BLACK KIDS IN PUBLIC SCHOOLS: Nobody cares!

MONDAY, SEPTEMBER 21, 2015

Part 1—Our final back-to-school questions: How much better are black kids doing in math?

Admit it! You’ve never seen that question addressed by any major news org!

You’ve never seen that question addressed by the New York Times or the Washington Post. You’ve never seen that question addressed by the millionaire corporate employees who perform as corporate liberal hosts on MSNBC, The One True Liberal Channel.

How much better are black kids doing? Voluminous data exist—but you’ve never seen them reported! For that reason, you’ve never seen any actual experts asked to say what those data might mean.

In our view, you’ve never seen that question addressed for a fairly obvious reason. Within our journalistic elites, no one cares about black kids, except:

(1) To the extent that their deaths can be used to heighten claims to moral greatness made by various public figures; or (2) to the extent that public school data can be used to promote elite establishment narratives about our allegedly failing public schools with their ratty unionized teachers.

When young black people get shot and killed, our liberal leaders swing into action, including our corporate millionaire liberals. They invent, embellish and disappear facts, making the stories more dramatic—easier to tell, easier to exploit for the TV star’s personal gain.

You will never see those people ask how black kids are doing in school. The reason for that seems abundantly clear:

None of those people care!

Just for the record, this is what score gains in math look like over the past twenty years. You’ll see these data nowhere else. Data from the 2015 NAEP aren’t available yet:

Gains in average scores, 1996-2013
Main NAEP, Grade 4 math
National public schools
White students: 18.92 points
Black students: 26.82 points
Hispanic students: 23.68 points
Asian-American students: 28.59 points

Gains in average scores, 1996-2013
Main NAEP, Grade 8 math
National public schools
White students: 13.69 points
Black students: 23.45 points
Hispanic students: 21.84 points
Asian-American students: Insufficient data from 1996;
18.46 points from 2000-2013

Because of changes in the Grade 12 math test, similar comparisons can’t be made at that grade level over that period. Last week, we showed you what Grade 12 score gains look like from 2005 through 2013.

(Over that period, Grade 12 score gains were actually larger than the gains at Grade 4. Before the week is done, we'll show you Grade 12 score gains in math from 1990 through the year 2000.)

Judged by normal measures, the score gains shown above seem to be quite large. From those data, you can also see that the “achievement gaps” in math have been narrowing on the NAEP during that period.

Still and all, those data raise important questions. Basic among them are these:

How much academic improvement is implied by score gains of that size? If significant improvement has occurred, to what can it be attributed?

Is there some way to produce more academic gains of this type? Is there any chance that the NAEP data are misleading or flawed in some way?

Admit it! You’ve never seen such basic questions explored in the Washington Post or the New York Times. And while we’re at it, admit one more thing:

If it weren’t for this site, you would have no earthly idea that those score gains exist at all! All across the mainstream press corps, a basic agreement exists:

These data simply don’t exist! Those score gains can’t or won’t or shouldn’t be reported!

Last week, we looked at the ludicrous way one of our “educational experts” disappeared some score gains on the NAEP. In a discussion of SAT scores, he ended up in a standard, mandated place:

We need more charter schools, he said! We need more “education reform!”

For ourselves, we aren’t opposed to charter schools, or to some of the basic tenets of so-called “reform.” We are opposed to the phony discourse about our schools which gets churned by our “experts,” professors and journalists—a phony discourse which always supports preferred elite nostrums about our failing schools and their heinous public school teachers.

This week, we’ll complete our back-to-school spectacular! We’ll do so by looking at two other questions which arose in the back-to-school pseudo-reporting by the nation’s press corps this year:

Our two additional back-to-school questions:
1) Do black kids get suspended more often in the South than in other parts of the country?
2) What kind of progress has occurred in the New Orleans schools?

In recent weeks, the press corps attempted, pretended or seemed to discuss those important questions. Warning:

Each question involves black kids in our public schools, about whom the press doesn’t care.

Here’s our plan for the week:

On Tuesday and Wednesday, we’ll explore the important question of public school suspensions. On Thursday, we’ll examine claims of progress in the New Orleans schools.

On Friday, we’ll return to this year’s SAT scores, reviewing the way the Associated Press and the New York Times pretended to report this topic in recent weeks. The following question may arise:

When’s the last time the New York Times got something right about schools?

Tomorrow, we’ll return to those professors from Penn and their amazingly bungled new study. Inevitably, we’ll see failed reporting in the Times playing its standard role as the professors’ ridiculous work spreads through much of the press corps.

Professors and experts and journos oh my! Our black kids seem to be doing much better. By way of contrast, our academic and journalistic elites are in a disgraceful state of moral and intellectual decline.

How are black kids doing in school? Manifestly, nobody cares!

Tomorrow: Two professors from Penn, as seen in the New York Times

How to access the data: Our data come from the NAEP Data Explorer, a font of basic information our “journalists” have sworn to ignore.

To access all data, follow these steps:

First, click this. Then, click on MAIN NDE (Main NAEP Data Explorer).

Click on “I agree to the terms above.” From there, you’re on your own!