Category: Those Meaningless Diplomas

The Black Kids Are Shortchanged Everywhere

The Duval County school district serves the Jacksonville, Florida, area.  Jacksonville is much more typical of neighboring Georgia than of Florida.  It has a relatively small Hispanic population and a…

The Duval County school district serves the Jacksonville, Florida, area.  Jacksonville is much more typical of neighboring Georgia than of Florida.  It has a relatively small Hispanic population and a history of anti-Black racism dating back hundreds of years.  The district’s website proclaims recent good news:

Duval County Public Schools has emerged as a national leader in mathematics and reading outcomes on the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) . . . “If this were the Olympics, you would say we medaled in almost every event,” said Superintendent Dr. Patricia Willis. “These results, in addition to our record-high graduation rate, reflect the incredible efforts of our students, our teachers, the district and our community.” . . .  “The new NAEP results confirm that Duval County is one of the highest performing big city school districts in the nation,” said Michael Casserly, executive director of the Council for Great City Schools.

Those newly released 2017 NAEP eighth-grade reading assessments show that while 42 percent of White students in the Duval County public schools can read at grade level (proficient or above), the school system teaches less than half that percentage, 18 percent, of the Black students in its care, to read proficiently at the crucial grade 8 level. Or, looking at that from the other side, well over three-quarters of the Black students in the Duval County Public Schools are not taught to read proficiently.  Of those, nearly 90 percent of the male Black students in Jacksonville are not taught to read proficiently and nearly half of those can hardly read at all. We can take that as an indication of the preparation for life that is provided for Black children by the Duval County Public Schools. It is a rather unusual Olympic medal quality performance.

A primary driver of these racial disparities in educational achievement is not difficult to discover.  Quite some time ago a large-scale research project in Texas demonstrated that disparities in the rate of school discipline actions were based on the racial attitudes of school personnel, rather than the actions of students.  In the Duval County schools the rate at which out-of-school suspensions are given is eight percent for Black students, three percent for White students, a more than two-to-one disparity, which is a good measure of racial prejudice in action.  That happens to be approximately the disparity in reading proficiency.  Of course, correlation does not indicate causation.

There are consequences to this failure of the Duval district to teach most of their Black children, and nearly all of their male Black children, to read easily.

The Equality of Opportunity Project at Stanford University has studied intergenerational economic mobility by race and gender. According to the Equality of Opportunity Project, the average Black child in Jacksonville, whose household in the year 2000 had an income at or below the 25th percentile of all American households ($28,000, very poor) would probably have an income at the 31st percentile (just poor) by 2015, about $32,000.  The average White child in Jacksonville, living in a similarly deprived household in 2000, would have had an income at the 40th percentile in 2015, about $43,000: a nine point, $11,000, advantage for being White. While a Black child growing up in Jacksonville can expect to go up six steps on the economic mobility ladder (from very poor to merely poor), a White child can expect to go up fifteen steps, between two and three times as far and within hailing distance of the national median.

This comparative restriction of intergenerational economic mobility for Black residents of Jacksonville cannot be attributed solely to the fact that well over three-quarters of the Black students in the Duval County Public Schools are not taught to read proficiently, but it makes you think, doesn’t it?

Well, Jacksonville has a history of slavery, segregation and lynching.  We can look to the free state of Wisconsin for better news . . . can’t we? The answer is no.

The 2017 NAEP eight-grade reading assessment shows that while 33 percent of White students in the Milwaukee public schools can read at grade level (proficient or above), the school system teaches less than one-fifth of that percentage, six percent, of the Black students in its care to read proficiently at the crucial grade 8 level. Or, looking at that from the other side, well over 90 percent of the Black students in the Milwaukee public schools are not taught to read proficiently and of those, 96 percent of the male Black students in Milwaukee are not taught to read proficiently.  Nearly two-thirds of those can hardly read at all.  We can take that as an indication of the preparation for life that is provided for Black children by the Milwaukee Public Schools.  As to causation, the racial school discipline disparities in Milwaukee are similar to those in Jacksonville:  a Black student is more than twice as likely to be punished with an out-of-school suspension as is a White student.  In addition to being an indicator of adult racial attitudes, out-of-school suspensions are likely to lead to students falling behind in their studies and prematurely ending their educations:  dropping out.

No matter where you go, traditional districts are failing the descendants of enslaved Africans.

And as to consequences, according to the Equality of Opportunity Project, the average Black child in Milwaukee, whose household in the year 2000 had an income at or below the 25th percentile of all American households (very poor) would probably have an income at the 36th percentile (poor) by 2015, about $38,000.  The average White child in Milwaukee, living in a similarly deprived household in 2000, would have had an income at the 50th percentile in 2015, about $56,000: a fourteen point, $18,000, advantage for being White. While a Black child growing up in Milwaukee can expect to go up eleven steps on the economic mobility ladder (from very poor to merely poor), a White child can expect to go up twenty-five steps, more than twice as far and pretty close to the national median.  White children growing up in severe poverty in Milwaukee can expect to participate in the American dream of dramatic economic mobility; the Black children living in that city cannot even dream of it.

Just as in Jacksonville.

Neither district is fulfilling its responsibility to educate all children.  The size of the racial gaps resulting from these failures are similar.  If disparities in school discipline rates are a valid measure of racism (which they are), that, too is similar.  And if the Equality of Opportunity Project’s calculations are correct, as they seem to be, the perhaps consequent restrictions on economic mobility for the Black residents of these two American cities will, similarly, continue from one generation to the next.

The Equality of Opportunity Project researchers point out that the Black/White racial economic disparities are not a result of factors under the control of Black Americans.  Rather, they are the result of factors, such as disparate incarceration rates and the school issues touched on above, that are under the control of the people running the criminal justice and school systems and other social, economic and political aspects of life in this country.  They are under the control of that governor, that mayor, this superintendent of schools, this judge and that chief of police in both Jacksonville and Milwaukee—and those in many other cities and towns in this great country.

