RSS Feed MenuThe achievement gap between white and minority students persists, and glaringly so, as this article in the New York Times details.
The lede of this article is unfair and shows the bias against President Bush’s signature education act – No Child Left Behind (NCLB):
The achievement gap between white and minority students has not narrowed in recent years, despite the focus of the No Child Left Behind law on improving black and Hispanic scores, according to results of a federal test considered to be the nation’s best measure of long-term trends in math and reading proficiency.
Aside from the lede, which does its best to blame the achievement gap on NCLB even though the achievement gap is way older than that law, the article is invaluable because it touches on the key elements in the education debate: Cultural challenges in urban communities that devalue book smarts, controversy over “teaching to the test,” strengthening education standards for all kids and the need to get better teachers into poor urban schools especially.
Having taught English in a very low performing urban school and seeing poor test results from a vast majority of my students, I have never had a problem with the NCLB tests that pop up throughout the year. The English test is a simple and good judgment of where the kids are in terms of reading comprehension and basic writing skills.
But it’s sad when the results come back and something like 15% of our kids pass the test compared with 85-90% of kids in suburban and country schools state-wide. Our state is one of the top ranked in the country in the overall rankings of state education – I sometimes wonder if the city’s test scores are just thrown out of the rankings.
As William Julius Wilson writes in his new book – More than Just Race: Being Black and Poor in the Inner City, it’s important to debate not only the structural causes of persistent poverty (a key cause of poor education and vice versa), but also the cultural causes of this illness.
There has to be a way to fix this problem; we can’t stand for the achievement gap in this country – whites, blacks, Latinos, Asians all. Being able to lay out all the issues, especially the sensitive ones that come when talking about race will be crucial to the debate and the future of the students trying to find their way in life in spite of failed schools, often split up families, and communities plagued by violence and poverty.
Cforchange // May 1, 2009 at 4:45 am
What no mention of the astounding drop out rates?
Bulldoglover100 // May 1, 2009 at 6:26 am
My sister in law runs the Head Start program for a major city. She says the No Child Left Behind was not a bad program but one that was totally under funded and with out the funds to fully implement the program? It was an exercise in futility.
barker13 // May 1, 2009 at 6:48 am
Hmm… if we could get more poor black kids to convert to Judaism…KIDDING! KIDDING! Just a bit of demographic satire… (Jewish kids… high achievers… blah, blah, blah…)(*RUEFUL SNORT*)The truth is, money won’t solve the problems of poor school districts; their problems are connected to the demographic they serve and the inability (unwillingness) of the public school system to “combat” the social ills – the mindset – you note in your piece, Tom.Of course it’s not “just” the neighborhoods. We often see private schools – Catholic schools, charter schools, magnet schools – do a far better job of educating students within these same neighborhoods. Partly this is due to self-selection regarding the student body (actually… probably it’s mainly this), but it’s also no doubt the mindset of the teachers and administrators (and obviously the parents) who “force” education upon the students and put up with much less nonsense than is permissible at a public school.One thing for sure… there’s no magic bullet. When you have beyond a certain level of students coming from dysfunctional homes… (*SIGH*)Yes… we can talk about “saving” the children of unfit parents (or more likely “parent,” singular) and in theory we can remove children from “bad” homes where the adults and/or elder siblings are drug addicts, criminals, etc., but what about the situation where you have a young single mother – largely uneducated herself – who isn’t “bad,” who isn’t a criminal or a druggie… but who is simply clueless – incompetent… unable to “manage” her children as a functioning head of household and most importantly role model? Certainly we’re not going to – as a society – start separating these sorts of families up… “taking” the kid(s) away…(*SHRUG*)And heck… even when social services removes a child from a truly, proactively horrible home environment… from what I “think” I know the foster care systems of most states – particularly states with the most problems – are in and of themselves horrendous. Anyway… bypass my ramblings… my bottom line is that I agree with Tom that we must address the achievement gap; it’s just that I’m not sure how.BILL
ChristianMiller // May 1, 2009 at 8:06 am
I live in a very good school district and my kids go to very good public schools. Now, the teachers and administrators of this school district will tell you it is because they are such good teachers etc. But the real reason is that there are many high achieving parents who live here, and not only do their kids get a good “head start”, the parents of many kids are from Asia, either India, China, Korea, you name it. They are chemists and biologists and computer professionals who came to the USA because they were elites in their field. Their parents pushed them drilled them and disciplined them to achieve. The white kids’ parents are no slackers either, but the recent immigrant kids are far superior to them in most subjects – especially math and science. Barker talks about Jewish kids being achievers tongue-in-cheek to make a point which I will broaden.Chinese kids around here go to “Chinese School” on Saturdays to learn Chinese starting at 3 and 4! I mean, how do you compete with that? To learn Chinese, besides the lingual component, one must learn 6,000 characters. This is why they excel, they are challenged outside the school system by their parents who put a premium on study, hard work and performance. If these kids come home with less than an “A” they have privileges taken away from them. For most of these parents, there is no reason their children shouldn’t learn everything the teacher is teaching in school, and more!So it becomes pretty clear when you look at failure and you look at success, what the missing component is, and there is little a school administrator can do to change things.The thing that undermines the kids you teach the most is cultural attitude. As long as those cultural attitudes are supported and pandered to, nothing will change.
