Lower Merion led racial equity efforts in the ′90s. But its achievement gap has only widened.

One of Pennsylvania’s wealthiest and best-performing districts, the Lower Merion School District has billed itself as a leader in tackling racial inequity: from convening a committee to address how race affected its schools in the late 1990s to becoming one of the first local districts to prioritize closing achievement gaps in its strategic plan in 2009.

Yet those gaps between Black students and their peers persist — and have only widened since the district committed to closing them.

Fifteen years ago, Black students in third through eighth grades trailed white students by 28.4 percentage points in English language arts standardized tests, and 28.5 points in math. In 2024, the difference in English scores had grown to 33.4 points. In math, the gap widened to 42.4 points.

Administrators who presented the latest test results in December said they were well aware of the problem. “We know people are asking us questions about it, and we own it,” Scott Weinstein, acting assistant to the superintendent, said during the school board meeting.

Lower Merion is not an anomaly; other suburban districts with similar shares of Black students — 9% of Lower Merion’s students are Black — have also seen their gaps widen, according to an Inquirer review of historical test data.

But its response has alarmed and frustrated Lower Merion’s Black parents, who say even though the district spends more on its programs than almost any other school system in the state, it is not delivering the same caliber of education for all children. Some fault racism and teachers who are not culturally competent or who maintain low standards for their children. Others see an unwillingness to make wholesale changes that could upset white parents, who they feel are prioritized by the district.

Nigeria James, who has one child in the district and another who recently graduated, is among those parents questioning the sincerity of Lower Merion’s efforts. She sees a disconnect between the district’s public statements and how it interacts with Black parents — failing to connect the dots, she said, between individual test scores and a systemic problem.

“At what point do they stop and look at how effective their approach is? Clearly, it’s not,” she said.

After progress was made in the 1970s and ’80s, efforts to shrink the Black-white achievement gap have stalled across the country. The gap has not changed much in the last few decades, said Sean Reardon, a professor at Stanford University’s Graduate School of Education.

The segregation of Black students in high-poverty schools and socioeconomic differences between Black and white families have traditionally driven the divide, Reardon said, though “the places with the largest Black-white gaps tend to be small, affluent districts, oddly.” He cited Berkeley, Calif., and Evanston, Ill., as other communities with significant gaps.

Lower Merion officials did not address why they think the district’s achievement gap has widened over the years, but noted the gap “exists in nearly every school district in the nation.”

Locally, several other Montgomery County districts with similar shares of Black students — Colonial, North Penn, and Wissahickon — have Black-white achievement gaps ranging from 28 points to 42 points, based on 2024 test scores. In Cheltenham, which is majority Black but was also an early leader in school racial equity efforts, the Black-white achievement gap is 34.8 points in English and 42.8 points in math.

Lower Merion’s efforts in addressing racial disparities date back to at least 1997, when a group of Black parents raised concerns. Among their complaints: Black students were disciplined more often than white students, were overidentified as needing special education, and were underrepresented in gifted classes.

The district that year formed the Committee to Address Race in Education (CARE), which continues meeting monthly with teachers, administrators, parents, and community members.

Asked what steps it had taken since, district officials provided a list of strategies, from reviewing student data more frequently and providing individualized supports to offering more early childhood education, including extended-day kindergarten for students who showed a need. (The district launched universal full-day kindergarten this year.)

Lower Merion has also sought to make its curriculum more culturally relevant, with all resources reviewed “to ensure they include diverse voices, perspectives and representation,” the district said. It also said professional development is “ongoing, with all staff receiving specific training in cultural proficiency.”

Linda Heller, who has advocated for Black students receiving special education in Lower Merion for 25 years, believes the disparities are a product of how administrators and teachers perceive Black students. In a predominantly white district — 6% of teachers were Black in 2020-21, while 90% were white — staff make assumptions about Black children and “don’t even know they’re doing it,” said Heller, who is white.

Heller said she had worked with a child who was recruited by the Haverford School; that school’s testing revealed he had a 130 IQ. That was a surprise to his mother, who said Lower Merion had never recognized he was gifted, Heller said.

“They look at the kids who are bright as unusual,” Heller said. “It’s not the ‘norm’ for Black kids.”

Jelani Wilson, who is Black and graduated from Lower Merion in 1995, recalled how his mother had to battle to get him into honors English. Warned that he could get a C, Wilson said, she asked, “‘So no one gets a C in honors classes?’”

“For a white student, it’s ‘a challenge.’ For Black students … it’s, ‘They’re going to struggle,’” said Wilson, who said things have not changed, based on recent experience working in the district and as a current district parent. “That’s a lot of the way the biases creep in, both personal and institutional.”

There are additional struggles for Black students in the minority in an advanced class, Wilson said. It’s intimidating to participate if you’re afraid not just of being wrong, but also that “your being wrong goes to invalidate your presence as a Black student,” Wilson said. Students may feel it’s safer to be quiet — a “psychologically corrosive” situation, he said.