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Beyond Graduation Rate Scandals

Recent scandals in places like Washington, D.C. have prompted debates over high school graduation requirements. Many observers rightfully express concern that students who are unprepared for the next stage of…

Recent scandals in places like Washington, D.C. have prompted debates over high school graduation requirements. Many observers rightfully express concern that students who are unprepared for the next stage of their lives might receive meaningless diplomas. They propose that we strictly enforce requirements.

If we take this advice, presumably fewer people will walk across a stage to receive a diploma they didn’t earn. On the plus side, these changes will make our school systems more honest about what high schools have achieved; and they will better inform graduates about their preparation for higher education. Unfortunately, along the way we may reduce opportunities for many young people to get the help they need to succeed as independent adults. People can argue about who deserves to graduate, however, if we decide to keep more kids from graduating, we should also agree that kids who don’t graduate deserve more public support that will also prepares them for the rest of their lives.

Instead of making a more strictly-enforced sorting device that denies more young people access to a good future, future systems that increase our ability to document a young person’s suitability for further study or training ought to tell us about all young people.  We should learn what dropouts know and can do. That way we can help them all transition to the next stage in their education, training, or work.

Recent years have seen significant increases high school graduation rates. Today’s scandals indicate that some of this increase has more to do with lowering standards than to gains in learning. Many districts now award diplomas to 15 percent more of their students than they did a decade ago. When it comes to the next phase of their lives, however, do we really think the bottom 10 percent of graduates are that different from the top 10 percent of dropouts?  And if both groups need a lot more help to become self-sufficient adults, we ought to not use the diploma to judge who is worthy of our continued support.

Diplomas have different uses for different audiences.  For students, they are a motivation. To be crass, the diploma is a reward for sitting still for four years, behaving as expected, and for doing all the work to master basic material. For employers and higher education institutions, a diploma is expected to certify that a student is ready for the next stage in their learning and growth. For society, leaving high school is a proxy for adult-hood; and the diploma means that the new adult succeeded at being a teenager. But our current diplomas don’t necessarily fulfill each audience’s needs.

Among both graduates and dropouts, there is a wide range in students’ knowledge and skills. Some of these new graduates may be academically closer to the better prepared dropouts than they are other graduates. Admittedly, this is more likely due to a generally poor state preparation than it is to large numbers of dropouts with strong skills.

But there are many dropouts who were doing fine in high school before things went poorly; just as there are many graduates who skated through high school with very low grades in classes that expected little of them.  If we learn more about both types of students, we can help them both.

Most of the debates over high graduation standards focus on attendance. Students were given credit for classes even though they had more absences than allowed in district policy. Technically, they should have failed their courses, which would have meant they didn’t earn enough credit to graduate.

In addition to “seat time”, diplomas signal mastery of content and the student’s ability to persevere and follow rules. But when a young person lacks a diploma, we don’t know why. Some didn’t attend class enough to pass. Others misbehaved. Others, attended and behaved, but didn’t learn the material well enough to pass. Labeling a person as a dropout doesn’t tell us which of these challenges tripped them up, only that they did not achieve all three.

Instead of focusing on what they lack, for both graduates and dropouts, it would help if we could better understand and certify what they have accomplished and what they are able to do. It is helpful to know if they could behave, if they persevered enough to attend regularly, and what they learned and are able to do.  And as we identify these strengths and assets, we can match them to services and programs where they are most likely to succeed. Ideally, more young people can be encouraged to do all the challenging work required in the next step, and we can counsel them to the most appropriate opportunities – where they can gain the skills and knowledge they need for whatever it is they want to do next.

There are some who argue that if we give a diploma away too easily, we “aren’t doing them any favors.”  I think I disagree. As long as many opportunities for further study or other support are tied to high school completion, and so many young people need more study and help, then a diploma may constitute a favor.  As we argue about where we draw the line between dropout and graduate, if we don’t invest enough in dropouts, we ought to revisit what it means to draw the line at all.

Giving fewer young people a diploma will increase our confidence that most of the remaining graduates are prepared, but it could also swell the ranks of the dropouts, who are less willing or able to continue their studies or prepare for well-paying work.

There’s a lot of handwringing about the graduation scandal at D.C. Public Schools. But there is little discussion about the underlying problem of the failures of American public education.

Instead of a slow-moving tragedy, recent debates could be helpful if they drive discussions about how we prepare all young people for the workforce or for further study and career training.

Far too many high school graduates and dropouts are not prepared to succeed after they leave high school. There are remarkable exceptions, including charter networks with strong records preparing more young people to earn college degrees. We should explore how to use similar strategies and tools to help more young people, regardless of where they are, transition successfully.

As it stands, American higher education (which includes traditional colleges as well as workforce training programs run by community colleges), and the kinds of jobs that include training, are all more likely to be available to high school graduates than they are to dropouts. Many programs explicitly target dropouts, and some of these opportunities are open to both graduates and dropouts.  But many young people who dropout decide not to try, or they don’t know how to pursue the most beneficial pathways. Compounding these individual tragedies, as a society, we are too comfortable with dropouts’ subsequent self-limiting decisions.

Unless we change our attitudes toward dropouts, efforts to deny diplomas to more young people are likely to reduce their access to further training – as well as the accompanying public investments in their futures.

We should certainly use this current debate to push for changes that clarify what it takes to earn a diploma. But we should also expand what we do as a society to prepare all these young people to succeed – even if they don’t graduate.

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Virginia Fails Black Kids

It was seemingly appropriate that White Supremacists marched down on the campus of the University of Virginia last Friday as part of the mayhem and terror they would eventually wage…

It was seemingly appropriate that White Supremacists marched down on the campus of the University of Virginia last Friday as part of the mayhem and terror they would eventually wage against Black people and other minorities. The long march for equality and democracy in America goes through the schoolhouse door in Virginia as much as in any other state.

While Gov. Terry McAuliffe and state legislative leaders can condemn the bigotry of the Unite the Right participants (as well as the words of the current President of the United States), neither they nor us should forget that there is a reason why they came to Virginia in the first place. It isn’t just because of some statue of Robert E. Lee. The last gasp of legal Jim Crow took place in Virginia, when that state’s government replied to the Supreme Court’s decision in Brown with “massive resistance” to school integration. The Old Dominion’s politicians of the time were so opposed to providing equal education (as understood at the time) to Black children that they shut down entire school districts.

