The results of the 2013 New York State tests of students in grades 3-8 have been greeted with consternation, as they should be, but it should be emphasized that they paint a picture of a system—especially that part administered by the New York City Department of Education—that is far gone in failure. This is simply the most recent indication of that failure and the Department’s lack of attention to its responsibilities.
In 2006, long before anyone had heard of common cores, the one-third part of the enrollment of the New York City schools made up of White, non-Hispanic, and Asian students combined, were doing poorly. At grade 8 nearly 40% were reading below grade level. In that same year the two-thirds of the students entrusted to the system who were Black or Hispanic were being overwhelmingly failed by the system. More than 60% were reading below grade level. The gap between the two groups amounted to over 30 percentage points. In other words, the New York schools were not preparing most of their students to graduate from high school or to be well-prepared for college or careers. They were preparing most of them for poverty.
It is not a law of nature that Black and Hispanic students do not learn well in school. They learn well enough in suburbs, without regard to the incomes of their own families. They learn well enough in systems with needs-based funding. They do not learn well—no students learn well—in places where resources are systematically diverted from where they are needed to places where wealthier families live and pay taxes. This goes double in New York, where the suburban schools are more lavish than the nearby country clubs; the schools attended by the White, non-Hispanic, and Asian middle classes are among the finest in the country, and the schools attended by the majority of students look worse and are resourced at lower levels than minimum security prisons.
In 2009 test scores for all groups in New York mysteriously peaked, only to fall to earlier levels in 2010. The gaps did not vary during this exercise. The downward trend in scores on arguably more honest tests continued through the 2013 assessment. The drop in scores this year was not very far off the trend line. Now we find that the system cannot educate even half its White, non-Hispanic, and Asian students to grade level and that more than 80% of the two-thirds of its students who are Black or Hispanic read below grade level in middle school. The gaps have not varied.
The disparities are stark. To take just one example, in the average school in Community School District 16, in central Brooklyn, only 6% of students perform at or above grade level in Mathematics at grade 8. In Community School District 26, a middle-class district in Queens, 56% of students in an average school perform at or above grade level. These disparate outcomes are on the face of it evidence of discrimination in resource allocation. They are not—need one say it?—indicators of a post-racial society.
Standardized tests are a bad idea and even bad ideas can be administered badly. On the other hand, you don't need a weatherman to know which way the wind blows.