Many factors affect states' ACT scores

Sunny Schubert:

The achievement gap between white and minority students has nothing to do with aptitude but correlates to socioeconomic factors such as poverty, racism and family structure. Still, it stands to reason that states with higher percentages of lower-performing students will perform lower in the aggregate than states with higher percentages of better performing students.

Results from the National Assessment of Educational Progress test are broken down for ethnicity. The scores show white students in Texas consistently score higher than white students in Wisconsin, and black and Hispanic students in Texas also outscore their Wisconsin counterparts.

As for the writer's statement that Texas licenses mere four-year college graduates rather than school of education graduates, I say "good for Texas!" It's ironic that the most engaging teachers at our colleges and universities, such as UW-Madison's famous chemistry professor Bassam Shakhashiri, would not be allowed to teach in a Wisconsin public school because most have no degrees in education.

Posted by Jim Zellmer at April 28, 2011 7:39 PM
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