Poverty in Upstate Metropolitan Areas – Characteristics and Change: 1999-2013

This is a paper based partly on data previously presented on this blog site. This paper examines the incidence of poverty in upstate New York cities compared to the surrounding suburbs. The data shows that while residents of upstate suburbs enjoy incomes that are substantially higher than the national average and poverty rates that are […]

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 […]

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 […]

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 […]

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 […]

New York’s “Failing Schools” – The Wrong Diagnosis and a Misguided Solution

For the past several years, Governor Cuomo’s office has issued a report, “The State of New York’s Failing Schools.” The 2015 report contends that “Despite the fact that districts with failing schools receive more state funding than other districts, these schools are delivering unacceptable results…The statistics and facts contained in this report and its Appendix […]

What Critics of Central City School Performance Ignore

Students attending central city schools perform very poorly on statewide tests.  For example, in Upstate New York, less than 20% of city students received passing grades on the 2015 Grades 3-8 New York State Statewide Assessment.  In Syracuse, only 8.7% of students passed, while in Rochester, only 6.1% passed.  In Buffalo, 13.4% of students passed. […]