The State Board of Education and the Michigan Department of Education recently set closing the achievement gap -- the difference in percentage of students passing the exam -- as a key goal for the 2012-13 school year, Lori Higgins of the Free Press reports.
The gaps, State Superintendent Mike Flanagan said in a statement, are "shameful."
"We need to end this disparity in education, and we need to do this together as a state," Flanagan said.
Overall, Thursday's release of MME results was mixed. Average ACT scores are up. So is the percentage of students considered college-ready. But students struggled against a higher standard for passing the exams, with only about a quarter of them passing in math and science.
The achievement gap between white and black students widened in reading, math, science and writing on the MME, and narrowed in only social studies. The gap between white and Hispanic students widened in math and science, but narrowed in other subjects.
