by Danielle Childress
African-American and Hispanic students score lower than Caucasian and Asian students on standardized tests across Henrico County and the United States. Henrico County Public Schools refers to the difference in scores as the achievement gap.
In January, HCPS held two meetings for residents to discuss the achievement gap between its Caucasian and African-American students on standardized testing, graduation rates and advanced diplomas.
Administrators Nicholas Barlett and Karen Castillo, social studies teacher Aaron Rose, exceptional education teacher Sarah Melton and English teacher Seth Croft attended the county meeting.
“The meeting allowed for a large number of people to share ideas, and the best ones floated to the top,” Mr. Barlett said. “Time will tell if implementing these ideas across the county will make meaningful change.”
Based on information from the HCPS website on the achievement gap, discussions at the meeting identified the lack of both parental involvement and rigorous instruction as the main barriers to success for county students, regardless of ethnicity.
African-American senior Iyanna Draper has a grade point average of 4.4 and is one of the top ten seniors in the class based on GPA. Iyanna said a lack of motivation at home could lead to students’ lack of success at school.
“If parents aren’t there to motivate their kids or show them there’s a better way to do things, they just don’t see that,” Iyanna said.
Principal Tracie Omohundro said fewer people attended Varina’s own meeting on the achievement gap than expected.
“The people that were there are interested in finding solutions, but there weren’t enough people there,” Mrs. Omohundro said.
The achievement gap has been a hot topic among educators since the early 2000s, and Mrs. Omohundro said that everybody is scrambling for answers.
“Whether it’s ability, support from the home, the quality of education they receive, external factors or physical factors, many things go into a student’s success or failure,” Mrs. Omohundro said. “There’s no magical answer.”
Although the achievement gap is present in test scores across the county and state, Varina’s school report from the Virginia Department of Education website shows Varina has a higher percentage of African-American students completing high school than Caucasian students.
School administrators said the solution to closing the achievement gap is not yet clear.
“Some solutions would include making sure our teachers are prepared to teach our student population, making sure we support teachers and the quality of teaching they are providing, recruiting help from the home to help students in what they do and continuing to try to find ways to motivate students to be successful, Mrs. Omohundro said.
Despite the achievement gap at Varina, Mr. Barlett said the quality of education is high.
“I feel that VHS has a total school program as good, if not better, than any other school in the county,” Mr. Barlett said. “I sometimes worry that the public sees very little of the great things that our students, teachers and parents do each day, but that doesn’t stop us from striving always to do better.”
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