The good news is that some things have changed. The bad news? Some things have remained pretty much the same.

Virginia’s Department of Education publishes “School Quality Profiles” on the Internet, easily searchable by school or “division” (district).  These profiles include the percentage of students tested as achieving proficiency in reading, math, science and social studies.  The results are impressive – if you take them on face value.

For example, the Virginia Department of Education judges that 76 percent of eighth grade students are proficient or advanced in reading.  The state broke this down to 84 percent of White, non-Hispanic, students reaching the proficient or advanced level in grade 8 reading during the 2016-17 school year, as did 59 percent of Black students. The 25-percentage-point gap is troubling, but it is nonetheless encouraging that the state’s public schools teach more than half of its Black students to read at the level expected for middle school students.

Decades after Harry Byrd Sr. and his cohorts fought integration and Brown v. Board of Education, the Old Dominion engages in a new form of massive resistance against educating Black children.

But do they?

We can perform a direct comparison at the state level between student learning as assessed and reported by the Department of Education of Virginia and the National Assessment of Educational Progress results for eighth grade reading for the state. NAEP is widely considered “the gold standard” of student assessments.  If there is a difference between assessments, NAEP is to be preferred.

NAEP’s most recent report on grade eight reading for Virginia show that by its standard 44 percent of White students are proficient and above as are 16 percent of Black students.  This indicates that Virginia’s assessments at grade eight for proficiency in reading for White, non-Hispanic, students should be divided in half, those for Black students should be divided by nearly four.

We might, at this point, observe that inflating student learning achievement in this manner is not useful for the students, who are being given the impression that they have skills that half or three-quarters of them do not in fact possess; nor for educators, who look to these assessments for guidance for their efforts; nor for the state legislature and governor, who might wish to use these assessments in their budgetary and other planning.

As a result of these distortions, students may have false expectations for their futures; teachers may base their lesson plans on an incorrect understanding of the tasks to be accomplished; and district administrations and boards of education, as well as the state government, may not appropriate and allocate resources effectively.

Prince Edward County, once an epicenter of Virginia’s opposition to integration, now primarily educates Black children. Badly.

As a matter of fact, in regard to how scarce resources are allocated, Virginia ranks 29th among the states in per pupil expenditures on education and 42nd on expenditures in relation to personal income. These are indications of the state’s commitment, or lack of commitment, to education. Virginia shows a similar lack of investment in the provision of preschool education, for which, according to the National Institute for Early Education Research, it ranks 29th for both access and spending

As far as educational opportunity is concerned, many schools in Virginia distribute opportunities quite inequitably to their students, basing them first on race, then in accordance with family income.  In regards to race, White students are nearly three times as likely to be taught to read proficiently in Virginia’s middle schools as are Black students.

But, it is not enough in Virginia for a student to be White to secure a good education.  It is necessary also to belong to a family that is not poor.  Using the NAEP standards, we find that White students from Virginia families living in or near poverty, and therefore eligible for the National Lunch Program, read at grade level at eighth grade just 20 percent of the time, while other White students, from more prosperous families, read at grade level more than twice as often: 51 percent of the time.

These inequities are compounded for Virginia’s Black students: only 12 percent of those eligible for the National Lunch Program read at or above the proficient level, while twice as many, 25 percent, of those from more prosperous families do so.

The decision by White Supremacists to protest in Charlottesville had less to do with a statue and more with the reminder of Virginia’s legacy of perpetuating the racism they prefer.

A White student from a comparatively prosperous family in Virginia is more than four times as likely to be brought to grade level in eighth grade reading than a Black student from a lower-income family.  A Black student from a comparatively prosperous family in Virginia is more likely to read at or above grade level at eighth grade than a White student eligible for the National Lunch Program. And even an above-average family income is not sufficient to secure three-quarters of affluent Black students the opportunity to read proficiently in middle school.

Virginia has undergone enormous, and accelerating, changes in the decades since Brown and the state’s “massive resistance” to desegregation and educational equity.  It has changed from a uniformly, nearly feudal society, steeped in the heritage of slavery, to one that is highly varied, in parts still agricultural, in others technology-based with a majority of residents who have relocated from the Northeast of the United States.

Educational opportunities are as variable across the state as this picture would indicate. Prince Edward County, in the south-central part of the state, closed its public schools after Brown rather than desegregate them.  The state reports that now 43 percent of the reopened school district’s Black students (who are 57 percent of enrollment) read proficiently in grade 8, which would be 11 percent or 12 percent on the NAEP scale.  The state assessment is of 59 percent for White, non-Hispanic, students, that is, about 30 percent on the NAEP scale.

On the other hand, Fairfax County, in the northern part of the state, a wealthy suburb of Washington, D.C., reports 69 percent of Black students (who are just 10 percent of its enrollment) read proficiently by state standards, which would be 19 percent on NAEP, and 81 percent of White, non-Hispanic, which would be 40 percent on NAEP, read at grade level.

Seven decades after Massive Resistance, Virginia still does poorly in providing high quality education to Black children.

In Richmond, the state capitol (and former capitol of the Confederacy), the state reports that 37 percent of Black students (who are 71 percent of enrollment there) and 85 percent of White, non-Hispanic, students read a the proficient or advanced levels, which translate by national standards to 10 percent of Black students and 43 percent of White, non-Hispanic, students: and to 90 percent of Black students who don’t.

It is, then, not unusual in Virginia for a district to fail to bring nearly 90 percent of its Black students to grade level proficiency in middle school by national standards, while succeeding in this fundamental task for 40 percent of its White, non-Hispanic, students. And it is not now unknown for schools in those parts of the state where old times are nearly forgotten to triple learning opportunities for Black students from the level where the traditions of Jim Crow survive.

Black students moving from Prince Edward County or Richmond to Fairfax would nearly double their opportunity to learn to read proficiently. Moving to a suburban Virginia school system would increase the likelihood of learning to read proficiently for a middle class Black student to 30 percent.

