Number 2 pencil - The way to address the problem
The Hampton Roads (VA) Daily Press does its damndest to fire up readers about recent county report that lays out the cold, hard facts about the achievement gap:
dailypress.com
School systems throughout the region should take a clue from the Williamsburg-James City County schools and compile, in one place and in the cold, hard objectivity of numbers, a snapshot of the performance of minority children in their schools. And if they don't, parents and leaders in the black community should speak up and demand such a reporting.
Because you can't solve a problem unless you acknowledge it, become familiar with its scope and nature, and agree on its importance.
And for every school system in the area, the performance of minority students - in this area, that's primarily black students - is a problem. On every measure, they trail white students...But often, the dimensions of the problem in a particular locality are hard to grasp. The data are buried in myriad reports, if they're available at all.
That's what makes the Minority Student Achievement Report issued by the Williamsburg- James City County schools so important. It gathers in one place the information needed to get a handle on the problem. Just the act of doing that is important, for it says that the School Board and administration recognize that the minority gap is a problem and they intend to address it. In many localities, you'd never know that from reading reports or watching the school board in action.
No, you wouldn't. Kudos to the Daily Press for this editorial. Here's the link to the report in question.http://www.wjcc.k12.va.us/content/pressrelease/PR-division/0201-Minority%20Student%20Achievement%20Report%20Board%20Presentation%202003%20-%202004.pdf From an admittedly-cursory glance (I'm getting ready to head out to a show), it doesn't seem to skip the good news, nor skimp on the bad. |
