"The reality is that children are emerging from public schools with an education that is simply not sufficient," said New Jersey State Acting Commissioner Christopher Cerf last night to an audience of concerned parents and educators at Clinton School.

Cerf was there to participate in a symposium called "Closing the Gap" — an event pulled together by the Leap for Success subcommittee of the Parenting Center. Basically the group was born out of the frustration that some parents felt with the pace of improvement in the South Orange-Maplewood School District's efforts to close the achievement gap between black and white students.

To these parents, the gap — although it is steadily closing — is simply not closing fast enough. For those with students currently in the district, they would like to see the gap closed immediately.

Cerf's comments indicated that he feels the same.

"If you want to be depressed," said Cerf, "look at children who can't read at third grade and follow them through life." Cerf noted that this factor — and low test scores — was a "marvelous" predictor of earnings, education, incarceration and life expectancy.

"If we don't get it right in elementary school, we see unfortunate outcomes."

But Cerf told the assemblage that they shouldn't give up on such students.

"What are we doing about it?" asked Cerf who said that first schools needed "absolute clarity about what our mission is." He said that South Orange-Maplewood had that clarity with a mission that aims to close the achievement gap and give all students the choice to go to college.

Cerf said these four elements were needed to meet this goal:

1. High academic standards and assessments aligned to college achievement
2. Focusing on talent and rewarding the best educators
3. Accountability
4. Welcoming innovation

After Cerf's comments, three videos were shown and then the symposium was open to panel discussion. Patch plans to add information on this portion of the evening later.