Bill de Blasio has followed the pattern of his other high-level appointments by appointing an insider as Chancellor of the New York City public schools, Carmina Fariña. Dr. Fariña knows what will face the new Chancellor. She has gone on record saying that she prefers retirement. But she has accepted the responsibility for the institution that is, with the criminal justice system and the economic system, one of the three pillars of inequality in the nation’s largest city.
Given controversies about city and state test scores (and other city data), it is good practice to use data from the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP—“The Nation’s Report Card”) as our measure. NAEP data for New York City goes back ten years, to 2003, which nearly matches Michael Bloomberg’s term in office. A good-enough general indicator of the record of the schools is the grade 8 Reading assessment. Reading, rather than the other subjects, is a preferred measure as it is an essential skill for all others. Grade 8 is appropriate, rather than grades 4 or 12, because by grade 8 the schools have a good chance to mitigate family effects perhaps still predominant at grade 4 and, it is said, students take the test more seriously at grade 8 than in grade 12.
Here is a snap-shot of the situation as it presently exists and the gaps between what the city’s public schools achieve for White, non-Latino, and Asian-American children of economically prosperous families and those children whose families are struggling to keep their heads above water as the rising tide floats only the wealthiest 1% of the boats.
What do we find?
• Three-quarters of all New York City 8th graders do not read at grade level.
During the Bloomberg years the gap between New York City’s performance by this measure and the national average has widened from 8 percentage points to 10 percentage points.
We can refine this analysis by looking at results for de Blasio’s two cities. NAEP’s measure of poverty is eligibility for national lunch programs.
• Eighty percent of New York City’s students living in impoverished families do not read at grade level at grade 8.
New York City’s students from impoverished families have fallen behind the national rate of progress in Reading achievement between 2003 and 2013.
New York City’s Asian-American students were at 34% at or above grade level in grade 8 Reading in 2003, as compared to the national figure for the group of 38%. In 2013 the city’s Asian-American students were at 44% and the national figure for the group was 50%. The gap has widened.
For the city’s White, non-Latino, students, in 2003 42% were reading at or above grade level in grade 8, while in 2013 that figure was 44%. Nationally, the change was from 39% to 44%. The city’s 2-point improvement was less than half the national 5-point improvement.
There has been some improvement of the reading achievement of New York City’s Black students. New York City’s Black students (male and female combined) in 2003 read at grade level just 13% of the time, close to the national figure for the group of 12%. In 2013 the city’s figure was 18%, a 5-point improvement, while the national figure was 16%, a 4-point improvement.
• Nearly 90% of male Black students in New York City’s impoverished families do not read at grade level in grade 8, a situation that has not significantly improved in a decade.
The city’s Latino students are falling behind national trends for the group.
New York City’s Latino students in 2003 read at grade level 17% of the time, better than the national figure for the group of 14%. In 2013 the city’s figure for the group was 18%, while the national figure was 21%.
In 2013, while for both Black and Latino students, just 18% were able to read at grade level at grade 8, while more than twice that proportion, 44%, of White, non-Latino, and Asian American students were reading at grade level in grade 8.
• The gap between White, non-Latino, and Asian American reading, on the one hand, and that of Black and Latino students in New York City, on the other, is greater than the actual percentage of Black and Latino students reading at grade level.
There is much more to be learned from the NAEP data, but the challenges facing the new Chancellor are clear enough. After a decade of happy talk about school reform, 90% of the city’s most vulnerable students, Black males, cannot read at grade level by grade 8, and therefore are unlikely to finish high school college and career ready. Providing the focused resources needed to end this catastrophe will inevitably result in improved educational outcomes for all students. Failing to do so will prolong the new mayor’s narrative of two cities into the next generations.