In All But 2 Suburban Districts, Whites Do Better Than Minorities

What parent doesn’t want a good education for their child. Suburban schools are delivering to their white students, but their African American and Latino students come up short test time.

“I think it’s shocking,” said Katy D’Agastino of Fairport. “I was surprised there was such a big gap.”

In standardized math and reading exams, African American and Latino students scored twenty to forty-five points lower than their white classmates. In Fairport, white students 2004 reading test scores were more than double black students.

“I’m not sure if standardized tests really measure achievement. So I’m not sure if the discrepancies in the test scores really give us an accurate account of what students intellectual or academic ability is,” explained Urban Education Professor Sonia James Wilson of the University of Rochester.

D’Agastino’s daughter Maria is still in a stroller, but her mother is concerned.

“It’s something that needs to be taken care of,” she said. “Now that I know what that I would want to send my child to the school where there wasn’t such a large gap.”

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D’Agastino is white and her daughter could stand to benefit from the academic gap. However she said that is not the kind of education she wants for her child.

“It would still bother me. It’s something that doesn’t seem fair,” she said.