Wake's success at narrowing the racial achievement gap on the SAT is mixed.
Wake's Hispanic students have made noticeable strides. But the district's black students are doing worse on the SAT than they were 12 years ago.
Wake's white students scored 1,072 on the SAT in 1996 — 168 points better than the black students. In 2008, white students scored 1,108 — 222 points better than their black classmates.
In 2004, the first year that Wake says the data is available for Hispanic students, white kids scored 1,096. That was 115 points better than the Hispanic students. In 2008, the gap was 99 points.
Wake's Hispanic students scored 1,009 in 2008, compared to 981 in 2004
Wake's black students scored 886 in 2008, compared 904 in 1996.
David Holdzkom, Wake's assistant superintendent for evaluation and research, stressed that the district's black and Hispanic students are both scoring above the state and national averages.
The racial achievement gap is growing statewide. But state officials say that's more a reflection of greater SAT participation by minority students than a drop in performance.
You can see the change over time by clicking here on Wake's SAT analysis.
Comments
Well sometimes black
Sat, 08/29/2009 - 06:43 — JoeAnne10Well sometimes black students are smarter then white students because they are usually motivated by something the white ones are not. Like poverty, fear, and stuff like that. I had the opportunity to work with some kind of students like this while I was working at Atlanta windows.
Q. Do socioeconomic factors
Fri, 08/29/2008 - 19:18 — bigwinnieQ. Do socioeconomic factors affect valued-added measurements?
No. Leading experts have shown that those factors -- such as household income or parents' education level -- have no significant relationship with student progress measures.
SOURCE: Battelle for Kids; University of Pennsylvania.
http://www.bridges4kids.org/articles/8-08/PlainDealer8-24-08.html
Q/ Why is measuring both achievement and progress important?
In the past, students and schools have been ranked solely on achievement. The problem with this method is that achievement is highly linked to the socioeconomic status of a student's family. In contrast, value-added assessment measures growth and answers the question: How much value did the school staff add for students?
Thank you hui
Fri, 08/29/2008 - 11:11 — Forget_not_the_...Thank you Hui--
This information is crucial. It is good that we are outperforming the state and nation in our minority scores...that deserves a huge HURRAH!!
But wow what an embarassment the gap between the white population scores and the black population scores. Once again pointing to the findings of the Curriculum Audit and our EOG's showing that we are not reaching or teaching our Black children.
The excuse that the lower scores of minorities on the whole are the result of larger numbers taking the exam seems a bit flawed to me.
As a "leading" school system the number of minority students taking the SAT should not impact the score because they should ALL be prepared to succeed. Students do not take this exam without the hope of going to college.
Is it still really an SAT Test?
Fri, 08/29/2008 - 09:30 — Uncle Ruckus (not verified)Just some interesting side notes on this issue:
http://www.nationalreview.com/contributors/kurtz032502.shtml
http://www.sntp.net/education/education_stats.htm
http://englishplus.com/news/news0399.htm
"Re-Centering," interesting word.
Just remember, the School Board(eR) and the management of the WCPSS are a bunch of "like-minded" educational elitist (you can follow this tread all the way to Washington). Regardless of your SES, in their mindset, you and your children are nothing but lab rats in their never ending "social engineering" project. They don't like when the "Great Whale" comes back to attack their "ship of fools." (Think Moby Dick)
Ask yourself, what do these "elitist" really want or what is their end goal.