Fulton County could serve as a core sample of all the ethnic, cultural and economic diversity of metro Atlanta, stretching about 80 miles from the north to the south, from the suburbs through the heart of the city. When SAT scores were announced last week it was like taking the latest reading on the impact of those influences on public schools.
By many measures, Fulton excelled. Six of the top 10 performing public schools in the state were in the county, and the district’s overall increase of 20 points bested that of its rival core counties of DeKalb, Gwinnett and Cobb (which showed a 2 point drop).
But there was an undertow to the numbers: The average score for the 11 north Fulton high schools was 1613 out of a possible 2400. That was 362 points higher than the average of 1251 scored by the five high schools in the less-affluent south end of the county — Banneker, Creekside, Langston Hughes, TriCities and Westlake.
Nothing new about that. Fulton — like school systems across the nation — has grappled for decades with an achievement gap between schools in affluent communities and those in areas of greater poverty. But the extremes in Fulton make the contrast starker and illustrate how difficult the gap is to close.
The gap starts opening early, according to studies on early vocabularies, a predictor of academic performance. The gap tracks along economic, not ethnic, lines. Three-year-olds from welfare homes, for example, have less than half as many words in their vocabularies as those from families headed by professionals, the studies show.
SAT preparation also heavily influences results. Fulton, as does other school systems, offers no-charge SAT preparation classes. But parents can take it a step further, investing sometimes thousand of dollars in private tutors and programs.
Fulton Superintendent Robert Avossa knows the disparity as well as anybody. He was hired last year chiefly for his work as the head of strategy and accountability for the Charlotte-Mecklenburg school system in North Carolina, which won a Broad Foundation Prize for improving overall academic performance and shrinking its achievement gap.
The superintendent said this week that he was encouraged by the 20-point boost in scores overall, but there was vast room for improvement. “From my two decades as an educator I would say there are few examples at the school level across the country where those numbers merged and the gap was eliminated,” Avossa said. “What I’ve never found is a districtwide improvement that completely eliminates the achievement gap. We’re going to work to be the first.”
As a rule of thumb, for every 1 percent increase in the number of students who are on the federal lunch program, SAT scores decline by 5 points, said Broad analyst Nancy Que. Based on that calculation, Fulton is outperforming expectations. Last year, its average SAT score of 1560 was 59 points better than what the Broad formula predicted. In Georgia, performance on the SAT or its rival, the ACT, can be critical to families because those test scores figure in whether a student’s full tuition at a public college is covered under the HOPE scholarship’s Zell Miller Award.
But many other factors come into play, including parent involvement and student preparation. In Fulton, and other schools systems across metro Atlanta, educators have worked hard to better define and solve the gap, and raise the scores. So have many parents. Banneker parent Glenda Shivers said she was not surprised by the 36-point drop in the school’s SAT scores this year — the sharpest decline among Fulton schools. More students focused on preparation for the ACT, on which the school saw its scores rise, she said.
“I’m not as concerned with SAT scores as I am with overall academic performance because SAT scores are just one component,” said Shivers, whose three children have attended the College Park school and have taken the SAT and ACT. “As individual parents, it’s our responsibility to make sure our children excel academically,” she said. “I look at the scores, I look at the stats, but I don’t use it as my only measurement. If you ask me, I think Banneker is a good school, I’ve never thought of moving my children.”
But parents did move out about 100 of Banneker’s highest-performing students, sending them to other Fulton schools under No Child Left Behind when it was still in effect in the state. Banneker principal Will Bradley said he wasn’t surprised by the drop, given the number of student who transferred and the increasing emphasis on the ACT. He also wasn’t surprised to get a phone call from Avossa the day after the results were released.
“[Avossa] is aware of the effect that NCLB has had on Banneker for the last few years,” Bradley said. “He is also aware of the distance Banneker has come and the challenges it faces. But he, our area superintendent, the board, our community, our faculty and I expect Banneker students to meet and exceed expectations.”
School board Chairwoman Linda Schultz said the system has made “great progress” in improving scores districtwide (nine of the 15 high schools were up), “but we still have a ways to go with some of our schools.” She said Avossa is working hard at retaining teachers and raised the standards for hiring principals, which will play out as SAT scores and overall academic performance improve.
Westlake High School was a particular bright spot, with its SAT scores increasing by 24 points under principal Grant Rivera, an Avossa hire. As factors in that improvement, Rivera pointed to the college and career center he established at the school and the emphasis he placed on student counseling.
He said Fulton’s systemwide practice of offering practice SAT tests to students in the ninth, 10th and 11th grades has also given students an advantage over students in other districts where PSATs might only be offered to 10th- and 11th-graders.
“You can see the improvements the students have made,” Rivera said, “and that gives us another way of opening up a conversation with parents about performance.”
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