A failure to teach
North Carolina recently released results from the end-of grade tests for third through eighth graders, and the results are shocking. Selected quotes:
"...it is easy to see that numbers of blacks, Hispanics, and low-income students are failing to learn basic skills"
"Twenty-three districts in North Carolina taught less than 50 percent of their young black males in grades three through eight to read at a basic level."
The problem isn't just within North Carolina:
"while overall scores have increased in reading and mathematics, the differences in scores for black and white students in virtually every NAEP subject area and for every age group are greater than they were in the late 1980s. Perhaps even more disturbing, these gaps seem to be getting wider each year."
Unsurprisingly, one of the suggested solutions to this problem is a set of multicultural lesson plans that stresses the importance of understanding the "differences and many aspects of multicultural education", although there are no studies listed in this report to suggest that such lessons would improve things. Meanwhile, the schools that have succeeded in raising the scores of minority students stress "solid academics, strong community support, and spending priorities", but mention of these schools, and these concepts, is buried near the very end of the article. Politics as usual, I'm afraid.