I've come to admire the anonymous edu-blogger Eduwonkette, what with her skillful use of Photoshop, fearless questioning of the high and mighty, and, yes, lavish attention and fun she heaps on us here at Fordham.* But I've got to call her out on this morning's post about New York City's achievement gap.
My beef isn't about NYC in particular but her analysis of the achievement gap in general. (An analysis that is strikingly similar to Charles Murray's, by the way.) She writes:
Proficiency rates, or the percentage of students passing a test, are often used to measure achievement gaps. For example, if 90% of white students passed a test and 65% of black students did, some observers will say that the achievement gap is "25 points." Proficiency is a misleading and inaccurate way to measure achievement gaps. Primarily, the problem is that we cannot differentiate between students who just made it over the proficiency bar and those who scored well above it. Proficiency rates can increase substantially by moving a small number of kids up a few points---just enough to clear the cut score. But black and Hispanic students may still lag far behind their peers even as their proficiency rates increase.... The most valid way to measure gaps between groups is to compare the test score distributions of the groups. What this means is that we compare average scale scores as well as differences between low-scoring white/Asian and Hispanic/black students (i.e. students scoring at the 10th percentile of their respective groups) and differences between high-scoring students (i.e. students scoring at the 90th percentile of their respective groups).
This is true, as far as it goes, if your goal is to create a world whereby all differences between racial or economic groups disappear. Maybe that's what some organizations are seeking. But I think that objective is rather na??ve and not particularly helpful. As Jay Mathews explains, working toward that outcome leads you to root against the progress of white and affluent students, because every gain they make offsets your attempt to "close the gap." Mathews says "all children deserve a chance to climb as high as they can," and surely he's right.
Eduwonkette's analysis also stands if "proficiency" has no meaning--if it's just an arbitrary bar, and a low one at that. And yes, in many states, that's exactly what it is. But let's imagine that a state sets a standard for proficiency that actually means something--say, that a student is on track to be college- and workforce-ready by the time he or she graduates high school. Then closing, or at least narrowing, the "achievement gap" at the proficiency level is a worthwhile objective, for it would mean that we are succeeding in getting more students to that real-world standard. Since most white and affluent students are already at that standard (or close to it), the only way to narrow the gap would be to help more poor and minority students become college and work-ready. That's a goal we can all get behind.
There are plenty of reasons to push back against the Bloomberg/Klein hype, but arguing that closing the "proficiency gap" doesn't matter isn't one of them.
* And so, as the senior pooh-ba on this blog (let's face it, Checker isn't posting a whole lot these days), I decree that Eduwonkette shall now be included among the "Flyest of the Fly." (See sidebar.)
