Wednesday, August 22, 2007

NAACP & Minority Achievement

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Last Tuesday, August 14th, the Loudoun NAACP came before the School Board and spoke about disparity between minority students (in particular those who identify themselves as Black or Latino) and students who identify themselves as White. The three areas of disparity are: Test scores, Suspensions & Expulsions, and Graduation rates. You can read the NAACP's letter for yourself, or watch the webcast on the school website. Leesburg Today also ran a story about it.

The school system has been working very hard to improve these disparities for over a decade now. About every 3-4 years, the NAACP stands up again and points out that the problems still exist. You can read some of the NAACP materials from years past, and also read about LCPS efforts from the Minority Student Achievement Advisory Committee website.

I have started to immerse myself in this issue, and I am finding that the more I know, the more I realize that I don't know. So you'll need to give me time before I have anything to say beyond the fact that A) the disparities are real, significant and important and B) our teachers and administrators are doing everything they can to eliminate them.

You can find out more about school testing results from the Virginia Department of Education website.
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2 comments:

  1. As a long time teacher and a very liberal Democrat, I have to say I bristled a bit at the implications made by the NAACP at the recent school board meeting. I know that most of us work very hard to make "A Climate For Success" a reality for each of our students.

    I think that a closer look at the data would be revealing. Rather than compare all "white" students to all "black" or "latino" students, most credible research would compare matched groups of students - matching students who are similar in other identified areas such as ability level, family income, family educational level, level of parental support, etc.

    I think is would also be interesting to compare groups of students of the same race, but with other differences - say white students whose parents have graduate degrees to white students whose parents have high school educations. I bet there would be some disparity between those groups, too.

    LCPS still has work to do of course, but I checked the local NAACP webpage and I wondered where their outreach is. It's easy to point out a problem. It's harder to be part of a solution.
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  2. And that is what needs to change about this cycle - it clearly does no good for the NAACP to keep doing the same thing over and over. Katie's point about outreach is very well taken. There are certainly ways in which the community can help come up with solutions to what it seems that just about everyone understands is a real problem.

    If the schools are willing to work in partnership with community-based service organizations (I'm thinking here of the new Loudoun Interfaith BRIDGES, for example, which has a schools and youth component) I think we could make some progress.
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