Part 4—A societal challenge: Within our student population, the gaps—the so-called “achievement gaps”—show up early and often.
Indeed, the gaps exist before our students are even technically students! Case in point:
Last year, in the New York Times, Stanford professor Sean Reardon described the way children from affluent families are pulling away from their middle-class peers in academic attainment. In the course of explaining this new dynamic, Reardon described an early gap—and a societal challenge:
REARDON (4/28/13): It may seem counterintuitive, but schools don't seem to produce much of the disparity in test scores between high- and low-income students. We know this because children from rich and poor families score very differently on school readiness tests when they enter kindergarten, and this gap grows by less than 10 percent between kindergarten and high school.When he talks about “rich and poor families,” Reardon seems to mean families from the 90th and 10th percentiles by family income. In that passage, he seems to say that a substantial gap already exists on the day children from these two groups show up for kindergarten.
We don’t understand what Reardon means when he says this gap “grows by less than ten percent” as these kids proceed through high school. Presumably, the gap in knowledge and skills is quite large by the end of their high school years—substantially larger than it was when these kids were five or six.
That said, substantial gaps already exist in the first years of life. Tomorrow, we’ll consider the so-called “30 million word gap,” a daunting gap which is said to exist by the time children are 3.
Simply put, kids from low-income, low-literacy backgrounds aren’t immersed in the culture of literacy in the ways their middle-class counterparts are. For kids from high-literacy backgrounds, his immersion starts in the first days of life. It helps produce the achievement gaps which represent a major societal challenge.
A certain class of upper-class liberal seems to enjoy pretending that these gaps don’t really exist. To us, their conduct has the feel of throwback, a throwback to the 1960s, when Hart and Risley hadn’t conducted the research which defined that 30 million word gap.
At that time, it seemed it would perhaps be easy to address the gaps which existed in schools like the ones Jonathan Kozol and Herbert Kohl described in their famous books from 1967, Death at an Early Age and 36 Children.
Today, sensible people know better. But all too often, journalists and professors seem to prefer to run with a bit of a ruse.
Have journalists sometimes avoided the gaps, dumbing us down in the process? We’ll return to that question in Week 3 of this month-long report.
For today, we’ll return to data from last year’s National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) to see how large those gaps can be. In our view, those punishing gaps can be painfully large.
The statistics which follow are painful statistics. That said, the problems these statistics capture can’t be confronted as long as upper-class pseudo-liberals keep finding ways to avoid them—keep finding ways to avert our gaze from the problems of low-income kids.
In yesterday's report, we looked at data from last year’s NAEP testing in Grade 8 math. These data can be used to divide the nation’s students into two groups by family income, based on eligibility for free or reduced price lunch.
Again, we’ll note that this is not a measure of poverty. Given current demographics, this measure divides the nation’s student population roughly in half.
According to NAEP data, exactly 50 percent of students tested in Grade 8 math were eligible for free or reduced price lunch last year; 50 percent were not. We’ll refer to these groups as “lower income” and “higher income students.”
As we noted yesterday, there was a substantial gap between these two groups on last year’s Grade 8 math test. As we saw in the data reprinted below, higher-income students scored substantially better.
We’re looking at a substantial gap. If we apply a common but very rough rule of thumb, this gap in test scores could be compared to almost three academic years:
Average scores, Grade 8 mathRemember—roughly half the higher-income students scored above 297. Roughly half the lower-income students scored below 270.
All public school students, 2013 NAEP
All students: 283.62
Higher-income students: 297.13
Lower-income students: 269.96
As such, those average scores seem to define a large gap in academic achievement. This presents a challenge to our schools. It defines an obvious problem in social justice.
Alas! These gaps look worse, become more painful, when we review the average scores attained by higher- and lower-income students in various “racial” groups. As a starting point, this is the way the “income gap” worked among white students:
Average scores, Grade 8 mathThus defined, the “income gap” among white students was more than 21 points.
White students only, 2013 NAEP
All white students: 293.19
Higher-income white students: 299.80
Lower-income white students: 278.36
A somewhat smaller “income gap” obtained among the nation’s black students. But in both income groups, black kids scored substantially lower than their white counterparts:
Average scores, Grade 8 mathIn these data, we see one of the ugliest statistics we know. By a slender margin, lower-income white students outscored higher-income black students in Grade 8 math last year. We’d call that an ugly fact.
Black students only, 2013 NAEP
All black students: 262.73
Higher-income black students: 275.97
Lower-income black students: 258.46
Those are average scores, of course. Many black students scored extremely well in Grade 8 math.
It’s also true that all these scores have been rising in the past several decades. Despite the propaganda you constantly meet in the nation’s leading newspapers, black kids’ math scores have substantially risen in recent decades.
White kids’ math scores are better too. For that reason, the gap persists, although it has gotten smaller.
Despite what you constantly hear from our journalists, black and white math scores are rising. But despite that good news, the statistics we’ve just presented define a major national challenge. The situation isn’t helped when upper-class Princeton professors look for ways to fudge this gap. Nor are things helped when we pretend that things were great at Tuscaloosa’s original Central High, when that city’s black and white kids all attended one high school together.
Those statistics define a large societal challenge. Let’s complete the statistical picture:
Average scores, Grade 8 mathFor the record, we’re using the term “Asian-American” in place of the official NAEP language, which refers to “Asian/Pacific Islander” students.
Hispanic students only, 2013 NAEP
All Hispanic students: 271.02
Higher-income Hispanic students: 282.81
Lower-income Hispanic students: 267.50
Average scores, Grade 8 math
Asian-American students only, 2013 NAEP
All Asian-American students: 305.92
Higher-income Asian-American students: 316.53
Lower-income Asian-American students: 289.53
Those data start to define the size of the gaps. They also define a societal challenge—a challenge our journalists and professors may not care much about.
In the days of Kozol and Kohl, we liberals were eager to tackle this challenge. Today, we tend to salonsplain everything else. Our deserving black kids—the D’Leisha Dents, and so many others—are pretty much left on their own.
Life in Princeton can be quite good! Who cares about Tuscaloosa?
Tomorrow: The gaps in Alabama
To access all NAEP data: To access the NAEP data cited above, click here, then click on MAIN NDE (Main NAEP Data Explorer).
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