Is It Something In The Water?

My students today blamed Lake Michigan, but seriously, why do students who are demographically identical to students in other areas of the country perform so poorly here in Chicago?

Illinois' poor and black students score worse than most minority students nationally, a study shows, offering a rare glimpse of how Illinois' minority students stack up.

Only 8 percent of black fourth-graders are proficient in reading, ranking Illinois 35th out of 41 states that test a large enough group of black students. Only 9 percent of poor eighth-graders are proficient in math, ranking the state 37th out of 50, the Thomas B. Fordham Foundation found after analyzing the 2005 National Assessment of Educational Progress.

"Illinois lines up abysmally," said Michael Petrilli, Fordham vice president.

Full Sun-times story here.

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