An achievement gap separating black from white students has long been documented — a social divide vexing to policy makers and the target of one blast of school reform after another. But a recent report focusing on black males suggests that the picture is even bleaker than generally known.
Only 12% of black fourth-grade boys are proficient in reading, compared with 38% of white boys, and only 12% of black eighth-grade boys are proficient in math, compared with 44% of white boys. Poverty alone does not seem to explain the differences: poor white boys do just as well as African-American boys who do not live in poverty, measured by whether they qualify for subsidized school lunches.
The data was distilled from highly respected national math and reading tests, known as the National Assessment for Educational Progress, which are given to students in fourth and eighth grades, most recently in 2009. The Council of the Great City Schools, an advocacy group for urban public schools released the report, “A Call for Change,” in October 2010.
