A Jaw Dropping Day
I had two jaw dropping moments in just one day, November 9, 2010. The first involved Black boys in and out of school; the second, Joel Klein.
“Jaw-Dropping Data” and “National Catastrophe” were two of the attention-getting phrases in the press release from the Council of the Great City Schools, phrases I assumed were hyperbole designed to catch the reader’s eye.
Wrong! The data, from the report titled A Call for Change: The Social and Educational Factors Contributing to the Outcomes of Black Males in Urban Schools (PDF), are jaw dropping, and we do have a national catastrophe.
Let’s start with educational attainment. Here are just a few of the numbers:
- Only 12 percent of black fourth-grade boys are proficient in reading, compared with 38 percent of white boys.
- Only 12 percent of black eighth-grade boys are proficient in math, compared with 44 percent of