When Eric Witherspoon became the superintendent at Evanston Township High School three years ago, he inherited a historically prestigious school that nonetheless had failed to meet “annual yearly progress” for the federal No Child Left Behind Act.

ETHS still hasn’t met all federal standards. But officials say Witherspoon has revived dialogue within the school and made significant efforts toward closing the persistent achievement gap between ETHS’s lowest and highest ranking students.

“He came in, took a look at what needed to be done and what initiative we needed to take to make some change,” said Candace Davis, co-president of the Parent Teacher Student Association at ETHS.

The District 202 School Board hired Witherspoon in February 2006 from a pool of 50 candidates. Witherspoon said his mandate was to provide a new direction. He praised ETHS as a “desirable school,” but recognized not all students have the same enriching experience there.

The biggest problem, Witherspoon said, is the achievement gap between white and minority students, a problem that predates No Child Left Behind and contributes to ETHS’s struggles in meeting the act’s achievement benchmarks, which are based on student performance on standardized tests. The school has failed to meet “annual yearly progress” for all minority subgroups every year since the law took effect.

“Our goal has been to open the pathways so that even more students achieve at a high level,” he said.

Witherspoon began his tenure with a vision of more universal achievement as a way to ameliorate ETHS’s struggles with the act. It has evolved into several initiatives, most notably the school’s System of Supports initiative and the newly modified mixed-level classrooms program.

System of Supports includes anything from mandatory parent-teacher interventions with a struggling student to voluntary remedial help before and after school, Witherspoon said. It has proven popular