Disparate educational outcomes in Virginia are facilitated by two overlapping types of segregation:  racial and income.  Public schools in Richmond, for example, have a Brown University Index of Dissimilarity of 69 on a scale where 60 or above is considered very highly segregated. The average Black student attends a school in which 77 percent of the students come from poor families and 87 percent are Black.  On the other hand, the Fairfax County Public Schools Dissimilarity Index is just 47 and Black students typically attend schools where just 38 percent of their students from poor families.  A reasonable hypothesis would be that differing educational opportunities for Black students between these districts follow from these differences in the intensity of racial and income segregation.

What must now be done in Virginia is ensure that all children are provided high-quality education.

But why is it that the quality of education available to a student varies with that student’s race and family income?  Part of the answer is that expenditure on that student’s education varies with location and the degrees of segregation found there.

Schools in Virginia, as most elsewhere in the United States, are funded by a locally-based tripartite system of revenue from local, state and federal sources.  In Virginia, state funding is higher for districts with lower amounts of local funding (and, as elsewhere, federal funding varies with poverty levels and other special needs).

In Prince Edward County, per pupil expenditure totals $11,300 per year, more than half of which comes from the state, partially compensating for the very low $3,800 per year from local resources.  In Fairfax County, per pupil expenditure totals $14,200 per year, more than 25 percent higher than that provided to Prince Edward County students.  $10,400 of this comes from local sources (close to the total of Prince Edward County’s expenditure), with just $3,200 from state sources and a negligible amount from federal sources.  Almost 60 percent of Prince Edward County’s students are Black, compared to 10 percent of students in Fairfax County’s schools.

Investment in a Black student’s education increases by a quarter if that student moves from Prince Edward County to Fairfax County, both racial and income segregation dramatically decrease and, according to Raj Chetty’s Equality of Opportunity Project, that student’s chances of reaching the top 20 percent of income distribution, given parents in the bottom 20 percent, doubles.

It is high time for Virginia’s politicians, especially outgoing Gov. Terry McAuliffe and his successor, to do better by Black children and other vulnerable youth.

Why should total investments in a student’s education, in this increasingly wealthy state, vary with the amount of local taxation revenues? Equalizing per student expenditures across the state to at least the level of Fairfax County would be a major step toward improving educational achievement for Virginia’s students who are the descendants of enslaved Africans, many of whom would have been brought from Africa and sold into slavery by Virginia-based slave traders.

Another factor restricting educational opportunities for Black students in Virginia is the racial attitudes of some school staff.  This can be seen in school discipline data.  Research has convincingly shown that disciplinary actions by school-level staff, such as out-of-school suspensions, are much more dependent on the racial attitudes of teachers and school administrators than on the activities of students.  The latest year for which state-level school discipline data is available from the U.S. Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights is 2011-12.

In that year, five percent of White students and three times that proportion, 14 percent, of Black students in Virginia and were given at least one out-of-school suspension.  (This is quite close to the 16 percent figure for Black adults in Virginia who have not completed high school and, perhaps coincidentally, the 16 percent percentage of African-Americans in Virginia who live in poverty.) Throwing a student out of class often begins the process by which that student is prevented from completing their education.

Unequal educational opportunities in elementary and secondary schooling in Virginia culminate in large numbers of Black students being denied high school diplomas.  The four-year adjusted cohort graduation rate reported by the state for the 2014-15 school year was 79 percent for Black students, but 90 percent for White students. [The graduation rate of Black students in the Richmond schools is 69 percent, that of White students 90 percent. In Fairfax those rates are 82 percent and 95 percent, respectively.] This

This includes more Black children in robotics as well as in other science and technology classes.

Given that only 16 percent of Black students and 44 percent of White students were reading at grade level in 2011, when they were in eighth grade, it appears that 61-63 percent of graduating Black students in Virginia and about half of graduating White students received their diplomas while having serious deficiencies in their reading skills. This is borne out by the fact that just 17 percent of those African-American students who took the SAT in 2015—and only college-bound students would take that test—met the SAT College and Career Readiness Benchmark.

[This is before we consider the lack of opportunities for Black children in the Old Dominion to gain college-preparatory education, the subject of previous Dropout Nation analyses.]

It is not “natural” that the allocation of resources should vary from district to district within Virginia—or any other state—depending on local tax revenues.  More equitable systems are not beyond the keen of human intelligence.  Nor is it “natural”—must one say this?—that educational opportunities should be greater for middle class White students than for Black students from lower income families.

It is good that one or two Virginia school districts and some suburbs offer greater educational opportunities for African-American students than are offered elsewhere in the state, even if these are simply the by-products for relatively small minorities of Black students of increased investments in the educations of upper-middle class White children.

It is good to take symbolic steps to erase the vestiges of slavery and Jim Crow.  However, a decision by the governor of Virginia, and its legislature, is needed to change the state’s education system, root and branch, so that educational opportunities are not determined by the color of a student’s skin, by the size of a student’s parents’ bank account, by the location of that student’s school.

Until McAuliffe, his eventual successor, and the state legislature do these things, the responsibility for the lack of educational opportunities for the descendants of enslaved Africans in Virginia remains theirs.

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Pennsylvania’s Educational Caste System

During the 19th and 20th centuries, Pennsylvania was a center of the anti-slavery movement, part of the route of the Underground Railroad, among the principal destinations of the Great Migration…

During the 19th and 20th centuries, Pennsylvania was a center of the anti-slavery movement, part of the route of the Underground Railroad, among the principal destinations of the Great Migration of the descendants of enslaved Africans from the Jim Crow former slave states of the south.

But these days, the Keystone State can no longer be considered by Black people as a gateway to freedom. Especially when it comes to their children attaining a high-quality education.

Today, just 17 percent of African-American adults in Pennsylvania have attained a baccalaureate or advanced degree compared to 31 percent of White, non-Hispanic adults. In fact, the level of higher education attainment for Blacks in the Keystone state is lower than the 20 percent national average for all African American adults.

Fifteen percent of Pennsylvania’s Black residents leave school without a high school diploma. That is higher than the nine percent average for White residents and two percentage points greater than the 11 percent national average for all African Americans.

