Achievement Gap Mystery Partly Solved - It's Murder - Living in Dialogue - Education Week Teacher: A startling new study has profound implications for school improvement efforts. From Reuters:
A murder in the neighborhood can significantly knock down a child's score on an IQ test, even if the child did not directly witness the killing or know the victim, U.S. researchers reported Monday.
The findings have implications both for crime control efforts and for the heavy reliance on standardized tests, said New York University sociology professor Patrick Sharkey, who conducted the study.
They can also explain about half the achievement gap between blacks and whites on such tests, he reported in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
