In D.C. schools, the racial gap is a chasm, not a crack

[XemaSab]

The final page has been turned on D.C. Public Schools’ 2015 calendar. But 2016 begins with the same uncompromising problem: the school system’s huge racial achievement gap. Schools Chancellor Kaya Henderson called the results of last year’s standardized tests “sobering.” How about painful?

The tests, known as the Partnership for Assessment of Readiness for College and Careers exams, or PARCC, showed that just 25 percent of D.C. students in the third through eighth grades met or exceeded expectations on new standardized tests in English. Only 24 percent met a new math benchmark.

And that was the good news.

Were it not for white test-takers in this majority-minority school system, the results would have been even worse.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/in-dc-schools-the-racial-gap-is-a-chasm-not-a-crack/2016/01/01/7cfc33e6-afe9-11e5-b711-1998289ffcea_story.html?hpid=hp_no-name_opinion-card-a%3Ahomepage%2Fstory

[elleng]

1. 'This new year, responsibility for a turnaround rests not only on principals and teachers

but also on mothers and fathers behaving like supportive, participating parents, and a community — business, religious and social leaders, including elected officials — bent on providing all that is necessary, both school resources and family support, to close one of the widest racial academic achievement gaps in the country. A city as intellectually, culturally and, dare I say it, spiritually enriched as the District should adopt that goal as a New Year’s resolution to be kept,'

but if they can't or won't, SOMEdamnone had better DO somethingS.

[Liberal_in_LA]

2. k&r

[kwassa]

3. and the product of poverty, not the school system.

DC is unique in a few ways.

the racism is not unique.

Putting the burden of solving poverty and racism on the backs of schoolteachers is both unreasonable, and abdicating the responsibility of society in eliminating these things.

[Recursion]

9. OTOH if teachers can't solve the problem, why does it matter who teaches?

That argument always seemed like a double-edged sword to me. If poverty actually is too powerful for any teacher to overcome, why does it matter that the schools have qualified, tenured teachers?

[kwassa]

11. Because the teachers can reach some....

and if they have proper supports, then can reach more. Those supports disappear at times of financial stress in the local government.

To bring kids out of poverty requires a holistic approach that involves a lot more than just teachers. Johns Hopkins creates these with some of the schools in Baltimore, like Dunbar.

[philosslayer]

4. This is an ongoing tragedy that MUST be addressed

A generation is being doomed due to ongoing racism, budget cuts, and an active war against young black children and teenagers.

[Waldorf]

5. Seems the author believes a lot of this can be traced back to the home.

"It helps when students go to school from homes where parental supervision is strong, where respect for teachers and other students is taught, and where getting a good education is valued. It helps, too, if students are exposed at home to correctly spoken English, and where homework must be done and checked for errors."

[XemaSab]

6. If the parents got shitty educations

how are they supposed to help their kids?

[Waldorf]

7. Did the parents get a shitty education or did they just not give a shit about school? There

comes a point where the educators need help from the kids families.

[yeoman6987]

8. Budget cuts in DC? I don't think so

They spend the highest per child in the country. I think it is the poverty outside the school that needs attention.

[1939]

10. Not just the teachers

The DC school system is an administrative disaster. The facilities are in bad shape because the maintenance employees hide out and don't function. They already ran off a superintendent who tried to fix the problems. As noted, they have one of the highest per pupil funding of any school district in the nation.