By Ben Fractenberg
DNAinfo Reporter/Producer
MANHATTAN — It looks as though Mayor Michael Bloomberg may not have done as well as he thought in closing the racial achievement gap for city students, according to the New York Times.
Results from the 2010 proficiency tests, which were considered to be more accurate than previous exams, showed that black and Hispanic students faired much worse than whites and Asians, the paper reported Sunday.
Only 40 percent of black and 46 percent Hispanic third through eight grade students met New York State standards in math, while 75 percent of white students and 82 percent of Asian students hit the mark, the Times reported.
The results were no better in English with only a third of blacks and Hispanics meeting the standards as opposed to nearly two-thirds of whites and Asians.
The scores were bad news for Bloomberg, who has campaigned on his success in closing the achievement gap.
"While it's not as good as we would like to have it, it's certainly not bad," Bloomberg said of the overall scores at a press conference on July 28.
The stricter test standards lowered scores overall with only 42 percent of students passing English in 2010, compared to 69 percent in 2009.
