It's NAEP day

I tweeted this out this morning, but I thought it might be useful here.

I kinda loathe talking about NAEP, but let's talk about NAEP for a second while we're all doing the #MAEdu pivot; the #MAEdu pivot is "We're doing really well, but we still have work to do" which is a guaranteed bingo square at any announcement of nearly anything Massachusetts educationally related.Yes, this is again the case for NAEP: we're number one. We also have a massive gap with how (in particular) our kids of color are doing.
We really don't like to talk about where our kids of color go to school, though. And where they DON'T go to school.
So let's take our second largest district, Springfield.
Springfield student demographics:

• 65% Latino 
• 19.6% African American 
• 11% white 
• 2.4% Asian 
• 1.7% multi-race

Springfield has also GOT to be running the biggest #FBRC gaps out there. They're the biggest at-foundation majority-state-funded district. I'd venture the state EASILY owes Springfield another $100M a year.
(And yes, this is part of my ongoing anger around the empowerment zone. The children begged for bread and you gave them a stone.)

Here's who's around Springfield:

• West Springfield: 68.3% white/17.3% Latino 
• Longmeadow: 79.6% white 
• East Longmeadow: 81.9% white 
• Wilbraham (regional): 85.7% white 
• Ludlow: 85.2% white

Every single one of those districts funds well over the foundation budget of their schools.
The only exception?
Chicopee, to the north, which is another Gateway city, funding at foundation, and looks like this:

• 54% white 
• 36.9% Latino 
• 3.9% African American 
• 3% multirace 
• 1.6% Asian

Massachusetts has what are tiny districts by national standards, because we mostly have town districts. Having town districts means that we have school systems that reflect town demographics.There's plenty of good resources out there on redlining and sundown towns, so don't come at me with "choices people make on where to live."
We have concentrated our children of color in particular districts, and then we as a state have chronically underfunded those very same districts.
So, yes, we have more work to do.