There was a story in today's NY Times about science test scores in urban schools.
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/11/16/education/16reportcard.html?_r=1&oref=slogin
Most of the story parroted the conventional wisdom about how awful city schools are.
But the story contained something a little different: a table breaking down the results by race. And when the results are broken down by race, big city schools don't always do worse than the nation as a whole.
For example, in Atlanta white 4th graders outperformed the national average for whites; they were at the 86th percentile nationwide, while white 4th graders nationally were at the 62nd percentile.
Nationally, 28% of white students were at the "below basic" level in science; but in four of nine big cities listed, the percentage of white students with below-basic scores was lower. The major exceptions were cities with large white working class populations (e.g. Cleveland, Boston).
Urban blacks did a little worse relative to national scores, but even there most city systems were pretty close to the national black average. Nationally, 73% of blacks were below basic; in 7 of 10 cities listed, the black "below basic" average was within five points of that (that is, no more than 78% of blacks were "below basic").
We don't have a problem with city schools. We have a problem with race and schools- which, of course, doesn't make it any less difficult.
