There is a significant academic achievement gap between black and white students in the US. However, the Liberals have noticed this problem and are trying to do something about it. Sadly, their intervention methods might just be causing more harm than good.
At first, they decided to increase the funding of urban public schools in the “Blue” states. This didn’t work out, as the performance of black students did not improve over time. After that, they resorted to affirmative action policies, which covered the poor performance of the students.
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They seem to have recently given up the fight and aren’t trying new methods to help. Instead, they abolished advanced courses and scrapped standardized tests. This inevitably hurts the students. Furthermore, the lockdown of schools during the COVID-19 pandemic also aided the decline.
Due to the reduced performance, most parents no longer believe in public schools. Instead, they now enroll their children in private schools or third-party educational platforms.
As for “Red” states like Texas, the performance of black students is much more impressive. Even as the issue of racism is more prominent in these states, the results of their black students’ performances are way better than that of the blues.
Also, it has come to light that the issue of funding the blue states is not a valid excuse for underperformance. This is because America’s poorest state, Mississippi, has black students performing up to standard. Their reading achievement scores have soared over the years, too.
How did they do this? Two simple methods.
First, the state’s teachers instruct students with a ‘phonics-based’ reading method. This is the opposite of the ‘whole word’ approach used by liberals in blue states like California. Second, the state employs coaches to work with teachers at schools with very poor results.
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In addition, all third graders must pass a reading exit exam to move on to the next grade. If they fail, they give the children several chances to make up for it and advance. This method seems to work wonders and further proves that even with low funding, they are preserving their quality of education.
Since implementing these policies, Mississippi’s NAEP scores have increased at an impressive rate. They were amongst the lowest in the country before, but now their scores put them around the middle 25.
The Dallas Independent School District has also found a way to boost black and Latino outcomes in math. They adopted a new “opt-out” policy, which automatically places every student with high enough scores on state standardized exams into advanced math courses. Furthermore, they give the students a choice to drop to a lower ranking if they like.
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Performance has increased from 17% to 43% in five years. According to the Dallas ISD school board Trustee Ben Mackey, this strategy works quite well for them.
“It makes such a drastic difference in whether the student will be college-ready and career-ready. We need to give every single person a chance to be successful in life, so when they leave us, they are not three steps behind,” he said.
The liberals and blue states can learn a few things from these red states and their academic achievements.
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