Letters

To the Editor:

The gap in school performance between white students and African-American or Hispanic students continues to vex teachers, administrators, and researchers. Mark Simon and Joseph Hawkins accuse local school administrators of being "clueless" about the causes and cures for a recent drop in the SAT scores among African-American seniors in the Montgomery County, Md., schools, but they contribute no new understanding of the problem ( "When Minority Test Scores Drop," Feb. 5, 1997).

Instead, they play a game of "Pin the Data" by applying factoids of unrelated material to their own agenda. Readers deserve a broader perspective on the data from this district of 125,000 students in order to appreciate the challenge of overcoming the performance...