Closing The Gap

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Boosting the number of minority students in Advanced Placement (AP) classes is a priority for Ann Arbor officials, but part of their challenge will be to make the students feel less alienated once they get into them. Sterling Cross, a junior at Pioneer High School, is often one of just two or three black students in AP classes because, he says, many of his black friends who are also qualified to take them are intimidated by both the rigor and the prospect of going it alone. They are worried that if they have trouble, they won't get any help and that a few poor test scores could mark them as failures. Jasmine Daniel, a junior with a 3.97 GPA, says the trepidation many minority students feel is understandable. She says two other minority students who enrolled with her in accelerated science last year transferred out because of the pressure. "I can see why they switch out or won't try at all. It's no fun killing yourself like this."

Not 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 Eastern Michigan University and the mother of two kids who have attended the Ann Arbor schools, to lead teachers and administrators through a cultural-competency course that fosters an appreciation for the perspectives of students and colleagues from diverse ethnic backgrounds. Separately, teachers at Pioneer High organized a faculty reading club to discuss books about race in hopes of making their colleagues more comfortable with the subject. "When we started, people avoided me in the hallways," says Amy Deller, a white science teacher who recruited members and leads the group. "But now colleagues grab me to have conversations."