The consequences can be seen in the economy. A much higher percentage of White residents than Black residents are employed in managerial occupations.  A much higher percentage of Black residents than White are employed in service occupations. Black family incomes are both lower than those of White families in the state and lower than the national average for African-Americans.  The poverty rate for the 1.4 million Black residents of Pennsylvania is more than triple that for White Pennsylvanians.

These matters are all connected.  Adults, particularly Black adults, without a high school diploma have little chance for middle class careers, those without college degrees little chance of securing jobs in the professions. Children whose parents have not graduated from college have less of a chance to do well in school than those whose parents are well-educated.

By failing to close the gaps in both the amount and quality of educational opportunities between Black and White residents of Pennsylvania, its state and local officials ensure that Pennsylvania’s racially-based caste system will remain in place.

The educational and racial caste system begins early. Pennsylvania is ranked 30th for access to pre-kindergarten for 4-year olds by the National Institute for Early Education Research. High quality pre-kindergarten programs have positive effects that continue to be evident through the primary grades.

Perhaps in part because of limited access, Pennsylvania’s early childhood education system does not have the expected positive results in the primary grades for Black children, just 15 percent of whom are in the state’s prekindergarten classrooms.  While 49 percent of White, non-Hispanic, fourth-graders are taught to read at the level expected at that grade, only 17 percent of Pennsylvania’s African-American fourth graders read at grade level.

The Keystone State’s big-city districts especially lag far behind national averages in teaching fourth grade students to read.  While nationally 30 percent of urban children read at grade level in fourth grade, Pennsylvania’s urban schools successfully teach only 19 percent of their students to read proficiently in primary school, while the state’s suburban schools teach more than half of their students to read well—approximately the same proportion left functionally illiterate in fourth grade by the state’s urban schools.

While Pittsburgh’s Black and White kids sometimes end up in the same schools, they don’t get the same quality of education.

Much of the problem is located in Philadelphia, where just 10 percent of fourth grade African-American students are taught to read proficiently, and even fewer, eight percent, of Black children from lower income families are taught to read to grade level.  In Philadelphia, over 90 percent of Black children from lower income families do not reach grade level in reading and nearly two-thirds are functionally illiterate in fourth grade, as are more than half of Black children from middle class families.

Could more access to high quality prekindergarten classes improve this situation?  Most researchers believe it would.  Why, then, is it that 85 percent of Black children in the state are not given that opportunity?

If a Black child remains in a Pennsylvania public school beyond fourth grade, their chances of being ready for college and career will not improve at all.

By grade eight, the same proportion of White children reading at grade level in eighth grade as in fourth grade and a decline to 13 percent of Black students taught by their schools to read as well as expected in middle school. The state’s record for its White, non-Hispanic, students is better than the national average for the group (42 percent), while that for its Black students is worse than the national average of 16 percent, bringing the state’s racial gap to 34 percentage points greater than the national gap, which is in itself unacceptable, of 27 percentage points.

It is generally expected that education is an important aspect of cultural capital that is passed down within families.  But the attitude toward education in the home seems to be overwhelmed by racial disadvantage in Pennsylvania.

The schools in the state teach nearly a third, 30 percent, of White, non-Hispanic, students whose parents did not progress beyond high school to read at the level expected in eighth grade.  This is more than twice the percentage of the Black children of college graduates reading at grade level in middle school. The positive effects of higher education attainment level in the families of Black students in Pennsylvania appear to be overwhelmed by the lack of educational opportunities for Black students in the schools.

In Pennsylvania, it is the color of your skin, not just the education level of your parents, which counts.

While the opportunities for high-quality education in Philadelphia is almost non-existent.

Student educational attainment in Pennsylvania, as elsewhere, is divided by income as well as by race.  White students from families living in or near poverty, and therefore eligible for the National Lunch Program, read at grade level in eighth grade half as often as students from more prosperous White families in Pennsylvania. Black students from families living in or near poverty, and therefore eligible for the National Lunch Program, read at grade level in eighth grade just under two-thirds as often in Pennsylvania as Black students from middle class families.

The gap between Black students from poorer families and White students from prosperous families is more than forty percentage points. The gap based on income among White students is approximately twenty points, among Black students it is just eight points. Family economic status matters much more for Pennsylvania’s White, non-Hispanic, students than it does for the state’s African-American students.  One explanation for this might be that, as in New York City, higher family income in Pennsylvania does not protect Black students from relegation to inferior, segregated, schools.

Racial disparities in Pennsylvania compound those of economic class.

The racial gap for students from lower income families is 15 points in Pennsylvania, as it is nationally, but that for students from middle class families is 38 points in Pennsylvania, 14 points greater than the national average. A White student from a comparatively prosperous family in Pennsylvania is approximately five times as likely to be brought to grade level in eighth grade reading as a Black student from a low-income family.  A Black student from a comparatively prosperous family in Pennsylvania is not as likely to read at or above grade level in eighth grade as is a White student eligible for the National Lunch Program.

In Pennsylvania, it is the color of your skin, not just the color of your money, which counts.

As with fourth grade, in eighth grade the lack of educational opportunities for African-American students is especially acute in the urban districts.  More than 90 percent of Black students from lower income families in city schools are not taught to read at grade level in middle school and half are left functionally illiterate.  Even middle class Black students are denied a meaningful education in the state’s urban schools: Just 12 percent of them are taught to read at grade level in eighth grade.  It is not that the schools are unable to teach their students to read.

Twenty percent of lower income White students in city schools read proficiently in eighth grade, as do more than half of urban middle class White students.  And in suburban schools nearly a third of lower income and nearly two-thirds of middle class White students are taught to read proficiently.

Pennsylvania Secretary of Education Pedro Rivera is one of the people responsible for the state’s failures to provide high-quality education to Black children. But he’s not the only one.

In Pennsylvania, it is the color of your skin, not just the location of your school, which counts.

The reality of the failure of the state’s education system is partially hidden behind the inflated results reported by the Pennsylvania System of School Assessment. In 2016, the state reported that 58 percent of eighth-graders read at Proficient and Advanced (grade) levels, while 11 read Below Basic. This doesn’t square with the National Assessment of Eduational Progress, which reports that only 40 percent of Keystone State eighth-graders were Proficient and above in reading while 22 percent scored Below Basic.

