by Kimberly Kroll, intern

Progress toward closing the achievement gap in D.C. public schools is slowing as the mayoral race speeds to a halt. Addressing the District’s poverty issue may be the only solution to reviving the progress towards a gap-free education environment.

Although there has been much progress in closing the achievement gap between Caucasian and African American students throughout the past three years of Fenty’s administration, 2010 test results released by Chancellor Michelle Rhee last week show a lack of movement toward closing the gap this year.

Fenty claims that the achievement gap is being closed rapidly, but evidence shows that this is not the case in some areas. Although scores of secondary students have markedly improved since 2007, very little of that progress has come this year. Additionally, success in elementary schools has not been as high as in secondary schools —it has even lowered in some cases.

Washington Post reporter Bill Turque reports that this year the math achievement gap widened between fourth grade students, and the gap in secondary math widened by almost 2 percent. Elementary reading scores have fluctuated, ultimately returning to almost exactly the same level they were at in 2007. Secondary reading scores have halted, closing most of the 15-point gap from 67.2 to 52.2 percent between 2007 to 2009, only one point of which was this year.  Further, the reading gap between Caucasian and Hispanic secondary students has grown over 9 percentage points in 2010.

Walter Smith, member of Defeat Poverty D.C. and executive director of D.C. Appleseed, said today on WAMU that the achievement gap cannot close any further until the issue of poverty in the District is addressed.  He commented further that students who must endure unsafe housing, hunger, and illness related to economic hardship are disproportionately disadvantaged when it comes to achieving in school.

In order to pull these children out of harsh learning environments, their parents must be provided with jobs where they can earn enough to support a family, Smith said. Mayor Adrian Fenty and Councilman Vince Gray who are vying for the mayoral position must address poverty if they want to make progress in the education reforms that they have put at the core of their campaigns.

Fenty and Gray both made their mayoral promises open to the public in op-ed columns published in The Washington Post Sunday.

Fenty’s piece lists his past successes, says he will continue to reform the education system, and briefly mentions continuing to battle unemployment.  “We’ve created thousands of jobs, financed more than 11,000 units of affordable housing and delivered more than a dozen new parks and recreation centers in neighborhoods that had not seen real investment in decades,” Fenty wrote. But what about the children and families who are still suffering? Fenty vows to continue to work towards solving the problems plaguing D.C., mainly the achievement gap and unemployment, but lacks an explanation as to how he will do so.

Gray seems a bit more attuned to what is necessary for creating healthier environments for students by calling for more jobs and safer neighborhoods in hand with education reform in his piece. Although Gray opens with education reform, he lays groundwork for how to further improve education in the District by extending reform to the college level. Gray also explains how he plans to put D.C. residents back to work, cut down on crime in residential areas, and reform the way the mayor’s office is run.

Walter Smith believes that reducing poverty will not only improve education but also help build the city’s workforce and tax base, increase business, reduce crime, and lower expenses for social services. Poverty is the barrier to further closing the achievement gap. With so many residents facing economic hardship, the gap between students will not budge.

University of California professor of education and public policy, Bruce Fuller, says that although teachers are highly influential in making a difference in the lives and education of poor children, this influence is limited. “Part of this hitting the wall may be the troubling fact that we may need to somehow attack family poverty before we see greater progress in closing achievement,” Fuller told Washington Post reporters.

Seventy-five million dollars in grant money were awarded to the D.C. area by President Obama in an education reform contest, according to Washington Post reporter Nick Anderson. Hopefully the winner of the mayoral election will wait until after poverty has been tackled to decide how to dish out the grant for improving schools and closing the achievement gap.