The Evanston/Skokie School District 65 school board continued discussion on Tuesday night of a program that will extend the school day for students at risk of failing.
The voluntary program will not be considered tutoring. Instead, it will offer one additional hour of classroom-based instruction with regular teachers every afternoon. The goal of the program is to help students pass their classes so they don’t have to attend summer school.
“Research has shown that time spent on task is a significant variable in academic achievement,” District 65 Superintendent Hardy Murphy said.
The discussion took place at an annual joint meeting of the District 65 and District 202 school boards. District 65 covers Evanston’s elementary and middle schools, while District 202 is exclusively for Evanston Township High School.
The purpose of the meeting was to focus on issues that affect both districts and to ensure that the progress from kindergarten through 12th grade is smooth.
The boards heard several presentations from different groups, all of which focused on improving student success and narrowing the minority achievement gap.
Three ETHS students proposed a mentoring program bringing together minority students at the high school and Evanston middle schools.
The program, “Raising the Bar,” would unite successful minority students at ETHS with struggling minority sixth- and seventh-graders at monthly seminars.
“We will help (the middle school students) academically and socially so that they are better prepared to take advantage of the great opportunities ETHS has to offer,” said junior Ashley Anderson, one of the program’s co-founders.
The remainder of the presentations focused on improving student performance in mathematics, including a new research project by a Northwestern professor.
Prof. John Diamond, who teaches in the School of Education and Social Policy and is the research director of the Minority Student Achievement Network, presented a preview of the findings of his currently unreleased research project. The focus of his study was the underrepresentation of black and Latino students in higher-level math courses.
Diamond said many minority students have poor teacher-student relationships, which can negatively affect their classroom performance.
District 202 board member Martha Burns questioned the point of the research.
“This discussion is really old,” Burns said. “When is (the narrowing of the achievement gap) going to happen? I disagree with the notion that it should take this long.”
The full findings of the study will be discussed at a Feb. 8 meeting.
Laura Cooper, assistant superintendent for curriculum and instruction at ETHS, acknowledged the existence of an achievement gap but said minority student math performance has been improving. She emphasized that the 2001-02 Illinois State Achievement Test scores revealed math gains for black and Latino students.
She also introduced a new graduation requirement for next year’s freshman class: All students will have to complete three years of math. The current requirement is two. Just more than 75 percent of ETHS students currently complete three or more years of math.
Cooper said the school system’s goal is not just to close the performance gap but to improve the performance of all students.
“We are not aiming for the 50th percentile,” she said. “We really are aiming for the stars. We need a school and community culture that says we care about you and we will get you there.”
Cooper said the 40 ETHS students who are enrolled in multivariable calculus this year reflects the school district’s success in getting early programs started. The early development math programs allow students to reach higher level math classes while still in high school.
“We really see this as the beginning of a wave,” Murphy said.
