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Racial disparities in M-STEP results

Posted at 8:01 AM, Aug 31, 2016
and last updated 2016-08-31 08:01:37-04

M-STEP results are in, and white and Asian American students scored markedly higher than other students of color, something Michigan State University Education Researcher Joshua Cowen says is happened across the country. "The results this year show that we still have a long way to go. I wish I could say they were surprising in some ways, but they're not," Cowen said.

Black and Hispanic students tended to do worse in math, English, social studies, and science than their white and Asian counterparts, especially in Ingham County.

"We have to be very careful of interpreting these numbers as a measure of school performance per se because what they do reflect is the challenges that some of these schools face that they're working with," Cowen said, citing that poverty and factors outside of the school's control often account for 60 percent of what affects test scores.

Community organizations, like the Capital Area Literacy Coalition which offers free literacy tutoring, can help schools confront those challenges, Cowen said. "I think what people would be surprised to know is we can do something about this," Executive Director Lois Bader said. She says she's seen students makes great improvements with the help of one-on-one tutoring.

"What we've seen with our Read to Succeed program for many many years is that these children can learn, it doesn't matter what their racial background is," Bader said.

Cowen says community organization and changes districts have already made might be improving the situation, it's just hard to know before researchers really dig in to this year's data.

You can check out the results yourself on the MI School Data website.