By: Davis Kennedy
The District government has been very successful in many areas, especially on the financial front. But the one area where our government’s results have been deplorable is in public education, particularly among minority students.
According to last year’s Partnership for Assessment of Readiness for College and Careers exam (PARCC), only 33.3 percent of public and charter students were successful in passing the language arts exam. And only 29.4 percent of those students passed the math exam. Indeed, the share of students with passing scores increased over the past three years, but the results are incredibly poor. These results are in spite of the District spending more money on public education than any of the 50 states.
Among African-American students, the results are reprehensible. Only 24.7 percent were successful in the language arts exam. And only 20.7 percent of those students experienced success in math. Sure, the share of African-American students who were successful has increased. But the numbers are still unbearable. Caucasians had a rate of 82.1 percent in language arts and 78.8 percent in math, which is well below where it should be.
Mayor Muriel Bowser is now looking for a new school chancellor. We hope she will be successful in finding someone who can recruit and train a teachers. And we hope those teachers will cause the results to skyrocket over the coming years.
