Posted on 04/01/2012 12:57:34 AM PDT by Cincinatus' Wife
The city’s Department of Education says it has found money to pay for the Advanced Placement exams this spring for low-income students, despite a cut in the federal subsidy for the exams.
The Education Department will use $462,000 in its budget to cover the cost of the exams.
“We made it a priority to identify funding so that all of our students have the opportunity to take their A.P. exams,” said a department spokeswoman, Barbara Morgan.
The city alerted principals about the financing availability this week. Last month, it warned that the financing was in jeopardy for low-income students after the College Board, which sponsors the exams, announced that a federal subsidy for the exams was cut to $26.95 million from $43 million.
The money is allocated to states to help financially needy students take the college-level exams at the completion of Advanced Placement courses.
Ms. Morgan said the city found a way to cover the $15 exam fee for up to three exams per low-income student, and the $53 exam fee for any additional A.P. exams that students take beyond the first three. In addition, she said the department secured a fee waiver from the College Board for A.P. exams ordered but not taken by these eligible students.
(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...
If education (like other things) is not worth saving or budgeting for - requires some "difficulty" to attain - it is not valued as something to aspire to and attain through YOUR OWN effort, and the recipient is the one who loses in the end. The NEA, the DoE - the Left - say, "Do it for the children," as they divide by color, language, race, income, sexual orientation, etc, etc. It's not about groups, it's about how parents view the reason and desire for achievement - how they understand that work builds the road to success.
_______________________________________________
What black parents must do now ..."..... "What amazed me is that these kids who come from homes of doctors and lawyers are not thinking like their parents," he said. "They don't know how their parents made it. They are looking at rappers in ghettos as their role models, they are looking at entertainers. The parents work two jobs, three jobs, to give their children everything but they are not guiding their children."
Needless to say, Ogbu has received a wild mix of praise and criticism, including from his fellow scholars. Some denounce his methods as too anecdotal, but in Ogbu's field that's not necessarily a defect. Anecdotes carefully collected and reported often can reveal truths that broader statistical studies conceal.
I've been following Ogbu's work since the 1980s, when he and fellow anthropologist Signithia Fordham, ) now at the University of Rochester, stirred up a national hornets nest by finding significant numbers of black students rejected rigorous pursuit of academics as "acting white."
Other scholars have studied Shaker Heights and other similar districts and found little difference in the tendency of the kids to make fun of friends who do well in school, except that lower-income kids tend to do it more. Since black students tend more often to come from lower-income families, they probably feel more of such peer pressure.
And other experts find that we unintentionally hand self-defeating messages down to our children in many ways. Claude Steele, a Stanford University psychologist, for example, has more than a dozen years of research that shows black students, among others, tend to perform 10 to 15 points lower than whites out of anxiety that they might confirm the low expectations others have of their race.
With those findings and many others in mind, we should never make too much of the impact that teen culture may have on achievement. But we certainly shouldn't make too little of it, either.
Your attitude, in large measure, determines your altitude, as I once heard Jesse Jackson say. Your first step in achieving is to believe that you can achieve.
There is no shame in the mere fact that some groups show different levels of interest and performance in education and other skills. It is only a shame if the low performers don't do something to improve."....
_____________________________________________
Cambridge Schools Try Integration by Income........."Proponents of economic integration say there is ample evidence that all children learn better at schools where middle-class students are in the majority.
"While there are a handful of exceptions, in general high-poverty schools don't work," said Richard D. Kahlenberg, an educational researcher at the Century Foundation who is a leading advocate for economic integration as the way to raise achievement among poor children.
But critics say that the way to help low-income students make educational gains has to be more effective teaching - not moving children around. "There's something wrong with the assumption that if you've got too many low-income kids in a classroom, you can't teach them," said Abigail Thernstrom, a senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute who has extensively researched race and education. "My response to that is: No excuses. Start to educate the kids."..............
..........Two years ago, persuaded by the work of Mr. Kahlenberg and others that one way to help the low-performing, high-poverty schools was to raise the number of middle-class students attending them, the Cambridge school committee adopted a plan that emphasized socioeconomic integration in student assignments.
