Fairfax Success Masks Gap for Black Students

Hunt recently met a black mother whose daughter is in the fifth grade at a Reston area school. During a meeting with a teacher, the woman said, she was told her daughter had problems but was improving. But the girl ended up with low grades.

Hunt doesn't know what that teacher said or what the mother heard, but he is discouraged that the result wasn't a clear plan to push the child to do better.

"The teacher might have been attempting to let the mom know that things were not well. Nobody wants to say, 'Your daughter's practically illiterate,' " Hunt said. "The perception of the mom was that there was no urgency."

At Woodville in Richmond, each child will say he expects to pass the next test. Students begin each school day with an affirmation. "I am somebody. I am somebody," they chant. "Here at Woodville, I will dress for success to be the best. I will come to school to learn, and I will learn."

Percy Norwood, who is black and whose son is a senior at Fairfax County's Centreville High School, is among those concerned about the lagging test scores. He is convinced that hiring more minority teachers would boost performance among black children. "People of different races bring different perspectives to the table," he said.

Norwood said he recently walked into a high school history classroom, and "all I saw was pictures of former presidents and white folks."

"The teacher has no idea what message that sends to [black] kids," Norwood said. "They are thinking, 'They aren't teaching about me in here.' "

The NAACP's Johnson and other African American leaders said the black community in Fairfax has to push that "I will learn" attitude, too. "The culture is somehow we've allowed ourselves to believe that being smart is not cool," he said.

This spring, two Fairfax schools have invited black parents to talk about their children's school performance. Carolyn Smith, a fifth-grade teacher at Washington Mill Elementary in the Alexandria section of the county, led one of those meetings.

Smith, who is African American, has seen black children in her classroom struggle. Still, she was nervous when she decided to bring black parents and black teachers together.

"As African American teachers, we were afraid to address the issue because people would perceive it as being negative," Smith said. "But we have to throw all that away and say, 'We have to face this.' "'

At the same time, Fairfax school officials are reshaping what is happening in elementary classrooms.

Fairfax has added training sessions to help teachers connect with every child. A new computerized system helps assess each child's progress and pinpoint where the student is falling short.

Increasingly, children meet in small groups with others who have a similar mastery of a subject. Several schools have teaching coaches and special teams to identify struggling students and help them progress.

Some schools that have focused on lagging test scores have shown progress. At Hybla Valley Elementary School in the Alexandria section of the county, 57 percent of black third-graders passed the reading test in 2003. Last year, 71 percent passed.

This spring, students across Virginia have been taking the annual Standards of Learning tests. Schools chief Dale said he wants all of Fairfax's students -- including the black children -- to be among the tops in the state.

"We ought to be in the top 5 percent in the state across all subcategories," Dale said. "The question is how we do it. We all believe we can, and we should."

Database editor Dan Keating contributed to this report.