Every so often, you have to take a deep breath and allow a full-color chart to get your FULL attention
Click on this and make your way to chart 17, a stunning graphic showing who makes up the students in the emotionally disabled pool in Philadelphia Public Schools.
You have to admire their euphemism, “emotional support program.” I think that’s something akin to a book group discussing the range of emotions experienced when reading the classics, right?
(Oh, and while you’re there check out charts 8 and 9, which conform with all the state tests I’ve seen emerging: Girls are doing better than boys in both reading and math).
This story from Philadelphia Inquirer reporter Kristen Graham gives all the context:
Philadelphia School District officials have known they had an achievement gap on their hands for years.
Yesterday, they saw the raw data, and were collectively horrified.
One in 10 white students is classified as mentally gifted; just 3 in 100 black students are.
Black and Latino students make up 79 percent of the district’s 167,000 students, but make up just 54 percent of students in the district’s prestigious magnet schools. Those groups make up 90 percent of all children labeled “emotionally disturbed,” and most of the students at the district’s lowest-performing schools.
Next time you hear a doubter of the boy troubles explain how the boy problems involve only race and class, think of chart 17. These boys and girls come from the same families, same neighborhoods, same schools — and yet the boys are turning out very differently. This is the same phenomenon documented so well in Chicago Public Schools.
Keep something else in mind here. This is in a school district that’s so desperate for black, male teachers that they place a cap on how many can teach in any one school. The goal: sprinkle the handful around. Who rearranged my Titanic deck chair?
If my sense of humor were darker I’d run a contest to guess on how many those boys get labeled as in need of emotional ”support” because their local schools never taught them how to read. When you can’t read, you can’t function in school, so what’s left to do other than disrupt class? And for that, you earn yourself a seat in the “emotional support” group.
Tags: Minority Boys
