Posted on 07/23/2008 4:36:39 AM PDT by Kaslin
"Hard Times at Douglass High," is an HBO documentary that aired last June. It captured much of the 2004-2005 school year at Baltimore's predominantly black Frederick Douglass High School. The tragedy is that what is seen in the documentary is typical of most predominantly black urban schools.
Douglass' students are four to five years below grade level. Most of its ninth-graders read at the third-, fourth- or fifth-grade levels. In 2006, only 24 percent of its students tested proficient in reading, in math just 11 percent, and that's an improvement over previous years. Only one student managed to score above 1,000 on the SAT and another student scored 440 out of 1,600. You get 400 points for just writing in your name. Out of its 1,100 students, 200 to 300 are absent each day. Many of those who do show up don't do so on time; they roam the hallways and leave the school during the day. Only one-half of the school's 500 incoming freshmen ninth-graders return for their sophomore year and far fewer remain for graduation
Sixty-six percent of the teachers are uncertified. Even if there were no certified teacher shortage, I doubt whether many teachers with attractive alternatives would want to teach at the school. Douglass High School is not a place for teachers with high expectations for their students. English teacher Mr. McDermott resigned in the middle of the school year saying, "Teaching becomes secondary, and discipline is the main thing that goes on. I don't feel like I'm making a difference anymore."
Cameras followed then-principal Isabelle Grant on her visit to the home of a chronically absent student. The student who reads at the fifth- or sixth-grade level is promised that if she attends school regularly she'll be promoted to the 11th grade. It is impossible to eliminate such a reading deficit in a semester. Teachers are pressured into passing failing students. The documentary showed that within a few days of graduation time the school went from having 138 eligible graduates to 200. Promoting and graduating students who haven't made the grade is nothing short of academic fraud.
Douglass High School teachers and staff appeared to be concerned and caring people, but the poor quality educational outcomes demonstrate that concern and caring is not enough. The virtually empty classrooms, filmed on back-to-school night, suggested little parental interest in their children's education. School day behavior demonstrated little student interest. Some students spent class time laughing, joking and tussling with one another. Others had their heads lying on their desks or appeared uninterested in the teacher's discussion. Many of those engaged in student-teacher exchange on academic topics showed very limited reasoning ability.
Frederick Douglass was founded in 1883 as the Colored High and Training School before it was renamed. It is one of the nation's oldest historically black high schools. It was a draw for Baltimore's brightest black students. Success stories among its alumni include Thurgood Marshall, Cab Calloway, as well as several judges, congressmen and civil rights leaders. I guarantee you that if Douglass High student test scores of that earlier era were available, they wouldn't show today's achievement gap. Also, a 1940s or '50s Douglass High graduate would find no comparison between student behavior during their school years and that shown in the documentary.
Politicians and the teaching establishment say more money, smaller classes and newer buildings are necessary for black academic excellence. At Frederick Douglass' founding, it didn't have the resources available today. If blacks can achieve at a time when there was far greater poverty, gross discrimination and fewer opportunities, what says blacks cannot achieve today? Whether we want to own up to it or not, the welfare state has done what Jim Crow, gross discrimination and poverty could not have done. It has contributed to the breakdown of the black family structure and has helped establish a set of values alien to traditional values of high moral standards, hard work and achievement.
We’ve had the same thing happen here in Houston in the North Forest School district. I can’t tell you how many times the district has almost gone under and every time it is caused by someone skimming money out of the kitty. Right now, one of the high schools and one of the middle schools are being closed and the students are being combined with another high school and middle school - all because of lack of funds. Another administrator or several administrators have mismanaged funds. It’s a minority school district.
I got rid of HBO because it was so filled with victim liberalism but I live in Maryland and you are on the mark. Baltimores schools with public employees union is hopeless.
When inner city schools like this one are just as pathetic, or even worse, then Obama and the left wing Demo phonies will be exposed for what they are. Sadly though, the people who are victimized by these schools, if you can call them that, will vote to reelect him anyway.
Some of that money going to each student should be taken out and set aside for jails that can hold more of these public shool animals.
Shuffle them from one gubmint paid building to another.
Nothing else you can do with animals like that except wait until their old enough to lock them up so they don’t bite anyone else.
