The Badger Herald: News: Minorities struggle with reading

Updated Tuesday, December 8, 2009, at 2:14 a.m.

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Minorities struggle with reading

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Also by Kevin Bargnes:

By Kevin Bargnes
Monday, April 7, 2008 12:00 a.m.

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Wisconsin’s black students are struggling to keep up with the state’s improving testing scores, according to reports released by the U.S. Department of Education last week.

Though scores in general have improved since 1998, black eighth graders in Wisconsin had the lowest writing scores in the country.

Likewise, the score gap between white students and black students is the second largest in the country, behind only New Jersey. Between 1998 and 2007, Wisconsin’s gap for eighth grade writing grew from 15 points to 31 points.

In the same time period, average writing scores for Wisconsin eighth graders went up by five points to 158, above the national average of 154.

Daria Hall, assistant director for K-12 education for the Washington-based nonprofit Education Trust, said regardless of the overall improvement, the most alarming thing to come out of this report is the racial disparity in Wisconsin schools.

She was critical of how inner-city schools are funded at lower levels and have the least-qualified teachers.

“We give them watered-down, scattershot curricula,” said Hall, a Wisconsin native and University of Wisconsin graduate. “We have low expectations of them and of what they can do.”

According to Hall, students who enter Milwaukee Public Schools a little bit behind end up leaving the school system very far behind.

“And if we are ever going to get serious about closing the achievement gap, we are going to have to be serious about closing these gaps in opportunities,” Hall said.

Hall added until that happens, Wisconsin is going to continue having a “very big moral, civic and economic problem on its hands.”

This data, released in the “Nation’s Report Card” by the DOE, was collected through a sampling of 2,585 eighth graders in Wisconsin.

In a statement, State Superintendent Elizabeth Burmaster said she was proud of the overall improvement and made only slight reference to the racial disparity gap.

“Our overall student achievement is improving and parallels what we see on other assessments,” Burmaster said. “We must stay focused on raising achievement for all students, in particular our African-American students, and closing achievement gaps.”

Hall challenged Wisconsin to take a long, hard look at the racial disparity, saying many other states have improved achievement gaps.

“All too often we see that in classrooms where students are predominantly poor and of color, students are far more likely to be filling out worksheets or watching a movie than they are to be writing a literary analysis,” she said.

Girls remained far ahead in writing with the gender gap only changing from 25 points in 1998 to 24 points in 2007.

Calls to the Wisconsin Department of Public Instruction seeking comment Friday went unreturned.

3 Comments | Leave a comment

Anonymous | April 7, 2008 10:04 AM | Reply
IP hash: c3cdec16

If blacks would stop being idiots just to be cool then maybe they’d succeed in life. Improving yourself is not “acting white”.

Anonymous | April 7, 2008 12:15 PM | Reply
IP hash: d59c084e

It’s the GAD factor which is most important.

The parents and students must Give A Damn. No amount of money can make them GAD about school, especially if sneakers and sports mean more than books and grades. Perhaps the rappers could encourage study instead of violence?

Anonymous | April 9, 2008 9:33 AM | Reply
IP hash: 0ec58bb2

Education is not working for blacks because schools are segregated and the least qualified teachers are sent to inner city schools. I am so tired of people calling black people “ignorant” and “stupid.” MPS is not working for black students because the black student is not valued.