What it takes…
…to make a Student.
From the NY Times
On the morning of Oct. 5, President Bush and his education secretary, Margaret Spellings, paid a visit, along with camera crews from CNN and Fox News, to Friendship-Woodridge Elementary and Middle Campus, a charter public school in Washington. The president dropped in on two classrooms, where he asked the students, almost all of whom were African-American and poor, if they were planning to go to college. Every hand went up. “See, that’s a good sign,” the president told the students when they assembled later in the gym. “Going to college is an important goal for the future of the United States of America.” He singled out one student, a black eighth grader named Asia Goode, who came to Woodridge four years earlier reading “well below grade level.” But things had changed for Asia, according to the president. “Her teachers stayed after school to tutor her, and she caught up,” he said. “Asia is now an honors student. She loves reading, and she sings in the school choir.”
[...]
This contention — that the achievement gap is on its way to the dustbin of history — is one that Bush and Spellings have expressed frequently in the past year. And the gap better be closing: the law is coming up on its fifth anniversary. In just seven more years, if the promise of No Child Left Behind is going to be kept, the performances of white and black students have to be indistinguishable.
But despite the glowing reports from the White House and the Education Department, the most recent iteration of the National Assessment of Educational Progress, the test of fourth- and eighth-grade students commonly referred to as the nation’s report card, is not reassuring. In 2002, when No Child Left Behind went into effect, 13 percent of the nation’s black eighth-grade students were “proficient” in reading, the assessment’s standard measure of grade-level competence. By 2005 (the latest data), that number had dropped to 12 percent. (Reading proficiency among white eighth-grade students dropped to 39 percent, from 41 percent.) The gap between economic classes isn’t disappearing, either: in 2002, 17 percent of poor eighth-grade students (measured by eligibility for free or reduced-price school lunches) were proficient in reading; in 2005, that number fell to 15 percent.
But the evidence is becoming difficult to ignore: when educators do succeed at educating poor minority students up to national standards of proficiency, they invariably use methods that are radically different and more intensive than those employed in most American public schools. So as the No Child Left Behind law comes up for reauthorization next year, Americans are facing an increasingly stark choice: is the nation really committed to guaranteeing that all of the country’s students will succeed to the same high level? And if so, how hard are we willing to work, and what resources are we willing to commit, to achieve that goal?
In the years after World War II, and especially after the civil rights reforms of the 1960s, black Americans’ standardized-test scores improved steadily and significantly, compared with those of whites. But at some point in the late 1980s, after decades of progress, the narrowing of the gap stalled, and between 1988 and 1994 black reading scores actually fell by a sizable amount on the national assessment. What had appeared to be an inexorable advance toward equality had run out of steam, and African-American schoolchildren seemed to be stuck well behind their white peers.
The issue was complicated by the fact that there are really two overlapping test-score gaps: the one between black children and white children, and the one between poor children and better-off children. Given that those categories tend to overlap — black children are three times as likely to grow up in poverty as white children — many people wondered whether focusing on race was in fact a useful approach. Why not just concentrate on correcting the academic disadvantages of poor people? Solve those, and the black-white gap will solve itself. [MORE...]
Filed under: Children's Issues, Practical Solutions
This article is so disturbing. Basically the solution is to make the teachers become parents. How is this a solution? This is impossible to replicate and teachers can’t work long hours such as these over a long period of time. Education in America is a mess and doesn’t look like its going to be fixed anytime soon as we refuse to make policy decisions based on facts and common sense. Parents need hold themselves up to higher standards, teachers need to actually know the subjects they are teaching and should be allowed to remove disruptive students and cut out all the bloated educational buracracy, lastly realize that not all students are college material.
I read this article and I thought it brought up some really good points. Such as the homework scam, why are parents basically doing at night what the teachers were supposed to do for eight hours that day.
The more I read the more it reinforces my decision to homeschool.
What about Chinese who have parents that do not speak good english, yet still excel?
I agree that parents must do more, but the fact is that there are so many black children that just do not have responsible parents. Much less those capable of homeschooling
The reason you have to work with black children a whole lot just to get decent results is that black children need a more controlled environment in order to learn because of their lower IQs. Blacks have a propensity for crime and chaos when outside of a strictly controlled environment.
As this study shows, when black children are put under stricter control, they can do better in school. Whites and Asians do not need such a strictly controlled environment to do well.
I believe that NE Asians are quite intelligent. However, they think differently. I can remember when I took physics in college, we would have these “classes” where we would go over homework. (Can’t remember what they called them, it’s been some years now.) Anyway, there would be an Asian graduate student (usually Northern Asian, like Chinese or Korean) going over a problem and its solution and we would sit there and go, “Huh?” I honestly believe their thought processes are different. In my mind, A goes to B goes to C, but they were off in another world.
Well if thats what it takes then its going to be an up hill battle because no teacher is going to work 15 hours a day, 6 days a week for 40K even 50K. You’ve got to pay 200K to get that kind of dedication and thats just not going to happen.
Ed, I know you comments were meant out of hate but we can still look at reality and make policy decisons based on facts with compassion and love. Yes there is some truth to your assertions and enviroments should be established based on reality. I mean really what is going on in education is a crime. My neice goes to a school in one of the “top districts” in our state. The girl is smart but as she gets older she gets more caught up in pop culture etc and basically her language skills are just going down hill. So you would think knowing how many young people now don’t know how to speak or write english correctly that the school would be teaching that. No they have the girl doing creative writing using hip hop slang. And this school is in the suburbs. Its ridiculous.
Teach the basics, drill it, teach self disclipline and realize that every child can’t go to college. That is a fact, stop trying to force kids that just need basic skills to have a decent life in America to be rocket scientists. It just makes school frustrating for them.
Insha Allah when my kids get older I really want to work on educating Blacks and Muslims about homeschooling. The hardest thing about homeschooling is living on one income and there are families and single moms who homeschool so that can be worked around. And learning to be patient with your children because you are with them all day. I think alot of people send the kids off to school earlier and earlier because they just dont want to be around the kids all day.
But as far as teaching there, there are so many curriculums out there that bascially tell you what to do step by step. In fact there is on that encourages self teaching
http://www.robinsoncurriculum.com/
Most parents have the ability but the desire and commitment are really the biggest obstacles.
My problem with homeschooling is the social aspect. I do believe in homeschooling in addition to regular school
we can make decisions out of compasion and love and still know that black kids need more tighly controlled environment. we need policy based in racial realism and need to stop shakling ourselves with political correctness that is hurting everyone
Personally I’m opposed to home schooling not so much because of any potential social impact, which I feel is significant, but also an academic one. I feel that homeschooled children do not develop good work habits as they don’t learn to adhere to a schedule, unless the parents doing the homeschooling are VERY conscientious about establishing a schedule and making sure their children adhere to it.
Most parents simply have too many other responsibilities on their plate to establish and implement a proper homeschooling program though they may have good intentions.
The other major concern is that homeschooled children don’t acquire a sufficient background in the various academic subjects, unless the parents are highly educated and recall enough of their own schooling to impart the required knowledge to their children/pupils. For example, how many homeschooling parents could tell me how to use trigonometry to solve a right triangle problem?
Now this may sound like an extreme example but it is an expected skill for secondary students in the public school system. Any student who leaves high school not knowing how to do this isn’t going to be able to progress much further in higher education or the professional world. If one is going to pump gas or flip burgers for a living then fine, but if one wants a successful career (s)he’s going to have to know how to do this particular skill, at least for academic reasons if not practical ones.
So all these things considered along with social impact I’m generally against homeschooling as an option.