As we know by now, NAEP is considered “the gold standard” of education assessment.  The PSSA does not meet that standard.  The children of Pennsylvania are not well-served by an assessment system that conceals the deficiencies of their schools.

But Black children in Pennsylvania aren’t just punished with low-quality education. The overuse of out-of-school suspensions and other harsh traditional forms of school discipline also damage their prospects.

A study by the Council of State Governments Justice Center has established that school discipline practices are a good indicator of the racial prejudices of the adults in the schools.  The researchers found that disciplinary actions by teachers and school administrators for subjective issues, “attitude” and such, were much more likely against African-American than White or Hispanic students, while those for actions that can be objectively assessed, such as violence, were more evenly distributed among the racial and ethnic groups.

As with crime statistics, which measure police and prosecutor activity, not simply the activities of those arrested, so school discipline data is a measure of the activities and attitudes of teachers and administrators, not just those of students.  This can be seen in Pennsylvania, where more than five times the percentage of Black students (17 percent) as White students (three percent) were given at least one out-of-school suspension.

It has been found that out-of-school suspensions, like expulsions, are an efficient way to discourage students from completing their educations.

What about graduation rates? The four-year adjusted cohort graduation rate reported by Pennsylvania for the 2014-15 school year was 72 percent for Black students and 89 percent for White students. Given that only 13 percent of Black students and 47 percent of White students were reading at grade level in 2011, when they were in eighth grade, it appears that just nine percent of Black students in Pennsylvania who began their high school education four years earlier and less than half (42 percent) of White students received their diplomas while reading at eighth-grade proficiency or better.

The value of the state’s high school diplomas for college and career readiness has been measured by the College Board.  According to the College Board, in 2015 just 12 percent of Pennsylvania’s African-American SAT takers met the SAT College and Career Readiness Benchmark.  Of course, only those students considering college take the SAT.

This is clear: Pennsylvania educates its White students, and does not educate its Black students, so that three times the former as the latter read at grade level in middle school. On average, just 9 percent of the Black students who begin high school in Pennsylvania, and less than half of the White students, graduate reading proficiently.

That is not a good record for White students.  It is a catastrophe for Black students.

Two-thirds of African-Americans in the state of Pennsylvania live in just three counties: Philadelphia, neighboring Delaware and Allegheny County (Pittsburgh). The responsibility for the catastrophic educational failure of the schools in the state can be attributed to the administrations of the districts in those counties, particularly Philadelphia and Pittsburgh.

The professed mission of the School District of Philadelphia is to provide to “every child in Philadelphia an excellent public school education and ensure all children graduate from high school ready to succeed, fully engaged as a citizen of our world.” The Board of the Pittsburgh Public Schools states in its mission statement that “We will hold ourselves accountable for preparing all children to achieve academic excellence and strength of character, so that they have the opportunity to succeed in all aspects of life.”

The four-year graduation rate for Philadelphia’s Black students is just 61 percent; that for Pittsburgh’s can be estimated at 64 percent. Very few of these graduates are “career- and college-ready.”  Fewer than ten percent were able to read proficiently when in eighth grade; fewer met the College Board’s standard for college and career readiness. They are, instead, prepared to reproduce the trajectory of their parents’ generation, with little chance of upward socio-economic mobility and a good chance of a life of poverty.

Who is responsible?  These people are responsible: The School Reform Commission of Philadelphia, controlled by the governor of the state, is responsible for the failure of the Philadelphia schools to educate most of its African-America students; the Superintendent and Board of Directors of the Pittsburgh Schools, for its failure to educate most of its African-American students. The state’s Secretary of Education and the state Board of Education; the state legislature and the governor are responsible for the race-based allocation of educational opportunities throughout Pennsylvania.

Most directly the governor and the two big-city district superintendents should be held accountable for failing to preparing all children so that they have the opportunity to succeed in life.

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Michigan’s Jim Crow Schools

Mississippi and Michigan are the states in the country with the lowest percentage of African-American students reading at or above grade level in eighth grade.  Mississippi teaches just 8 percent…

Mississippi and Michigan are the states in the country with the lowest percentage of African-American students reading at or above grade level in eighth grade.  Mississippi teaches just 8 percent of its Black students to read to national standards in middle school; Michigan teaches just 9 percent.  [The national average is for Black students is 15 percent.]

In both states, about half are functionally illiterate, tested at the “Below Basic” level by the National Assessment of Educational Progress. As the percentage of students reading at grade level changes little between 8th and 12th grades, it means that more than 90 percent of Black students in these states are unlikely to graduate from high school college- and career-ready.

It would, of course, be unjust to say that in the 21st century the goal of educators in Michigan and Mississippi is to so limit educational opportunities for Black students that 90 percent cannot read at grade level in middle school, that half are functionally illiterate, that nearly a fifth of Black adults in Michigan and a quarter of those in Mississippi have not finished high school. But what can we say about institutions, and those in responsible positions in those institutions, that year after year fail to meet their responsibilities 90 percent of the time?

Mississippi, the quintessential post-Confederate state, has the nation’s highest percentage of descendants of enslaved Africans: 37 percent.  In Michigan, far to the north, only 14 percent of the population is Black, although there are many more African-Americans in Michigan, 1.4 million, than in Mississippi—1.1 million. Mississippi did not repeal its constitutionally mandated restrictions on voting by means of poll taxes and literacy tests until 1975 nor the requirement for segregated schools until 1978 (a quarter century after Brown).  Michigan has never had a poll tax or a literacy test for the franchise, nor de jure segregated schools.

While the Black population of Mississippi is fairly evenly distributed about the state, although especially dense in the plantation counties along the Mississippi river, that of Michigan is highly concentrated in its southeastern corner, primarily the formerly industrial cities of Detroit, Flint and Saginaw, with a Brown University segregation index for the Detroit metropolitan area of 80, on a scale where 60 is considered very high.

