"There are: Lies, Damn Lies, and Statistics"
- Benjamin Disraeli

"If ya kill him now, he won't learn nuthin."
- The Riddler (Jim Carrey), Batman Forever

"Don't raise the bridge, lower the river!"
- Title to a Jerry Lewis film

April 18th, 2002

A very much anticipated rant from my friend and former manager, Brian Demarzo. His commentary in purple:

The results are in. Statewide testing shows that, on average, less than one out of every two students in New York City schools are performing at or above statewide standards.

Note that these are not standards of high achievement – they are standards which most, if not all, children should be able to achieve. Unfortunately, in more than half of the cases, the children are not achieving as you’d think they should.

What does the Board of Education do with these findings? Play the race card. It turns out that, on average, black and Hispanic students have achieved about half the success of white students and Asian students. These statistics would mean something if the only difference between students of different races is the color of their skin or their ethnic background. Of course, that’s not true.

Rather than try to make everything a racial issue, why don’t we analyze statistics based on what we’re really trying to identify – why some kids do better than others? Even State Education Commissioner Richard Mills said it’s likely issues related to poverty, not race, that hamper learning.

If that’s the case, why not group kids on more meaningful characteristics? Let’s find out what percentage of kids did not pass the standardized tests whose households income is at or below the poverty level. Or, better yet, how does household income correlate to passing the standardized tests?

There are many different criteria which can be used to analyze the true correlation between academic achievement and something other than race. Household income, or, perhaps income per capita in a household, may give a good indication to how economic conditions affect student performance. Student performance in single- or two-parent households may tell us something about how domestic issues affect student performance. And these are just two examples.

If you look at how test scores correlate to demographic conditions related to economic status, family life, education level of parents, and others, you have the opportunity to identify if any of these conditions have an impact on a student’s performance. Don’t you think this would tell us a lot more than just talking about our students in terms of race?

If this is obvious to people (I can’t imagine how it couldn’t be), why do so many people keep breaking things down to a racial issue? Is everyone afraid of finding out that it may be someone’s fault, by action or inaction, that things are the way they are? Perhaps a student’s test scores are low because he’s in a single-parent home, or because his parents have a lower level of education, or because he lives in a high crime area. This is much more revealing – and if we find issues like these are true, we may actually be able to do something to correct the situation.

As long as we refuse to look past appearance and race, we’ll never be able to determine the root cause of a problem – and we’ll continue to divide our “united” society on racial lines.