Week Three: Part One

Hello again, and welcome back to my blog post.

I didn’t intend to write up two blog posts this week, but I’ve discovered something important. Last week I was wrong when I stated that we needed to switch over to using Percentage White (PW) instead of Percentage African American (PAA) when we were examining Math scores and pass rates. Well, I wasn’t wrong per se, you still need to use PW if you want Median Household Income (MHI) to be significant, but I ignored something which, looking back, I really shouldn’t have.

I ignored the fact that PAA, by itself, explains 40% or more of the variations in both Math formulae. To give some context to this, this means that PAA is only 2-3% worse as an explanatory value than both PW and MHI together. This difference is so small that it might as well not really exist in my view.

The implications of this are startling, as it means that the primary determinant of how well the average Virginia student learns Math is basically just determined by how many African Americans are in the school district. In other words, according to my study and my analysis as it currently stands, the main cause of variations in how well students do on Math exams across Virginia is structural racism.

There will (probably) be another post discussing some other interesting aspects of the stuff I’ve uncovered this week, but I felt this couldn’t wait.