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New York City Achievement Gap Round Robin

By Eduwonkette — August 01, 2008 1 min read
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Check out these links on the NYC achievement gap dust-up:

1) All Tricks, No Treats: Head over to the National Review Online, where dataman Robert VerBruggen takes a stab at the NYC state achievement gap data. In Has NYC Discovered the Trick for Closing the Achievement Gap?, he writes:

That question has important ramifications for college admissions and affirmative-action policies. The schools claim the answer is yes....as yours truly will further argue in the ridiculously long post after the jump, that doesn't appear to be the case.

2) Madonna Revenge: Achievement gap virgin Mike “Milli” Petrilli argues over at Flypaper that proficiency is what’s important, not the continuous achievement gap. I’ve planned a longer post on why the achievement gap matters, but for now, a few words from “When Measuring Achievement Gaps, Beware the Proficiency Trap:"

The proficiency view, to my mind, is certainly important to consider when we are thinking about building stocks of human capital. But if we are concerned about inequality and social stratification - ensuring that, on average, every demographic and socioeconomic group is equally prepared to compete in higher education and the workplace - relative achievement measured on a continuous scale is what matters, not proficiency rates.

3) More Sorry than Eliot Spitzer: Matthew Tabor won a no-bid contract with the NYC DOE to write David Cantor’s letter of apology for denying the public access to data that are rightfully public. Read the whole thing, but here’s a taste:

Dear New Yorkers, This last Sunday I denied a public information request inappropriately. When one is overcome with a bitter, “them vs. us” attitude on top of a penchant for political game-playing and a disinterest in public communication, surely you understand how these things happen.

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