[Durham INC] New from the Rev-elution - Jeanne Lucas

[Will Wilson]

In my humble opinion, we need to address the achievement gap. In my 
nerdy way, a couple of years ago I plotted the composite student score 
against free lunch fraction for all of NC's public schools (attached). 
Students in 100% free lunch schools have 60% the performance of students 
in 0% free lunch schools. Isolating the triangle schools shows the same 
pattern. Unlike some folks, I don't blame the teachers or the schools -- 
it's a tough problem involving everyone.

There are correlations between poverty, performance, life expectancy, 
race, etc, and if we can adress this issue, we'd be addressing many issues.

Will

On 6/3/2012 4:33 PM, Deborah Christie wrote:
> Dear Melissa,
>
> From my perspective of 62 years, we Americans have come a long way on
> race, regardless of continuing racism and racial polarization.  I
> remember the very bad old days of KKK violence and vicious
> anti-miscegenation laws.
>
> For encouragement, highly recommend Professor Steven Pinker's The
> Better Angels of Our Nature, Why Violence Has Declined
> (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Better_Angels_of_Our_Nature) which
> describes, among many other things, how race riots have virtually
> disappeared from the civilized world, and how violence in general has
> drastically decreased over the millennia and particularly in the last
> century.  A real tour de force and an effective reply to fear-mongers
> and naysayers.
>
> The real  breakthrough on race is coming, when we end the "war on
> drugs" which predominantly and unfairly impacts the African-American
> community (see The New Jim Crow by Law Professor Michelle Alexander
> (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_New_Jim_Crow).
>
> Always appreciate your comments, Melissa.
>
> Cheers -
>
> Deb Christie
>

-- 
http://www.biology.duke.edu/wilson/
New Book: http://www.constructedclimates.org/
-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: FreeLunches.jpg
Type: image/jpeg
Size: 145710 bytes
Desc: not available
URL: <http://rtpnet.org/pipermail/inc-list/attachments/20120603/b768d8ef/attachment-0001.jpg>