White Plains schools focus on increasing diversity in advanced courses after fed investigation

WHITE PLAINS - It’s been five years since the U.S. Department of Education found that certain groups of students were underrepresented in high-level courses across the city school district and called on the school system to remedy the problem.

Today, higher percentages of black students are enrolled in the most challenging courses at White Plains Public Schools. But the district is struggling to increase the representation of Latino students and English language learners (ELLs).

District officials say they have embraced the challenge and continue to see the rewards for students and staff. But the process is ongoing, even though the U.S. Education Department ended its investigation in 2015.

"The district should be quite proud because that’s something that we’ve sort of aspired to do, is break down the barriers that get in the way of equity and break down the barriers that get in the way of opportunity," said Superintendent Joseph Ricca, who came to the district in July.

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The federal investigation, which started after a compliance review was initiated to look into possible rights violations, found that minority students in grades 3-12 were underrepresented in enrichment or higher-level courses and programs. These include Advanced Placement (AP) and honors classes in high school, accelerated math and English courses offered in middle school, and gifted and talented programs in elementary schools.

While the federal Education Department required the district to take a number of actions, they didn't provide any enrollment benchmarks. The general goal was to increase the number of minority students in gifted and talented programs to align with their make-up of the school's student body.

During the 2011-12 school year, black students made up 12 percent of the overall student body, but 8 percent of those enrolled in high-level courses and programs. In 2016-17, they accounted for 14 percent of the student body, and 12 percent of those enrolled in the courses and programs.

Less progress has been made with the district’s fast-growing Latino population and those whose native language is not English.

In 2011-12, Latino students were 35 percent of the overall student body, but 21 percent of those enrolled in top classes and programs. The gap was about the same in percentage terms five years later, in 2016-17, when Latino students made up 57 percent of the student body and 44 percent of those in challenging programs.

The challenge is greatest with English language learners, who may not have the language skills needed for the most challenging coursework.

In 2011-12, these students accounted for just under 8 percent of all students, but only 0.6 percent of those in top classes and programs. In 2016-17, ELLs made up 12.6 percent of all White Plains students but 2 percent of those enrolled in advanced courses.

At the high school level, the challenge was clear: increase minority representation in AP and honors classes, as opposed to Regents-level courses.

High school Principal Ellen Doherty was in her first year when federal officials charged White Plains with fixing the disproportionality issues.

After talking to students, she realized the biggest barrier to enrolling in AP and honors courses was the application process. Students had to apply with a recommendation from a teacher and a parent signature, in addition to high grades and test scores.

So the high school eliminated the application process.

“We said any kid who has the prerequisite (grade point average) is going to be automatically enrolled in honors or AP courses,” Doherty said. “You’re going to have to convince me to take you out of the course, not convince me to put you in it.”

The high school also began offering additional teacher training so instructors could handle larger class sizes and teach to different learning styles.

Last school year, 620 White Plains High School students were enrolled in AP classes, up from 493 in 2011-12. Studies have shown that students who take AP courses are more likely to enroll in college than peers who don’t. The New York State Education Department has been pushing for greater access to AP courses for minority students across the state.

College Board, the nonprofit behind the AP exams and curriculum, put the district on its national honor roll list in 2015 and 2011 for increasing minorities in its AP classes while maintaining at least 70 percent of students earning top marks, a 3, 4 or 5, on the exam.

Rebecca Doherty-Fahey, who teaches an AP English course, said the changes have been dramatic.

“My classes today in 2017-18 are much more diverse, really representative, you can see around the room; in 2010-11, I did not have that,” she said. “There’s a lot of encouragement from many different sources to encourage more participation. And I see in honors classes, too, there’s encouragement from students to take the course and become successful.”

At Highlands Middle School, for the district’s seventh- and eighth-graders, Principal Ernest Spatafore said there used to be no clear explanation of what advanced courses were offered and what grades and scores were needed to be eligible for them.

So, they developed a handbook in English and Spanish that is distributed to every student. The schools also hold curriculum nights for parents to discuss class options and engage families in the course-selection process.

A tutoring support class, known as AVID, was also implemented years ago. Designed for students academically in the middle, it meets twice a week and provides instructional time for kids to learn study, problem-solving and note-taking skills. AVID Excel was added two years ago for ELL students, to provide them one-on-one tutoring opportunities with bilingual instructors.

“The AVID program has been very successful in terms of moving students both academically from a grades point of view and also into accelerated classes,” Spatafore said.

Next year, Spatafore said the entire eighth grade will take Regents-level Earth science, typically taken freshman year of high school. In years past, a small selection of the school’s eighth-graders took it, almost always guaranteeing a 90 percent pass rate.

Spatafore said it’s likely more students will fail the exam, but doesn’t see it as a downside.

“Just the fact that you’re sitting in that class, being exposed to higher level material and being forced to think at a higher level and develop critical thinking skills, that’s a plus,” he said.

Analyzing school data for disproportionality issues has become more commonplace in recent years.

Suspension rates have become a flashpoint for districts around the country because students of color and those with disabilities are more likely to face out-of-school suspensions than their white peers and those without disabilities, which can hinder academic achievement.

Conversations about advanced academic opportunities for children of color are beginning to happen more on the local level, particularly in districts with My Brother’s Keeper programs, said Allison Lake, deputy director of the nonprofit Westchester Children’s Association.

My Brother’s Keeper, a President Barack Obama-era initiative to engage communities and schools, including White Plains, to improve the outcomes of black and Latino men, has encouraged parents and community members to pay attention to enrollment data in gifted and talented programs, Lake said.

“You have community members, you have parents, the school system at the table, and everyone is saying what’s happening with our kids,” she said. “The conversation does go to how many are going on to college, how many are taking the SAT, how many are taking the AP classes that set you up for success.”

She added: “When people are armed with the data, people can start to demand we want to see something different here.”

Estee López, director of the Center for Teaching and Learning and Leadership at the College of New Rochelle, said data collection and support programs are essential to helping ELL students.

“The question is: Are the districts applying good assessment instruments to determine their level of proficiency in order to determine what the kids know and what they bring to the learning experience?” López said.

And then, she said, the question becomes “once we know that data, do we have the instructional programs that linguistically can support those children so they can continue to excel?”

López is wrapping up her second year overseeing the college’s RESET program, a federal grant-funded, five-year program that offers bilingual teachers from local districts free graduate-level instruction in strategies and techniques to help ELL students. The teachers can earn credits for state teaching certificates in language.

The year-long program, which has a waiting list, has enrolled 98 teachers from local districts including Ossining, Peekskill, New Rochelle, Mount Vernon and White Plains.

“Our work is really arming our teachers to try to be more effective, using very unique research-based strategies in order to support the education of these children,” she said, adding that districts must “monitor their (students’) progress and make sure that we encourage rigor from the very beginning.”

Data journalist Frank Esposito contributed graphics to this report.