Black students "are not being served as well in Charlottesville City Schools" as white students, according to an audit recently completed by the Bloomington, Ind.-based Phi Delta Kappa Educational Foundation.
The audit's critique of the City's school system offered hope for some parents who responded to the document at the Charlottesville School Board's meeting last night.
"This is going to drive what we do in the foreseeable future," parent Charles Morel said.
The audit cited a disparity between the test scores of white and black students and the low number of black students receiving advanced curriculum instruction as evidence that the City's school system is not providing equal public education.
While white students compose 45 percent of the school system, they account for 77 percent of gifted educational programs. Only 16 percent of black students participate in gifted programs.
Additionally, black students comprise only 7 percent of the students enrolled in the Advanced Placement program in City schools.
The achievement gap reported in the audit is old news, according to City Council members.
"I think the findings were very much expected," Vice Mayor Kevin Lynch said. "We've been aware of the achievement gap for some time. It's been a priority of Council and the school board to close the gap. It's one of the reasons we hired a new superintendent."
The audit provided constructive criticism and focused on areas for the school system to potentially improve rather than recognizing past achievements, Mayor David Brown said.
However, some of the audit report went beyond constructive criticism, he said.
"Some of the language used in the introduction and conclusion had a twinge of rhetoric in terms of race issues within the schools," Brown said.
Despite the sometimes harsh criticism, some parents voiced appreciation for the audit's honesty.
"I read about a world class city, but this, this is the truth," Morel told the board in reference to the audit.
However, the report also failed to consider the socio-economic situations that tend to parallel racial disparities, Lynch said.
"Looking at things in terms of black versus white is a 20-year-old mindset of what the problem is," Lynch said. "We have issues of poverty in this town."
Although many of the students at the lower end of the City's achievement gap are black, on a more basic level, they are from low-income families.
There are already programs in place in City schools as part of an ongoing effort to close the achievement gap.
The school board has instituted more testing -- in addition to the Virginia mandated SOLs -- as well as creating a system-wide reading program in order to provide a standard approach to reading for younger students, Brown said.
However the audit's criticism may prompt Council and the school board to rethink such programs.
"We have a large number of intervention and remediation programs to address a variety of issues associated with the achievement gap," Lynch said. "We need to collect adequate data to evaluate these programs."
Despite a range of sentiments toward the audit, many involved in the school system are urging the board to take their time in adopting the document.
"It's going to take a while to digest it," Charlottesville High School teacher Diane Price said.
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