OCR Data Release

From: POLITICO Pro Whiteboard [mailto:politicoemail@politicopro.com]
Sent: Thursday, December 26, 2013 2:12 PM
To: Nadeau, Gregory
Subject: Education Department data reveal disparities among students of different races

12/26/13 2:12 PM EST

New estimates from the Education Department paint a picture of vastly different educational experiences among children of different racial groups, using data collected about the 2009-2010 school year.

The Education Department's Office for Civil Rights gathered information about dozens of data points from roughly 7,000 school districts through its Civil Rights Data Collection. Combined, the districts represent about 85 percent of public school students in the country.

Using those figures, it estimated, for example that while black students represent about 17 percent of students in the country, they make up a little less than 9 percent of students enrolled in a calculus class during the 2009-10 school year. Hispanic students represent about 22 percent of the student population captured in the data set. But only 10 percent of students enrolled in calculus were Hispanic. In Algebra 2 enrollment, students aligned more closely with their representation in the public school system: about 16 percent of students enrolled in Algebra 2 were black, while 60 percent of students enrolled in the advanced math course were white. (About 55 percent of the 48 million public school students nationwide were white that school year, the national estimates show.)

But only about 10 percent of students identified as gifted and talented were black while 65 percent of students with that label were white.

And while third grade retention has grabbed headlines, the data show choke points in retention elsewhere. For example, states retained more than 116,000 kindergartners, but only about 50,000 third graders — and about 40 percent of the third graders retained were black. Of retained kindergartners, however, about 42 percent were white.

The delicate freshman year proved to be a hurdle for students too: Nearly 279,000 ninth graders were retained, more than in sixth, seventh and eighth grades, combined. About a third each of those freshman retained were black, Hispanic and white.

Also, 33 percent of students suspended out of school more than once were white, and 44 percent of students suspended out of school more than once were black, the estimates find.

However the figures, which the Education Department has said can only be analyzed with great caution, don't provide the total population of kindergartners or third graders.

The Education Department is currently analyzing data collected from the 2011-12 school year, which will include data from every district in the country, rather than a sample.


— Nirvi Shah