Closing the test-score gap between non-Asian minority students and the rest is a tremendous obsession among educationists. Every so often we get a report of some breakthrough in this area. Then, a year or two or five later, it turns out the report was some bureaucratic lie mistake.
Yesterday’s New York Times published the latest retraction in this never-ending cycle:
When results from the 2010 tests, which state officials said presented a more accurate portrayal of students’ abilities, were released last month, they came as a blow to the legacy of the mayor and the chancellor … the most painful part might well have been the evaporation of one of their signature accomplishments: the closing of the racial achievement gap …
“The claims were based on some bad information,” said Michael J. Petrilli, a vice president of the Thomas B. Fordham Institute, a research group that studies education policy …
The latest state math and English tests show that the proficiency gap between minority and white students has returned to about the same level as when the mayor arrived.
If the Mayor and Chancellor want to reduce those gaps, my book We Are Doomed offer them no less than two ways to do it (pp. 130-131).