In 2019, Jesse Doiron was a new teacher in Milwaukee.
He was working one-on-one with struggling kids to help them catch up. But he didn’t feel like the system was moving to close the achievement gap between Black and white students.
He wrote in to WUWM’s Beats Me series asking for an examination of that gap.
“My question was: Milwaukee had the largest achievement gap between Black and white students in the United States," he says. "Is there political will to fix this large issue?”
It’s been seven years since Doiron sent in his question. Since then, it's clear that the the achievement gap — also known as the opportunity gap — had only gotten worse.
In 2019, Black fourth graders in Wisconsin scored 39 points lower than their white peers on national reading assessments. The gap was the same for eighth grade readers, according to the National Assessment for Educational Progress.
By 2024, that achievement gap had widened to 45 points. The gap for eighth graders remained the same at 39 points.
Why does the racial achievement gap exist in Milwaukee?
To understand why the achievement gap exists in the first place, it helps to look backwards first.
James Nelsen is a Milwaukee Public Schools teacher and a historian who wrote the book "Educating Milwaukee" on how Milwaukee’s schools attempted to desegregate.
“Milwaukee is, of course, one of the most segregated metropolitan areas in the United States. And it's not just racially segregated, it's also economically segregated," he says.
The economic segregation means that there’s a higher rate of poverty among Black families in Milwaukee, which can result in compounding challenges.
Students may struggle with evictions or unstable housing, deal with the impacts of gun violence, have difficulties getting to school or parents who work several jobs and may not be able to assist with schoolwork.
Dr. James Ferguson is on the Milwaukee School Board. He represents the predominately Black central part of the city, and explains the historical under-resourcing of Black neighborhoods creates more difficult learning environments for students.
Pair that with closing schools and long commutes for students, and Ferguson says the system has been designed to let them down.
Asked whether he thinks there’s political will in Milwaukee to change this, Ferguson said “Honestly, I have to say no."
"The reason I say no is because I think Black males in particular are one of the most neglected, and one of the most neglected groups in our city," he says. "I think if the case were the same for white male students, you would see coalitions forming around this particular issue in order to lift them up. And unfortunately, that just hasn't been the case when it comes to Black males.”
It's worth mentioning that MPS participates in the Achievement Gap Reduction program offered by the state Department of Public Instruction.
It also hosts a collection of chapters of the Black and Latino Male Achievement program, although budget cuts this year will result in consolidation of some staff into one central equity office.
Has Milwaukee accepted the racial achievement gap as 'just the way things are?'
Colleston Morgan, executive director of the pro-school choice and charter group City Forward Collective, says that too many people have resigned themselves to the status quo in Milwaukee.
“I think that we have accepted a reality in our city for far too long that this is just the way things are, or perhaps the way things have to be," Morgan says.
He rejects that. Morgan says that the achievement gap is fueled by small decisions year after year, such as recent failures by the state Department of Public Instruction to fund the work of the Milwaukee Reading Coalition, and Milwaukee Public Schools’ hesitancy to close under enrolled schools.
Morgan’s organization released a report earlier this year that found that Milwaukee Public Schools serve 57% of all the Black students in Wisconsin. Most live or attend schools on the city’s northwest side.
"Twenty-two of the 50 lowest performing schools are on the north side of Milwaukee," Morgan says. "Seventeen of those are Milwaukee public schools, but that means that we've got schools that are not Milwaukee public schools that are also sitting on that bottom 50 list."
"We can't solve these challenges just by looking to Milwaukee Public Schools, and we can't solve these challenges without Milwaukee Public Schools," Morgan adds.
Dr. Brenda Cassellius is the superintendent of Milwaukee Public Schools. She says that MPS offers a variety of programs meant to keep kids coming to school and supporting their learning – things like early childhood programs, intervention for students with disabilities and crisis support for families.
But Cassellius says the creation of the school choice program 36 years ago hasn’t delivered on its promises to improve outcomes for Black students. Instead, she says it’s created more instability for families and disrupted public school budgets.
“I think there needs to be a much more coordinated effort around the children of Milwaukee — regardless of what type of system you go to now that the city has chosen it — to ensure that there is a compelling political will (to address the achievement gap)," she says.
Cassellius also questioned whether the National Assessment for Educational Progress is the right mechanism to measure student achievement gaps. The assessments are given to a random sampling of students every two years.
"We use (NAEP) to make more generalized assumptions about students' learning," she says. "When you're trying to move the Black/white student achievement gap, you need to be looking individual-by-individual, school-by-school. It has to be that precise."
"What's a better measure of that performance is that student's work on course assessments that are given by the teacher to really gauge whether they're making progress toward the grade-level standards," she says.
Addressing the achievement gap involves bringing families out of poverty
Meanwhile, a conservative-leaning organization that’s looked at Wisconsin's education disparities has advocated for looking beyond race when considering the achievement gap – and focusing instead on poverty.
Will Flanders is the research director of the Wisconsin Institute for Law and Liberty.
“The way to help these minority students reach higher levels of achievement isn't to focus on race," he says. "The solutions still lie generally in the same things that will be effective for any student of any race that comes from a low-income background.”
Part of what Flanders said appears to cut across the political spectrum: To close the achievement gap, Milwaukee should address underlying issues of poverty, invest in early literacy and better fund special education.
But Cassellius, the MPS superintendent, says she doesn't like using poverty as an "excuse" for leaving students behind.
And school board director James Ferguson says that addressing poverty will require more investment in areas like the district he represents, not closing schools.
"When we treat every student the same without regard to their circumstances, their unique circumstances or their unique needs, what we see is that [achievement] gap continue to widen," he says.
"But when we specifically lean into and not shy away from these groups that are underperforming, when we develop programming specifically around that, the achievement of that group, we see the group increases [in achievement,]" he says.
At the center of all the debates about the achievement gap are the students who are living it.
And they’re counting on school leaders and the adults in the room to close the gap and open up more opportunities.
Do you have a question about education or how schools work in our area? Submit it here to WUWM education reporter Katherine Kokal.
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