Racial Achievement Gap in Schools to be Probed

Posted on Oct. 2, 2006

“Closing the Racial Achievement Gap: What Works?” is the title of conference set for Oct. 6 at UNC and Oct. 7 at Duke University.

The event, the 2006 Youth and Race conference presented by UNC’s Institute of African American Research, is co-sponsored by units on both campuses. Educators from schools and universities nationwide will debate the issue.

“This year’s conference will showcase approaches that have been effective in markedly raising black and Latino student academic achievement,” said William Darity Jr., institute director and a professor at both universities.

“I hope that this conference will make it clear that there is no mystery to closing the achievement gap, that it is largely a matter of political will to make the needed changes in school policies and practices,” he said.

On Oct. 6, in UNC’s Sonja Haynes Stone Center for Black Culture and History, speakers will include:
UNC sociologist Karolyn Tyson, who studies the black-white achievement gap and interactions between schooling processes and student achievement. Tyson is at work on a manuscript about her 10 years of research on black academic achievement. Her keynote address will be 9 to 10 a.m.

Harvard University sociologist Prudence Carter, who wrote Keepin’ It Real: School Success Beyond Black and White (Oxford University Press, 2005). In the book, she looks at how race, class and gender influence achievement among low-income black and Latino youth. She will speak from 10:15 to 11:15 a.m.

On Oct. 7, in Duke’s Bryan Center, speakers will include:
Muriel Summers, principal of the A.B. Combs Leadership Magnet Elementary School in Raleigh, speaking from 9 to 10 a.m. on “Inside the Achievement Gap: The Teacher-Administrator Perspective.” One of the state’s most diverse schools, Combs, named a National Blue Ribbon School of Excellence and winner of other top honors, has seen more than 97 percent of its students perform at or above grade level on statewide assessments.

Charles Payne, Duke African-American studies, history and sociology professor, who wrote Getting What We Ask For: The Ambiguity of Success and Failure in Urban Education (Greenwood Press, 1984). Harvard Education Publishing will issue his new book next year, So Much Reform, So Little Change: The Persistence of Failure in Urban School Systems.

Conference co-sponsors are the Robertson Scholars Program of both universities; UNC’s Center for Developmental Science and Moore Undergraduate Research Apprentice Program; and Duke’s African and African American studies program, Center for Child and Family Policy, education program and Spencer Foundation Education Policy Research Training Program.

directions to the sites, are available online.

For more information, contact Mikhaela Houston by e-mail at the institute or at (919) 962-0977.

---