Urban Schools Deserving of Far More Credit than They Receive

We have often quoted Mark Twain when it comes to the use of statistics.

“Figures often beguile me, particularly when I have the arranging of them myself; in which case the remark attributed to Disraeli would often apply with justice and force: There are three kinds of lies: lies, damned lies and statistics.”

While most have heard that expression, Twain is also said to be the author of an even more telling summary of the world of statistics.

“Facts are stubborn, but statistics are more pliable.”

The Poor Educational Performance of Urban Schools
The statistics indicate that urban schools perform very poorly on national tests. If one takes a composite look at test results, one will note that DC, New York, and Boston all perform collectively far worse than the national average on various standardized tests.

As Matthew Yglesias notes at TheAtlantic.com, the data reveals a classic “big city, bad schools” association.

But Mr. Yglesias goes on to do a little more in-depth analysis of the performances of urban schools and in doing so, reveals that some big cities actually exceed the national average when poverty figures are taken into account. Not all big cities mind you. But two that perennially take media hits, Boston and New York, are definitely given an unjust rap about the performance of their students.

Controlling for Poverty Factors
Yglesias provides helpful charts, the first noting the initial basic data that demonstrates that Boston, New York, and Washington D.C. all saw a higher percentage of students perform below basic on the 2005 NAEP math test than the national average. New York and Boston appeared to have at least 30% more low performing students while DC had more than double that of the national average.

But Yglesias continues onward to examine those substandard scores in greater depth. Prior to his charts, the writer notes the longstanding impact that demographic factors have on school achievement. Yglesias asserts, “Big city school systems tend to contain a higher-than-average number of poor kids, and poor kids tend to do worse than middle class kids, so cities wind up with bad test results.”

He then backs his premise by restricting results so as to really compare apples and oranges. He breaks the data down so as to contrast school performances for all kids from economically struggling families. His criteria for poverty is to compare the students eligible for federally subsidized school lunches.

The resulting impact totally contradicts the urban myth that inner city schools offer a substandard education. In fact, when eighth grade math scores are compared, Boston and New York schools actually do a better than average job educating our nation’s
economically disadvantaged children.

Yglesias notes the difference between facts and statistics. The ‘big city, bad schools’ label is simply a result of the fact that the overall numbers of these inner urban school districts “are pulled down by their larger-than-average number of poor kids.”

In other words, big city schools have more children in poverty and these children score poorly on the exams. More kids scoring at lower rates brings the averages for inner city schools below that of the nation as a whole.

At the same time, it must be noted that taking the data apart does not help the DC school district results. DC has a large number of economically disadvantaged children but their data does not change when adjusted for poverty.

Yglesias pulls no punches.

“DC, by contrast, does have a challenging population, but also is doing a crappy job relative to the challenge.”

Reversing the Focus
Adding support to the assertions of Yglesias is the fact that he also takes time to reverse his performance focus. He moves on from his comparison of those who scored below basic to examine the percentage of students who scored proficient.

Once again, New York and Boston matched or exceeded the national average when their non-federally lunch eligible students were compared to those nationally. And once again, sadly, DC’s results remained typical to the public viewpoint of urban school districts.

The writer concludes:

“All across the United States we have a problem with kids from disadvantaged backgrounds doing poorly in school. We also see kids from disadvantaged backgrounds overrepresented in urban school systems. Consequently, average results from city school systems tend to be below average.

Some cities — i.e., Washington DC — really do have sub-standard school systems and would do well to implement reforms that made DCPS get results more like what you see in Boston or New York. But even if all cities did get the level of performance that you see from the best cities, there would still be a problem insofar as poor kids tend to do badly even in ‘good’ schools in the United States.”

Statistics Versus Facts
We have to believe that such analysis is the basis for Twain’s “facts are stubborn, but statistics are more pliable.” Statistics can be used to create the impression that our urban schools are doing a poor job of educating their students.

At the same time, it is a fact that both New York and Boston, two of our largest urban school districts, score lower overall on national tests. But when one peels back that initial set of data, one quickly sees that these two cities do a better job with the student population they have been given than does the rest of the country as a whole.

And that leads to one last critical fact: our urban schools are deserving of far more credit that they receive.

Editor: New York public school photo courtesy of Steve and Sara, Boston public school courtesy of Jonk.