Surprise!
MINNEAPOLIS, Minn. – The achievement gap between white and minority students remains as big as ever in Minnesota schools, despite a “restorative justice” approach to student discipline designed to address the problem.
Student scores on the Minnesota Comprehensive Assessments released Thursday show that student achievement has flatlined, and despite efforts to keep unruly minority students in school with a “restorative justice” discipline policy, a persistent achievement gap shows the approach has had little effect.
“White students are more than twice as likely as their Native American and Hispanic peers to be proficient in science, and more than two-and-a-half times as likely as their African American peers,” Alpha News reports.
“Only 25 percent of African American students in grades five, eight, and high school met expectations in the science portion of the MCAs.”
Overall, reading proficiency statewide increased by one percentage point to 60 percent, while math proficiency among third- through eighth-graders slid one point to 61 percent, according to Minnesota Public Radio.
Almost 70 percent of white students were proficient in both reading and math, while roughly a third of black students met the threshold. Those figures are “virtually unchanged” from the prior year.