[rattrap]

Long, but interesting, got the link from boortz.

[TontoKowalski]

What an interesting article. I have anecdotal evidence which tends to support the professor's theories:

My old college roommate is a high school teacher with 15+ years in the classroom. He says that the single most important factor in determining a student's success is parental involvement.

According to him, it's more predictive than race, gender, income, geography. Children whose parents are involved in the child's education (attending conferences with teachers, emailing or phoning back and forth, serving as chaparones on field trips, tracking homework completion, and so forth) will do better in school than children whose parents are not involved.

He tries to involve parents. He sends the class schedule to parents, including what assignments are due and when, when exams are scheduled and what material will be covered, and invites them to phone/email him with any questions or concerns, schedules parent conferences at the parents' convenience, and so forth. He says the response rate is extremely low...and that's for all races.

I'm sure studies of white children would show the same results (weighted for parental involvement) as his study of black children.

[elephantlips]

"She believes school pressure to speak Standard English and "act white" is the very thing that makes black students fail."

America is a melting pot. All, I repeat, ALL people who have come here have established what we presently have as a culture, mores and a language. The essence of what this country is requires that in order to be successful you need to become part of the whole by contributing your culture to that whole. If you remain separate and apart for whatever reasons, then DO NOT COMPLAIN about the level of unacceptance and the lack of achievement for your children. YOU have chosen that path and its consequences. To remain isolated is to encourage divisiveness. (See Jessie Jackson, Farakhan(sp?), etc.) That divisiveness is hurting all parties. America suffers from the lack of your inclusion.

[lady lawyer]

When will these people learn that taking responsibility is the most empowering thing in the world?

[Thane_Banquo]

Doesn't surprise me. A guy who manages the investment porfolio for one of the largest private non-profit healthcare firms volunteered at a government school. He said students there bragged about getting straight F's.

He's pretty direct. Used to be a bond trader. So he basically told the kids they were idiots.

[robertpaulsen]

"Although they did outperform other black students from across Ohio and around the country,"

With a 1.9 GPA?? That's sad.

[MississippiMan]

It's such a shame that the truth is essentially banned from this debate. Speak the truth, like this guy, and risk everything because the attack dogs will in fact show up and do their best to ruin you so you can't be heard again, and so that if you are, you have no credibility.

MM

[Lunatic Fringe]

African-American parents worried that Ogbu's work would further reinforce the stereotype that blacks are intellectually inadequate and lazy. School district officials, meanwhile, were concerned that it would look as if they were blaming black parents and students for their own academic failures.

WOW- the truth hurts, doesn't it?

[Only1choice____Freedom]

>>"I'm having my doubts his work is going to motivate African-American parents and kids."

It's sad that when they pay an expert to do just what he did, they don't want to hear the answers.

The truth hurts sometimes. If you don't want to know the truth, don't ask the questions. How can you grow as a person or society if you are unwilling to listen to truth and change?

[Flightdeck]

Having gone to high school in northeast Ohio, I can tell you that the students strive to be: (in order)
1.) good at football
2.) as hard core as possible (guns, drugs, and fighting helps)
3.) with as many girls as possible
26.) good students

and I went to a catholic school. We had rival cross-town students show up in carloads with guns. I've been shot at in the parking lot. Our local public school has had teachers held hostage with screwdrivers. Kids walked around school trying desperately to project an image as tough-guy as they could.
We need more money pumped into the system in the form of higher teaching salaries to attract better teachers. But I agree the most important factor is parental encouragement. I was lucky enough to have parents that made my high school years hell. It's funny, my post-college years are making up for it.

[wideminded]

It wasn't socioeconomics, school funding, or racism, that accounted for the students' poor academic performance; it was their own attitudes, and those of their parents.

Ogbu concluded that the average black student in Shaker Heights put little effort into schoolwork and was part of a peer culture that looked down on academic success as "acting white."

Very interesting article. But I think that the bad attitude toward academics is a general problem for many white Americans as well. My own son once said to me that concentrating too much on schoolwork would be "acting Asian".