petty boozshwa // May 1, 2009 at 1:29 pm
Conservatives have to keep their heads down and mouths closed on this issue, because there is no way we could say anything that would not be demagogued. If any liberal Democrat read and agreed with Franco’s post, however, I’d recommend that person put forward a Child’s Bill of Rights, starting with the proposition that all children deserve to be conceived in love by two parents that want them. Society needs to get more proactive and provide financial incentives to the next generation of prospective single parents to avoid that outcome, and penalize those that burden society with the costs their decisions impose.
danbmil99 // May 2, 2009 at 3:59 am
“children deserve to be conceived in love by two parents that want them. “Hmm — like Bristol Palin’s kid? Of course they have the resources to support a new grandchild. How hypocritical of them to bloviate about moronic, ineffective “abstinence only” programs.The truth underneath some of these problems is frankly the push by religious conservatives who promote zero sex ed, zero contraception, zero abortion. Would I prefer that these kids don’t have sex at 15? Sure. But honestly, many of the white kids do, but they are protected one way or another. The poor kids end up having kids of their own way too soon. And the religious right, and the Catholic Church especially, promote that behavior. It’s unconscionable.I know this won’t go over well on this blog, but whatever. The truth just is.
sinz54 // May 2, 2009 at 7:21 am
danbmil99: I agree. Scientific studies have failed to find any better results with “abstinence-only,” and in fact “abstinence + safe sex education” often gives better results.This is part of what I meant when I said that science and scientific discoveries should be respected by us conservatives. If the goal is to reduce teen pregnancy, then let’s look at the scientific studies to see what actually works, not what ideology dictates. If the goal is to just have less sex (as Kathryn Jean Lopez of the National Review admitted), then let’s be honest with the public and stop claiming that it’s about teen pregnancy.And you’re wrong that such views won’t get a hearing on this blog. New Majority is one of the few conservative forums that is not dominated by the Christian evangelical wing of the GOP. (Little Green Footballs is another alternative for you.)So please stop shooting from the hip.
darleenclick // May 2, 2009 at 11:14 am
dnbmil99How much straw did you have for breakfast? Palin is on record for teaching about contraceptives AND abstinence. If nothing else, Bristol’s pregnancy demonstrates that even contraceptives are not 100% effective. I give her props for not flushing away her “mistake”.Your contempt of religious folk is noted.
Andy // May 2, 2009 at 6:18 pm
Why doesn’t anyone ever bother to mention that maybe rich people are richer than poor people because they’re more intelligent, and therefore their offspring are more intelligent? Is it really the governments problem if people choose to have children and not take care of them?
