GAPS AND SEGREGATION: One approach to closing the gaps!

MONDAY, MAY 7, 2018

Part 1—Who is Mara Gay: Of all our public school achievement gaps, the most painful is the "racial" gap. Here's one way it looks:

Average scores, Grade 8 math
American public schools, 2017 Naep
White students: 292.16
Black students: 259.60
Hispanic students: 268.49
Asian-American students: 309.52

The gains in test scores have been large in the past several decades. More specifically, the gains have been large for all four of those demographic groups. (You almost never hear that.)

That said, the gaps are still very large. Based on a common rule of thumb, those numbers from last year's Naep suggest that the average white student is roughly three years ahead of the average black student in math by the end of eighth grade.

Those are only averages, of course. But (something like) three years by the end of eighth grade is a very large, punishing gap. Decent people—the people our TV stars are not—would presumably try to figure out the ways we might address it.

That said, it's abundantly clear that virtually nobody cares about any of this. In particular, you'll never hear your favorite "liberal" cable stars expending their breath on this.

Dearest darlings, it isn't done! Liberal stars rarely degrade themselves by attempting to address those brutal achievement gaps and the interests of low-income kids.

It rarely happens! But when the very occasional liberal does voice concern about this topic, she'll often take the approach Mara Gay took in last Friday's New York Times.

Gay is the newest, apparently youngest member of the New York Times editorial board. She graduated from Michigan in the class of 2008.

She was appointed to the board at the end of March. We'd call it a good appointment.

When Gay's appointment to the board was announced, the poobahs said she was going to be "lead opinion writer on state and local affairs." Last Friday, in an Editorial Observer essay, she discussed a local matter concerning the New York City schools.

Gay "got her start in opinion journalism at The Michigan Daily," the editors wrote when she joined the board. That was long ago and far away, but after some perusals this weekend, we're happy to say that we think she did some excellent work, even then.

We like the cut of Gay's jib! On balance, though, we're inclined to skepticism concerning the approach she took in Friday's essay.

In a word, Gay wrote in praise of the "desegregation" of New York City's schools. She said Gotham's schools are "intensely segregated." Indeed, she said the city contains "some of the most segregated schools in the country."

Are Gotham's public schools "segregated," even "intensely" so? We'll start discussing that question tomorrow.

For today, here's the way Gay's essay began, hard-copy headline included:

GAY (5/4/18): Parents Start Desegregating Schools

It was enough to make you want to cheer.

On the Upper West Side last week, a middle school principal stood before a crowd of angry white parents—furious about a plan to help the poorest students gain access to some of the city’s most desirable schools—and told them they were wrong.

“There are kids that are tremendously disadvantaged,” Henry Zymeck, principal of the Computer School, told the parents, his voice filled with the disappointment of an educator whose pupils had betrayed their most sacred lesson. “To compare these students and say, ‘My already advantaged kid needs more advantage, they need to be kept away from those kids!’ is tremendously offensive to me.”

How thrilling it was to hear those words in a city with some of the most segregated schools in the country, a city where black and Latino children are often herded into classrooms with such concentrated poverty that one out of four of the students are homeless, while other children attend public schools with P.T.A.s that can raise $1 million.

Needless to say, that middle school principal was perfectly right in his basic assertion. A lot of the kids on the wrong end of our achievement gaps are, in fact, "tremendously disadvantaged" as compared to the bulk of their peers.

It's also true that a lot of those kids come from low-income families. They're among our "poorest students" in the financial sense.

Given these facts, it will seem to make perfect sense to argue that disadvantaged kids like these should be given "access to some of the city’s most desirable schools." It's natural to want to cheer when you see a principal advocate such a proposal.

Here's something else that's easy to do, especially for modern-day liberals who may have paid little attention to the actual workings of our public schools. It's easy to want to cheer when a parent activist says what follows, as one such person does in Gay's essay:

“Public school is a public good, so we need to do the best for all our kids."

We need to do the best for all our kids? Presumably, that goes without saying! That said, we think the "desegregation" approach is frequently built around a boatload of pleasing delusions. We'll examine that notion all week.

Let's be clear! Gay didn't claim in Friday's essay that some type of "desegregation" can solve our public school problems or erase that brutal achievement gap. In the main, she's talking about one proposal, for one collection of public schools, in one part of Manhattan—though she goes on to advocate for "a comprehensive citywide plan," suggesting that Mayor de Blasio is dragging his heels about that.

(Online, the New York Times headline says this: "Parents Do What the Mayor Hasn’t—Integrate Schools.")

Gay doesn't claim that "desegregation" can erase that brutal gap, though she seems to suggest it will help. That said, it's easy for liberals—especially since we've been so lazy and indifferent for so long—to thrill ourselves with the idea that "desegrgation" provides an easy solution to our punishing public school gaps, one which lets us feel that we're standing with the great civil rights heroes of the past.

Rather plainly, we aren't. We're doing so such thing.

It's easy for liberals to imagine that "desegregation" will be the simple magic solution, the type of solution toward which we've always defaulted in the few minutes we devote to matters like this. In our view, Gay may perhaps encourage some such thinking with some of the things she says.

Liberals ardent for desperate glory may gain an impression, from Gay's essay, about the way "integration plans" could effect New York City's schools—and, by extension, our public schools across the nation. Such readers may set down an essay like this filled with the highest moral feeling—and perhaps a bit deluded.

Are New York City's schools "segregated" in some sensible sense of the term? Are its schools intensely segregated? Does the city really have "some of the most segregated schools in the country?"

More significantly, to what extent can disadvantaged kids be helped by "desegregation" plans, both in New York City itself and across the land? We'll discuss these topics all week, producing zero further discussion.

The liberal world quit on low-income kids a long, long time ago. All too often, we may be inclined to soothe our demons by momentarily cheering high-minded crusades which suggest that we're heroically fighting great battles from the past.

"Heroic" is something we aren't. In the main, we're much more in love with Stormy Daniels and her heroic money grabs.

Below, we'll show you that one brutal gap again. Within the liberal and mainstream press worlds, we almost never discuss such gaps. It's abundantly clear that, on the whole, we liberals simply don't care.

Tomorrow: Public school "segregation" in New York City and around the U.S.

One last lingering look: Once again, a look at a gap we never discuss and plainly don't care much about:

Average scores, Grade 8 math
American public schools, 2017 Naep
White students: 292.16
Black students: 259.60
Hispanic students: 268.49
Asian-American students: 309.52

When's the last time you saw that discussed by our favorite corporate TV stars? The answer, of course, is never.

They talk about Stormy's adventures instead. Such talk has produced great ratings.