At the same time, it allocated extra resources to low-performing schools like Fletcher-Maynard; officials hoped not only to improve achievement, but also to attract more middle-class parents to those schools. The plan, which will be phased in over three years, began with this year's kindergarten class.
Economic integration is turning out to be controversial in a city where low-income and middle- and upper-income parents - and white and minority parents - often have very different ideas about what makes a good school.".....
......Ms. Bokhari said she had tried to convince a friend to send her two children to the school. But she said the friend, a computer programmer, preferred a school with a lot of demanding upper-income parents. "She says, `I want the rich moms to help me bring up my children,' " Ms. Bokhari said.
Her friend has a point. Middle- and upper-middle-income parents tend to be more aggressive about making sure their schools have everything, from top teachers to special arts programs, experts said. "Middle-class parents provide quality control," said Nancy Walser, a member of the Cambridge school committee and the author of a guide to the Cambridge public schools. "They're like canaries in a mine."
Some people fear that under the plan middle- and upper-income parents will flee the Cambridge system if they must contend with unqualified teachers and inadequate resources.".......
_________________________________________________
Hip-hop product portrayals divide black community ".....If all goes as planned, gangsta rapper Nelly's new energy drink will be on store shelves by next month. The brand name: Pimp Juice.
The Loaded Weapon sneaker is among the latest shoes to hit the Converse conveyor belt. And the new game Ghettopoly, a take on the classic board game Monopoly, features "playas" who vie for stolen property and crack.
All three speak to a growing fascination with hip-hop and its portrayal of urban black America. The products have also ignited protests and boycotts nationwide, highlighting a division in the African-American community over what's an appropriate representation of the black experience.
It is part of a larger cultural war among blacks, fought largely along class and generational lines.
"The traditional civil rights model included a kind of politics of respectability, putting the best face of the African-American community forward," says Imani Perry, a law professor at Rutgers University. "There is an absolute refusal in the hip-hop community to adhere to those ideals of respectability, in terms of what the public face of black people should be."
That tension may only heighten as hip-hop goes global and the appetite for edgy products grows. Nelly announced the release of Pimp Juice, named after his hit single, at the MTV music video awards late this summer. Days later, the Rev. Paul Scott, founder of the Messianic Afrikan Nation, launched a local campaign to keep it off shelves in Durham, N.C. He calls the word "pimp" derogatory and demeaning.
"We don't want our young people walking around with Pimp Juice in their lunchboxes, thinking that it's cool," says Mr. Scott, who has joined forces with black leaders nationwide to petition for Nelly to change the name. "Four hundred years ago, black women were being sold into slavery ... and now someone wants to come out with a drink selling women.".........
__________________________________________________
Black families open up, cram education in....." My hope is that this phenomenon spreads throughout Harlem and other black communities nationwide. Education is the key to our uplift and creating a larger, more solid middle class that can take advantage of the nation's unlimited opportunities and enjoy its vast wealth.
Shirley and other Harlemites are right to encourage their children to love learning for its own sake. This new generation will reject the self-destructive mantra that being smart is acting white.
For good reason, Asian children have been labeled the "model minority." If this label is a stereotype, Shirley says she wishes it on all black children. For black children to become another model minority, black parents must change their views on learning and formal education.
"You can't be selfish," Shirley said. "Blacks have got to start sacrificing for the children. I'm not a saint or anything, but I put my babies first. I don't make much money. Their dad helps out some, about $150 a month. I spend every penny I can on the boys' classes. I don't even think about it."
While in Shirley's two-bedroom apartment on St. Nicholas Avenue, I noticed the boys' many awards for excellence in math, writing and science. Books are everywhere. The boys share a tiny bedroom, and each has a laptop that Shirley bought through a discount program her church sponsored.
"A lot of people, even some of our kinfolks, told me I was pushing my kids too hard," she said. "I told them to get lost. When people don't understand what you're doing, you have to shut them out and do what you know is right. My kids don't complain. They love making good grades. They really want to study hard."......
___________________________________________
___________________________________________
A Cry in the Black Education Wilderness [Links to more articles]
And nearly all of these mayors have set their sights on the one workplace protection that teachers have held central for more than 100 years: tenure.
