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Only 12 percent of black fourth-grade boys are proficient in reading, compared with 38 percent of white boys, and only 12 percent of black eighth-grade boys are proficient in math, compared with 44 percent of white boys.

Poverty alone does not seem to explain the differences: poor white boys do just as well as African-American boys who do not live in poverty, measured by whether they qualify for subsidized school lunches.

So writes Trip Gabriel in The New York Times, summarizing the findings from A Call for Change, a study released yesterday by the Council of Great City Schools that was designed to bring attention to the state of the Black male student in the United States.

I have not yet read the study in its entirety, just the executive summary. And it is discouraging. In addition to test scores, the study examined “Readiness to Learn,” finding, for example, that in 2008 Black children ages 17 and under were nearly 50 percent more likely to be without private or government health insurance than White children. It looked at “College and Career Preparedness,” reporting gaps in dropout, Advanced Placement test taker and college enrollment rates, as well as ACT and SAT scores. It also looked at “School Experience” and “Postsecondary Experience” indicators in trying to gain a complete sense of the Black male student. In every instance, gaps.*

Something has to change. And the report offers 11 recommendations for policy responses. Among them, a White House conference on the status of Black males, expanding the number of Black male counselors in the nation’s urban schools to provide support to these students and ensuring that Black male students take the requisite courses at the appropriate level of rigor, beginning in late elementary at the latest, to ensure they are on track to graduate. They also encourage establishing networks of black mentors.

This report clearly illustrates the racial discrepancies that exist in our society, and I am looking forward to reading it in its entirety.

But I also find the Times article about the report interesting. Trip Gabriel doesn't seem to accept the report at face value. Rather, he takes a dig at the recommendations of the report, sharing his opinion about the best ways to reform schools:

What [the report] does not discuss are policy responses identified with a robust school reform movement that emphasizes closing failing schools, offering charter schools as alternatives and raising the quality of teachers.

According to Michael Casserly, executive director of the Council that released the report, “the report did not go down this road because ‘there’s not a lot of research to indicate that many of those strategies produce better results.’”

Without responding to Casserly’s concern with what the research says, Gabriel countered with a quote from Ronald Ferguson, director of the Achievement Gap Initiative at Harvard, that the key to narrowing the achievement gap is “really good teaching.” [Though earlier in the piece he quoted Ferguson in remarks on the accumulating racial differences in what kids experience before coming to school suggesting the need for “conversations about early childhood parenting practices. ...The activities that parents conduct with their 2-, 3- and 4-year-olds” - a bit removed from quality teaching.]

And Gabriel concludes by highlighting increasing minority graduation rates in Baltimore, with public schools CEO Andres Alonso crediting aggressively closing failing schools among the strategies contributing to their success.

I appreciate that there are many different ways to improve the performance of Black male students. And I am positive that good teaching would help. But I am also sure that mentoring programs can improve outcomes as well, and I'm not sure why Gabriel didn't highlight successful examples of the strategies recommended by the report.

This is just the latest in a series of frustrations with the media. I wish I could read what should be an objective newspaper article about an education report on an extremely serious issue without seeing the author's agenda.

[Robert Pondiscio has a different take over at the Core Knowledge blog]  

*Data are disaggregated when available by gender within race, but in many instances data are available only for race and not gender within race, so gaps may refer to Black/White gaps and not Black male/White male gaps. One recommendation of the report is to encourage disaggregation of data by gender and race/ethnicity