Despite reading success, Minnesota still struggles with a stubborn gap

In an article in the Star Tribune on Thursday, March 25, it was reported that the achievement gap between black and white students still hasn't budged since 1992. According to test results released earlier this week, Minnesota's students outperfomed most of the nation in reading tests conducted in 2009 but did not see any improvement in the achievement gap. The only jurisdiction with a black-white gap larger than Minnesota's in fourth grade is Washington D.C., and Connecticut being the only state with a larger gap in eighth grade.

This makes most in the education community concerned including Alice Seagren, Minnesota Education Commissioner. "We are really going to devote some significant additional money to trying to focus on our minority students and the achievement gap," Seagren said.

Tom Dooher, president of Education Minnesota, the statewide teachers' union, has another idea. He said that, "we need a combination of early childhood development, classroom resources and parental and teacher involvement to turn this around."

While both ideas target the core of the problem, Sen. Kathy Saltzman, DFL-Woodbury, believes that good reading instruction consists of five "big ideas": phonics, comprehension, fluency, vocabulary, and phonemic awareness- the ability to recognize that words and syllables are composed of bits of sound. "Unless we are very intentional in teaching children using these models, they will struggle to read," Saltzman said.

The Minnesota Reading Corps embodies these reading models and continues to see better and better results. With further persistence and a combination of other resources, the stubborn achievement gap will shrink in time.

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