L. A. (PUBLIC SCHOOL) CONFIDENTIAL: Black kids recorded enormous gains!

FRIDAY, APRIL 8, 2022

The public was never told: Yesterday, we forgave you. 

We forgave you if you hadn't heard about the suddenly heralded improvement, over the course of the past two decades, in the Los Angeles public schools (the LAUSD).

All of a sudden, the L.A. schools have been transformed into "schools that work." We forgave you if you hadn't heard about that. We hadn't heard about any such phenomenon either.

Today, we extend additional forgiveness. We forgive you if you haven't heard about the enormous academic progress black kids nationwide have shown over that same stretch of time.

You haven't heard about that progress for a fairly obvious reason. You haven't heard about that progress because, in the upper reaches of our failing blue tribe, absolutely nobody cares.

Simply put, the high-ranking people we're taught to trust don't care about any of that. More specifically, they don't care about the lives or interests of the nation's black kids, except for such kids who might end up at Yale, and except for performance and branding purposes. 

Simply put, these people don't care. Indeed, they see to be devoted to the task of making that fairly obvious.

Enough about the Rachels and the Lawrences and the rest of this talented cast! For perhaps the ten millionth time, let's review the remarkable progress you've never been told about. 

Below, you see several decades of progress laid out in the form of average scores on the Naep, our one reliable educational testing program. We're starting in 1996, the first year which lets us make direct statistical comparisons to the rising test scores which followed:

Average scores, Grade 8 math, Naep
Black students, National Public Schools
1996: 239.28
2000: 243.27
2003: 251.75
2005: 254.19
2007: 258.90
2009: 260.28
2011: 261.84
2013: 262.73
2015: 259.85
2017: 259.60
2019: 259.21

To the extent that we can credit such data, you're looking at a record of massive academic progress. 

(For all Naep data, start by clicking this. At that point, you're on your own.)

From 1996 through 2013, the average scores of black eighth graders nationwide rose by more than 23 points on the Naep scale. According to the very rough rule of thumb endorsed by Professor Fuller in his new book, that represents a gain of at least two academic years.

Scores dropped back a couple of points after 2013. Before we're done today or tomorrow, we may propose a speculation about that undesirable change.

Maybe then! But from 1996 through the most recent testing in 2019, those average scores, among black kids, rose by twenty points! The public has never heard about that, for a fairly simple set of reasons:

Our elites are unimpressive and dumb. Also, they plainly don't care.

Even now, when we look at those numbers, our heart wants to jump with joy. We think of Willa Cather's narrator in My Antonia, exulting in the vast success, over one generation, of Nebraska's "immigrant girls" in the late 19th century.

From Book II, The Hired Girls, Chapter IX:

I always knew I should live long enough to see my country girls come into their own, and I have. To-day the best that a harassed Black Hawk merchant can hope for is to sell provisions and farm machinery and automobiles to the rich farms where that first crop of stalwart Bohemian and Scandinavian girls are now the mistresses.

The Black Hawk boys looked forward to marrying Black Hawk girls, and living in a brand-new little house with best chairs that must not be sat upon, and hand-painted china that must not be used. But sometimes a young fellow would look up from his ledger, or out through the grating of his father’s bank, and let his eyes follow Lena Lingard, as she passed the window with her slow, undulating walk, or Tiny Soderball, tripping by in her short skirt and striped stockings.

The country girls were considered a menace to the social order. Their beauty shone out too boldly against a conventional background. But anxious mothers need have felt no alarm. They mistook the mettle of their sons. The respect for respectability was stronger than any desire in Black Hawk youth.

That passage comes from The Hired Girls, Chapter IX, the greatest act of advocacy of which we are aware.

Cather's narrator always knew he would live to see the ascension of those immigrant girls, whose beauty (and moral greatness) had always stood out against a conventional background. 

By the time Cather's narrator was telling his story, their work ethic had made them the mistresses of the most prosperous farms in the county. We think of that passage whenever we review the rising test scores you were never told about.

