Answer: Does it matter?
With government schools, it all comes down to the black-white academic achievement gap, and don’t let anyone try to convince you otherwise.
Whether it’s the takeover of suburban schools (read: tax base) in Omaha, Nebraska, or the dumbing down of gifted programs in Montgomery County, Maryland, the achievement gap is at the center. If racism were the cause, black-run school districts like Prince George’s County and D.C. Public Schools would fare better, but obviously they don’t. (Ironically, DC’s per pupil expenditure is among the highest in the country.)
By now you’ve read these alarming headlines: “States Omitting Minority Scores,” “Schools skirt ‘No Child Left Behind’ rule,” “Whites Generally Not Left Behind,” “Educators say some Indian children being left behind,” etc. Some schools are not reporting test scores for minority students, as required under the No Child Left Behind law (NCLB), which was designed to hold schools accountable for low-achieving students.
You actually need to read such stories to the end to find out what’s going on. But first, let’s “cut to the chase” on NCLB. Feds to states: “States, you must improve minority students’ performance, or else. We don’t care how you do it, just do it. Unfunded mandate, my eye!”
If you prefer convoluted, governmentspeak explanations, knock yourselves out: White House: No Child Left Behind and the Department of Education’s NCLB page.
Back to the “hiding scores” meme. When reporting standardized test scores to the Department of Education as mandated by NCLB, states are allowed to exclude scores of groups too small to be statistically significant, and states decide what’s “too small.” For example, let’s say Florida decided not to report scores from racial groups of less than 20 students. In a school with 1,000 whites and 15 blacks, the black students’ scores wouldn’t be reported.
Sounds reasonable as far as statistics go, but the trend is troubling to some, I suppose. The practice disproportionately impacts black students, and that makes it automatically suspect (at least to social engineers). A few years ago I supported NCLB. I particularly liked that parents have the option of transferring their children to a different school if their neighborhood school fails for two consecutive years to meet a rigorous set of standards. There was no guarantee that the law would work, but I thought it provided an incentive for schools to retain students. It represented a shift toward “competition.”
[Note: A commenter reminded me of something I read but forgot to mention. Blogger Jeff the Baptist wrote: "It is my understanding that these children are not going uncounted. All kids are counted in the summary descriptive statistics. However if a minority population is too small (below 20 or 30) you don't have a sufficient population to form accurate descriptive statistics. Those populations are not required to have their own minority descriptive statistics." Emphasis added.]
But I’ve all but given up on such idealistic notions. Under NCLB, it appears that schools are only as strong as their weakest students. Students from “failing” schools would transfer to a “passing” school and place more pressure on those schools to improve their weak performance. It’s a vicious and confusing circle.
I’m no longer in denial about the persistent achievement gap. There’s more going on than just “some people aren’t good at taking tests.” And transferring to higher-quality schools may help, but they will eventually succumb to the pressure. While focusing on low-achieving students, high-achievers get the shaft.
Based on decades of personal experience, articles, and studies I’ve read through the years, I’m convinced the achievement gap is exacerbated by certain factors in the black American subculture. Of course, all subcultures have issues, but I think the lack of focus on education — not just in the abstract, but as a concrete way of life — is largely absent in many black communities.
At this point I’m tempted to focus only on “poor” or “uneducated” blacks, but I won’t give in to it. The gap exists among all socioeconomic classes, but so-called affirmative action benefits blacks in higher class levels the most.
Families don’t have to make lots of money to supplement a child’s education at home. All they need is a precious commodity called TIME. Even if you don’t have a college degree or didn’t finish high school, you can still read to your child every day and take him to libraries and museums often.
When I was a kid, I LOVED libraries. These days, I usually get free books for review (often unsolicited) or buy them. But back in the day, if you were looking for me, you’d probably find me in the library in a chair by a window with a book.
I was disappointed if I couldn’t check out a fresh stack of books every week. My hometown library’s “bookmobile” used to come to my neighborhood every two weeks. I was always ready to dart out the door, with orange card and books in hand as soon as it parked (with my two younger sisters in tow and eventually, my “baby” brother), which was only several yards from our house. When I turned 12 (or was it 13?), I graduated to a blue adult card. I was proud of that card!
I still visit my hometown’s library whenever I can. Adult cards are no longer blue or wallet-sized. The high-tech, thin plastic squares fit on a key chain. I still love that library. I’ve lived in several different cities through the years, and finding the local libraries was always high on the to-do list.
As you can tell, those early library trips and bookmobile adventures had a profound effect on me. My parents paid for those services through property taxes, so they weren’t free in the strictest sense. But you get the point.
