response to Nick Lehmann’s New Yorker

Joel Klein, Michael Lomax and Janet Murguia with a spot-on response to Nick Lehmann's New Yorker article (a link to it and my response are here: http://edreform.blogspot.com/2010/09/schoolwork.html):

 

October 11, 2010

 

Lemann's position that things aren't so bad in American public education is belied by facts that he adduces. He readily admits the "heartbreakingly low quality of the education that many poor, urban, and minority children in public schools get." Only fourteen per cent of African-American and seventeen per cent of Latino eighth graders achieved proficiency in reading on the 2009 National Assessment of Educational Progress, compared with forty-one per cent of white and forty-five per cent of Asian eighth graders. In math, the gaps were even greater (twelve per cent for African-Americans and seventeen per cent for Latinos compared with forty-four per cent for whites and fifty-four per cent for Asians). Minority groups represent thirty-five per cent of the population today and are already a majority in two of the country's three largest states. Research shows that by 2018 nearly two-thirds of all new jobs will require more than a high-school diploma, but today, according to the Alliance for Excellent Education, barely half of African-American, Latino, and Native American students graduate from high school. (African-American students graduate at fifty-four per cent, Latinos at fifty-six per cent, and Native Americans at fifty-one per cent, versus seventy-seven per cent of their white counterparts.) When so many Americans are subject to a "heartbreakingly low quality of education," and when the achievement gap hasn't narrowed in almost thirty years—what is this if not a crisis?

 

Joel Klein, Michael Lomax, and Janet Murguía

Co-chairpersons, Board of Directors

The Education Equality Project

New York City

(Klein is the chancellor of New York City schools. Lomax is the president and chief executive of the United Negro College Fund. Murguía is the president and chief executive of the National Council of La Raza.)

www.newyorker.com/magazine/letters/2010/10/11/101011mama_mail2#ixzz11PfDU0FB