In most cases, the conventional players of our upper-end press corps didn't know about those rising test scores. Within the culture of their "educated" but dull-witted class, statistics are known to be boring and hard.

Also, they simply don't care about black kids! To the extent that they'd ever heard about those scores, their conventional backgrounds and desire for respectability didn't equip them to care.

Today, they're busily pretending to care. Today, they drench us in endless performance. 

That said, our black kids haven't yet attained the status described in the case of Cather's immigrant girls. Even as their test scores rose, so did the scores of other groups. Here are thee boring statistics:

Average scores, Grade 8 math, National Public Schools
Naep 1996 versus Naep 2019:
White students:  279.50 / 291.46
Black students: 239.28 / 259.21
Hispanic students: 249.18 / 267.96
Asian-American students: NA / 309.09

Black kids have gained roughly 20 points, but white and Hispanic kids have produced higher test scores too. Hispanic kids have gained almost 19 points. White kids have gained 12.

This means, of course, that the black/white "achievement gap" has narrowed during this era. You'd almost think that would be good news, but you've never heard about that either. Your "journalists" didn't care, and they had a different brand of "narrative product" to sell.

What "narrative product" was being sold during that era, even as black and Hispanic kids were recording so much academic progress? You were being sold a Storyline about certain types of education reform, and that Storyline was being sold via this talking-point:

Absolutely nothing has worked in the public schools.

Even as test scores rose for every demographic group, your lazy, unintelligent upper-end journalists just kept typing that talking-point. You were never told about those gains. As far as any of us rubes knew, no such progress had occurred.

In that way, we were kept from feeling pride in the progress of our various "country girls." We were kept from feeling the joy that the demonstrative Cory Booker has suddenly discovered, though only with respect to the ascension of those within his own class.

We weren't told about the gains recorded by all those other black kids. We weren't allowed to care. Nor were we allowed to wonder what might be helping create that progress. There was exactly zero sign that anyone actually cared.

It's against that backdrop that Professor Fuller has released a strange new book. The strange and grossly incompetent book carries this strange title:

When Schools Work: Pluralist Politics and Institutional Reform in Los Angeles

All of a sudden, the Los Angeles schools are billed as "schools that work!" As we noted yesterday, we're asked to swallow that happy talk in the face of such data as these:

Average scores, Grade 8 math, 2019 Naep
Black students, LAUSD: 248.14
Hispanic students, LAUSD: 255.14 
White students nationwide: 291.46

In that, the most recent Naep testing, black kids in L.A. were performing roughly four academic years behind white kids nationwide! On what planet—in what moral universe—does that circumstance emerge from a bunch of "schools that work?"

Professor Fuller explains none of this in his grossly incompetent book. We've mentioned the lazy incompetence of our tribe's ranking journalists. You can pretty much throw our ranking professors into that same useless stew.

Someone else blew right past this background state of affairs. That would be the Washington Post's Jay Mathews, whose demeanor and commitment we have long admired.

We admire Jay's demeanor and his commitment. On occasion, we've been puzzled by his work. 

In writing about the Berkeley professor's book, Mathews blew past all this background information. At this point, we'll note an exchange which occurred in the comments to his column.

One person who read Mathews' column wasn't completely convinced. Recording his name as Walnut Street, he offered this remark:

COMMENT: Glad LA allowed charter schools and glad they are doing so well. Same thing happened in Wash DC.

Love to see some data backing up improvement claims about LAPS in this OpEd.

The reader wanted to see some data. Mathews penned this reply:

MATHEWS: Sadly there isn't room for that in a 800 word column, Walnut, but I figured that anyone who wanted to see all the data could just buy the book. I am sure my Uncle Jeff will get it to you quickly and cheaply. —jay

By "Uncle Jeff," Mathews apparently meant Jeff Bezos, he of Amazon fame. If the commenter "wants to see all the data," he can go ahead and buy the book, Mathews said in his reply.

