Not being good at Math is not that big of deal but not being proficient at your own native language seems inexcusable.
Unfortunately, I couldn't find any easy way to get example questions - they're all locked behind a login that requires student id.
Furthermore, this isn't entirely an ESL issue - according to the article, scores for African-American students were the lowest, and they're obviously native speakers. So we would need more information to figure out the origin of this disparity.
One final point - these numbers are the percentage of students who scored above a threshold, NOT their average scores. All of the scores for every ethnic group are likely on something like a normal distribution, shifted to the right or left. Of the groups who performed below the standard, it's likely that the majority of them performed very close to the standard even if they were just below it.
This isn't entirely true. There is a great diversity of dialects of English. Schools test and grade students on their abilities with "standard" English.
For historical and racist reasons, African American Vernacular English is considered by many to be "stupid English", which puts many African American students at a disadvantage [0].
Setting dialectal variations aside; no one speaks standard English. In fact, "standard English" (that is, "correct" written English) contains rules that are not, and have never been, part of any dialect of English that I am aware of. For example, in standard English you cannot split infinitives, and must use commas (which aren't a "thing" in spoken English) in certain places. Further, the phonology of standard (written) English is miles away from what anyone says. This result of this is that being a native speaker of English is not sufficient for anyone to learn standard English. To do so, one must be exposed to sufficient written material; and exposure to written material tends to correlate with class.
[0] Admitidally, it is true that, as far as English dialects spoken in America go, AAVE is relativly distinctive from standard English (likely due to our history of segregation).
Knowing "African American English" still puts one at a severe advantage compared to immigrants who don't know English or American children who have immigrant parents who can barely speak English. There are noticeable and helpful similarities between the AAVE and standard English.
African Americans also have cultural advantages compared to immigrants and immigrant children because their parents and family all grew up in America. Knowing and understanding American cultural references helps them learn standard English vocabulary and concepts much quicker.
http://www.mercurynews.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/09/sjm-l-...
To go to one of the majority-white / Asian schools you need to live in neighborhoods where the houses are easily 3x the cost of the houses in Latino /black neighborhoods. There are few if any apartments to rent. These schools routinely have fundraisers where parents are asked to donate thousands of dollars to their specific schools. Stay-again-home mothers help teachers out in the classroom. There aren’t ESL classes, just Spanish or Chinese immersion classes.
So I wouldn’t be so sure that the schools don’t make a difference.
Thinks like housing, school districting, and sanctuary state.
I don't think it's fair to blame the teachers or education curriculum.
If the schools are only effectively serving White and Asian students, they are failing.
If the schools are effectively doing nothing and success is determined mostly by parents educational attainment which just correlates with race, then the schools are still failing.
So, no, I think your basis for concluding that the schools are not founding is inadequate to that conclusion.
I'll mention it has nothing to do with money. Instead it's a cultural values problem.
Jews & Chinese are two groups of people that went from poor to affluent over the course of a few generations. The primary cause of this socio economic change has to do with their value of education.
If they could do it, so can the Hispanic/African Americans.
Eventually both are needed - as well as computers - but how to get there, opinions can differ widely.
So having difficulty with English is a really, really bad thing for these students.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_California
Though I have heard tales of Californians being native speakers of Lisp, this is probably just a rumor.
That's true of most Californios, sure, but they are, by far, a minority of California Hispanics, who are mostly from families that immigrated much more recently.
Depends which other parts. Disadvantaged compared to German or Dutch speakers, and even French speakers, but, sure, advantages compared to other, say, people whose only prior language is Mandarin. And, of course, a big disadvantage compared to immigrants who already speak English, even if it's not American English.
But still very far from starting off even functional, much less halfway to native fluency.
I wouldn't understate the significant advantages.
> And, of course, a big disadvantage compared to immigrants who already speak English, even if it's not American English.
Not necessarily. A large percentage of children of immigrants speak with their family (nuclear and extended) mostly in their native language even if their parents can speak decent English. The English skills don't transfer much unless the parents are very active in their child's English education.
http://bigthink.com/strange-maps/a-map-of-lexical-distances-...