Talking to your child, correcting mispronounced words, reading to him — these things require no money. If he’s at the homework stage, check it every night and make sure it’s done. Stay in touch with teachers and monitor your child’s progress. If there’s a problem, find out what you need to do on your end to help fix it. Join and participate in parent-teacher conferences. Parental involvement in education is crucial.
It’s really sad that some parents believe schools (read: government) should bear full responsibly for their child’s education (or the lack thereof). Tutoring, mentoring, and enrichment programs help, but parents ought to be the child’s primary motivator. It’s a darn shame that many still believe MONEY will solve the so-called educational crisis in America. Believe it at your child’s peril.
Family structure plays an important role in children’s lives. With so many black children living in homes headed by unmarried women, they don’t get the time and attention they need. I’d argue that black children are the most in need of two-parent families and require extra educational support, but they get it least. There ought to be a law…
I hate to be the bearer of bad news, as the cliché goes, but as long as we live in a free, racially and culturally diverse country where some subcultures value learning and excellence more than others, gaps in achievement won’t shrink. To make matters more complicated, some racial groups simply perform better than others in different areas of life. Our country’s persistent problem of skin color discrimination (then, Jim Crow; now, race preferences) may be a big part of the reason; it could be mostly genetics. I don’t have the answers.
To get a better grasp on the “hiding scores” situation, I sent the following questions to the Department of Education’s e-mail address for “press inquiries”:
1) Is the story accurate, that states are helping schools hide black children’s scores, with the federal government’s assistance?
2) If this is the case, why? To follow-up, isn’t that illegal or at the very least in conflict with the intent of the No Child Left Behind law?
3) If the federal government has participated in this practice, what is the justification and how does it help minority children?
I probably should have done more research before I e-mailed, but it was a spur of the moment thing. This is the response:
According to the AP analysis, 93 percent of students are accounted for. While any number is too many, accountability under NCLB represents great progress. Prior to NCLB, only a handful were being accounted for because most states were not disaggregating data for accountability purposes. In the past, accountability was based on school-wide averages where low-income and minority students could be hidden.
When there aren’t enough students to make up an individual group at the school level without compromising the identity of the student (s), districts become accountable for these students. Thus, no student group is ever “lost” or left unaccounted for.
Make of it what you will.
Related posts:
The Achievement Gap And Social Skills
Sources:
- No Excuses
- Fairfax Success Masks Gap for Black Students
- States Help Schools Hide Minority Scores
- Loophole masks achievement gap for black students
- Possible Education Loopholes Exposed in Report
- Check Google News for more stories
- Achievement gap
- Cognitive ability
Note: I can’t possible link to all relevant sources, so I recommend you do your own research about the NCLB law, the black-white achievement gap, etc. Google is a good place to begin:
{ 33 comments }
It is my understanding that these children are not going uncounted. All kids are counted in the summary descriptive statistics. However if a minority population is too small (below 20 or 30) you don’t have a sufficient population to form accurate descriptive statistics. Those populations are not required to have their own minority descriptive statistics.
It is also a very good thing that they are aggregating at the district level if they can’t do so at the school level. It is an obvious solution to reduce this trend as much as possible.
I forgot to mention that. No, really I did! I’ll add your comment to the post. – Admin
I have more of a question than a comment. I read with interest your childhood trips to the library. If we had lived near each other, I would have seen you at my library as well. We seemed to both live in homes where reading was encouraged and learning a priority. While I am white and you are black, I don’t see any difference. I homeschool my kids, because of the same commitment to education and literacy. I don’t understand how is it a racial problem rather than a cultural one. In American culture in general, the popular, musical, sports entertainers get more ‘press’ than the educated or intelligent. Is the racial differences more of a subculture ’stuckness’? I am not sure I see someone like ‘Paris Hilton’ exactly a role model for white girls.
Is it really a racial problem or a subculture/way of life problem?
thanks,
Linda
Funny that no one seems to fret about the achievement gaps between white kids and kids of Asian ancestry, with the Asians, I gather, usually coming out on top. The “solution” of places such as Berkeley is to put a cap on the number of Asians admitted so there won’t be “too many” of them. Now THAT is discrimination.
Linda, I think it’s a bit of both, but the problem, as so many others, disproportionately impacts blacks. And children in bad inner-city schools are mostly black…and it doesn’t help that so many black children don’t have residential, biological fathers. Family instability has wreaked havoc!
“When there aren’t enough students to make up an individual group at the school level without compromising the identity of the student (s), districts become accountable for these students”.
So is “student privacy” more important than achievement gaps?
Most ‘achievement gaps” are biased by a small group of low achievers. If these “low achievers” are spread out into the population, and NOT identified individually, they are “lost in the statistics” which then give a false impression that everything is OK. Shameful.
Low achievement is low achievement, however it is measured or hidden from view.
The real losers are the low achieving students, who won’t even know if if they are not individualy identified and if their parents know the school is really not that good.
