It seems that living in a violent neighborhood can distract students from being able to focus and pay attention during tests, even if they did not witness the crime. NYU's Patrick Sharkey published a report that examined the link between violence and test scores in Chicago. Sharkey found hat African-American children tested within a week of a local homicide did significantly worse than children tested at another time. The poorer scores persisted up to nine days after the homicide, while Hispanic children had no difference in scores. This is attributed to the fact that more of the violent crimes involved blacks. Black crime is not only killing black people and neighborhoods, it is also impacting children in ways that many have not considered. This information is going in our "from bad to worse" file.
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