Fairfax Success Masks Gap for Black Students

Fairfax educators are still trying to figure out how a school system that helps so many children thrive has fallen short for one group. Thousands of immigrant children who cannot speak English when they enter Fairfax schools learn the language in sophisticated literacy programs and passed the third-grade reading test at a 70 percent rate. High-poverty Fairfax schools have extra resources for remediation. Yet too many black students are not getting the help they need.

The result has been a school system that is uncharacteristically off balance.

Fairfax school officials readily acknowledge that they don't know how to solve the problem or what has caused it. They even went to Richmond twice last year to study that city's success. While black student performance has shown modest improvement over the past three years in Fairfax, it has risen greatly in Richmond.

But the challenge is different in Fairfax, where there are 17,600 black students, or about 11 percent of the school population. Schools in Richmond and Norfolk are majority black, so helping those students does not require focusing on a particular racial group.

In addition, some educators say they fear that teaching to the test -- which Richmond readily acknowledges it does -- would not work in Fairfax because the vast majority of students are passing and school officials don't want to give up the creativity that comes with current teaching methods.

"We run the risk of losing our community who think, 'This is not what I want for my child,' " said Ann Monday, assistant superintendent for instructional services.

The achievement gap between Hispanic and black students and their white and Asian peers is among the toughest challenges facing schools nationwide. Fairfax, like most school districts, has historically worked to close that gap.

The search for ways to boost black test scores has led Fairfax to an unlikely teacher, Richmond. Educators want to learn how the historically troubled district accomplished a major academic turnaround in recent years.

Poverty is one of the key reasons many minority children struggle in school. Children from low-income homes tend to have fewer books and generally are read to less often than those in middle-class homes.

Although poverty is a challenge in Fairfax, it is an even bigger hurdle in Richmond. In Fairfax, 43 percent of black children qualify for free or reduced-price school meals, a common indicator of poverty. Overall, 20 percent of the county's students qualify. In Richmond schools, where nearly 90 percent of students are black, about 69 percent qualify for subsidized meals.

That means something going on in Richmond schools is making a difference.

"It's not about the kids," Monday said. "It's about us preparing the kids for those tests."