Edison Schools Announces Achievement Gap Gains Tuesday, December 17, 2002 Edison announced today that in its schools serving predominantly African American students, it is showing important academic progress. In those Edison schools with 90 percent or more African American students, the average annual rate of improvement of student achievement through the 2001-2002 school year is 5.2 percentage points on criterion-referenced tests and 4.4 percentile points on norm-referenced tests. These rates of improvement are several times greater than the rate of improvement by all students in the districts and states where these Edison schools are located. The corresponding statewide average gain rates are 0.2 percentage points and 1.2 percentile points for criterion-referenced and norm-referenced tests, respectively. The corresponding district gain rates are 0.7 percentage points and 3.1 percentiles, respectively. These gains at Edison's predominately African American schools are important for several reasons. Nationwide, the scores of African American children have lagged significantly behind those of whites and the general population for many generations. Though this achievement gap improved somewhat during the 1970s and 1980s, it actually worsened in the 1990s. The progress being made in the Edison schools shows very clearly that the gap can be reduced with the implementation of a comprehensive education program and school design. These gains are all the more significant because they were made in 35 schools across 12 states, a large and varied sample. They also reflect annualized gains going back as far as 1997 and including all subjects and grade levels, from K-12, who are subjected to required standardized testing. Dr. John E. Chubb, Edison Chief Education Officer, and co-editor with Tom Loveless, of the recent study Bridging the Achievement Gap, published last month by The Brookings Institution, commented: "The progress made by many of Edison's predominantly African American schools compares very favorably with several other reforms that appear to be beginning to make substantial, though isolated, progress in reducing the achievement gap. This progress is obviously most important to the students who are making these strides, for it promises to radically improve their future educational and economic options. It is also important for our nation, as it looks for ways to solve an educational problem that has had devastating consequences for the nation's social welfare and racial harmony." Edison Schools Inc. will be detailing its progress in reducing the achievement gap, as well as sharing other measures of academic achievement, in its Fifth Annual Report on Student Achievement, scheduled for publication in late January 2003.
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