrowed achievement gaps between at least one set of student subgroups between the 2002-03 and 2003-04 school years represent 6.1% of the 3,341 K-12 school districts in these 13 states, and 11.4% of the 1,784 K-12 school districts that have sufficient data to measure an achievement gap. -- Interestingly, 17 of these 203 districts have managed to reduce an achievement gap in each of two consecutive years, meaning that they have managed an overall gap reduction of more than 10 points since 2002. -- In addition, 10 school districts have reduced their achievement gaps between not just one set of subgroups, but two (black and white, Hispanic and white or economically disadvantaged and non-economically disadvantaged or all students); -- Finally, one school district across all 13 states has managed to narrow the achievement gap between all three sets of subgroups measured. * More districts have made progress in reducing economically disadvantaged achievement gaps than black-white or Hispanic-white achievement gaps. * Overall, the districts recognized in this report for reducing their achievement gaps have improved their overall reading and math proficiency rates more than all K-12 districts analyzed. * The districts recognized in this analysis have improved the reading and math proficiency rates among their black, Hispanic and economically disadvantaged students by at least twice as many points as among all students in these districts. * On average, the narrowing of the achievement gaps in the districts that are being recognized is much greater than the progress made by all K-12 districts analyzed. * Despite the improvement, there is still significant progress left to be made, as remaining achievement gaps are still considerable. Nonetheless, the average remaining achievement gaps faced by the districts that are being recognized is less than those of all K-12 districts analyzed.

The 13 states included in Standard & Poor's analysis are: Arizona, Arkansas, California, Delaware, Indiana, Kansas, Kentucky, Massachusetts, New York, Pennsylvania, South Dakota, Virginia and Washington.

Standard & Poor's conducted its analysis using data obtained from SchoolMatters.com. SchoolMatters.com is a free public service sponsored by the National Education Data Partnership, a collaboration among the Council of Chief State School Officers, Standard & Poor's School Evaluation Services and the CELT Corporation. The National Education Data Partnership is generously funded by The Broad Foundation and the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.

The analytical report that synthesized the data for these 13 states, as well state-specific reports, which list the school districts being recognized and which explain the analytical methodology used to identify them, can be found at http://www.schoolmatters.com/.

Standard & Poor's

CONTACT: Susan Shafer,212-438-2193, orJason Feuchtwanger,212-438-6042

Web site: http://www.standardandpoors.com/http://www.schoolmatters.com/

Source: PRNewswire

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