Monday, March 31, 2008

Whut's Deeversahtee?

So, the results are in: my high school is still poor and undereducated.

Percent of students on free lunch: 53.
Diversity: 60 white; 472 black; 5 Asian; 12 Hispanic.
SAT scores: 394 math; 401 verbal; 398 writing.

Let's look around the rest of my old district, shall we?

New Haven:
Percent of students on free lunch: 19.
Diversity: 822 white; 57 black; 14 Asian; 62 Hispanic.
SAT scores: 498 math; 498 verbal; 476 writing.

Heritage:
Percent of students on free lunch: 15.
Diversity: 763 white; 65 black; 0 Asian; 20 Hispanic.
SAT scores: 518 math; 491 verbal; 474 writing.

Woodlan:
Percent of students on free lunch: 13.
Diversity: 680 white; 8 black; 1 Asian; 7 Hispanic.
SAT scores: 498 math; 484 verbal; 472 writing.

Leo:
Percent of students on free lunch: 4.
Diversity: 1154 white; 4 black; 7 Asian; 5 Hispanic.
SAT scores: 530 math; 538 verbal; 505 writing.

I've hung around too many economists to start making too many assertions about this and that based on these general numbers.

But c'mon now. While my high school may not be able to, just do the math.

The good news is, we won State in football and made it to State Finals in basketball! (Because that's what's really important.)

I think I'm going to be sick.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Pretty terrible.

What would you do to improve it?

- Daniel

JPB said...

1) Get the state out of education. Lowest common denominator education has been nothing but a curse for our educational system.

2) Use non-profit and other community groups (e.g., the black church)to stress the importance of education in the black community, if not the greater public generally. I mean, really, it is not as if these other scores are spectacular.

3) Break the cycle of government dependence. The lower we set the bar for performance in the society, the lower the results are going to be. What I would call the "Hustler class" feeds off of government assistance, handouts and lowered expectations.

None of these are really that simple, but I'm not about to write a book in the comment section. Those are the basic problems and solutions, as I see them.