Before students at Morey Middle School took CSAP tests this year, school administrators pulled all the African-American students into two assemblies and told them that, as a whole, they were not performing as well as their peers at the school.

The sixth-, seventh- and eighth-graders were told that the school’s principal and assistant principal care about them and that they wanted to hear from them about what they could do to help.

This has sparked controversy at the Denver middle school, where some parents say the achievement gap is so dramatic that drastic conversations such as this must take place.

Others, though, decry the assemblies as inappropriate and insensitive because they unfairly single out students by their skin color.

“The students were made to feel like they were worse than the white kids,” said Stacey DeKraker, whose daughter was at the assembly.

“If even one of the students got that message, was it worth it?”

Morey principal Dori Claunch, who has spoken with DeKraker about her concerns, said she decided to call the assembly after winter break because she noticed that black students were lagging behind other ethnic groups at the school.

Fifty-three percent of African-American sixth-graders at the school are proficient readers. Among white sixth-graders, that number is 89 percent.

“The idea of the assembly wasn’t just to talk about how African-American kids aren’t performing well,” Claunch said. “We wanted to talk to our African-American students to let them know we care about them and to let them know they have the best opportunity at Morey.” (more…)