There’s a “test score gap” in a Florida school. In fact, there’s test score gap in almost all American schools.

But this one Florida principal thought he could keep it from the students–although it’s been the subject of Presidential speeches and a major national boondoggle, the No Child Left Behind act.

Via Reason.com, [Don't Bother the Students with Facts] here’s the St. Petersburg Times story on the censorship

Hillsborough: School newspaper censored

The offending content: already-posted test data.

By LETITIA STEIN
Published October 24, 2006

TAMPA - There are few issues in American education as widely discussed as the achievement gap, the racial divide that separates the academic performance of white and minority students.

But not at Hillsborough High School, where the principal pulled an article detailing the school’s achievement gap from the student newspaper.

Principal William Orr [send him mail]called the content inappropriate, even though it focused on data the federal government publicizes under the No Child Left Behind Act.

Instead of a story and chart, students found a gaping hole Monday in the Red & Black, the school newspaper.

“If it’s something that has a potential to hurt students’ self-esteem, then I have an obligation not to let that happen,” he said. “I don’t think it’s the job of the school newspaper to embarrass the students.”

Editor-in-chief Emily Matras wrote the article, which included a chart breaking down Hillsborough High student test scores as reported on the state Education Department’s Web site. She wanted to let classmates know what the school administration was doing to address the divide, including a schoolwide reading push.

Instead, she learned this lesson:

“High school is not the real world,” said Matras, a junior. She understood the decision, but doesn’t fully agree with it. “I think that we could have made a case that the story could have run, but we thought not to because we respect Dr. Orr.”

Students stayed at school until 8 p.m. Friday cutting the article out of Page 3 in the October edition. It was replaced by a stapled note explaining that the administration offered to reprint the edition, but the newspaper’s staff didn’t want to delay publication.

Students were told not to talk about the article. The St. Petersburg Times contacted several after learning what happened.

“It did not condone anything immoral. It didn’t talk of drug use or pregnancy or teen violence,” said Simone Kallett, the newspaper’s features editor and a sophomore. “It was a very fact-based article, and we don’t understand why it was pulled.”

Orr allowed a Times reporter to read the article briefly in his office, but not to quote it.

The Red & Black’s faculty adviser, Joe Humphrey, declined to answer questions about the article when they came up around campus.

“We were told not to publish, and by word of mouth or otherwise we have not published it,” he said. “Our primary goal when this happened was to still get the newspaper out.”

There’s more, and you can comment at the newspaper and on Reason.com’s blog.

Censorship doesn’t help–the students who are scoring lower need to worry about homework, study, and memory drills, not self-esteem.

Steve Sailer writes

Must be iSteve.com readers

In the spirit of our recent discussion of singers’ heights:

Man shot in argument over James Brown’s height

Two Atmore men exchanged gunfire Monday, injuring one of them when the friends got into an argument about how tall the recently deceased soul singer James Brown was, police said.

You hear stories like this everyday–and try not to associate with people who do things like that.

This is not necessarily race-based–it’s more of a class thing. The race of the two arguers is unreported, as usual, although their ages are given as 62 and 70. James Brown was 5′6″, but was known to wear lifts.

Anyhow, it reminded of this old story from Chester Himes’s book, The Crazy Kill, written in 1959 by a black American who’d lived in Paris. Black NYPD detective Gravedigger Jones says

“This is Harlem,” he said. “Ain’t no other place like it in the world. You’ve got to start from scratch here, because these folks in Harlem do things for reasons nobody else in the world would think of. Listen, there were two hard working colored jokers, both with families, got to fighting in a bar over on Fifth Avenue near a hundredeighteenth Street and cut each other to death about whether Paris was in France or France was in Paris.”

“That ain’t nothing,” Brody laughed: “Two Irishmen over in Hell’s Kitchen got to arguing and shot each other to death over whether the Irish were descended from the gods or the gods descended from the Irish.”