Failing Schools

In many of our major urban centers today, students of color -- African-Americans, Latinos, Asians, Caribbean and Pacific Islanders, and many more -- are now the majority in public schools. This demography coincides with a Reading Report Card of the National Center for Educational Statistics which indicated that over 50 percent of Black and Latino children score below fourth grade reading levels, and 47 percent of Black and 46 percent of Latino children score below eighth grade reading levels. Discrepancies in math scores are similarly stark. That is to say, we do not have a general education crisis in the nation. We have a crisis for poor Black, Latino, Asian and White kids. Extensive analyses of test scores nationwide reveal that -- surprise -- schools with high concentrations of poor students have very low academic performance rankings. In The Manufactured Crisis, Berliner and Biddle show how schools for middle class children fundamentally fulfill their purposes while schools for poor children fail. And though this failure affects all poor children, it disproportionately impacts the children of African-Americans and Latinos. Fully half of their children are failing in school.