Race-Based Detroit School Disaster

The New Observer
October 30, 2015

Less than 7 percent of eighth graders in Detroit schools are able to use whole numbers in math, and less than 4 percent are able to understand basic written material, the 2015 National Assessment of Educational Progress tests, published by the Department of Education’s National Center for Educational Statistics (NCED), has revealed.

higgins-elementary

The NCED “Report Card” for Detroit noted “white” students made up 1 percent of Detroit’s students, blacks made up 82 percent, Hispanics 14 percent, and Asians 3 percent.

This illiteracy disaster—which is clearly linked to race—comes despite the US government spending, on average, 34 percent more on each student in that black city than the national average.

According to the newly-released NCED report for Detroit, only 4 percent of Detroit public school eighth graders are “proficient or better” in math and only 7 percent in reading.

results-race

According to the NCED’s own definition of “proficiency” in math, a student at that level must be able to “understand the connections between fractions, percents, decimals. . .and have a thorough understanding of basic level arithmetic operations. Quantity and spatial relationships in problem solving and reasoning should be familiar to them, and they should be able to convey underlying reasoning skills beyond the level of arithmetic. These students should make inferences from data and graphs, understand the process of gathering and organizing data…”

The NCED’s definition of “proficiency” in reading says that a student “should be able to provide relevant information and summarize main ideas and themes. They should be able to make and support inferences about a text, connect parts of a text, and analyze text features. Students performing at this level should also be able to fully substantiate judgments about content and presentation of content.”

What this means in real terms is that well over 93 percent of the students in Detroit are functionally illiterate and unable to perform in any modern society which requires even the most basic level of comprehension and analytical thought.

achievement-levels

This racially-based disaster comes despite the Detroit public schools having “total expenditures” of $18,361 per student and “current expenditures” of $13,330 per student (figures from the most recent published by the Department of Education, valid for the years 2011–2012).

By way of comparison, in 2011, nationally the US Department of Education spent $11,841 per student—fully 34 percent less than per student in Detroit.

The NCED “Report Card” for Detroit noted that in 2015, the average score of eighth-grade students in Detroit was 244.This was not significantly different from their average score in 2013 (240) and in 2009 (238).

The percentage of students in Detroit who performed at or above the proficiency level was 4 percent in 2015. This was not significantly different from that in 2013 (3 percent) and in 2009 (4 percent).

Male and female scores in Detroit were also not significantly different, knocking holes in the widely-held theory that black females do better academically than black males.

Finally, with regard to racial score gaps in the results, the NCED report said that in 2015, Hispanic students had an average score that was 11 points higher than that for black students. This performance gap was not significantly different from that in 2009 (18 points).

The government’s own statistics have therefore shown, once again, that there are massive, and unbridgeable, racial gaps in achievement and cognitive ability, despite massive affirmative action subsidization.