Read the latest news on Nyack education issues and a broad range of topics. Many of these articles appear in The Rockland Journal News and be can accessed on line. The full text of these sources will be referenced via our links page.
Read our Latest Press Release and...
The Nyack Villager article by Frances Pratt, President of the Nyack NAACP.
The New York Times puts Nyack on the front page- August 4, 2000
The Journal News provides the latest update from The U.S. Justice Department
RNN Cable News examines the issues in Nyack--- September 7, 2000
WBAI 99.5FM also discussed Nyack's racial issues--- September 7, 2000
Contact us for copies of video and audio cassettes
NY Times Editorial May 16, 2000
Over the last five years, the New York State Board of Regents has enacted a series of public school reforms that have placed
the state in the lead of the national movement for standards and accountability.
At the same time, however, local educators and politicians who claim to
want reform have sometimes reacted with skepticism and resistance when
confronted with the discomfort that comes with change. Defenders of the status quo
whipped up a fuss, for example, when the Regents raised graduation standards
across the state, demanded a tougher curriculum and began to issue "report
cards" that exposed as mediocre schools that many citizens thought were
excellent.
A similar backlash has emerged since the Regents announced
that they will soon begin reporting student performance by income and
race, to focus attention on the achievement gap that often exists between rich
and poor and between white and minority students within the same school.
Critics say that holding districts accountable for closing the achievement gap is
onerous and unfair, some of them suggesting that nothing can be done. But
national studies indicate that the gap can indeed be closed and that disaggregating data by race and income is a crucial first step in the
process.
Pessimism about closing the performance gap is widespread,
but it is not supported by the facts. The most recent study of national
achievement data by the Education Trust, a Washington foundation devoted
to school reform, shows that while black and Latino students continue to
trail white students on reading scores, schools that serve those students made
great strides in recent decades. Between the mid-70's and mid-90's, the
gap in achievement between African-American and white students, as measured
by a federally sponsored test called the National Assessment of Educational
Progress, narrowed by about half. The progress stopped in the late 1980's,
when poverty became more concentrated and educators began to focus on remedial studies instead of much-needed high-level instruction.
Several states now report performance by race, most notably Texas. It began its effort in the 1980's with the Perot Commission, whose
work culminated a decade later in a novel accountability system that
rates the public schools by how well their minority students perform. Simply
put, a school cannot receive the highest state rating unless 90 percent of its
students -- including 90 percent of minority students -- perform at the
highest levels on all state assessments. Texans looked at the data and
recognized that the schools were jeopardizing the state's future by writing
off minorities -- who make up more than half the public school enrollment.
Since the reform effort, more minority students than ever are taking the
Scholastic Assessment Tests, setting their sights on college.
The New York State Board of Regents created a similar momentum when it raised standards, requiring all students to pass Regents
exams to graduate from high school. By disaggregating performance scores
by race and economic status, the Regents hope to focus public opinion on the
achievement gap in New York, forcing schools to work harder on minority
achievement.
(NY Times May 5, 2000)
By KATE ZERNIKE
Pushing further in its drive for accountability and tougher standards,
the New York State Board of Regents voted yesterday to publicly grade every
school in the state based on scores on the new statewide tests, rewarding
or punishing schools according to where they rank.
In another significant departure, the grades would tease out the scores
of black, Hispanic, non-English speaking and special education students in
each school, to distinguish gaps between their performance and white
students'. By doing so, they will potentially expose weaknesses in better-off
districts where the average grades have sometimes masked low achievement by
students from those groups.
With the Regents' vote, New York joins Texas and California in
considering racial data in the rankings and 26 other states that have imposed some
form of grading on their schools. In large part, the grades are a way of
publicly shaming schools into improvement, or enticing them, as Kentucky and South
Carolina do, with cash rewards.
Although the state has previously branded the very worst schools, the new
system, to begin with test results for the next school year, will be the
state's first to rank schools that do not fail. The message, officials
say, is that simply passing is no longer the only goal and that serving only
middle-class white students well is no longer good enough.
To read the full text of this article go to:
http://www.nytimes.com/library/national/regional/050500ny-regents-edu.html
Discussion about The Achievement Gap is well documented in our Archives.
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