There’s a significant fact that critics of mayoral control often gloss over: Black and Latino students have delivered the greatest performance gains on the state’s math and English exams under City Hall’s watch the past six years.
Progress made by minority students considerably reduced the yawning achievement gap with white and Asian students, the data show.
BOOSTS ARE IN MATH ARE ADDING UP
“We’ve improved the test scores for minorities — black and Latino kids compared to white and Asian kids, who have always tested better. Seven years in a row of closing the outrageous ethnic gap in testing,” Mayor Bloomberg said.
Blacks and Latinos make up 71 percent of the city’s 1 million public-school students.
The results show:
* The gap in the number of blacks and Hispanics meeting fourth-grade reading standards compared with white students dropped by nearly a third between 2002 and 2009. For example, more than 60 percent of minority kids passed the test this year — 20 percentage points higher than before mayoral control.
* The gap in eighth-grade minority students passing the English test compared with whites fell 22 percent over the same period.
* In fourth-grade math, the disparity between minorities and whites was cut by half from 2002 to 2008.
* In eighth-grade math, the difference in achievement nar rowed by 25 per cent for Latinos and 14 percent for blacks.
* More minori ties are graduating high school, reduc ing the gap by 17 percent for blacks and 13 percent for Latinos compared with whites, according to the city’s data.
Some lawmakers who will vote on whether to extend mayoral control have taken notice.
“We’re making progress, and I believe it’s because of mayoral control. We figured out a way to hold principals and schools more accountable,” said state Assemblyman Michael Benjamin (D-Bronx).
He said he has seen improvements in public schools in his district, which includes the mostly minority neighborhoods of Morrisania, Tremont and Crotona Park East.
Merryl Tisch, chancellor of the state Board of Regents, said, “The city is making inroads with the achievement gap. For so long, the level of achievement has been so low, particularly for black and Hispanic kids.”
But critics who want to rein in mayoral control dismiss the state data as mostly hype.
The union-allied Campaign for Better Schools says national test data show “no significant progress” in closing the achievement gap. The group also said fewer minorities are earning entrance to the city’s elite public high schools.
The pass rates on state tests for whites and Asians are still roughly 20 percentage points higher than for blacks and Latinos despite the progress. It used to be 30 points higher.