New York City schools: While black and Hispanic students did better on the math and reading exams in 2014 compared with 2013, the achievement gap still worsened, since white and Asian kids saw bigger increases

Pro-charter school group Families for Excellent Schools found that no black or Hispanic students passed the standardized tests — based on the more stringent Common Core standards — at 90 schools with diverse student bodies in New York City. Education Department officials have struggled for years to close the persistent achievement gap faced by black and Hispanic students in the New York City’s public schools. At 31 city schools with a combined enrollment of 1,065 black students, none passed the state math exam. At another 28 schools, zero out of 613 Hispanic students passed the math test. State reading exams saw similar results. Citywide, 18.5% of black students and 23.2% of Hispanic students were proficient on state math exams in 2014, compared with an overall proficiency rate of 34.2%. Reading scores showed a similar gap. The schools where no minority students passed the tests were a mixed group. Some, such as Public School 114 in Belle Harbor, Queens, were relatively high-performing schools that enrolled few black and Hispanic students. Others were troubled schools that struggled to pass any students at all, such as the School for the Urban Environment in Bedford-Stuyvesant, Brooklyn.