South By North Strategies, Ltd.

A new report from the North Carolina Budget & Tax Center looks at the progress that North Carolina has made to close the racial achievement gap among public school students. Using  results from end-of-grade tests, high school end-of-course tests, the Scholastic Aptitude Test, and the National Assessment of Educational Progress, the report concludes the following:

These limited efforts have not only failed to fulfill the promise to close the achievement gap, a decade later the gap has not even narrowed. On every measure, minority students are still failing to achieve the success of their peers. American Indian, black, and Hispanic students continue to have significantly lower standardized test scores than white students. They have higher dropout rates and lower graduation rates, are under-represented in programs for the gifted and disproportionally disciplined with suspensions and expulsions.