More Proof That There Is A Correlation Between Poverty And Academic Achievement.

In 2004 Mayor Michael Bloomberg and Chancellor Joel Klein, heeding the education reform community, decided to eliminate the neighborhood high school and give students "free choice" to apply to any high school in New York City that was not a specialized school.  This "free choice" was supposed to narrow the academic achievement gap and help diversify schools.  In fact, Chancellor Joel Klein in his exit interview with the New York Times said " poverty is not destiny" when it came to student academic achievement. Well, fast forward to 2016 and the high schools are far from diverse with far too many of them segregated by race and income.  As for narrowing the racial/income?  It has been a total failure as the "college and career readiness" numbers show.  In other words, the education deformer claim that poverty is not the primary factor in academic achievement but teacher quality is has been proven false.  In fact, Joel Klein himself grudgingly acknowledged this in a speech this year.

Now adding to the evidence that poverty is correlated with poor academic achievement, a study just completed convincingly shows that a students home zip code is strongly correlated with academic achievement, regardless of what high school these students attend.  A study prepared by Measure for America found that neighborhoods are even more important than race or culture.  A Washington Post summary of the report is found Here.  Some of the findings are as follows: when linking the best and worst neighborhoods to graduation rates.

Neighborhood.............................................Graduation Rate

Morris Heights.....................................................60.9%
Ocean Hill/Brownsville.........................................61.4%
Crotona Park.......................................................61.4%
Highbridge..........................................................63.4%
Hunts Point.........................................................63.4%
East Harlem.........................................................65.1%
Far Rockaway......................................................67.7%
Bedford Stuyvesant.............................................67.7%



Neighborhood.............................................Graduation Rate

Greenwich Village/Soho....................................95.1%
Bayside/Little Neck...........................................92.2%
Forest Hills........................................................91.0%
Tottenville.........................................................89.0% 
Upper East Side.................................................88.3%
Murray Hill/Gramercy........................................86.8%
South Beach......................................................86.0%
Fresh Meadows.................................................83.9%

What the report shows that regardless of what high school the student travels to, the biggest factor in the student academic achievement is the community that student lives in not the quality of their teachers or the location to school resides in.


Note:  While I believe the graduation rate is inflated and the college and career readiness rate is probably a better indicator of student academic achievement, the study is simply comparing the graduation rate for different neighborhoods which shows the true academic achievement gap.