Beyond the numbers: Rethinking race and success in Idaho’s schools

When the new ISAT scores were released, Idaho Ed News used the state’s official reporting to share a familiar breakdown: top-performing districts tended to have higher percentages of white students, while lower-performing districts had fewer white students. This mirrors how the state and federal government report the data, but these standard categories can also limit what we truly learn about Idaho’s students.

At face value, the numbers seem to suggest that whiteness itself is somehow tied to better academic performance. But in Idaho, where every district is majority white, this framing doesn’t tell the whole story and risks sending the wrong message.

Here’s the reality:

Even in the lowest-performing districts, white students make up 65% of enrollment. So, the idea that schools are un