Blacks have completely destroyed the public school system in the US.
We’ve had the same thing happen here in Houston in the North Forest School district. I can’t tell you how many times the district has almost gone under and every time it is caused by someone skimming money out of the kitty. Right now, one of the high schools and one of the middle schools are being closed and the students are being combined with another high school and middle school - all because of lack of funds. Another administrator or several administrators have mismanaged funds. It’s a minority school district.
Blacks have completely destroyed the public school system in the US.
Black education is an oxymoron and should not be confused with a systemic problem in black American families. Biraq asked that we be exposed to the problems and it’s time to air the dirty laundry.
To view this item online, visit http://www.worldnetdaily.com/index.php?pageId=70196
BRAVE NEW SCHOOLS
WorldNetDaily
District gives students exam answers, half still flunk
‘I’m not concerned that it’s a cheat,’ says supervisor
Posted: July 21, 2008
2:42 pm Eastern
The school district of Rochester, N.Y., gave teachers and students exact copies of the questions and answers that would appear on a mandatory test, only to have officials deny wrongdoing and watch half the students fail anyway.
The district requires seventh- and eighth-grade students to take year-end exams in four subjects: English, math, science and social studies. While only the English and math tests are used to determine advancement, the exams do comprise 25 percent of the students’ grades in each course.
Prior to taking the social studies test, however, a district-created study guide available to teachers and students listed multiple-choice questions and answers that were identical and in the same sequence as those that would appear on the social studies exam.
The multiple-choice questions were only a part of the exam, comprising 40 percent of each student’s score, reports the Rochester Democrat and Chronicle.
It is unknown how many of the district’s seventh- and eighth-graders saw the answers beforehand, said the newspaper, but it was determined that of the 4,329 students who took the exams, 50 percent of the seventh-graders and 44 percent of the eighth-graders failed.
Connie Leech, the district’s supervisor for secondary schools, told the Democrat and Chronicle that the study guides were “probably not in the best judgment” but denied any wrongdoing.
“I’m not concerned that it’s a cheat,” Leech said. “What we were doing is giving kids a better sense of the knowledge that they needed for the test. It’s like giving them an open-book test.”
Ed Roeber, the former director of testing and accountability for the Michigan Department of Education, likened the district’s action to something else. “It’s not a whole lot different from teachers going through the tests and erasing answers and marking correct answers,” he told the Democrat and Chronicle. “I’ve got to wonder if the district is doing anything with the state tests that’s not kosher.”
The study guides, produced by Paul Lampe, the district’s director of social studies, were distributed to be used in class, possibly with PowerPoint, as a review and preparation for the exams. Neither students nor teachers, however, could have known that the questions in the study guides were identical to the exams, since the tests were kept sealed until the day they were taken.
Lampe told the Democrat and Chronicle that he purposefully chose to use the identical questions and answers, but that he had intended to scramble their order. Whether human error or computer glitch led to the sequence being preserved, Lampe insisted the guides were nonetheless not created to artificially boost test scores.
“I’m very sensitive to (teaching to the test),” Lampe said. “That was not the intention of this. The common practice is to review for a test with questions in the same format and with the same language students are going to see. I don’t think this goes into the argument of teaching to the test.”
Roger Schaeffer, a spokesperson for the National Center for Fair and Open Testing, disagreed, saying the district’s study guides went “beyond teaching to the test.”
“It’s outright weird,” Schaeffer said. “There’s a continuum of test-prep procedures that range from the ethical to the totally unethical, and it’s generally viewed that preparing kids with identical questions is on the unethical side of the spectrum.”
Rochester Teachers Association President Adam Urbanski called the review method “plain cheating.”
“I can’t imagine anyone making a case for it,” Urbanski told the Democrat and Chronicle. “I wish I could say that I’m surprised. I am not surprised. I strongly suspect this is just the tip of the iceberg.”
Black education is an oxymoron and should not be confused with a systemic problem in black American families. Biraq asked that we be exposed to the problems and it’s time to air the dirty laundry.
An increasing number of black families are homeschooling and doing an excellent job.
If this public school were shut down, private schools and churches would step in, and they would be free to dismiss the disruptive students so that the others could learn in peace. That's the way things ought to be, but no one in power has the nerve to do what needs to be done.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.