Three-part series on the Hispanic achievement gap: Why it’s not getting better, and why we should worry.
October 25th, 2011 § Leave a Comment
The Hechinger Report, in partnership with California Watch, has published a three-part series on the Hispanic achievement gap in California this week. We focus on reading by third grade, a benchmark that can predict how students will do later in school.
Only 12 percent of Hispanic fourth-graders in California–which has the largest number of Hispanic students in the country–were proficient in reading on the National Assessment of Educational Progress in 2009, which places them behind every state in the nation except for Utah and Minnesota. On this test, the proficiency gap between Hispanic and white students actually grew slightly over the past decade.
The series looks at what’s being done and what isn’t in the small town of Soledad, a microcosm for the problems the state is facing, how English learners in particular have fared and what we know about the best ways of teaching them, and how early education might help.
Today at 5pm Eastern/2pm Pacific, we’ll be having a discussion about the series on Twitter. Follow and join in with #learninggap.