Despite their similarities, there are major differences in the ways that the two states distribute, or, rather, restrict, educational opportunities. In Michigan, over half of Black families and one-third of White families have incomes low enough to qualify their children for free- or reduced-price school lunches; in Mississippi, over one-third of White families and over two-thirds of Black families have qualifying incomes (or qualifying lack of incomes). Both states educate very few of their children, of either race, from low-income families. Each brings just seven percent of their African-American children from low-income families to reading proficiency in eighth grade.  Mississippi manages this marginally better than Michigan for its White students from comparatively poor families: 25 percent to 23 percent.

The picture is quite different among students from more prosperous families.  Mississippi does much better than Michigan for those among them who are descendants of enslaved African, educating just over a quarter to reading proficiency in eighth grade, which we should note is more than either state does for its impoverished White students. Michigan only manages to bring 12 percent of its students from the upper half of the Black family income distribution to grade level in reading in middle school.  Nearly four times that percentage of middle class White children in Michigan learn to read proficiently in eighth grade.

One interpretation of these results would be that while educational opportunity in Mississippi’s public schools is chiefly distributed by income for both Black and White students, while in Michigan, educational opportunities are chiefly distributed by race, with less regard to income. The gap between lower income Black and White students in each state is approximately the same, but the gap between higher income Black and White students is much larger in Michigan. More than twice the percentage of Black students from higher income families in Mississippi read at grade level are brought to grade level in reading than in Michigan.

Few of the Wolverine State’s black children graduate with the knowledge they need for lifelong success.

However, it should be noted that while among White residents of Mississippi, almost two-thirds have incomes high enough to make students from those families ineligible for the National Lunch Program. Just one-third of Black families have incomes sufficient to make their students ineligible for the National Lunch Program. In other words, dividing educational resources by economic class in Mississippi results in increased opportunities for two-thirds of those from White families and decreased opportunities for two-thirds of those from Black families.

At the classroom level, out-of-school suspensions in both states are inflicted on a racial basis.  Schools in Mississippi give Black students more than one-out-of-school suspension three times as often as they do to White students; Michigan does this four times as often to Black as White students, resulting in nearly a fifth of Michigan’s Black students being kept out of the classroom at some point in their school careers. Research has shown that out-of-school suspensions have an efficient negative effect on student learning and frequently lead to the need to repeat grades and, eventually, to leaving school without a diploma.

Mississippi reports a graduation rate for its Black students of 77 percent, for its White students, 83 percent, a six-percentage point racial difference, considerably less than the 13 percent national difference.  Michigan reports a graduation rate for its Black students of 68 percent, for its White students, 83 percent, close to a 15 percent racial difference.  This is bad enough.  But if we look at the basic skill of reading mastered by these students when they were in eighth grade, we can conclude that just nine percent of Black students in Michigan and eight percent of Black students in Mississippi graduate able to read at least at the level desired for middle school students. This means that 59 percent of Black students in Michigan are graduating without the necessary skills for college and a career.

The failure of Michigan to adequately educate its Black residents can be traced to the inequitable support of schools they attend.  Support for public education in Michigan is directly related to the racial make-up of the schools in each district. In the schools of Ann Arbor—where the University of Michigan is located—the schools are more than 90 percent White. The median family income is considerably higher than the state average, as are teacher salaries. The pupil-to-teacher ratio is lower (better) than the state average.

In Detroit, with a student enrollment that is 80 percent Black and a median family income just above half of the state average, teachers are paid less than the state average and the pupil-to-teacher ratio is considerably higher. Nearly 200,000 of Michigan’s 280,000 Black public school students are in the districts of the Detroit metropolitan area and nearby Flint.  The Detroit public schools are under state control and therefore the state government—the legislature and the governor—are directly responsible for how they educate, or fail to educate, their students. The decisions leading to these disparities are not “institutional” or “structural.”  They are the decisions of the governor and the legislature of the state of Michigan to give few educational opportunities to the descendants of enslaved Africans, children for whose education they are individually and collectively responsible.

[Some will mention Michigan’s charter schools and the successes the high-quality operators have had in improving student achievement. But the state allows too many low-quality charters to remain open despite lagging performance. Fourteen percent of Michigan’s charters are both low-performing and do little to improve student achievement, according to Stanford University’s Center for Research on Educational Outcomes; while just one of the 11 charters shut down in 2015-2016 were closed because of academic failure, according to data from the Wolverine State’s Department of Education.]

The only districts in Mississippi with large numbers of Black students are the public schools in the state capitol, Jackson, enrolling 28,000 Black students and those in Desoto County, in the far northwest corner of the state, near Memphis, which enroll 11,000.  According to NAEP, none of the eighth-graders attending Mississippi’s big-city schools read at grade level or above.

Private schools have little effect on the educational opportunities of Black students from low-income families in either Mississippi or Michigan. Private school tuition in Mississippi for a family with two children, one in elementary school and one in high school, would amount to nearly a third of the family income of the average Black family in the state. Similarly, an average Black family in Michigan, with two children, one in elementary school and one in high school, would have to find nearly 40 percent of its income to pay for their private school tuition.

Michigan and Mississippi have separate paths to limiting educational opportunities for the descendants of enslaved Africans.  That followed by Michigan is the racially targeted unequal distribution of educational resources.  That followed by Mississippi is economically focused disparities in education quality in the context of centuries of Black poverty. They both work equally well to perpetuate the status of descendants of enslaved Africans as three-fifths of an American.

College graduation is increasingly important for employment and other economic and social factors.

In Michigan, college graduation rates for both Black and White adults are lower than national averages: 29 percent of White residents have a Bachelor’s degree or higher and 17 percent of Black residents, compared to the national averages of 32 percent and 20 percent, respectively.  The college graduation rate for Black residents of Michigan is almost exactly three-fifths of the White college graduation rate in the state. In large part because of the state’s failure to educate its African-American students, while the median family income of White residents is $68,300, that of Black residents is just over half of that: $37,100. The poverty rate for Black families in Michigan is three and a half times that for White families.

