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Focus on the early years, says Stern. Photo by woodleywonderworks

Close the achievement gap by focusing on early-grades reading instruction, argues Sol Stern in the latest issue of City Journal, calling for “a Marshall Plan for reading.”

Stern cites research showing that “controlled for socioeconomic variables, blacks were still at the 35th percentile of the white distribution in math and the 39th percentile in reading,” and that the gap occurred even when students attended the same schools and had the same teachers as their white peers. Stern identifies the root of the problem in “cognitive deficits” of black students when they enter school:

Inner-city black children, research shows, begin school with only half the vocabulary of white middle-class children. Typically, they soon fall behind in trying to decode how the written English language blends the sounds made by letter combinations into words.

The solution Stern proposes is to create an office of reading improvement within the DOE, which would then identify 300 high-poverty, low-scoring schools, fund scientifically-proven K-3 reading programs, reduce class sizes to no more than 15 students in those schools, and provide information to principals about the effectiveness of the program choices.

Stern projects the cost of such a “Marshall Plan” to be about $150 million.

Mind the gap, by Marcin Wichary

The internet has seen a flurry of activity recently over the DOE’s claim that it has reduced the achievement gap between black and Hispanic students and their white and Asian peers. Testing that claim, the New York Sun submitted the ELA and math scale score data for students in grades 3-8 to three independent analysts, who concluded that the gap has decreased in ELA, but has stayed flat since 2002 in mathematics, confirming much of Eduwonkette’s analysis.

The new analysis emphasizes the difference between closing the proficiency gap by comparing the percentage of students who score at a level 3 or 4 on state tests, and closing the achievement gap by comparing mean scale scores.

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America’s schools systematically fail to educate black males as well as they educate other students, according to a new report by the Schott Foundation for Public Education, Given Half a Chance: The Schott 50 State Report on Public Education and Black Males.

If Black students did poorly in all schools, we would plausibly seek solutions to the problem of their achievement among those students themselves. The same would be the case if, in schools with majority Black enrollments, Black students did poorly and the other students did well. But in reality, Black students in good schools do well. At the same time, White, non-Hispanic students who attend schools where most of the students are Black and their graduation rates are low, also do poorly. The crisis of the education of Black males sits squarely in the middle of the crisis America faces as we work to create a world-class public education system that will support and maintain the values of a fair and equitable democratic society.

According to the report, in New York State, 39 percent of black male students graduated from high school in 2005-06, compared to 75 percent of white male students, and far more black male students performed at the Below Basic level on all sections of the NAEP tests compared to white male students. Also, as the report points out, on the eighth grade NAEP reading assessment, “virtually none reach the Advanced level.” Furthermore, black males in New York State are about 5 times less likely to be placed in Gifted and Talented programs, and nearly 3 times more likely to be classified as mentally retarded.

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