In all but 2 suburban districts, whites do better than minorities academically
Ty Chandler:
What parent doesn't want a good education for their child. Suburban schools are delivering to their white students, but their African American and Latino students come up short test time.
"I think it's shocking," said Katy D'Agastino of Fairport. "I was surprised there was such a big gap."
In standardized math and reading exams, African American and Latino students scored twenty to forty-five points lower than their white classmates. In Fairport, white students 2004 reading test scores were more than double black students.
"I'm not sure if standardized tests really measure achievement. So I'm not sure if the discrepancies in the test scores really give us an accurate account of what students intellectual or academic ability is," explained Urban Education Professor Sonia James Wilson of the University of Rochester.
D'Agastino's daughter Maria is still in a stroller, but her mother is concerned.
"It's something that needs to be taken care of," she said. "Now that I know what that I would want to send my child to the school where there wasn't such a large gap."
Two districts in Monroe County are the exception. Brighton and Penfield are the only districts where students perform equally, regardless of race.
"Every child counts. That is the bottom line," said Assistant Superintendent Jeanne Strining.
Strining said there is no silver bullet, but in Brighton they don't teach to meet state standards, their goal is to exceed them.
"It's not looking at kids as a group of kids. It's not looking at kids for their ethic background or their skin color or their ability on some standardized test," she explained. "It's what ever child needs right now to help them go the extra mile."
Like other suburban districts, Brighton and Penfield students are predominantly white. Many of these districts are in affluent communities and the teacher to student ratio is almost identical. Many educators find standardized exams culturally biased, yet minority students in Brighton and Penfield are acing them.
"I would imagine it's related to issues of class," said Prof. James-Wilson. She said while there may be cultural differences between minority and white students, in Brighton and Penfield they are most likely in the same socioeconomic class.
D'Agastino is white and her daughter could stand to benefit from the academic gap. However she said that is not the kind of education she wants for her child.
"It would still bother me. It's something that doesn't seem fair," she said.
The most likely reason that blacks do so well in Brighton and Penfield in contrast to other districts is that African-Americans in these two areas have IQ's that are higher than the average black IQ of 85.
posted by Adam Lawson @ 4:06 PM
2 comments
2 Comments:
The tiptoe-ing around and downright idiocy when people comment on this issue is absolutely asinine.
Of course not all Blacks are dumb, so it is rather obvious (and not surprising, given what is likely a small sample size) that better off Blacks ("the same socioeconomic class") do as well as their local white counterparts, since belonging to a better "socioeconomic class" correlates well with being more intelligent.
The claim of even the two districts having well performing blacks is suspicious. If you try to check out the standardized test scores of the blacks in Brighton and Penfield (www.emsc.nysed.gov/repcrd2004, look at Monroe County) you will not be able to find the black's test scores. The districts will not report black, hispanic, and american indian scores because there are fewer than 30 students in each ethnic group enrolled in the respective school. You should note, however, that all "asians" are classified together (I assume this would be any ethnic group, japanese, chinese, east indian, etc.) Funny, that grouping! They seem to score well too!
By the way, the white woman they interviewed for the article lives in Fairport, NY. Fairport is 97% white, 1% asian, 1.3% hispanic, and 0.7% black. I wonder why she lives there, and not someplace more "diverse"?
Do you think she was lying? Hahahahahahaha!
More snow jobbing by the marxist press.
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