Minority students say network helps them succeed
Sitting in the back of the class isn't necessarily a bad thing, but when Nicole Coburn found herself assigned to the back row along with all the minorities in a class at East High School, she asked the teacher a pointed question.
Why?
The senior was surprised at the response.
"I asked, 'Was it intentional that you think students who achieve more were placed in the front of the class?' The teacher said, 'I don't like when students join a class and don't intend to do anything in class.' "
Coburn, who is African-American, explained that she was not given the chance to show her intentions and prove herself, a statement that silenced the teacher.
"You wouldn't outwardly admit that you're discriminating against somebody, but the fact that the teacher didn't give any explanation" was wrong, Coburn said.
She contends that this particular teacher's reaction is not the norm at East, but creating an atmosphere of equity in schools is one of her goals through her involvement with the Minority Student Achievement Network.
The network, which moved to Madison this year from Evanston, Ill., is a consortium of students, teachers and administrators from 23 high-achieving and affluent public school districts from across the country that studies ways to eliminate achievement gaps between white students and minorities. The group hosted 180 participants at its annual student conference Sept. 24-27 at the Monona Terrace Convention Center.
While the network has some targeted initiatives such as improving access to honors courses for minority students, one of the conference's main purposes was to develop leadership skills for participants, and they said that their public involvement with the network has boosted their confidence, and by extension, their peers' as well.
"That's one thing that I took away from MSAN is that being a leader rubs off on people at my school," said Coburn, who plans on studying education, psychology or business in college. "If my friends see me doing something they wouldn't normally do, like extracurriculars or MSAN, they ask me questions.
"That's because I'm going to go to college and I'm preparing myself, and I'm filling out college applications and hanging out with friends who are going to achieve because I want to achieve. Now I see them more often, and they're asking for homework help and things like that."
Reaching out for help is the key, said Memorial High School senior Justin Tompkins, who was also at the conference. He said that while he's always had positive experiences at Memorial, minority students who have problems often need to learn to trust and interact better with teachers.
His own experiences with the network over the past two years have given him a self-assurance that's helped him speak in front of the Madison School Board and school administrators.
"The biggest thing that I've gotten, the problems that I have with going through school growing up in a college town as a minority are shared across the country regardless of where you come from," said Tompkins, who attended the conference last year in Arlington, Va.
Tompkins and Coburn were two of eight Madison Metropolitan School District high school students who helped organize the conference last week. Other students who attended and assisted in planning were Kweku Brewoo, Fernanda Leyva Jaimes and Chloe Brown of West High School; Alisha Muhammed of Memorial; and Lorena Guimaraens from La Follette.
Large portions of the event were devoted to leadership building and college preparedness. Students representing districts including Green Bay; Shaker Heights, Ohio; Arlington, Va.; Eugene, Ore.; and Cambridge, Mass., collected ideas on tackling achievement gaps in their schools. The network focuses on well-off communities because unlike many large, urban school districts, they don't have the excuse of having too little money to explain the achievement gap.
In February, network officials relocated their offices to the Wisconsin Center for Education Research, choosing the University of Wisconsin location over Harvard and the University of Pennsylvania.
Executive director Madeline Hafner said the collaboration among researchers, practitioners, students and administrators is valuable. She said she does not yet have quantifiable data to show the network is making a difference, but she added that there are individual examples of collaboration between districts that have helped to increase achievement.
In one example, a social studies class called "Sociology of the Achievement Gap" was added to course offerings at a high school in Amherst, Mass., after an MSAN student group drafted a proposal with ideas for the class, which was fine-tuned and approved by the school's curriculum committee.
"I think one of the things that's impressed me (with MSAN) when I meet with district folks from across the country is their sense of urgency about this problem," Hafner said. "It's not about what we want or don't want; it's not about if we're comfortable or not comfortable. This is a huge, burning issue, and they have such a high commitment level to making these changes in ways that are so sensitive to their communities."
Tamira Madsen/Capital Times
Memorial senior Justin Tompkins (left) and West senior Fernanda Leyva Jaimes were two of eight local students to attend the Minority Student Achievement Network conference.
