Cairo Association of Teachers - Newsletter

CAT Tracks for October 27, 2006 FOCUS ON POOR, BLACK IL STUDENTS

More bad news...expect fallout as state officials try to shift blame!

From the Chicago Sun-Times...

They fare worse than minorities nationally: study

BY KATE N. GROSSMAN Education Reporter

Illinois' poor and black students score worse than most minority students nationally, a study shows, offering a rare glimpse of how Illinois' minority students stack up.

Only 8 percent of black fourth-graders are proficient in reading, ranking Illinois 35th out of 41 states that test a large enough group of black students. Only 9 percent of poor eighth-graders are proficient in math, ranking the state 37th out of 50, the Thomas B. Fordham Foundation found after analyzing the 2005 National Assessment of Educational Progress.

"Illinois lines up abysmally," said Michael Petrilli, Fordham vice president.

The rigorous NAEP, known as the "Nation's Report Card," is the only test taken by a sample of students in every state.

Illinois' black and poor students scored poorly, but their peers elsewhere scored only marginally better. Nationally, 11 percent of black fourth-graders passed reading. When all students are included, 23 percent rate as proficient. On the eighth-grade math test, 12 percent of poor students passed. The percent proficient for all students is 23 percent.

The foundation didn't include in their analysis students who scored above proficient. Including those scores would have raised pass rates slightly.

But how accurate are stats?

In Illinois, scores may be deflated by outside variables, said John Easton, director of the Consortium on Chicago School Research and a member of the NAEP board. Other states may exclude more students from testing than Illinois does and Illinois' low-income students could be more destitute than students in other states, he said. "But whatever the cause, [the data] indicates a bigger problem than people are normally attuned to," Easton said. "This puts us in a national context and makes us ask the question: Why is it different here?"

The state's Hispanic students fared better, matching the national average for Hispanic students on two of three tests the foundation examined.

In Illinois and nationally, far more students pass state exams than NAEP, raising questions about the rigor of state tests, the foundation suggested.

State Education Supt. Randy Dunn defended Illinois' exams. "But it's very hard to defend those [NAEP] scores," Dunn said. "Clearly, there is a tremendous challenge that we have in moving the needle on those scores."