We've all heard about the test score gap (aka, the achievement gap), and Andrew Coulson of the Mackinac Center has a provocative article about how ideology helps the gap persist:
As researchers know all too well, there is still a gulf of more than 220 points between the SAT scores of white and black students, and black children trail their white peers by significant margins on every subject tested by the National Assessment of Educational Progress. Many people are likewise aware that Michigan performs even worse in this regard. Across grades and subjects, Michigan’s racial achievement gap on the NAEP is four to nine points larger than the gap nationwide.[1]
But there is one aspect of the achievement gap that is almost universally unknown: how it differs between public and private schools.
Coulson uses NAEP data to reach a conclusion that isn't really surprising:
As the table shows, there is a sizeable achievement gap between black and white fourth-graders in both public and private schools. It is also clear that the private-sector racial achievement gap is narrower at the 12th grade than at the 4th grade in all of the core NAEP subjects. Public schools actually see a larger race gap in both writing and mathematics at the 12th grade than at the fourth.
Averaged across subjects, the public school racial achievement gap is virtually unchanged between fourth and 12th grades. By contrast, the gap in private schools is an average of 27.5 percentage points smaller at the 12th grade than at the fourth.
Note that the achievement gap does not close faster in private schools because white private school students lose ground with respect to white public school students as they move to higher grades. Rather, the gap closes because black private school students have learned at a substantially higher rate than black public school students.
I like his concluding remarks:
So, will the NAACP and other groups avowedly committed to reducing the racial achievement gap act on these findings? Will they compete with one another to discover the best way of bringing nongovernment schooling within reach of all children?
The answer, obviously, is no.
Why?
Because while these groups are committed, on some level, to the aims they profess, they are handcuffed by a self-destructive political ideology. Yes, they will say, we should do everything we can to close the racial achievement gap, as long as our efforts stay comfortably within the confines of a state-run education monopoly.
Given the choice between actually narrowing the racial achievement gap and remaining ideologically pure, they will chose ideological purity. Sooner or later, this position must surely crumble under the weight of its own immorality.
Emphasis his. He also notes that the dropout problems with public schools probably give a boost to the public school scores, because the worst 12th-graders aren't there to take NAEP. Yet, the private schools look better.
As for his belief that this position will crumble soon, let's just say I'm not holding my breath for that, any more than I'm holding my breath for the eradication of the racist belief that minority children cannot be expected to do well on standardized tests.
Posted by kswygert at February 7, 2005 10:38 AM