More on Race, Income and Student Achievement

A few months ago, I wrote about the link between economic disadvantage and poor student performance. I looked at the performance of students on the State’s annual student assessment for grades 3 to 8, and found that the percentage of economically disadvantaged students in schools and school districts accounted for about three quarters of the […]

Racial Divisions in Upstate Metropolitan Neighborhoods

In my last posting I described income differences in 800 upstate metropolitan neighborhoods in Albany, Erie, Monroe, Oneida, Onondaga, Rensselaer and Schenectady Counties. The data comes from the United States Census Bureau which divides the nation into census tracts, the most detailed level publically tabulated. Overall, there are 73,000 census tracts nationally, averaging 4,200 residents each. […]

Income Divisions in Upstate Metropolitan Neighborhoods

In earlier posts, I wrote about income and racial separation between the residents of upstate cities and suburbs. The data showed that residents of upstate cities saw sharp increases in poverty levels between 2000 and 2013, while city populations became increasingly diverse, primarily because of the loss of white residents. The data also showed that […]

The Minimum Wage Debate – Part II

The Albany Times Union carried an article on March 24 detailing the connections between researchers who produced the reports for and against a minimum wage increase that I discussed in my post “A $15 Minimum Wage for New York – Benefits and Risks.” The article points out that one of the authors of the study […]

A $15 Minimum Wage for New York: Benefits and Risks

Recently, a friend and colleague from the time when I worked at Empire State Development suggested that I take a look at Governor Cuomo’s proposal to raise New York’s minimum wage to $15 from $9.00. Like others, I’m sure that he wanted to cut through the competing claims about the impact of the proposed increase. […]

Failing Schools – Bill Hammond’s follow up discussion

Bill Hammond’s piece may be found here: Bill Hammond: Why New York’s ‘Failing Schools’ Fail — and How We Can Turn the Tide

Income Inequality and Minority Group Status in Upstate Metropolitan Areas

In an earlier post, I pointed out that residents of upstate metropolitan areas actually have incomes that are somewhat higher than the average for other cities in the so called “rust belt” – cities located in the old manufacturing regions of the Northeast and Midwest. But, the largest upstate cities – Buffalo, Rochester and Syracuse […]

Single Parents and Child and Family Poverty in Upstate Cities

In an earlier post, I showed that very high percentages of people with children under 18 lived in poverty in upstate cities, and that the percentage increased significantly between 1999 and 2013. While a few rust belt cities, like Flint and Detroit, Michigan had higher levels of poverty among people with children, poverty in cities […]

Should Teachers be Evaluated by Student Performance on Standardized Tests?

In January 2015, Governor Cuomo proposed changing the state’s teacher evaluation system to increase reliance on measures of student progress on statewide standardized tests, using a so called “Value Added Model.” In his 2015 State of the State address, he said: “Now 38% of high schools students are college ready. 38%. 98.7% of high school […]

Can Charter Schools break the Poverty-Poor Student Performance Link?

In an earlier post, I argued that school based solutions to the problem of the poor performance of students in central city schools were not likely to succeed because they ignored the impact of the concentration of disadvantaged students on student achievement. The data showed that 79% of the variation in performance in school performance […]