February 2020
The Secret Shame: How America's Most Progressive Cities Betray Their Commitment to Educational Opportunity for All A recent report from brightbeam, The Secret Shame: How America's Most Progressive Cities Betray Their Commitment to Educational Opportunity for All, highlights the outcomes for students of color in America's most progressive cities. The report uncovers that highly prosperous cities with progressive residents have particularly poor outcomes for children living at the margins. Brightbeam researchers found that students in America's most progressive cities face greater racial inequity in achievement and graduation rates than students living in the nation's most conservative cities. Some of the findings from the report include: Progressive cities have larger achievement gaps than conservative cities Progressive cities, on average, have achievement gaps in math and reading that are 15 and 13 percentage points higher than in conservative cities, respectively. In San Francisco, for example, 70% of white students are proficient in math, compared to only 12% of black students reaching proficiency - a 58-point gap. In Washington, D.C., 83% of white students scored proficient in reading compared to 23 percent of black students - a 60-point gap. In contrast, three of the 12 most conservative cities Virginia Beach, Anaheim and Fort Worth - have effectively closed or even erased the gap in at least one of the academic categories examined.