Nothing was said about blacks becoming more educated in the south... only that the GAP had decreased.
Simple explanation... Now no one in the south black or white is learning anything!
The possibility is that white kids scores are declining.
Closing the gap does not man every one rises, it means the scores get closer. Maybe the scores of whites are falling.
I live in a small town in NC, the schools here are abysmal. A few weeks ago the paper published a letter to the editor written by a 1st grade teacher, who is also the president of the county’s education association. The one paragraph letter was filled with incomplete sentences, spelling, capitalization, punctuation and other grammar errors.
One has to wonder how many other teachers, who are just as poorly skilled, are in the system.
I have a friend who teaches 8th grade English, she says they pass on students that she and other teachers beg to have held back. At some point they “age out” or they drop out.