Despite concerted efforts by educators, the test-score gaps are so large that, on average, African-American and Hispanic students in high school can read and do arithmetic at only the average level of whites in junior high school.
"The gaps between African-Americans and whites are showing very few signs of closing," Michael T. Nettles, a senior vice president at the Educational Testing Service, said in a paper he presented recently at Columbia University. One ethnic minority, Asians, generally fares as well as or better than whites.
The reports and their authors, in interviews, portrayed an educational landscape in which test-score gaps between black or Hispanic students and whites appear in kindergarten and worsen through 12 years of public education.
Some researchers based their conclusions on federal test results, while others have cited state exams, the SATs and other widely administered standardized assessments. Still, the studies have all concurred: The achievement gaps remain, perplexing and persistent.
Why is this so perplexing?
Because of political correctness, that's why.
The achievement gap mirrors the IQ gap. Of IQ gaps we cannot speak amongst polite company, such as those that still read the NYT.
That's the elephant in the room.
Even the legislators behind NCLB were not so crazy to think that NCLB was going to magically erase the achievement gap. You can search all day long in the legislation, but you won't find anything that suggests that the real performance of all the racial groups will be the same in 2014.
What you will find is achievement measured by defining a cut score over which even our dullest students will be able to jump over into proficiency land. However, once they're in proficiency land there will still be an achievement gap. And, that gap will be the same as it is now due to the persistence of the IQ gap.
The aim of NCLB is to set a minimum competency threshold and get all students over it. The theory goes something like this. States set a proficiency level as low as is politically feasible, then schools improve teaching until 99% of students can meet or exceed the goal. If the goal were set much below 99%, we'd still see an achievement gap due to the IQ gap, so don't expect to see that level reduced below about a mid ninetieth percentile.
The best NCLB can accomplish is masking the achievement gap.
Insta-update: Guest blogger Jal Mehta at Eduwonk either toes the political correctness line like a good think tanker that wants to keep his job or gets it wrong:
[F]rom a policy perspective, I think (and here is that Rorschach test) it reveals the weakness of external accountability as a lever to accomplish what is one of the most difficult of our social policy objectives -- breaking the link between family poverty and school outcomes. In a sense, setting standards and measuring progress through assessments are the low-hanging fruit -- what they leave undone is the much more difficult task of actually helping kids do tomorrow what they couldn't do today. These questions--of which accountability systems are one part but a relatively small part--is where the policy dialogue needs to go. Let's hope today's story sounds the bell and starts that conversation.
If this is the typical substitution of "poverty" for "IQ" wink-and-a-nod that we see when talking about racial achievement gaps, we have the problem that "breaking the link between [IQ] and school outcomes" is all but impossible. Smart kids learn more per unit of instruction and that's that. Otherwise if Jal really means that poverty is somehow responsible for diminished school outcomes, he has a wet streets cause rain problem. He's got the cause and effect thing backwards. And, he's ignoring the effects of the IQ gap. An immigrant family from one of the Northeast Asian countries who might be living in poverty today will likely have children who perform well in school, whereas your native inner city family who just won the powerball lottery will likely still have children who won't do well in school. Poverty has little to do with school performance, especially the way we define poverty in this country which includes many families who would be considered filthy rich in most of the rest of the world.
And, as far as the "what [accountability systems] leave undone is the much more difficult task of actually helping kids do tomorrow what they couldn't do today" meme goes, I view this as a good thing. NCLB is basically saying, you've been taking our federal money for a long time now with little to show for it. We don't like it. If you want to keep on taking our money, you need to start showing results. Here's what we want to see in 14 years. You set the standards as you see fit and you, as the experts in education, find a way to meet those goals, in whatever way you want to. You want to teach to the test? fine. You want to expand the school day? go ahead. You want to adopt a sunshine and lollipop curriculum? Great. Just don't come crying crying to us, if you don't meet your goals. Little did they know, educators would be crying in less than five years.
Super update Two: Joanne Jacobs writes that:
[W]e could cut the gap considerably by giving disadvantaged children more experienced and expert teachers, a well-designed curriculum, frequent diagnostic testing and after-school tutors who could provide the support their parents can't. I also think we could work more closely with parents to tell them what they could be doing to help their children do well in school. Maybe the gap wouldn't close completely but it can be narrowed.
Sure, we can raise student achievement of low performers by improving their curriculum. I'm on board with that. But, I don't think, it'll diminish the achievement gap. How long do you think it would take for middle-class families to start demanding the same improved curriculum that the poor kids are getting? Once they get it too, their achievement will also rise. Back to steady state, i.e., achievement gap.
And guestblogger Jal Mehta at Eduwonk begins construction on what appears to be a strawman when he characterizes my position as "assuming that racial gaps are  immutably given by nature." I see where he's going with the "immutable" language. We've already squeezed out most of the immutability about as far as we're going to take it, now that the poor are super-nutriated. Closing the gap further by reducing "poverty effects" have proven elusive and starts to bring us into the land of Kozol.