California’s Rainbow Coalition of Bad Math Scores
As this San Francisco Chronicle story notes, “California consistently has ranked among the lowest-scoring states in the biennial National Assessment of Educational Progress, a federally mandated assessment of a sampling of fourth- and eighth-graders across the country.” But the story also repeats the rationalization that the “abysmal standing” is due in part to “the state’s diverse population” and cites federal officials who blame “disproportionate representation of students who historically post the lowest scores on the test – English learners, low-income students and Hispanic students.”
There’s no question that you can’t compare California’s scores with, say, Vermont’s without controlling for race, ethnicity, income, etc. But the graphic accompanying the Chronicle article clearly demonstrates that California doesn’t discriminate when it comes to math scores. They’re lousy for almost everyone.
Let’s compare the scores of sub-groups of California students to those of their peers nationally:
White
4th grade: -1 8th grade: -3
Black
4th grade: -5 8th grade: -10
Hispanic
4th grade: -8 8th grade: -10
Asian
4th grade: +2 8th grade: -6
Low income
4th grade: -8 8th grade: -8
Middle to high income
4th grade: -4 8th grade: -8
English learner
4th grade: -7 8th grade: -6
English fluent
4th grade: -2 8th grade: -6
Middle to high income California 8th graders outperformed low income California 8th graders by a whopping 27 points. But they trailed middle to high income 8th graders nationally by 8 points – the same gap that exists for the low income students. Similarly, English learners and English fluent 8th graders were no different when they were compared to their peers nationally.
Blaming California’s poor scores on poor kids, or black kids, or brown kids, or non-English speaking kids, is a convenient way to avoid the fact that everyone’s kids are underperforming. So maybe it’s not the kids at all.
