As the US Men’s basketball team is abroad breaking down stereotypes, the NCLB is helping propel them, at least in Missouri.
In the local paper today, they reported the pass rate of the state standardized achivement test for each school, which got me wondering about pass rate over a number of variables, including race. So, I went data hunting…….
…..I found the pass rate per race for MO.* No surprise on the outcomes, and I made a graph to ease trend analysis:
Chart for Math (opens in another window)
Chart for Communication (opens in another window)
Here are what is considered proficient: (math) (CA)
What worries me is that all groups are far less than 100, which is the NCLB ultimate goal (which is an asinine goal, anyway, IMHO). Also, some slopes are negative(!!!!), which isn’t good as the pass rate threshold is increasing each year (plateauing at 100 in ~10 years).
The results if your school screws up consistently: the school, in addition to loosing Title 1 money**, must offer the parents the option of transferring their children to better performing schools (at the school district’s expense, of course), subject to the other schools’ space availability.
Putting on my Nostradamus hat, I predict that by as the 100 threshold nears, the only schools who are reaching the mark are those who have de facto segregated themselves by competency via the transfers, and we can all guess how the segregation will look racially.
*One nice thing about NCLB (maybe one of the only things) is that it mandates certain data (i.e., pass rates by race, SES, etc.) be accessible to the public.
**Money to help educate poor kids
Posted by A. Beaujean at 12:03 AM