Putting the "achievement gap" in perspective

The Seattle Post-Intelligencer reports that

Institutional racism in Seattle schools contributes to poor performance by black and Hispanic students and to the gap between their academic achievement and that of white students, School Board candidates said last night at a public forum.

I don't think it was all the School Board candidates who invoked racism, only a few of them.

Darlene Flynn, who is challenging District 2 incumbent Steve Brown, said an example of institutional racism is the failure of the district to raise an alarm over the near-total inability of black students to meet standards in math on the standardized Washington Assessment of Student Learning.

A black woman who is the only non-white candidate in the election, Flynn said that if white students recorded a similarly dismal performance, there would be an uproar.

Darlene Flynn, who has been endorsed by the teachers' union, might find it easier to blame an abstract bogeyman like "institutional racism" than to roll up her sleeves, understand the actual issues and propose actual solutions to actual problems.

First of all, there has been an uproar over the disparity in academic performance between different ethnic groups. Just query the phrase "achievement gap" in the P-I archive or in the Seattle Times archive, or at the website of the Seattle School District and you will see how many times this phrase appears. The "achievement gap" is the single most prominent issue in the public discussion of the Seattle school system and in the School Board race.

Unfortunately, this uproar doesn't seem to be universal. The P-I tells us who was present at this public forum.

The forum, sponsored by the NAACP and other civil rights groups at the African-American Academy, drew two dozen voters and seven candidates in Tuesday's election

The P-I doesn't tell us who these two dozen voters were or if they were even parents of children in the Seattle schools. But if the achievement gap was important to the parents of the thousands of underperforming children, why couldn't the "civil rights groups" produce a larger turn out for this forum?

Could it be that the "achievement gap" stems from a "parental involvement gap"?

Betty Hoagland, who is perhaps the most overlooked candidate in the School Board race, may also be one of the most realistic:

Hoagland appealed to the citizenry for help with district problems.

"School districts cannot do this alone," she said. "We have to involve the community. We have to say, 'We don't know it all. We need your help.' "

Indeed.

Betty Hoagland will get my vote, as will Darlene Flynn's more sensible opponent, incumbent Steve Brown.

Posted by Stefan Sharkansky at November 03, 2003 10:26 AM