Wednesday, May 11, 2016

Academic Achievement Gap





Money, Race and Success: How Your School District Compares
https://cepa.stanford.edu/news/money-race-and-success-how-your-school-district-compares
April 29, 2016
The New York Times

[There are no districts where blacks score above aveage]

communities with narrow achievement gaps tend to be those in which there are very few black or Hispanic children, or places like Detroit or Buffalo, where all students are so poor that minorities and whites perform equally badly on standardized tests.


In some communities where both blacks and whites or Hispanics and whites came from similar socioeconomic backgrounds, academic gaps persisted. Mr. Reardon said that educators in these schools may subliminally (with absolutely supporting evidence accusing them of racism)  – or consciously in some cases – track white students into gifted courses while assigning black and Hispanic students to less rigorous courses.

 Union City, N.J., students consistently performed about a third of a grade level above the national average on math and reading tests even though the median family income is just $37,000 and only 18 percent of parents have a bachelor’s degree. About 95 percent of the students are Hispanic, 

socioeconomic status captures income, the percentage of parents with a college degree, the percentage of single parents, poverty, SNAP and unemployment rates. Charter schools are included in the local school districts where they are located.

Correction: May 3, 2016 
An earlier version of this article, using information from Stanford, misstated gaps in Menlo Park, Calif. and Tredyffrin-Easttown, Pa. Charter schools in those areas are located outside of the district or online, not in those communities.

By MOTOKO RICH, AMANDA COX and MATTHEW BLOCH

Sixth graders in the richest school districts are four grade levels ahead of children in the poorest districts.

We’ve long known of the persistent and troublesome academic gap between white students and their black and Hispanic peers in public schools.

We’ve long understood the primary reason, too: A higher proportion of black and Hispanic children come from poor families. A new analysis of reading and math test score data from across the country confirms just how much socioeconomic conditions matter.

Children in the school districts with the highest concentrations of poverty score an average of more than four grade levels below children in the richest districts.

Even more sobering, the analysis shows that the largest gaps between white children and their minority classmates emerge in some of the wealthiest communities, such as Berkeley, Calif.; Chapel Hill, N.C.; and Evanston, Ill. The study, by Sean F. Reardon,Demetra Kalogrides and Kenneth Shores of Stanford, also reveals large academic gaps in places like Atlanta and Menlo Park, Calif., which have high levels of segregation in the public schools.

...
Click here to read full article originally posted by the New York Times.

Liberal cities have largest black-white achievment gaps
www.joannejacobs.com/tag/whites/
Ultra-liberal Berkeley has the largest black-white gap in the nation

Racial achievement gaps are widest in the most liberal towns writes Steve Sailer in Taki’s Magazine. Ultra-liberal Berkeley has the largest black-white gap in the nation, according to the national database of school-district test scores created by Stanford and Harvard researchers. Black students in Berkeley are 4.6 grade levels behind their white classmates. Yet, Berkeley is ferociously antiracist. It was the first to have a Black Studies Department at the high school level. In the 2012 election, Berkeley voted for Obama over Romney 90 to 5. Berkeley Unified school-district administrators obsess over any data showing that black students get punished more than other races. White kids in Berkeley averaged 2.7 grade levels higher than the national average for all students, notes Sailer. Hispanics in the district’s public schools scored 1.1 grade levels below the national average and blacks scored 1.9 grade levels below. . . . white students, who tend to be the children of professors, Pixar employees, or the idle rich, score well. Bu

t Berkeley’s blacks do poorly, even by the standards of blacks in general, averaging below African-Americans in Chicago and Philadelphia. Berkeley High School was broken into five smaller schools in hopes of closing achievement gaps. However, the two academic schools are mostly white and Asian-American, while the other three schools have drawn most of the black and Hispanic students. 

Out of 2121 school districts with enough blacks and whites to generate fairly reliable results, the largest black-white gaps are in liberal college towns and liberal big cities such as Washington, D.C., Atlanta, Oakland Seattle, Minneapolis and San Francisco, writes Sailer. 

