Racial Test Gap Persists, State Figures Show

[Mizmoon]

ore of New York State's high school students are taking and passing the Regents exams now required for graduation, education officials said yesterday. But the achievement gap between white and minority students, they said, remains troubling.

Although 81 percent of white students who started high school in the fall of 2000 graduated in June, as scheduled, only 45.4 percent of black students and 42 percent of Hispanic students did.

And although 88.8 percent of the white students who graduated passed the English Regents exam with a score of at least 55 out of 100, only 64.2 percent of the black students and 59.3 percent of the Hispanic students did.

"Essentially what you're seeing here is a gap in student achievement," the state education commissioner, Richard P. Mills, said. "The minority four-year graduation rates are too low, unacceptably low."

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/03/10/nyregion/10regents.html

[fasttense]

1. No child left behind? Maybe it really means no white child. n/t