Tacoma educators and civic leaders are going to back to college this fall to learn how to help struggling students.

Their coursework: Hear from researchers, leaders of school districts across the nation and Harvard University faculty members about closing the achievement gap between white and minority students.

It won’t be an easy class to pass.

And putting kids from Tacoma’s minority, immigrant and poor communities on a path to more learning, graduation and college or success in the job market could take decades, a Harvard researcher says.

“This is a journey. And it’s a long journey,” said Heather Barstow Weiss, founder and director of the Harvard Family Research Project.

But that doesn’t mean Tacoma schools, community groups and parents can’t make changes to start benefiting kids right away, she added.

The work is crucial and urgent, said Dorothy Anderson, president of the Tacoma Urban League. “I think that we’re long overdue to try to come up with something that will give the most vulnerable kids in our community an opportunity to have a better shot at life.”

An increasingly loud and sustained chorus of pleas for attention to Tacoma’s achievement gap arose from the Urban League and several other community groups in recent years.

Anderson is one of two civic leaders invited by Tacoma School District interim Superintendent Art Jarvis to attend the Nov. 1-3 Harvard institute “Closing the Achievement Gap: Linking Families, Schools and Communities Through Complementary Learning.” Tom Hilyard, education chairman of the Tacoma Black Collective, Jarvis and five other school administrators also are making the trip.

The $29,500 cost for travel, hotel, tuition and other expenses will be paid for with federal Title 1 funds, which are earmarked for helping disadvantaged kids do better in school. The Tacoma School Board approved the trip Thursday night.

LOOKING FOR ANSWERS

The quest isn’t new. Community groups and school officials long have grappled with the troubling issue. Helping minority kids learn was a directive the Tacoma School Board gave to Charlie Milligan when he was hired as superintendent in 2006. Jarvis got the same mandate when the board hired him after Milligan’s summer departure.

About half of Tacoma’s 29,000 students are an ethnic minority. Roughly 55 percent of Tacoma’s kids qualify for free or reduced price lunches, a widely accepted indicator of poverty.

Only 52.6 percent of the city’s black 10th-graders passed the reading portion of the WASL this year, compared with 73.7 percent of their white counterparts, according to a draft report from the School District.

The disparity is even more striking in math. Just 13.7 percent of black 10th-graders met the state standard, while 43.5 percent of the School District’s white sophomores passed.

The issue many call a community crisis boiled over last spring .

The Black Collective, an influential civic group, implored Milligan on several occasions to come up with a plan to focus on the issue. In letters and public comments, the group pointed out the gap runs far deeper than what WASL scores show.

Collective members wanted to know why the cumulative grade-point average among black ninth-graders was only 1.6 on a 4-point scale. The figure, Hilyard said, showed Tacoma’s black youth were ill-prepared for high school.

“Today my pride is hurt,” he told the school board during its May 24 meeting, citing a number of concerns about the city’s schools.

Turning squarely to face school board President Connie Rickman, that night, he added: “I’m looking to you, Madam President. I’m asking you to do something.”

FIXING WHAT’S BROKEN

The Harvard Graduate School of Education is offering the institute to which the Tacoma contingent is headed.

The institute, in its second year, is so popular there’s a waiting list, said Weiss, who’s done extensive research and written many papers on how to get families and communities involved in kids’ learning and development.

The Tacoma group will be among delegates from 20 cities learning together.

The researcher, who did her homework on the Tacoma School District, its issues and the last tumultuous year, told The News Tribune on Thursday that having community representatives in the delegation is crucial.

“What we’ve come to see is that if we’re going to close the achievement gap, it’s not going to be any one thing,” she said. “It’s going to be a set of things.”

She believes the answer to successful education for all kids is a support network that embraces them “really from birth” to adulthood.

That means a “complementary learning” approach that focuses on deep involvement of families, schools, community groups and businesses.

And learning doesn’t stop at the schoolhouse door. Kids need help during out-of-class hours, too, Weiss said.

“I think we are at a tipping point in this country where people recognize that schools alone can’t do it,” she said.

TAKE-HOME LESSON

Karyn Clarke, the School District’s director of improvement, expects the Tacoma group to return home with ideas for launching an assault on the problem.

Though the conversation often focuses on black youth, Clarke urges people to see take a wider view.

“It’s the ethnic minorities. It’s the special education students. It’s the second language students. It’s the Anglo students who are in poverty,” she said. “There are a lot of kids who will be addressed in our effort to close the achievement gap. Any child who’s not meeting standards is a child we care about.”

Clarke expects the group to return with ideas on enlarging “the community conversation” and then proceeding slowly to do that. She’s hoping a plan of attack and timeline can be crafted by January.

Hilyard of the Black Collective called the Harvard trip a sign of “an uptick in efforts to address the concerns.” While he’s hopeful solutions will eventually be carved out, he said he’ll take a “wait and see” stance for now.

The Urban League’s Anderson knows it’s an “exploratory effort,” too. But she also is eager for change.

“It’s gotten to a critical situation, and it has long-term consequences for the city of Tacoma” Anderson said, referring to the possibilities of disaffected minority students dropping out and “ending up incarcerated, underemployed or unemployed.”

“I hope that the energy that seems to be behind us is going to grow and that we ultimately produce a plan that we can use.”

Achievement gap in Tacoma schools

Chart shows percentages of Tacoma 10th graders in various groups who met or exceeded WASL standards in reading and math from 2005 through 2007.

Reading

2005 2006 2007

Black45.5 51.3 52.6

Hispanic51.6 49.4 55.1

White65.4 70.4 73.7

District 59.6 63.9 69.6

State 72.9 82.0 80.6

Math

2005 2006 2007

Black15.8 11.3 13.7

Hispanic18.8 18.4 21.3

White38.5 40.0 43.5

District 32.8 32.3 36.0

State 47.5 51.0 50.2

Note: Numbers represent the percent of all enrolled students except those exempt from testing. Source: Ethnic group scores derived from Aug. 22 draft WASL performance figures posted on Tacoma School District Web site; district and state average figures for 2007 from OSPI School Report Card Off to Harvard

The Tacoma School District is sending these people to a Harvard seminar on closing the gap.

 • Dorothy Anderson, president of the Tacoma Urban League

 • Karyn Clarke, Tacoma School District director of improvement

 • Dan Dizon, McIlvaigh Middle School principal

 • Pat Erwin, Lincoln High School principal

 • Tom Hilyard, education chairman for the Tacoma Black Collective

 • Art Jarvis, interim superintendent

 • Flip Herndon, assistant superintendent for K-12 support

 • Michael Power, assistant superintendent for program and learning support

Kris Sherman: 253-597-8659

Kris.sherman@thenewstribune.com