"Jaw-Dropping Data" and "National Catastrophe" were two of the attention-getting phrases in the press release from the Council of the Great City Schools, phrases I assumed were hyperbole designed to catch the reader's eye.
Wrong! The data, from the report titled "A Call for Change: The Social and Educational Factors Contributing to the Outcomes of Black Males in Urban Schools" (PDF), are jaw dropping, and we do have a national catastrophe.
- Only 12 percent of black fourth-grade boys are proficient in reading, compared with 38 percent of white boys.
- Only 12 percent of black eighth-grade boys are proficient in math, compared with 44 percent of white boys.
- In 2009, the average mathematics scale score of large city black males who were not eligible for free or reduced-price lunch was eight points lower at grade four and 12 points lower at grade eight than the score of White males nationwide who were eligible for free or reduced-price lunch.
- Young white male students in poverty do as well as young black male students who are not in poverty.
- African-American boys drop out of high school at nearly twice the rate of white boys, and their SAT scores are on average 104 points lower.
- Between 2003 and 2007, black mothers had infant mortality rates at least twice as high as white mothers.
- In 2008, black children ages 17 and under were nearly 50 percent more likely to be without private or government health insurance than white children.
- Only 5 percent of college students in 2008 were black men. At the same time, black men were incarcerated more than any other demographic group -- at 6.5 times the rate of white males.
I would have liked to see some very specific recommendations, such as schools exclusively for young black boys, for example, or classes separated by gender. (Because so many of our public schools are now de facto segregated, one doesn't have to mention race. Simply calling for gender specific schools and classes is enough to assure that all the boys will be black, or all Hispanic, or all white. That's where we are now, 56 years after the Brown decision.)
The French pre-school system has what it calls 'economic priority zones' (ZEP, in French), to which the government devotes more resources, not fewer. I know we've tried that in Kansas City, Newark and other places without much success, but I think that's because the money was spent on buildings, or salaries, or adult needs.
Perhaps one of those national meetings the report calls for could come up with better ways to spend the additional dollars we are going to have to spend to solve this crisis.
---
John Merrow's new book, Below C Level, is now available on Amazon.
He blogs regularly at Taking Note, where this post originally appeared.