America’s Schools of Education Must Improve - Higher Education: For all the time, money and brainpower spent on improving the academic performance of America’s public school children, some things never seem to change. African-American students consistently lag behind their peers in reading.
Annual measures from the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) show that children from every other race and ethnic group read at higher levels, on average, than Black students at every point of assessment: fourth, eighth and twelfth grades. The results have been consistent since the NAEP measures began, in 1992, and I’m sure results wouldn’t have been much different had they started decades earlier.
Since the U.S. Department of Education became a stand-alone agency in 1980, we’ve had six presidents and nine secretaries of education. We’ve had one initiative after another, from National Goals to No Child Left Behind to Race to the Top to Common Core State Standards, and guess what: Too many African-American children still can’t read at grade level. And now, in 2013, the gap is wider than ever.
Can anything be done?
