Word: fornero
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...superintendent of schools in Ann Arbor, Mich., George Fornero can tick off the kind of statistics that might cause ambitious parents to consider moving across the country to get their kids into his schools. The class of 2004 in the city's three main high schools racked up a combined average score of 1165 on the SAT, 139 points higher than the national average. Eighty-five percent of their seniors go on to four-year colleges. And last year they had 44 National Merit finalists. But there are other numbers of which Fornero is less proud. The district's African...
...discrepancies baffle Fornero because the median family income in the integrated city is $71,293 and the district spends a generous $9,234 on each pupil. Furthermore, the vast majority of students come from homes in which at least one parent is college educated. "How do I market the district to African-American parents with these numbers?" he says of the black students' performance. "We can't have one set of facts we put on billboards in front of the schools and another set we don't talk about...
Superintendents from the districts Ferguson studied, including Rossi Ray-Taylor, Fornero's predecessor in Ann Arbor, had created a network to share gap-closing ideas even before Ferguson began his research. His findings formed the basis for the efforts Ray-Taylor started in 2002, which Fornero expanded when he took over in January 2003. "Our goal is achievement and opportunity for all students--and I'm serious about it," Fornero says...
...everyone in Ann Arbor is enthusiastic about Fornero's approach to narrowing the achievement gap. Some white residents have complained that the efforts to bring black students up to par will divert resources from other students. Accordingly, the phrases "African American" and "minority" are absent from the titles and mission statements of the various initiatives, and the programs are open to all underachieving students. Many teachers are simply ill at ease with the frank public conversations on race that the new strategies sometimes require. To assuage those anxieties, Fornero has hired Deborah Harmon, an African-American education professor from nearby...
...efforts will pay off. But there are some signs that the chasm is beginning to narrow. Among fourth-graders, for example, 92% of whites met state reading standards last year, and so did nearly 70% of their black classmates, up from a mere 35% three years ago. Nonetheless, superintendent Fornero gives Ann Arbor's performance only a grade of C because "some people still don't believe we have a problem." Until they do, he says, the path to an A will be long and uphill...
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