Deeper Look At Test Scores
Dr. Jim Taylor recently wrote a post that looks deeper into recent international education scores which I commented on earlier this month. Turns out if you go to a poorer school, calculated the percentage of kids on a lunch program, your scores are lower.
In schools with less than 10 percent of students relying on the subsidized lunch programs (i.e., schools in affluent communities), U.S. fourth graders had a math score of 583, placing them third internationally. In schools with under 25 percent of students on these lunch programs (i.e., schools in middle-income communities), American students scored a 553, putting them in fifth…
This analysis, however, isn’t intended to diminish the injustice and tragedy of the 60 percent of our public school population who, for a variety of reasons, are not gaining the full benefits of a quality public school education. For this group of predominantly African-American and Hispanic-American children, we should be doing our best Chicken Little impressions.
Obvious assumption: If there’s more strife in the home and you’re hungry, it’s going to be a tougher road. But Dr. Taylor figures out an interesting, logical method to draw powerful correlations, bringing deserved attention to this problem. If we figure out how to make headway in low performing schools where test scores fall far behind, the economic effect could be historic.
