Posted on 11/09/2010 10:24:07 AM PST by lbryce
An achievement gap separating black from white students has long been documented a social divide extremely vexing to policy makers and the target of one blast of school reform after another.
But a new report focusing on black males suggests that the picture is even bleaker than generally known.
Only 12 percent of black fourth-grade boys are proficient in reading, compared with 38 percent of white boys, and only 12 percent of black eighth-grade boys are proficient in math, compared with 44 percent of white boys.
Poverty alone does not seem to explain the differences: poor white boys do just as well as African-American boys who do not live in poverty, measured by whether they qualify for subsidized school lunches.
The data was distilled from highly respected national math and reading tests, known as the National Assessment for Educational Progress, which are given to students in fourth and eighth grades, most recently in 2009. The report, A Call for Change, is to be released Tuesday by the Council of the Great City Schools, an advocacy group for urban public schools.
Although the outlines of the problem and many specifics have been previously reported, the group hopes that including so much of what it calls jaw-dropping data in one place will spark a new sense of national urgency.
What this clearly shows is that black males who are not eligible for free and reduced-price lunch are doing no better than white males who are poor, said Michael Casserly, executive director of the council.
The report shows that black boys on average fall behind from their earliest years.
(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...
How about thanking the parents? Teachers unions are out of control in most areas of the country but teachers are also unionized in the good suburban districts, where math/reading performance is far superior to the inner-city performance. So might it be the parents’ fault? Maybe there’s only one parent around instead of two. Maybe the one parent that’s still around isn’t there most of the time and the kids turn to crime. The black family unit has basically disappeared since the 1960s. Black fathers who stay around are penalized by the welfare system and this same system encourages single motherhood. It’s a terrible system with no end in sight.
Of course he could be, and taught arithmetic, basic oral and written communication skills, and a lot more besides.
We were discussing eleventh and twelfth grade. Persons with IQs of 85 and below CANNOT reasonably be expected to do trig, physics, complex grammar and declensions, or reason abstractly. They also cannot reasonably be expected to smile when repeated failure is thrown in their faces, or when they are congratulated for work they know is inadequate.
Entrance exams for high school would solve a lot of these problems.
There are Christian and Christian-influenced black homeschool movements.
Yes. Some were discussing 11th and 12th grade, but they weren't discussing trigonometry (though I'm pretty sure I could teach any kid essential trig, but 800-me wouldn't be allowed to teach because I'm not "certified"). We were discussing reading and literacy. If a kid is illiterate when he "graduates" high school, I doubt he was much of a reader in fourth grade. Get it?
ML/NJ
I’d say this would be the social equivalent of Ebonics. Their own dysfunctional social hierarchy, their own language.
Thanks for the double post, but I don't think I'll need two guesses, thank you!
Its all in there.
Wikipedia's article covers but did not emphasize the most critical and obvious point.
Subsidizing welfare mommas results in their having more children. As the mommas and their baby daddies are generally not rocket scientists, you INCREASE the perecentage of low intelligence kiddies born, driving the average down.
Your tax dollars at work.
When my wife took her masters in Elementary Education (so she could keep her job) I got to coach her with the math parts. She really didn't need me, but I had fun. The math heavily stressed stuff on obscure topics like combinatorics that PhD mathematicians I work with don't know off-hand, though a reasonably intelligent person could master the entire semesters material in a week. It was more or less job protection for teachers. My wife took the license exam well before she completed the course work and scored in the 90-percentile in all areas. She felt that she learned nothing of any practical use over the entire period (she was already working as a teacher). It was a complete waste of time, though I must confess, I enjoyed coaching her in math, though, she really didn't need me to.
I’m not sure I understand.
When people try to explain why black males are disproportionately over-represented in the NFL, NBA, and porn movies, they explain that black males are genetically superior due to their african heritage and due to selective breeding of slaves.
But, when people try to explain black males drastically lower IQ scores, academic performance, violent tendencies, ewtc, they don’t blame genetics?
Given that studies have accounted for single parent families and poverty, and blacks are still doing much worse in measures of intelligence and crime, isn’t the explanation the same as when they try to explain the nfl nba physical characteristics etc?
72% of black babies are born to single mothers, most into generational poverty. It’s not the poverty that’s the problem, it’s that no one in the succeeding generations made the attempt to walk away from the welfare plantation. There’s a problem when people prefer slavery to freedom.
A must read.
Gatto’s got it.
Schools work to infantilize kids and we see that success with the level of immaturity in today’s 20 & 30 year olds.
The entire government schooling model is a failure - age grades and grading simply reinforce failure.
Adult life is about mastery of skills. Schools rarely teach mastery.
The generational poor, those who were born on the welfare plantation to those who had been born on the welfare plantation, then go on to breed with people on the welfare planation.
It is not a recipe for genetic success. Nor is this, relatively speaking, a very large gene pool, compared to those who grow up and go out into the world and find a mate from among the MANY socieconomic strata in our culture.
If it’s mostly the dim who stay behind generation after generation, and together produce the next generation, there’s not much chance for improvement. Then add in that the children are not raised well, the intelligence cost of substance abuse among parents and eventually kids, this means that their natural potential is not encouraged either.
I thought the same thing.
Only if you buy into the notion that IQ scores are inherent. Unless there is a real and true disability inhibiting a person's intellectual capabilities, that IQ test score is most likely a result of one's environment - family, cultural influences, lowered expectations and standards, etc.
Refusing to raise expectations and standards is cruel.
ax me lader
Many years ago I replied to a thread dealing with Black colleges. I used a little sarcasm to make a point. I was promptly booted off of “FREE” Republic. Apparently no joking is allowed when Blacks are being discussed. Anyhow, I’ll keep my thoughts to myself this time. I will not touch the tar baby. I will not touch the tar baby. I will not touch the tar baby. I will not touch the tar baby. I will not touch the tar baby. I will not touch the tar baby.
Chappelle got out of line, they pulled him back.
There's no answer from us, it has to come from within them.
That's straight from Cos, by the way...before they neutered him with that Benadryl lawsuit...
I thought schools were for feeding and monitoring kids. What’s this crap about learning? When did this start?
That's absolute horse hockey. That's like saying my 40 yard dash time is a result of my environment.
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