kitchen table math, the sequel: News 14 Carolina | 24 Hour Local News | Triangle | Schools reduce minority achievement gap

Wednesday, February 28, 2007

News 14 Carolina | 24 Hour Local News | Triangle | Schools reduce minority achievement gap

News 14 Carolina 24 Hour Local News Triangle Schools reduce minority achievement gap

Between the 2003-2004 school year and the 2004-2005 school year, Tommy's Road Elementary School lowered its achievement gap from 14.8 percent to 9.6 percent.
First of all they don't say which achievement gap they are talking about, but usually its reading. Sure enough the numbers matched the reading achievement gap for students for all grades who scored at least level III on the state reading test. I also found out some other information.

Between the 2004-2005 school year and 2005-2006 area, Tommy's Road Elementary School raised it's achievement gap from 9.6% to 16.6%

Check for yourself at the NC Dept of Education disaggregated data webstite. Select Wayne County school system, then select composite reading scores.

If you check out their school report card, then the numbers are even worse. The gap between blacks and whites passing BOTH math and science proficiency tests is 26.5%. I guess it is a lot better than the District achievement gap of 32.2% and the states achievement gap of 33.5%

Don't reporters ever investigate anymore?

2 comments:

Catherine Johnson said...

wait

you're saying they've announced to the public that they've narrowed the gap when in fact they've widened it?

TurbineGuy said...

I am saying that there are lots of numbers... and there are more bad numbers than good numbers.

All and all, there is nothing about this school that stands out.

Plus, it is located near a military base, which will tend to skew numbers up compared to the general population.

Blacks in the military are more educated and very simular to whites in the military demographically. This is why the smallest achievement gap in the United States is in Department of Defense schools.