To The Education Reformers. It Really Is About Community, Family, And Poverty.

The revised New York State tests came out and as predicted, every school district saw drops in the passing rates.  In the well-to-do school districts scores dropped by an average of 25% while the poor school districts saw drops of well  over 50%.  In looking at the data it's very obvious that community, family, and economic status are the major factor in the achievement gap between minority and non-minority school districts.  In this post I will compare two Long Island school districts only 7 miles apart that showed why the student academic achievement gap persists and its not the teachers!

The Jericho school district is considered one of the top school districts in the nation while seven miles to the southeast is Wyandanch school district, one of the worst in New York State.  What are the differences between the two school districts?  Easy its about the community, family, and economic status.  Let's compare the two school districts.

Demographics:

Jericho..........White..........Asian..........Black..........Hispanic
                    61.3%........34.3%.........2.1%...........1.5%.

Wyandanch......0.6%..........2,2%........66.6%.........32.6%

Obviously, the demographics are opposite of each other as Jericho has only 3.6% of minority students. Moreover, 40% of the white student population are Jewish.  On the other hand, Wyandanch has only 2.8% of its student body is made up of White and Asian students. 

Economic Status: Slightly more than 64% of school age children are economically disadvantaged compared to only 8% of the students in Jericho.  While the official poverty rate of Wyandanch is 12% compared to 4% in Jericho, the poverty rate is concentrated in families that have school age children, that's why there is such a large percentage of economically disadvantaged students in the Wyandanch schools.

Single Family Households: Related to the economic status is the preponderance of single family households.  In Wyandanch he percentage is an astounding 43% of all families compared to Jericho where only 8% of the population have a single parent household. Is it little wonder that the annual household income in Jericho is over twice the amount in Wyandanch?

That brings me to the 2013 test scores how did the two school districts compare in passing the tests?

Jericho....................English...............Math............Drop from 2012
                              70.6%..............72.6%.................20%

Wyandanch               6.2% .............. 5.6%..................80%

While the education reformers can keep speaking the lies that "poverty is no excuse" the facts speak for themselves that the community demographics, the family unit, and the social-economic status are the main reason for the racial/income academic achievement gap and not the teachers they love to demonize are the blame for the abysmal test scores in poor minority school districts.