Many education reformers seem to believe, and are certainly content to let the public believe, that “…we have the worst education outcomes for children of color in the country, in particular for black children,” as one MinnPost reader recently commented.

If it were true, it would be damning, but it simply isn’t. Recent National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) test scores paint a different picture.

NAEP exams are one of the few tools that can be used to compare students across the country, because students take the same NAEP tests at the same time. By contrast, using the results of state-level exams and graduation rates doesn't provide reliable comparisons, since states design their own state-level exams and the definition of "graduation rate" differs from one state to the next—even from one school district to the next.

According to the most recent NAEP scores, fourth-grade black students in Minnesota outperform the national average for all black students in both math and science. In reading, black fourth-graders in Minnesota score below the national average for all black students, but by eighth grade that difference virtually disappears.
 
Furthermore, eighth-grade black students in Minnesota exceed the national average for all black students in math and science too. That sure doesn’t seem like the “worst education outcomes for children of color in the country, in particular for black children.” Instead, it seems that black children in Minnesota generally outperform their counterparts in other states, at least in terms of NAEP scores.

The Test-Score Gap
 
It is true that the test-score gap between white and black students is larger in Minnesota than the national average test score gap, but white students in Minnesota generally score well above the national average for white students in all but one of the aforementioned areas.

Still, this test score gap is a cause for concern and should unite Minnesotans in attempting to address and resolve it. That is difficult to do, however in the current climate, where rah-rah reformers bash teachers and trash schools.

Graduation Rates

Then there's the issue of graduation rates. Published in 2013, the Building a Grad Nation report is an in-depth analysis of graduation rates that attempts to control for the fact that states compute graduation rates differently. The Grad Nation report puts Minnesota in the solid center with a graduation rate of nearly 77%. The report does show an unusually large 35-point gap between the graduation rate for white and black students, yet further on, the report concludes that Minnesota was in the top ten of states in reducing the gap between black and white students from 2003 to 2010.

It seems to me that while we should all be concerned about making sure that all students recognize the value of their education and achieve at high levels, we need also to have an honest discussion that includes these facts.

Caroline Hooper is a Minneapolis high school teacher. This is an adaptation of an article she wrote for the Minnesota 2020 web site.