Virginia's New Achievement Standards

I found the Huffington Post's article "Virginia New Achievement Standards Based on Race and Background,"  today and was shocked to hear of Virginia's new standards. The state has set different achievement levels based on race. This does not mean that students must get a different number of answers correct to pass, it means that certain percentages of different racial groups are expected to pass state exams. This is where the standards vary. For example, for math, "only 45 percent of black students are required to pass the math state test while 82 percent for Asian Americans, 68 percent for whites and 52 percent for Hispanics are required to pass." 
Holding students to different levels of expectation can be detrimental to their success in school. If students are not expected to keep up with their peers, they will continue to slip further away and the gap will widen. 
Setting the bar high for students of all backgrounds is important, and it is even more important that the bar is the same for all students. Traditionally, minorities, particularly black students and hispanic students underperform in schools. There are many contributing factors including background, US history, and socioeconomic status. This doesn't mean, however, that we ought to be accepting of this lower level of achievement. We cannot consider the school to be performing on par by lowering the expectation for the groups of students who traditionally do not succeed as well or as often.
With the standards set this way, not only do students in these groups feel that they are not being challenged or that they are being grouped off, but also teachers do not have to work as hard to engage these challenge students. 
When Virginia says that the traditionally better performing racial groups of students are all that are really required to pass the state exams to fulfill state requirements, this is further isolating and losing our at-risk students and sending a very powerful and strong message that it doesn't matter how black and hispanic students do. Students that fall into these categories might feel they are not as smart as their peers, when really it is a number of social factors that contribute to their lower levels of success. By coming to expect these lower levels of success, society is reinforcing them and it all becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy. 

Let's not further alienate our racial groups and create more divides between our school-aged children and their peers. Everyone ought to have equal opportunity to succeed and equal expectation, regardless of race and skin tone. 

--Megan