danbmil99 // May 2, 2009 at 8:59 pm
Andy: “Is it really the governments problem if people choose to have children and not take care of them?”This is a great question, and I think it really defines the dividing line between moderates/liberals on the one hand, and a certain type of conservative/libertarian thought on the other.The short answer is that in today’s society, with the norms that have evolved, the answer is yes. We no longer live in the world of Dickens, where poor children can be shipped off to work farms to languish until they’re old enough to beg on the streets, or die of overwork and lack of care. We pay for these children in our budget for public schools. They show up at emergency rooms for health care. In the end, they either struggle along with low-paying jobs or, almost as likely, turn to drugs and gang violence to survive and make a place for themselves. So they most definitely are our problem, regardless of what your opinion is about whether that’s fair or not.In the end, it’s way, way cheaper to convince teenagers to stop having kids they can’t afford than to pay the social costs of letting them bring new children into a society where they are almost bound to fail. It doesn’t even matter if you ascribe to notions of social Darwinism (though I would be careful spouting that stuff in liberal or moderate circles, it’s not very PC. Larry Summers knows about keeping his mouth shut on nature vs nurture).darleenclick: “Your contempt of religious folk is noted”Wrong. My contempt is for people who put ideology, whether religious or secular, ahead of facts. Note that 15% of the country is either avowedly atheist/agnostic, or professes no religious views at all. I promise you that this 15% is not died-in-the-wool liberal. However, they (we) definitely want religion to stay where it belongs, as part of your personal life. When it is used as an argument for policy, it’s just wrong.BTW thanks for the tip about Palin and contraception. Apparently the message didn’t take very well. In the end my point still holds — the Palins can afford another child; most 16-yr-olds who get pregnant cannot.
Andy // May 2, 2009 at 10:22 pm
danbmil99, yea, everyone’s going to end up paying for poor/absent parenting in the end, but my problem is that liberals just automatically blame the system, as opposed to the people themselves. I read a study back in the early 90’s in Scientific American. It was about Chinese immigrants going to inner-city schools. The study was looking into why these children were succeeding in such a bad environment. The answer came down to the fact that they came from two-parent families that made them study and do the homework. It was as simple as that. Maybe good parenting comes down to intelligence too, but you’re walking through a minefield even suggesting that around liberals. They seem to have this fantasy that everyone’s a potential genius. Maybe if they’d take race out of the equation, and look at it from a rich/poor standpoint.
danbmil99 // May 3, 2009 at 1:21 am
Andy : “you’re walking through a minefield even suggesting that around liberals.”Actually, while it would be unacceptable to talk about things like racial IQ, it has become very accepted, even among the black community, to discuss the disintegration of the family, and the issue of black fatherhood (just google what Bill Cosby has been saying for a few years).I think the time is ripe for a meeting of minds on this issue between reasonable liberals and moderate conservatives. No one is saying it’s all the evil white man’s fault anymore. There need to be constructive solutions to disproportionate black unemployment and imprisonment, gang involvement, etc.But I come back to this unarguable fact: the more poor, uneducated people who have kids in their teens or early 20’s, the more this problem gets kicked down to the next generation. So I come back to the structural problem with the GOP in dealing with this issue: the hard-headed, ideological dogma of the religious right, which passes every proposed solution through the litmus test of Biblical acceptability. I just think it’s time that we put that approach in its place, and start looking at real-world data and workable solutions, regardless of whether they rub up against some people’s ideas of traditional values or whatever euphemism they want to use.Otherwise, as with so many other issues, the GOP just becomes an onlooker, shaking its head in disbelief as other people make the key decisions about how our country will look in 10, 50, or 100 years.
danbmil99 // May 3, 2009 at 1:26 am
One more thing: I’d point out that in many of the Bible Belt states, there is disproportionate poor, young, uneducated, unmarried parenthood — among all races. That doesn’t seem like an advertisement for extending the value system of those localities to the nation as a whole.When it comes down to it, I probably would rather live in France or Sweden than Alabama, Arkansas, or Kansas. I’m sure most liberals would agree, and many independents and “Reagan Democrats” would too.It’s fine to scream “socialism!” at the top of your lungs, but if your alternative is a throwback to 19th century capitalism, with its income distribution, education disparity, and class structure, it’s not a winning argument for the majority of Americans. The GOP has to put forth a vision of the future that is not dystopian capitalism run amok.
Andy // May 3, 2009 at 2:50 pm
Yea danbmil99, I’ve always like Bill Cosby, and I’m pretty sure there are plenty of blacks who agree with him. It just seems that the liberal media dismisses him anymore. It’s also hard to say that one would prefer to live in a certain place over another without having spent significant time there. I’ve lived in CA since I graduated from college, so I can have some insight into the problems of a liberal government. High taxes, unemployment, too much regulation, etc. I’ve never lived in the southeastern US or western Europe, so any opinion is just based upon statistics, and people tend to manipulate statistics. Liberals whine about the income gap and everything, but it doesn’t really tell you anything. Any extra wealth people at the top have is just being used for job creating investments. If you look at the overall picture, poorer people in this country are living better quality lives than ever before.