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This paper describes Delaware's progress in implementing a comprehensive and coherent approach to education reform from the time of application through June 30, 2011. In particular, it highlights key accomplishments over the reporting period in the four reform areas: standards and assessments, data systems to support instruction, great teachers and leaders, and turning around lowest-achieving schools. With its Race to the Top win last year, Delaware embraced a unique opportunity, and responsibility, to dramatically improve student outcomes for all students in the state. Race to the Top is not just another grant program; rather, it has become the catalyst for comprehensive and sustainable statewide reform. Individual sections contain references and footnotes. [For the parent report, "Race to the Top Annual Performance Report," see ED529267. For the state summary report, "Race to the Top. Delaware Report. Year 1: School Year 2010-2011. [State-Specific Summary Report]," see ED529310.]

To understand the achievement gap between Black and White students, test performance on Delaware statewide assessments was studied. The study focused on Black-White test score gaps in reading, mathematics, and writing across grades 3, 5, 8, and 10 by achievement level, item format, and gender within each racial/ethnic group over time. The assessments considered were the Interim Assessment Program (IAP) and the Delaware Student Testing Program (DSTP) assessments, in which the Stanford Achievement Series, 9th Edition tests are embedded. As in previous research, this study found that the test scores of Black students lag behind those of White students for reading, mathematics, and writing in grades 3, 5, 8, and 10 based on Delaware longitudinal data and that these gaps remained similar for more than 6 years on both norm-referenced tests and performance assessments. Results also show that the largest gap was in mathematics and the smallest in writing. The Black-White achievement gap became much wider for the low-achieving and high-achieving students in the bottom and top 10% and 25% of the score distributions. Black students seemed to perform better in developing their responses than in selecting answers from choices provided. Results also show that the achievement gap is smaller for females than for males for reading and mathematics, but larger for writing. (Contains 8 tables and 19 references.) (SLD)