Several months ago I wrote about the hundreds of thousands of dollars the Lawrence school district has spent on a socialist and, frankly, racist program known as "Courageous Conversations." USD 497 has contracted with the San Francisco-based Pacific Educational Group (PEG) since 2010 to bring this program to Lawrence. The stated goal of the program is to reduce the achievement gap between white and minority students.
Unfortunately, USD 497 appears to have gotten little, if any, return on its investment with PEG. Consider these charts:
As you can see, the percent of African American students scoring proficient or above in reading grew significantly between 2006-2009. However, the percent scoring proficient or above has essentially leveled off since then, despite hundreds of thousands spent with PEG since 2010.
The percent of African American students scoring proficient or above in math also grew significantly between 2006-2009. Gains were made in 2011 and 2012. However, the percent scoring proficient or above in 2013* is actually lower than it was before the district contracted with PEG.
Like African American students, white students are doing slightly better in reading than they were doing in 2009. However, like African American students, in math white students made significant gains between 2006-2009. And, like African American students, white students performed better in 2009 than they did in 2013.
If we compare the percent of students scoring proficient or above in 2009, which is before PEG began working with the district, with 2013, we see that the gap between white and African American students has narrowed by just .4%. However, the gap in math proficiency has grown by 2.8%.
Unfortunately, this lack of progress appears to be common with districts that have worked with PEG. For example, after paying PEG more than $850,000 over three years, the achievement gap between white and black students in St. Paul, Minn., remained unchanged. The achievement gap between white and Hispanic students actually widened. Nevertheless, in 2013 the school board there voted to spend another $380,000 with PEG for the 2013-2014 school year. That's equal to the salaries and benefits of 7.5 teachers.
