Can Better Schools Significantly Improve Academic Performance Of Minority Kids?
/In response to Saturday’s post, several commenters remarked that it is not appropriate to blame “bad schools” for the poor academic performance of many children from minority groups, particularly black children. These commenters suggest that there are other factors that play a principal role, and that these factors are things that schools can do nothing to change, particularly low IQ and/or a culture that does not value education.
The problem with this contention is that there is actually substantial and even definitive evidence that schools can make a very large difference in the educational outcomes of minority children. I previously discussed some of that evidence in this post from August 2020. That post focused on the issue of school discipline, as well as on Thomas Sowell’s recent book Charter Schools and Their Enemies. Today I’ll focus on some data generated by the State of New York.
As mentioned in Saturday’s post, the national data comparing educational results among states and certain cities come from a biennial federal study called NAEP. The NAEP only tests a relatively small sample of students, and only in the 4th and 8th grades, and thus cannot be used to compare one individual school to another. However, here in New York we have tests called the New York State Assessment. These tests are given to every student every year (although apparently not in 2020), at least in grades three through eight. (For high school they have something different called the Regents Exams, but those are only administered to kids who take the relevant subjects.) For kids in grades 3-8, the test categories for the NYSA tests are very similar, although not identical, to the categories of NAEP: NAEP tests “math” and “reading,” while the NYSA tests “math” and “English.” Unlike the NAEP, the NYSA test results are reported to each individual student, and are used, at least in some instances, for determining entrance to certain selective schools, such as middle schools.
Like the NAEP, the NYSA tests have a level called “proficiency.” I cannot provide any detail on how that metric is defined, but it is clear from the reported results that it is different, and likely substantially so, from what NAEP uses the term to mean. Thus for 2019, while the NAEP reported that only 14% of New York City black 8th graders scored “proficient” in either math or reading, the NYSA reported for the same year that 28.3% of black third through eighth graders tested “proficient” for math, and 35.0% for English. “Proficiency” results in 2019 between the two tests were similarly different for white students, with 46% of white students testing “proficient” on the NAEP for both math and reading, but 66.6% testing “proficient” in both math and English on the NYSA.
And then there is the issue of what appears to be dramatic grade inflation on the NYSA. Here is the NYC Department of Education chart of the results of their students on the NYSA English tests for 2013-19, broken down by race/ethnicity:
Supposedly, all NYC kids’ rates of “proficiency” have risen like a rocket ship over these seven years, with increases for every ethnic group and in every single year, and for both English and math, since these comparisons began in 2013. Meanwhile, over at the NAEP, they had a “proficiency” rate for New York City black 8th grade kids of 18% in 2013, and that rate then went down to 14% by 2019. For white NYC 8th graders, the NAEP reading “proficiency” rate went up marginally from 44% in 2013 to 46% in 2019, compared to the enormous increase from 46.8% to 66.6% reflected in the NYSA chart above for the same years. Yes, one test only covers a sample of 8th graders, while the other covers all 3rd to 8th graders; so make of this what you will. But I must admit that I find the reported NYSA results dubious. Over in the math chart, the NYSA data for New York City shows the level of “proficiency” of black 3rd to 8th graders from 2013 to 2019 soaring from 16.3% to 35.0%; meanwhile, the NAEP results for black NYC 8th graders rose just one point, from 13% in 2013 to 14% in 2019.
Yet with all those flaws, it remains that New York State gives the same Assessment tests to the charter school students as to the non-charter public school students. Therefore, we can at least compare the NYSA results between the non-charter district schools (above) and any of the charter networks that reports its results.
The most consistently successful of the charter networks is called Success Academies. They publish their results on the NYSA for 2019 here. Success says that they enroll approximately 23,000 students in 43 schools, which makes them larger than all but a handful of the state’s largest urban districts. 7,405 of their students took the NYSA tests in 2019. Students at Success are selected by lottery. According to Success, 84% of their students who took the 2019 tests were either black or Hispanic (55% black and 29% Hispanic). Success reports their “pass” rates on the NYSA for 2019 as 99% in math and 90% in English. (I believe that what they call “pass” is the same as what New York City calls “proficient,” although they do not explicitly say so.) They do not break the results down by race/ethnicity. However, clearly even if every non-black or Hispanic student scored at least “proficient,” the proficiency rates for the blacks and Hispanics would have to be well above 90% for math and about 75% for English in order to reach the overall percentages reported.
Another prominent charter network, although much smaller than Success, is called KIPP. They report their data for the 2019 NYSA here. For some reason, they do not break down their data between the math and English tests, but unlike Success they do report a breakdown by race/ethnicity. They report a 73% “proficiency” rate for black students among 160 test takers, and 83% proficiency for Hispanics among 260 test takers.
Some comments:
Critics of the charter schools like Success and KIPP generally claim that they cherry-pick their students in order to achieve their impressive student proficiency rates. The charters respond that they have no ability to select students, and instead admission is strictly by lottery. Nevertheless, I have no doubt that there is an element of selection going on. It could occur in multiple places. Applying for admission requires some initiative from the parents, who must therefore have a degree of ambition for their children. Then, the successful charters are known for delivering an intense educational experience, with strict discipline and focus on the material at hand. Students who find that kind of experience distasteful or intolerable tend to drop out and go elsewhere. Thus, it is impossible to get a perfect apples to apples comparison to enable a conclusion as to exactly how well the charters would have done with the exact same student body as the traditional public schools.
However, with all that said, I think it is clear that the charters are making a clear demonstration that there are large numbers of black and Hispanic students who are eminently capable of achieving at least the level of achievement designated as “proficient” in basic math and English and who are getting left behind by deficient public schools.
Scoring “proficient” on an 8th grade math or English assessment test is not to be mistaken for being ready to become a high-end software engineer or doctor or corporate executive. Nevertheless, just achieving proficiency in math and English is extremely important for basic participation on our modern society. If the schools fail to accomplish that goal for the large majority of students by the 8th grade, no amount of affirmative action or so-called “anti-racism” later in their lives is ever going to turn things around.
Returning to the question of the headline: Can better schools significantly improve the academic performance of minority kids?, I think that the answer is unequivocally yes. This issue is far too important for us to continue to let the educational bureaucracies and the teachers unions off the hook for their ongoing disastrous failures with respect to the most vulnerable members of our society.