Sad! In fact, the professor's very expensive, rather short book is extremely short on relevant data. (For his extremely limited data from the Naep, see page 64.) 

Here's a chunk of statistical information which doesn't appear in the professor's book, a book which spills with praise concerning those Los Angeles schools that work:

Average scores, Grade 8 math, 2019 Naep
Black students, LAUSD: 248.14
Hispanic students, LAUSD: 255.14 
White students nationwide: 291.46

We keep suggesting that you ponder those data. Walnut Street won't find those punishing data in the professor's book.

Briefly, let's be fair. The Los Angeles schools did show test score gains during the years in question. 

Apologizing for the fact that information is boring and hard, this is the way the district's scores improved during the era in question. We're starting with 2003 because that's when the Naep began providing average scores from specific cities:

Average scores, Grade 8 math
LAUSD, Naep 2003 versus Naep 2019
White students:  277.06 / 287.02
Black students: 233.99 / 248.14
Hispanic students: 239.71 / 255.14
Asian-American students: 274.64 / 295.37

Black kids in Los Angeles gained 14 points during that period; Hispanic kids gained more than 15 points. Those are actual gains, and we're sure that a lot of people in L.A. worked hard in pursuit of that improvement. 

That sad, those gains are roughly equivalent to the gains which were recorded by Large City Schools nationwide during that same period. And uh-oh:

As we noted on Tuesday, the Los Angeles schools were performing substantially behind other large city systems as of 2003. In spite of the subsequent gains in test scores, they were still performing behind other big city systems by the end of that period.

Los Angeles kids were still performing less well than their counterparts in comparable urban systems! And once again, we'll show you the most punishing data from within those "schools that [allegedly] work:"

Average scores, Grade 8 math, 2019 Naep
Black students, LAUSD: 248.14
Hispanic students, LAUSD: 255.14 
White students nationwide: 291.46

We've got your schools that work right there! We think of Wilfred Owen, trudging along behind wagons filled with the dying and dead as The Great War ground on:

If in some smothering dreams, you too could pace
Behind the wagon that we flung him in,
And watch the white eyes writhing in his face,
His hanging face, like a devil’s sick of sin;
If you could hear, at every jolt, the blood
Come gargling from the froth-corrupted lungs,
Obscene as cancer, bitter as the cud
Of vile, incurable sores on innocent tongues,—
My friend, you would not tell with such high zest
To children ardent for some desperate glory,
The old Lie: Dulce et decorum est
Pro patria mori.

Translation: If you could care about the bulk of the nation's low-income kids, you wouldn't be pimping, with such high zest, the old tale about schools that work.

On the one hand, it's true. Mathews can't explain all this in 800 words. 

On the other hand, he could find some other format. And even within 800 words, he could explain the lunacy of saying that Los Angeles is now blessed with public schools that work.

More than anything else, the Cory Bookers of this world could stop their Holy Roller conduct in support of the (perfectly decent) people he describes as "double Harvards." Once in a while, the Bookers could talk about the giant number of kids who are being left behind.

(The kids who don't go to Georgetown Day to get their anti-racism.)

Our nation's giant urban systems are full of good, decent kids. Their academic challenges track back to the brutal events of our brutal racial history. At least according to theory, their academic deficits are locking into place long before they ever enter the halls of our public schools.

Our own tribe's elite press corps doesn't care about those kids. Simply put, they simply never discuss them.

Booker jumps about in his chair, letting us admire the way he's gripped by the Holy Spirit. As he praises the "double Harvards," he quickly notes that he himself went to law school at Yale.

Anthropologists have told us this about that recent behavior:

This is the way our human brains are wired, these disconsolate scholars have said. Elites will talk about their own class, and about no one else.

According to those major experts, no discussion of our nation's urban schools will ever emerge from our feathered elites. Their disinterest will only continue. Those other kids will be left on their own.

This familiar old conduct won't change, experts say. This is the way our self-impressed species and tribe are implacably wired.

We care about the double Harvards. We talk about Will Smith.