584 DOES ANYONE CARE ABOUT BLACK KIDS?

Does anyone care about black kids? Does anyone care enough to report or discuss their educational progress? For us, a recent report in the New York Times raised this important question.

But first, a look at Gail Collins’ attempt to discuss our public schools.

You’re right! We aren’t big Collins fans around here; on the whole, we think her work represents a familiar type of counter-productive, pseudo-liberal hackwork. Last Thursday, she did one of the smaller things for which we dislike her oeuvre. She started with one of her eye-rolling smirks at the comical, lower-class tastes of one of those hopeless red states:

COLLINS (5/5/11): Let us stop for a minute to consider Mitch Daniels, the governor of Indiana.

Bet you didn't see that one coming.

Many of you may be unacquainted with Daniels. After all, a lot of Americans go for years on end without ever setting foot in Indiana even though it is a fine state, full of lovely people and some first-class universities, not to mention the RV Hall of Fame, the world's largest ball of paint and the Dan Quayle museum.

But about Mitch Daniels...

We know—you think we’re nit-picking here. Sorry. Collins mocks the rube states fairly often. It’s a classic example of the way top-shelf “liberals” tell the unwashed that they aren’t liked or respected. After that, we ask ourselves why these idiots won’t vote the way we prefer.

This is very dumb politics. Collins seems to enjoy it.

To our ear, an element of this sneering seemed to lurk in yesterday’s column, in which Collins pretended to discuss the needs of our public schools. We have no idea how Collins selected her rather narrow issue focus—but we saw no sign that she had any particular knowledge about those issues. We did see a great deal of smirking about those silly redneck rubes in Texas (and, to a lesser extent, in Florida).

The bulk of her column was focused on the stupid things people in Texas do. As Collins notes, this is a fairly typical focus of her work.

Here’s the larger point: Readers may come away from that column thinking that Texas must have lousy schools. This notion is pleasing to pseudo-liberals; a few months ago, the endlessly phony Diane Ravitch wrote a column plainly intended to convey that pleasing impression (see THE DAILY HOWLER, 3/23/11). This impression is pleasing to some liberal readers because we get to laugh at those dumb-assed Texans. We also get to laugh at George W. Bush, who created the big mess down there.

As we read Collins’ newest column, we couldn’t help wondering: Does Collins know that Texas schools score extremely well on the National Assessment of Educational Progress (the NAEP), the widely ballyhooed “gold standard” of educational testing? Does she know that Texas kids in all major demographic groups outscore their national peers, often by a wide margin? You’d never get any such idea from reading Collins’ smirking column. We don’t know if Collins knows those facts, but we’ll guess she doesn’t.

Technically, Texas test scores aren’t relevant to Collins’ new column. But we think her undercurrent was familiar and rather clear.

But then, does anyone care about black kids? Consider this recent news report by Sam Dillon, one of the New York Times’ education reporters.

Dillon discussed an intriguing question: When high school students take “advanced placement” courses, are the courses really advanced? Dillon suggests that, in many schools, these classes are “advanced” in name only. According to Dillon, “Algebra II is sometimes just Algebra I. And College Preparatory Biology can be just Biology.”

This was a perfectly valid topic, although we were underwhelmed by some of Dillon’s analysis. But one fleeting passage brought the analysts right out of their chairs. In the highlighted passage, Dillon discusses American student achievement over the past forty years. He refers to student performance on the NAEP. We think his account is misleading and unfortunate:

DILLON (4/26/11): ''[C]ourse titles may bear little relationship to what students have actually learned,'' said Dr. Mellor, who has analyzed course completion, test records and other student data in Texas. ''We see students taking more and more advanced courses, but still not performing well on end-of-course exams.''

The 2009 results—the most recent available—of the federal test that measures change in achievement levels over decades showed that the nation's 17-year-olds were scoring no higher in reading and math than in 1973. SAT scores have dropped or flat-lined, too, since 2000.

But a federal study released this month of nearly 38,000 high school transcripts showed that the proportion of graduates completing a rigorous curriculum rose to 13 percent in 2009 from 5 percent in 1990.

Let’s get the small errors out of the way. First, Dillon actually refers to the 2008 results of the test in question, the so-called “Long-Term Trend” NAEP; no such testing was done in 2009. Second, the NAEP didn’t give the “long-term” reading test in 1973. Beyond that, the use of SAT scores for this kind of assessment is quite shaky, as everyone knows.

But let’s return to that highlighted passage—a passage which can be defended as technically accurate. According to Dillon, “the nation's 17-year-olds were scoring no higher in reading and math [in 2008] than in 1973.”

We think that statement is highly misleading, in ways which don’t serve the republic.

For now, let’s skip the ways in which that statement is technically accurate. Instead, let’s focus on the story Dillon doesn’t tell. Question: If we just consider the nation’s black students, how did 17-year-olds score in 2008 as compared to 1971 or 1973?

As citizens, we ought to know the answer. Very few people do.

The answer: Black students scored substantially higher in 2008 than in the early 1970s. This was true in both reading and math. For example:

In reading, black 17-year-olds gained 27 points on the NAEP scale over that period. How large a gain does that represent? Experts often apply a very rough rule of thumb in which ten points on the NAEP scale represents one academic year. Applying that rough rule of thumb, black 17-year-old students gained almost three years over that period, despite the fact that fewer such students drop out.

(Over that same period, the score gain in reading for black 13-year-olds was slightly higher.)

In math, the score gains aren’t as large for the older students, but they still exist. Black 17-year-olds have gained 17 points on the NAEP scale since 1973. Since changing drop-out rates can confuse the picture at this age level, a second fact might be noted: The gains for black 13-year-olds are much greater. In math, black 13-year-olds gained a massive 39 points on the NAEP scale over that period.

(Presumably, almost all 13-year-olds are still in school. For that reason, changing drop-out rates don’t cloud the statistical picture at this age.)

Citizens should know these basic facts; journalists should analyze them. Since we liberals routinely announce our greatness in matters of race, we should know these facts most of all. But alas! It is virtually against the law to report good news about American test scores. Liberals thrill to Ravitch’s claims that nothing has been getting better—even though this gloomy, misleading claim undermines the public’s faith in what our teachers and students can achieve within our public schools.

(Many liberals like Ravitch’s claim because it lets us party about George Bush’s consummate dumbness.)

We were bugged by Dillon’s piece last month, as we often are by such reporting. You ought to know that his highlighted claim obscures some promising data. The refusal to discuss score gains is amazingly standard in modern press culture. We liberals thrill to misleading, gloomy claims. In the process, liberal interests get hammered.

Or does no one actually care? These are just black kids, after all. When’s the last time anyone on your “liberal” TV shows said squat or squadoosh about them?