Start early to close achievement gap
6:38 PM 7/01/04

Wisconsin schools on the whole graduate the vast majority of their students. But there's an unacceptably wide gap between white graduation rates (87 percent) and those of African-American students (44 percent) and Hispanic students (55 percent). <

Yes, many of these students live in Milwaukee. But it's wrong to write off this problem as a Milwaukee issue. Statewide, poverty, more than race, is the primary warning signal of potential school failure. Almost all African-American and Hispanic dropouts are poor. But so are most white dropouts. <

A state task force recommends testing an extended school year in high-poverty schools to help students keep up, and perhaps establishing boarding schools for homeless kids. While expensive propositions, these creative ideas shouldn't be dismissed as unworkable. <

Bridging the achievement gap isn't merely a matter of money, either. Pouring money into middle or high schools full of poor students is, frankly, money down the drain. It's too late to make much difference in school performance and attendance at that point. <

The resources need to be focused on younger children. Cutting class sizes for children in grades kindergarten through third grade - but not beyond - has shown some promise. An even better buy for taxpayers would be preschool programs targeting poor kids. UW-Madison research shows that early childhood education targeting the poor could be the most effective way to solve this problem. <

Rather than spend a lot of money on special education in the elementary and upper grades, the argument goes, we should give poor kids an extra boost early, effectively eliminating many special education needs later. Programs that help parents learn proper child-rearing also figure into this equation. <

Does this mean we want government dictating parenting? Of course not. Early childhood education isn't day care, and it doesn't replace the need for good parenting. These programs teach children how to learn - addressing head-on the fact that for a complicated set of reasons, poor children don't pick up good learning habits as readily as better-off children. <

Even as we acknowledge that Wisconsin has done a poor job recognizing and relieving poverty-linked learning problems, now comes a new wrench in the works: language. As the population of Spanish speakers grows rapidly, it's clear that we need to find more effective ways of teaching students who speak English poorly or not at all. <

Expanding effective bilingual programs - such as the promising Nuestro Mundo charter elementary school in Madison - also takes money. But effectively educating all students, regardless of background, is critical to Wisconsin's future. <

If we can't graduate a work force qualified for an increasingly high-tech economy, Wisconsin is destined to become a backwater on par with oft-maligned Mississippi and other states that fail to make the link between quality education and economic prosperity. Wisconsin children deserve better. <

Sunday: Tie pay to performance