HOWNOTTO CLOSE THE ACHIEVEMENT GAP
THE SAD STORY AT CMS' JULIUS L. CHAMBERS HIGH
Reducing any Student Achievement GAP is urban public
education's Holy Grail. So, when an urban Charlotte-Mecklenburg high
school achieved the impossible of an economically disadvantaged group bettering
advantaged students' graduation numbers, it got my attention...until I saw what
a 10-year mess looks like.
Let's start with a typical GAP chart any U.S. urban educator will
recognize. Chart One shows the best of all possibilities:
increasing achievement and GAP closing. In Chart Two, Julius L. Chambers High
School closed the GAP, but in the most diabolical way. The district
allowed both groups' graduation rates to free-fall for ten-years until the disadvantaged
students leveled out as the advantaged continued to implode. That's not education!
CHART ONE
CHART TWO
IS RECONSTITUTION NECESSARY?
Since 2015, Julius L. Chambers High School, formerly Vance High
School, has been in decline as Chart Two above shows. In 2022-2023, the
not-economically disadvantaged students gave up their academic prominence and
became the underperformers. There is no Holy Grail of closing the GAP here. Just an
awkward explanation of how Chambers is the state's 6th WORST graduation
rate among the 147 large traditional high schools.
NEITHER COVID-19 NOR REMOTE LEARNER THE CAUSE
The Pandemic had no hand in the decline. The issue began up to nine years
before in elementary schools, K8s, and middle schools that were unable to prepare
future 9th graders to succeed. The missing special sauce was classroom Reading Comprehension lessons didn't take, accompanied by an unwillingness to retain those not on grade. The hidden villains were principals who accepted that Growth would lead to proficiency...it seldom does!
NINTH GRADERS DON'T STICK AROUND FOR DIPLOMAS
In August 2020, when the Class of 2024
entered Chambers, there were 604 students. Four years later, the 12th-grade
June 2024 ADM sank to 434. An attrition of
170 students (-28.1%). A clear indication that CMS failed to fulfill
its responsibility to prepare students for the challenges of four years of high
school. (source: NCDPI Principals Monthly Reports).
WHO IS AT FAULT?
How and why did the Board of Education let this ten-year fiasco go unnoticed? The State Board of Education gifted local school administrators with a convenient way to warehouse non-proficient students and at the same time advance them to the next grade. It's called Growth measures. To my mind Growth is to schools what opium addiction was to early 19th century China...a pacifier and motivation killer.
ARE CHAMBERS TEACHERS EFFECTIVE?
In the 2019 last full year before the Pandemic, which also was a low point for Chambers(Vance) economically disadvantaged student graduations; the Chambers' highly effective teacher percentage was one-third the district average. This should have been a sign to the Board that Chambers students weren't being supported.
CHART LEGEND:
ni needs improvement
eff effective
he highly effective
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