Closing The Achievement Gap

In a report performed by the Institute of Educational Science entitled "How Black and White students in Public Schools Perform in Mathematics and Reading on the National Assessment of Educational Progress" stated that the past half century has witnessed considerable gains in educational attainment in the United States. Although scores have increased for both Black and White students, on average Black students do not perform as well as their White peers.

In 2007, mathematics scores for both Black and White public school students in grades 4 and 8 nationwide, as measured by the main NAEP assessments of the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP), were higher than in any previous assessment, going back to 1990. This was also true for Black and White fourth-graders on the NAEP 2007 Reading Assessment. For grade 8, reading scores for both Black and White students were higher in 2007 than in the first reading assessment year, 1992, as well as the most recent previous assessment year, 2005.

White students, however, had higher scores than Black students, on average, on all assessments. While the nationwide gaps in 2007 were narrower than in previous assessments at both grades 4 and 8 in mathematics and at grade 4 in reading, White students had average scores at least 26 points higher than Black students in each subject, on a 0-500 scale. 

 The educational gap between Black students and White Students continue to slowly decline as Educators, Teachers, Politicians, and Government continue to search ways to help close this gap sooner. For more information on this issue, please visit http://nces.ed.gov/, or for more information on the Delphonse Education and Performing Arts Center please visit www.mydepac.com.