Engaging students in discussion on the achievement gap

Madison Hosts MSAN Student Conference, by A. David Dahmer

Two hundred students from 23 school districts across the country will convene in Madison for the annual Minority Student Achievement Network (MSAN) Student Conference Sept. 24-27.  This year’s theme will be "Futura De La Juventud: Laying Foundation, Affirming Our Identity, Building Relationships."
"One of the things that the conference is really focused on is engaging the kids in discussion about the achievement gap and what barriers that students of color face in their school environment," says Lisa Black, special assistant to the Superintendent for Race & Equity and the planning chair for the MSAN Conference. "Our goals really are to increase access to post-secondary options."
African American and Latino students from around the country will gather at Monona Terrace to share experiences and develop strategies for improving student academic achievement and school climate in their home districts.
Black stresses that the students have really taken ownership of the planning for the conference.
"The students really set the agenda. We shared with them what MSAN is all about and they studied the gap and all the data in the district, and they are taking it from there," she says. "It's important that their voices and views are heard, and [that] it's not always adults setting the agenda."
Each year, MSAN holds a student conference in a different city across the United States where teams of students of member district schools engage in discussion and plan for follow up activities related to improving the effectiveness of their schools in educating African American and Latino youth.
The goals of the 2008 annual Student Conference include engaging in discussions about barriers students of color face in their schools and district, and networking with students across the country to craft solution and strategies to eliminate these barriers. With strikingly similar and disturbing disaggregated achievement data, racial disparities on an array of achievement outcomes demonstrate wide gaps in performance between students of color and their White peers.
"We hear about 'the gap' so much, but these kids have had the opportunity to see what the gap means and what they can do about it, rather than just taking on the victim role," Black says.
Lorena Guimaraens, a senior at Madison La Follette, and Justin Tompkins, a senior at Madison Memorial, are part of the student planning committee for the MSAN Conference. 
"It makes me sad when I see minority kids not caring about school," Guimaraens says. "I wish they were in my place learning everything that I am right now because it would probably make a serious difference in their lives."
"It's just the possibilities that are available," adds Tompkins. "You're not always going to do what you see, but if you know what you can reach and become, it can make a difference. Especially in my school where there isn't a lot of outreach in terms of college reps coming in. Something like this conference can show people what they can do with their potential and talent if they don't currently have a direction."
The other students who are working on the planning include Nicole Coburn and Emilio Natera of Madison East; Kweku Brewoo, Chloe Brown, and Femanda Leyva-Jaimes of Madison West; and Alisha Muhammed of Madison Memorial. The group has been meeting throughout the school year, and lately, they've been meeting once a week for planning.
This is a mixed group of Black and Latino students. "There's a lot more similarities than differences," says Tompkins, who is African American.
"When I go to this group, I feel like we're all the same," adds Guimaraens, who is Latina.
MSAN started out just looking at African Americans, Blacks says, but soon realized that there were disparities among Latino population, too.
"Beyond language, they have found that they have more similarities with each other," Black says. "Even in planning in our meetings, I wanted the facilitators to be both Latino and Black."
Black notes that the theme of the conference — "Futura De La Juventud: Laying Foundation, Affirming Our Identity,Building Relationships" — is in Spanish and English. "The students really felt it was important to blend the titles," she says.
The keynote speaker for the opening day of the event will be Dawn Crim, acting special assistant to the Chancellor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. The conference will also feature keynote speeches by Robert Rivera of the positive rap group Elements of Change, First Wave performances, and an open mic. The highlight of the event will be the keynote speech of UW Men’s Basketball Coach Bo Ryan on Friday, Sept. 26.
Leadership workshops will feature UW-Madison law students of color and Black engineers serving on the panels and engaging in discussions with students. There will also be action planning and college panel sessions.
"Two of the college planning sessions are going to have somebody from UW private colleges talking about the process of applying to college, financial aid, and how you search out those resources," Black says. "We'll also have UW students from the law school who will come and speak to the kids."
The action planning is a follow-up to the leadership workshops, Black says.
"One of the things that the kids are responsible for is coming up with an action plan so when they go back to their districts they are expected to develop a project that addresses the issue," Black says.
A College Fair will be held on Friday afternoon, Sept. 26.
"There will be 20 or 21 colleges at the College Fair, and that's a traditional part of the MSAN Conference," Black says. "The kids meet with these recruiters and ask them questions and find out quite a bit of information."
Students will come from 25 MSAN districts from around the country including Ann Arbor, Mich., Cambridge, Mass., Evanston, Ill., Chapel Hill, N.C., and from as far away as Eugene, Oregon. The youth conference will be an opportunity for African American and Latino students to learn from peers across the country while constructing messages for the academic leaders of their schools.
 "These cities came together — college towns — because their superintendents were really interested in what research existed that was really studying achievement gaps that were occurring with African American and Latinos.  Even in college towns where you have educated African American families, there was still a gap.
Last year's conference was held in Arlington, W.V. and was attended by both Guimaraens and Tompkins. 
"It was very informational ... I learned that I'm not the only that is going through all of these things," Guimaraens remembers. "There are so many people involved in MSAN. I thought it was awesome to have that kind of support."
"The conference showed me that the issues that I had in school weren't just mine," Tompkins adds. "They were across the board and across the country."
The students agreed that they wanted to make this year's Madison MSAN Conference even better than last year’s.
"The things that we want to improve are to be able to have more time to network, but still be focused on the achievement gap and the objective of the whole conference," Tompkins says.
“At the last conference, we all really came together at the end, but we were a little awkward at the beginning," adds Guimaraens. "Our goal for the Madison Conference will be to come together right from the start.”
Black wants to make sure that the students are empowered by the conference to go back and have a positive impact on their lives and on other students' lives.
 "Part of what the kids are doing — and part of what they did when they went to the conference last year — is networking and sharing with all these students across the country," Black says. "So, it's not just venting and complaining; it's about them being empowered to do something about it."
This is the third year that Black has been involved with MSAN, a national coalition of multiracial, suburban-urban school districts that have come together to study achievement gaps that exist in their districts. MSAN districts have student populations between approximately 3,000 and 30,000, and are most often well-established first ring suburbs or small-to-mid-sized cities. Additionally, the districts share a history of high academic achievement, connections to major research universities, and resources that generally exceed neighboring cities.
"Initially, we would take kids to these conferences but by the time we came back there would be no real structure in place so the kids would just go back to what they were doing," Black recalls. "That's something that we have been working to improve the last few years."
Black says there were plenty of high-flying Black and Latino students who came from educated and well-off families, but her goal was to reach out beyond that. "I really wanted to look at students who have some leadership potential and who are really working hard," Black says. "I wanted to reach out beyond the normal kids who get all of the attention.
"And it's such a powerful opportunity for the MSAN students to come back from the conference into their communities and kind of pay it forward — and get the information to their peers," she adds. "So, it's not just on the adults to do that."
And this year's MSAN students are confident that the Madison conference they are organizing will be a very memorable one.
"I want people to remember Madison as that one place where we had that fun time," Tompkins says. "For some people — not everybody — Madison is not a very big destination, but I think that after this conference, we can really show people what Madison has to offer."