In Mississippi, the state’s percentage of Black adults with Bachelor’s degrees (14 percent) is also three-fifths of the percentage of White adults with Bachelor’s degrees or higher (24 percent). The unemployment rate for African-Americans in the state is more than twice that for White residents.  The median family incomes of both White and Black Mississippi residents are also considerably below national averages.  That of White residents is $62,200, that of Black residents is, again, just over half that: $32,500, hardly different from the ratio in Michigan. The poverty rate for Mississippi’s Black families is three times that for White families.

Recently, the director of the Michigan Department of Health and Human Services was charged with misconduct in office, a felony, for his role in the Flint water crisis.  It is an interesting precedent. The officials – governors, legislators, members of state and local boards of education and others—who have been responsible for restricting educational opportunities for Black residents of these states could act differently. They could provide the resources needed to close the gaps between the education now provided to their Black students and that provided to their White students.

Michigan’s political leaders could improve educational opportunities for all students.  They have not.  They do not.  It is not because they cannot. It is because they will not.

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New York’s Jim Crow Schools

There has been a persistent theme in the media, explicitly, and in scholarly studies, implicitly, that economic class is much more important as a basis for analysis than race.  This…

There has been a persistent theme in the media, explicitly, and in scholarly studies, implicitly, that economic class is much more important as a basis for analysis than race.  This is, of course, a Marxist position, one clung to by the Communist Party of the United States to its dying day.

But the basis of American society, as even some Communists admitted, is division by race. This was embodied in the original wording of the Constitution, with its three-fifths rule for counting enslaved Africans and their descendants. It dominated debates in the Senate until the imposition of the “gag” rule, barring discussion of slavery; led to the Civil War, and as Jim Crow, determined social structures and social relations in much of the country until the 1960s.

Despite Brown v. Board of Education and the Voting Rights Act and similar legislation, de jure Jim Crow did not vanish; it was transformed into “Jim Crow by another name,” primarily through the operation of schools and prisons. The stronghold of what Michelle Alexander branded as “The New Jim Crow” is the “black belt” of counties in the former Confederacy, running from Norfolk Virginia to, say, Waco, Texas, with satellites in various urban centers, especially in the line from Louisville, Kentucky to Milwaukee, Wisconsin, but also including Cleveland, Detroit, Philadelphia, Baltimore, Washington DC and New York.

Among the northern urban centers, New York City, because of its size and cultural and political significance, is of particular importance. New York City has an African American population of 2,089,000, a larger number than any other city in the country, more than in many states. How well do the New York public schools perform their task of educating all children, including Black children?

The National Assessment of Educational Progress is the standard by which education is measured in the United States.  Among NAEP’s many assessments, that for reading is particularly crucial as an indicator, particularly reading at grade 8, when the schools have had sufficient time to overcome many issues arising from home and community.

Results for grade 8 reading for New York City show that 46 percent of White students are Proficient and above (compared to 42 percent nationally) as are 15 percent of Black students (compared to 15 percent nationally).  Forty-four percent of Black students in the city’s public schools and 15 percent of White students were at the Below Basic (difficulty reading) level in 2015.

New York City’s public schools educate three times the percentage of their White students as their Black students to read at grade level in the crucial grade 8 year.  And they leave nearly half of Black middle school students unable to read easily, therefore unlikely to graduate from high school “college and career ready,” unlikely to qualify for or to obtain middle class jobs and incomes.

The failure of the New York City public schools to educate Black students is particularly troubling for male Black students, only 9 percent of whom are at Proficient or above in grade 8 reading in 2015.  Which means, of course, that 91 percent are not.

Student educational attainment in New York is also sharply divided by income.  Thirty-six percent of White students from families living in or near poverty, and therefore eligible for the National Lunch Program, in the New York public schools reach the Proficient and above levels in grade 8 reading. Other White students, from more prosperous families, read at grade level 57 percent of the time by eighth grade.  Among Black students, 13 percent of those eligible for the National Lunch Program read at or above the Proficient level, while 18 percent of those from more prosperous families do so.  A White student from a comparatively prosperous family in New York is more than four times as likely to be brought to grade level in grade 8 reading than a Black student from a low-income family.

Notice, however, the different sizes of the gaps between students from relatively poor and relatively prosperous families among Black and White students. It is 21 percentage points among White students, five among Black students.  Or, White students from more prosperous families are 58 percent more likely to read at grade level than White students from less well-off families, while with Black students it is 38 percent.  NAEP’s records for New York City assessments of this type go back only to 2003, but if we analyze those, we find that the family income differences for White students are pretty steady, over time, but for Black students they are narrowing, from 13 percentage points in 2007 to 5 percentage points in 2015.  The reading ability of New York City’s Black middle class students is declining, according to NAEP, while that of Black students from lower income families is remaining relatively flat.

How can this be interpreted? New York is one of the nation’s most segregated cities, as are its schools.  While since the (Lyndon) Johnson administration formal housing segregation has been illegal, in New York City even middle class Black professionals are ghettoized. Therefore, their children go to the same schools as do the children of the poorest, single parent, families.  In theory, this should not matter.  In theory, all schools would provide educations of equal—high—quality to all students.  Now, there’s this bridge in Brooklyn I want you to look at . . .

If we are done with that, it is obvious that all but 15 percent of Black children (and 9 percent of male Black children) in New York City are being provided with inferior educational opportunities because they are Black.  And of those, comparatively successful students, many are the children of school teachers and other highly educated parents, in effect, home schooled: the home environment making up for the deficiencies of the school (rather than the idealized opposite).

The racism of the New York City public school system is more or less overt, as witness the unspeakable racial imbalance of the system’s selective high schools, which year after year admit so few Black students that those could be accounted for by the number of children of Black United Nations diplomats. The outcome of all this is that the 65 percent of Black students entering grade 9 in New York City who were given diplomas four years later include about 40 percent who could not read at grade level when they were in grade 8 and probably could not read eighth grade material when they were given diplomas. More than one-third of the system’s Black students do not graduate from high school, two-thirds or more of those who do are far from “college and career ready.”

If a system fails in its professed purpose—say, educating children—more often than chance would indicate, and continues to do so over time, it is probable that it is, in fact, achieving its actual purpose, in this case, perpetuating racism.

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