you can't make them learn if they don't want too...To each according to his needs.
Resources, of course, to be allocated by unelected bureaucrats.
Right after that, I remember reading a story about two girls who graduated from a mostly-black high-school in the city, who went to a local junior college. The college decided that both girls had to attend remedial English and math classes, before they could begin normal college-level courses at the JUNIOR college.
Why do I remember this? Because the two girls had been the Valedictorian and Saluatorian of their high-school class, and they were not ready for college yet. And in the meantime, the same city that spent taxpayer money for a baseball team could not get these girls educated in less than 5 years for what should be a 4 year program.
And with their GPA's, it wasn't like their attitude was the problem.
Give the blacks extra time by flunking them all and thus
they get AN EXTRA YEAR!
The system didn't fail the black students, the black students failed themselves. I remember back in the early 70's when the Dallas ISD decided to bus black kids to our school. That was 35 years ago and at least one generation of black students getting the same exact educational benefits as white students.
Talk to any public school teacher who works in an intergrated setting.
The following will come out: too many black kids come out of an oppositional culture. When faced with demands from a white teacher that they actually try, they won't.
Too many black kids have terrible attitudes about education; black kids who do achieve are called 'sell-outs'.
Too many black kids lose their books and materials; when they come to class they are not prepared.
Too many black kids come to class late if they come at all. This is said by the professional apologists to be a 'cultural' issue. It's not about being uncaring or uninterested.
Too many black kids miss too much class time. Everything a teacher does for the rest of the class he/she has to do again for them.
Too many black kids think society owes them a living. They have a welfare attitude; if they can't get a job someone will/should give them money.
Not all black kids; I didn't say that. But, just too many.
It is simply a question of cultural values. African-American culture may pay lip service to the value of education but that is all. I grew up in a rural farming community where education and respect for authority were values on which a lot was placed. There were terribly poor people in this community who were "hired hands" and their families. Some employers treated these people decently but many did not. Although their parents were uneducated and they came from circumstance where there was quite possibly no TV, or radio, and some did not even have electricity and I am talking about the fifties. But nonetheless these kids came to school and as disadvantaged as they were, they worked at school and got enough education that they would be in a much better position than their parents. Our public school system is a miserable failure for a variety of reasons, but throughout our society and beyond just African-American culture, there are so many who only pay lip service to the value of education. Education is and always has been the most reliable way to climb the socio-economic latter. But it is not the fastest or the easiest, but it is the safest without the overwhelming odds of failure that the quick and fast ways offer.
you can't make them learn if they don't want too...Have they specified what they think the district ought to be doing differently?
Note the total absence of any attempt to define what these "uniquely tailored programs" would be.
The truth is that we know exactly how to effectively teach poor black kids. It's the same way to teach kids of any other color. The problem is that these methods are neither easy nor politically correct. They require teachers to work their tails off and are not particularly expensive to implement. Thus they are unpopular with teachers' unions.
Google Marva Collins. Starting in 1975, she consistently took poor black kids who had been expelled from the Chicago public schools (!) as being incapable of learning and turned them into scholars.
"International People's Democratic Uhuru Movement"
Named after the communications officer on Startrek?