[jeremiah]

The blacks have a real problem, they see everything as racial. Ask the kids if they identify with black or white, and see the ones that think black, are the ones that do poorly, regardless of race. I'd be willing to bet those that look puzzled at this question, don't spend all day worrying about such minor things as color of skin, or the beat of music.

[SauronOfMordor]

It doesn't matter whether the students are in Shaker Heights or an inner city. The achievement depends on what expectations the teacher has of the students." Hilliard, who is black, believes Shaker Heights teachers must not expect enough from their black students.

The expectations of the teacher for the students matters much less than the expectations of the students for themselves. The opinions of the teacher only matter if the students care about what the teacher thinks

[m18436572]

As an example of the consequences of allowing this to continue: My neighbor has a daughter who recently FAILED her 6th grade math class and, as expected, failed her end of year test, which is required to continue to the 7th. The principal (who is black), concerned about his newly aquired position, passed her on to the 7th grade anyway. When he was confronted about this, he told the mother that, in fact, she would not be held back (which was the mothers wish) and would continue on to the 7th grade regardless of whether the student was prepared or not. In fact, he told her there was nothing she could do about it. The decision was not in her hands.

I need more specific details about this situation, but I am very concerned, as my kids are about to enter this same school. We are in Raleigh, which is supposedly KNOWN for its above average school system.

[Incorrigible]

Hey rdb3!  This is your neck of the woods.  Thought you'd be interested.

Dude!  You've been spending a lot of time on your About page!

Open source consulting not keeping you busy?  Time to switch to Windows!  :-)

[kidd]

Soon after he left Ohio and returned to California, a black parent from Shaker Heights went on TV and called him (Ogbu) an "academic Clarence Thomas."

This is a dead giveaway. Clarence Thomas is arguably the most powerful, influential, respected and most successful black man in this country. I would take this as a compliment, but this was intended as an insult!

If the Shaker Height black parents don't want their kids to aspire to the kind of success that Clarence Thomas has achieved, then they must be encouraging failure.

[zeugma]

You ain't kidding!

Too Darned Long To Read Right Now Bump!

[dirtboy]

Ogbu concluded that the average black student in Shaker Heights put little effort into schoolwork and was part of a peer culture that looked down on academic success as "acting white."

Sound of hammer squarely hitting nail. Heck, it was tough enough as a smart white kid for me to deal with the peer pressure against academic performance back in the 1970s. I can only imagine what it's like for smart black kids now. Sociologists have what they call the crab-bucket syndrome - if you have a bunch of crabs in a bucket and one learns how to get out of the bucket, the other crabs will pull it back in. Same applies here.

[spodefly]

Perpetual Victims BUMP.

[garbanzo]

There is much merit to this - it's not "acting white" per se, but rather the notion of "collective failure" - the idea that failures by blacks reflect on the entire black race and the converse that successes of blacks are in essence individual successes not related to the general ability of blacks as a whole. Contrasted with whites where failures are individual and successes are collectives. The recent example is Jayson Blair - the general meme on the right has made it a collective failure of blacks rather than the failure of an individual - something that didn't happen with Steven Glass for example.

This is idea of collective failure/individual success (especially among blacks) explains I think a lot of the hostility many blacks have toward the successful. If you see someone as successful because of some sort of dispensation of grace, especially someone who doesn't "give back" to the "less fortunate" that would certainly inspire a lot of jealously and resentment of someone who "lucked out" but pretends as if he deserved his position. If a close family member won the lottery but didn't give you a much as dinner, you'd probably feel some sense of resentment towards them.

On the flip side, if every failure of blacks is collective, you certainly have tendancy to "circle the wagons" when one of you fails. You pretend nothing happened or that the person was somehow wronged by larger forces, e.g. the rallying around OJ.

The tough question is how to reverse these attitudes. As a culture we have to start treating people as individuals, and seeing their successes and failures as individuals rather than as members of a race.

[blam]

" Hilliard, who is black, believes Shaker Heights teachers must not expect enough from their black students."

The black parents and the black students don't give a s#it, expectations are set and enforced by the parents, not teachers.

When the parents aren't involved, the results are similar for whites.