Month: February 2019

It is no mystery that achievement gaps exist in New York City public school, as they do across the nation. However, New York faces a unique challenge with students who are both low-income and students of color. Compared to their white and asian peers, poor black and hispanic students face a significant challenge in their particularly isolated schools. Due to the prevalence of specialized public high schools in NYC, (many of which are comparable to the top prep-schools in the nation) poor districts of homogenous demographics of black and latino students underperform at an even more significant rate.

While the cleavages widen on isolated schools, another problem arises when a mixed demographic learns under one roof. Even when attending “high achieving schools” with a significant wealthy and white population, poor students of color still underachieve. This issues highlights the difference between integration and diversity. While these schools seem to be diverse on face value, the lack of integration of poor students of color into the high achieving programs is apparent. This disparity gives credence to the importance of non-academic variables that factor into achievement gaps across demographics. Studies like these isolate the variables that are often obfuscated with a simple testing of achievement across schools with varying demographics.

Racial and Economic Disparity in Achievement (NYC)

The shrinking of the achievement gap in Success Academy Cobble Hill and other gifted and talented schools in NYC are a good indication of how to address the problem in public schools. These schools are committed to testing all students into their accelerated programs with an emphasis on integration in the classroom. They are dedicated to reflecting their school demographics in their high achieving classes. Compared to the rest of NYC, these schools that emphasize integration have an average 3.9 score for students of color compared to the 2.7 across the rest of NYC. The students of color at these unique schools score higher than most white and asian students across the board.

While the achievement gap widens as time passes, integrating accelerated classes early in education allows black and hispanic  students to rise to their potential rather than fall behind in high school. However, the engagement of the teachers and local community cannot be understated in this analysis. To qualify the success of the outliers, we must first understand the systemic underpinnings to these statistics. The Coleman Report first began to understand the importance of integrated schools and these schools that succeed in shrinking the achievement gap follow that same logic from 1966.