Wilson, who worked as an instructional aide at Harriton High School before leaving in 2022, said some Black students in the school’s International Baccalaureate program told him they felt isolated.

He understood, having encountered “all of my most visceral experiences” with racism while in Lower Merion schools. With his own children, Wilson’s oldest did not attend elementary school in the district, but entered later, when he had already developed self-confidence, Wilson said. His son graduated with a full ride to Howard University.

His younger child, meanwhile, stopped wanting to go to school in second grade. Eventually, she told Wilson why: She was uncomfortable around a white student who had been repeatedly touching her hair.

Wilson’s daughter told him she didn’t want to tell her teacher, because she thought she’d get in trouble. “Kids aren’t stupid,” said Wilson, who believed his daughter’s instincts were probably right. When Wilson informed the teacher — and said it was problematic that his daughter was afraid of speaking up — she did not acknowledge that concern.

Instead, she moved his daughter to a different table. “That was the end of it,” he said.

In a report submitted to Lower Merion school officials in September, the Main Line NAACP noted one-third of Black high schoolers, and 27% of Black elementary schoolers, had individualized education plans for special education; about 20% of Lower Merion students districtwide receive special education.

Black students, while representing only 9% of district enrollment, account for 30% of its disciplinary actions, the NAACP report said. It also noted that in 2021, 25% of Black high school students in the district were enrolled in Advanced Placement courses, compared with 65% of their peers.

Loraine Carter, an author of the report who moved to Lower Merion in 2002 and formed a Concerned Black Parents group that brought a lawsuit in 2007 alleging that Black students were improperly classified as special education students, said there is a link between disproportionate placement and other outcomes.

For instance, Black students in special education are more likely to be disciplined, she said.

Special education is “this door where we go in and don’t come out,” said Carter, whose three children attended district schools. A federal judge dismissed the lawsuit in 2011, ruling there was no evidence of discrimination. Some parents then brought individual complaints against the district, which were settled privately.

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Disparities like those reported by the NAACP can reflect how a district’s equity mission is “disconnected from the practices that are actually happening and everyday social interactions people have in the context of the school,” said John Diamond, a sociology and education policy professor at Brown University, who wrote Despite the Best Intentions: How Inequality Thrives in Good Schools.

Diamond said how districts track students into higher-level classes and administer discipline “can reproduce inequalities people aren’t even conscious of.”

Among local districts with similar achievement gaps, a spokesperson for the Colonial School District called its gap “concerning” and said the district offers interventions including small group instruction, tutoring, and summer learning programs.

North Penn Superintendent Todd Bauer said that while his district’s gap was historically smaller than the state average, “we must ask ourselves ‘why’ and work to ensure that all students achieve at their highest potential.”

Diamond said districts should be analyzing practices like how course placements are decided. “Is it racialized teacher recommendations, influential parents’ interventions, or tests with outcomes correlated with race and class?” he said.

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Even though Lower Merion teachers recommend whether students should take higher-level courses, district officials said any student can enroll, as long as the prerequisite courses have been completed. They also said there are opportunities for students to take more-advanced math classes, even if they do not initially place into them.

The percentage of Black students in high school honors classes has been growing since 2020, the district said, from 55% to 68% last year. It also pointed to standardized test data showing that Black students last year scored above or well above for growth in most subjects.

Regarding discipline, district officials said they follow a student code “that emphasizes uniformity, fairness and due process” and, when possible, pair discipline with a “restorative approach.”

Officials also said CARE and other committees provide a forum for students and parents to voice where improvements are needed.

Carter, of the Concerned Black Parents, said CARE’s focus “had evolved into more of a conversation along belonging … vs. ‘Here’s our plan’” for fixing the achievement gap.

Wilson sees the problem as bigger than the school district. “Lower Merion is a white place,” and racism in the broader environment permeates the schools, he said. He noted the pain felt by Black families during school board debates this fall around the district’s equity policy, when Jewish families objected to remarks by the board’s lone Black member contrasting anti-Black racism with the experience of Jews, who she said “chose to be white.”

“The moment you identify an issue of whiteness, that represents a fundamental threat,” Wilson said. He said the debate and subsequent demands for antisemitism training spoke to the “sense of ownership white parents, of any religious background, have over the district.”

James, who moved to Lower Merion from Los Angeles in 2011, said she had high hopes for her two daughters, given the district’s reputation. But despite monitoring their grades and attending parent-teacher conferences, she felt she didn’t know how well they were faring. It was not until middle school, she said, that a teacher shared concerns about her older daughter’s writing.

Now that her youngest daughter is a senior, on the verge of graduation, “I can’t say this was a great move for my family,” James said. She doesn’t think the district is operating with urgency when it comes to improving Black students’ achievement.

“The wool is pulled over people’s eyes,” she said. “They trust and believe in a system that’s not working for them.”