Some Atlanta suburbs, which have been attracting college-educated black families, have “small racial disparities with middle-of-the-road overall performance,” he writes. The large town with the highest test scores in the country for both blacks (+0.7 grade levels above the national average) and Hispanics (+1.1 grade levels) is Frisco, Tex., a rapidly expanding exurb 28 miles north of Dallas. . . . The median income is in the low six figures. The Frisco school district “looks like America” more than just about any other: It’s 11% black, 14% Hispanic, 11% Asian, and 59% white. That’s diversity. Frisco’s white-black gap is 0.57 standard deviations and its white-Hispanic gap is 0.43, both a little below national averages and well below most other high-scoring districts. Frisco-area voters gave 65% of their vote to Romney, Sailer points out. The white-Hispanic gap numbers are about 75 percent as large as the white-black gaps, the Stanford study found.


Seattle schools have biggest white-black achievement gap in state ...
www.ooyuz.com/geturl?aid=11545554
Seattle schools have biggest white-black achievement gap in state
Mon May 09 05:09:01 EDT 2016 | The Seattle Times

White kids in Seattle’s public schools are doing great. They’re performing about two grade levels above the national average on standardized exams. That finding comes from a sweeping new Stanford study of 2009-2012 test scores from third- through eighth-grade students around the country. But for black kids in Seattle, the data from that study paint a very different picture. They test one and a half grade levels below the U.S. average. Compared with their white peers in the city, black students l..- See more at: http://www.ooyuz.com/geturl?aid=11545554#sthash.dNYDrh1u.dpuf..



Seattle schools have biggest white-black achievement gap in state
Originally published May 9, 2016 at 6:00 am Updated May 9, 2016 at 10:03 pm


Among the 200 biggest school districts in the U.S., Seattle has the fifth-biggest gap in achievement between black and white students. Seattle’s white-black gap is also the biggest in Washington.

They’re performing about two grade levels above the national average on standardized exams. That finding comes from a sweeping new Stanford studyof 2009-2012 test scores from third- through eighth-grade students around the country.


But for black kids in Seattle, the data from that study paint a very different picture. They test one and a half grade levels below the U.S. average. Compared with their white peers in the city, black students lag by three and a half grade levels.

That ranks Seattle, among the 200 biggest school districts in the U.S., as having the fifth-biggest gap in achievement between black and white students.

Papers using SEDA data

Seattle's achievement gap
Seattle schools have one of nation’s largest equity gaps, new study says
Race dramatically skews discipline, even in elementary school
How a diverse yet divided school blended ‘segregated’ classes
Seattle school district considers office focused on black male students
The resegregation of Seattle’s schools

Seattle’s white-black gap is also the biggest one in Washington, and about seven times more severe than in the district with the smallest gap — South Kitsap, which serves Port Orchard and Olalla.

The difference between white and Hispanic achievement in Seattle Public Schools — about two and a half grade levels — is only a little less stark. (The study does not include Asian American students because reliable estimates were not available).

The nation’s big-city school districts that rank alongside Seattle for the widest white-black academic gaps — Washington, D.C.; Atlanta; Charleston, S.C.; and Oakland, Calif. — all have high levels of segregation. (also high levels of liberalism) This tends to concentrate kids with social and economic disadvantages in certain schools, which compounds the obstacles to achievement they face.

Seattle schools, too, have become increasingly segregated. In 29 of the city’s 98 public schools, at least 80 percent of students are black, Latino, Asian American or Native American.

,,,at we needed to pay special attention to our students of color.... Some saw Hollins’ approach aspolitical correctness run amok. That overshadowed any success she had — and during her tenure, the racial gap in standardized test scores narrowed modestly.

But complaints about her from white parents mounted, Hollins says. The district shut down her department, which a spokesperson said at the time was not related to the complaints.

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