Column: Teach black and Hispanic students differently
In late March, a panel of 10 education experts gathered in Washington to nominate four most-improved urban school districts for a national education prize. What should have been a routine review of student data, however, suddenly took a new direction.
2003 photo by Mario Villafuerte, Getty Images
In Tyler, Texas: Students recite the Pledge of Allegiance.
First one member on the review panel for the annual Broad Prize for Urban Education then another noticed the same thing: Plenty of large urban school districts nationwide were making solid progress with Hispanic students closing achievement gaps with white students. But African-American students continued to lag.
In theory, the experts should not have been seeing what they were seeing. The federal data tracking Hispanic and black students show that they are making roughly the same progress (not much) in closing learning gaps. That left the review panel members puzzled. Was this an