In light of the attention paid to the achievement gap between white students and students of color during the recent legislative hearing on adequacy (the descriptor for the hearings that determine our state’s education funding priorities), I thought it might be good to look at the numbers.

For comparison, I’ve chosen 4th grade NAEP (National Assessment for Educational Progress) reading scores and am looking at gaps in achievement between black and white students. Arkansas’s 2015 scores show that 37% of white students in Arkansas scored proficient or advanced (a proxy for reading at grade level) while just 17% of black students did.  Put another way, white students are more than twice as likely to be reading at grade level as their black classmates.

That bears repeating: white students are more than twice as likely to be reading at grade level as their black classmates.

Using this same measure, we can see that all of our surrounding states face a similar (and in some cases slightly larger) gap in achievement. What we don’t see is a large difference between us and our surrounding states. And, that is not even slightly a feather in our cap.

Rather, it is a call to lead. We need to make targeted and meaningful use of the resources set aside to close this gap.  We need to fund quality early childhood education and after-school and summer programs. We know what works, we have dollars set aside to do what works. It’s imperative that we close that gap by funding what works.