The unions say many of the “fixes” embraced by the mayors are trendy ideas without evidence that they help children learn. Instead, they allow politicians to appear as if they are making improvements without having to confront the profound problems of urban schools, labor leaders say.
“We don’t want to have honest conversations about poverty and segregation and race and class, all those other sorts of ills,” said Karen Lewis, president of the Chicago Teachers Union. “Those are really tough issues. So this gives them an excuse to focus on something else.”.......
Yet they wear $400 outfits, $200 shoes, thousands of dollars in gold teeth, tatoos, piercings and hair-dos and expensive i-pods, i-pads, cappucinos and rims.
$15!? My wife just sent in $200, but not sure if that was for one or two exams.
Hell, I thought this was about Anatomy and Physiology...
Then it sounds like the “discounted fee” is waived for lower income.
Hmmmmm....
Step 2...low income students will no longer be required to pass exams for placement.
Step 3...low income students will be subsidized for attending class.
Step 4...low income students will no longer be required to attend class.
Who are the dentists who cap a perfectly good tooth in gold? Some of these guys are too young to have front teeth cavities. Is this ethical? Who is doing this?
The goal is to get more and more kids taking AP classes even if they are over their heads so the College Board can administer more expensive tests. Just a little corporate welfare.
The lady who cuts my hair is a hard working single mom of two early teen boys. She shops at Goodwill, sometimes makes tough choices between clothes, meds etc. Her ex-husband is a manic depressive deadbeat.
They were recently giving out laptops to the “underprivileged” in school, and her son did not qualify because she made “too much money”.
It appears to be easier to sit back and qualify for the goodies, at least sometimes, than to be a hard working, productive member of society.
We are going to see one heck of a storm if this entitlement system is ever curtailed. It must end someday.
Somehow, I can’t imagine too many of these kids will qualify for the AP exams, as you have to take these advanced courses in the first place before you sit for the exams. Sounds like many of the funds going towards this latest effort will end up in the hands of the bureaucrats who “administer” the program.
I’m sure the cost to the “paying” students of middle class families, though, will likely see their fees raised.
New and creative ways to fleece the taxpayers ...
The $200 breaksdown this way: $15 for the test, $185 to subsidize the low-income students’ tests.
She was probably just honest about how much she made. Those forms are never questioned, because that would be 'racist'.
----
We are going to see one heck of a storm if this entitlement system is ever curtailed. It must end someday.
True. On a personal level, I know a lot of people are not being as charitable as they used to be. Most of the Christmas time money stopped because people were seeing folks coming to stand in line for the freebies driving up in nicer cars than the charity workers had!
Now if we could just get government out of our pockets!
Pretty much. The per test cost here jumped $30 because the feds decided to partially 'defund' the testing.
Personally, I think it's just a maneuver by the feds to 'tweak' the middle class into falling for the 'see what happens to YOU when we don't have enough money?' gambit.
Just like local bureaucrats 'defund' garbage and police services.
It's all just different versions of the same thing.
Thanks for stealing my post!
Advanced Placement — so, they’re gonna need to take that because they can’t manage to save a dollar a year throughout most of their first 18? Thanks Cincinatus’ Wife.
I shelled out over $500 for AP exams this year- each of my girls is taking three exams. It was a big hit to the budget—we have three graduates this year (two from high school and one from college) Still, I’m not complaining - it’s cheaper than college credits.
A black teacher I knew was saying this to his students in the '60s, not just for blacks, but for everyone.
That hasn't changed, what has changed is the putrefactive cultural rot brought about by the effects of LBJ's 'Great Society'. Among all but the most steadfast, it has been downhill from then.
It isn't that the best aren't doing better, but that the worst has become so pervasive and widespread.
There is a significant 'jump' from the welfare culture of EBT cards, subsidized housing, free lunches, free medical, energy assistance, etc. to being self sufficient.
Anyone earning a starting wage will have to give up some of the goodies to get off the dole. It is not an easy transition, and I am convinced that that is intentional, designed to keep the poorest masses poor and dependent, as only the most determined will advance.
If the system was set up to encourage self-sufficiency, the person working a reasonable job would fare better than those doing best (legally) on the dole, to encourage people to do better, and the benefits would drop out in such a way that the transition would be less daunting.
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.