Dozens rally to focus on minority education

Minority students in Utah face an educational achievement gap every day in school.

Could the federal No Child Left Behind program be the answer to closing that gap? Or how about the U-PASS — the Utah Performance Assessment System for Students?

The answer could be somewhere in the middle, according to Andrea Rorrer, an assistant professor at the University of Utah's Department of Educational Leadership and Policy and a member of the Utah Achievement Gap Coalition.

More than 50 people attended a rally Monday night at Salt Lake City's Riley Elementary School to discuss how the state can move toward equity in education for all social classes.

"We feel like this hasn't become a problem enough, and we want to keep bringing it up and keep asking questions to make sure our students are getting the best education possible that they can," said Jim Martin, a fourth-grade teacher at Riley and a member of the Utah Achievement Gap Coalition.

The discussion came on the eve of a much-anticipated state legislative debate expected to begin today. In today's special session, lawmakers are expected to debate a bill that explains how Utah will deal with President Bush's No Child Left Behind federal education requirement.

NCLB requires that all students read and do math by 2014, regardless of race, income or disability. But Utah officials say NCLB is too strict in determining how students are progressing toward that goal, and they believe Utah is better fit to decide.

Utah is asking the U.S. Department of Education to loosen testing requirements for students learning English as a second language and to use its own growth-centered accountability system, U-PASS, to meet NCLB requirements.

Both systems are flawed, according to members of the Utah Achievement Gap Coalition. U-PASS is a young, untested education system, Rorrer said.

"There are components of NCLB that we think are good that can help us close the achievement gap," Rorrer said. "U-PASS, to be honest . . . we don't know enough about it in its current form to know. We're not sure that's a good thing."

The rally on achievement gaps comes on the heels of a survey released by the Utah Consortium of Minority Groups and the Utah Family Center. It says minorities, in general, have a much higher dropout rate and lower test scores than white students.

"How is it we have such a huge disparity between dreams and reality?" said Ljubica "Buba" Roth, chief executive officer of Utah Peace Institute and spokeswoman for the consortium, an umbrella group of 23 racial and ethnic minority associations.