Just as kids are returning from summer Âvacation, Families for Excellent Schools is highlighting the city’s most shameful racial division.
Looking at a diverse cross-section of 90 New York City schools, the education-reform group found that not a single black or Hispanic student passed the state-administered math and reading exams. Let’s repeat that: Not a single black or Hispanic student from these schools passed.
The saddest thing is these findings correspond with numbers showing that only 18.5 percent of black students and only 23.2 percent of Hispanics passed math. The reading scores for both were around 18.6 percent.
So why no outrage from our leaders?
Maybe because they’re playing for the other team. Mayor de Blasio came to office condemning inequality. Yet as mayor he’s tried to make it harder for the public schools where minority kids do learn.
At Eva Moskowitz’s Success Academy, for example, 93.6 percent of black children and 96.4 of Hispanic children passed the math tests.
Likewise the mayor’s friend, the Rev. Al Sharpton. Maybe the Rev. Al is reluctant to organize demonstrations against the Department of Education and the teachers unions for this glaring racial gap because the United Federation of Teachers sponsored his rally against the cops.
In an economy that increasingly rewards knowledge, children who don’t learn are written out of the American Dream before their teens. So three cheers for Families for Excellent Schools for underscoring this ongoing betrayal of our city’s children of color.