I was complimented often on my reading proficiency as a young child -- but much too often, the accolades would arrive on a high note, the kind you hear when something surprises someone: "He reads/speaks so well!" I always wanted to live in a world where young black boys were expected to read and speak well, and so it stung like an insult.
It seems that we don't quite live in that world yet. A new report focusing on African-American males offered, sadly, more of the same:
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.
American Prospect writer Jamelle Bouie examines the report, and calls for education reform. Ultimately, he's about as optimistic as I am about people giving a crap:
That everything contributes to the racial achievement gap is what makes it so difficult to narrow. Worse, there is absolutely no appetite -- among the public, in government, or in the media -- for pursuing a comprehensive solution to the racial achievement gap. When education reform doesn't work, we'll give up and with the thought that "nothing will change anyway." Of course, I could be wrong. But until other people start panicking about the near-50 percent black teen unemployment rate, I think it's safe to say that few people actually care.
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So true, I used to always here this as a child "he reads so well". Upon moving from Brooklyn, New York to Staten Island, New York in 1962, the new school, P.S. 45 refused to accept my standardized reading test scores because they believed that it was impossible for them to be so high due to the fact they were higher than any of the students in the new, all white class.
John H. Armwood
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