As I was reading I remembered a young (white) mother telling me of her son’s poor writing skills a few years back. He was about 9yrs old at the time and she just said he has no interest in school at all and that his handwriting was horrible. I suggested to keep him out of sports until his writing skills improved. She scoffed – no way was sports going to stop in her house. It was their “religion” so to speak. Apparently it was more important for the young boy to play sports than it was for him to learn to write.
I must be a mean mom – after my son’s 6yr old b-day party I would not let him play with any of his toys until he completed all of his thank-you cards. Each was handwritten on writing paper and it had to be PERFECT. I figured I was teaching him the importance of saying Thank you to everyone who celebrated with him and gave him the chance to practice his writing skills at the same time.
I grew up in Mon.t county, MD and I’m raising 2 young boys in DC. I just looked at the reading report card for DC schools 1998-2005 for 8th graders. the 12th grade data wasn’t online. I was struck by the DC public school officials “good news” that you linked to: that the black/white performance gap had narrowed. in the case of the 8th graders in the 1998-2006 timeframe, half of gap narrowing was by a decrease in performance by those not eligibile for subsidized food (direct race tracking was not available). Since reading performance did not significanlty change in this timeframe but the gap narrowed, what are we to attribute this to? Is it just as much a sign of flight among the better off people from the public school system, an influx of non-native speakers, a diversion of resources from the better performing schools to the stragglers? Whatever, it is, I can’t see how focusing on the “gap” is cause for joy if the average performer gets no better. the message seems to be: if we can’t raise the lower end, and least we can hinder or scare off the top end!!! hip, hip, hurray!!
as fo montgomery cty- giving up on the gifted and talented program, or whatever it’s called these days would be a real loss to the school system.
I am very fortunate that my mom, who is a teacher, knew how to work the system and got me into gifted and talented programs that I stayed in all the way through high school.
You have to stay informed when it comes to your child.
Personally, I think the whole system needs an overhaul. There are so many problems that are concept problems which result in practical problems. First of all, is local control a good thing? I happen to think it is, but the fact is that the local board has very little actual control today. Boards determine policy – but at least in my state, have very little to do with establishing what is taught. Should the State determine goals and curriculum? Should the Federal Government have an input? What is the purpose of education? Should we be teaching as if every child is directed towards college? or should we offer technical/vocational schools from the 6-8th grade level?
Sometimes I wonder…. It seems to me that trying to compare various schools or states, we are comparing apples and oranges because there are different standards. I like the idea of NCLB because it informs a parent who wants to know how their local school is performing as compared to other schools nationwide. It’s then up to the parent to nag the school board to make changes if necessary. If the board is so entrenched that no changes can be made locally, then I hope people don’t look to the next higher governing body to effect changes…think how hard it would be to make any changes if the power is in DC!!
There are lots of problems in education, and imo, everybody is blaming someone else. In the end, I think parents are the ones with the power, if they’d just use it. They need to demand that their board does their job, that teachers do their job and that their children do _their_ job! If parents cede that responsibility (and I blame teachers for this somewhat because they are more than eager to portray themselves as the experts and parents as little more than producers of the subjects that support their jobs – shame on parents that allow themselves to be intimidated!), then all is lost.
The sub-culture problem you describe is crucial, though, and not limited to blacks. I suspect it’s the major factor in all impoverished sub-cultures. The black community has a particular problem, though, in that their young people have developed this attitude that scorns others for “acting white”. Anything that smacks of getting ahead is “acting white” and is “bad”, unless it’s getting ahead as the result of drugs, sports, or the rap culture. That’s just poisonous.
La Shawn – this is about as trivial as anything I can think of, but DOE is Department of Energy. Education is DOED. Probably only the people at either agency care.
Actually, I knew that and meant to change it. No, really! Thanks.
– Admin
As a psychologist who has worked primarily with inner city African American children for twenty years, I couldn’t agree more! Inner city schools have failed these children with lower standards though it doesn’t take a Ph.D. to see the connection between school failure and lack of parent involvement. In schools I serviced, attendance at parent-teacher conferences, teachers made themselves available afternoons and evenings, was less than 25%. As for enrichment, I was told parents did not have money for theater or concert tickets though my kids wore great clothes. In fact I defied anyone to find me more fashionable kids!
Problem is, they couldn’t read.
I am going to side with Ward Connerly. Race questions are an invasion of privacy, and likely against the law. Additionally they are generally unhelpful as they tend to stigmatism. I really hate talking about blacks as a group, or whites as a group. Everyone knows that a race is not related to outcomes. Students do not do badly because they are black. They do badly for a host of reasons, but the melanin in the skin is not related so why should the government collect and report such data. Race is merely descriptive. It should be mentioned only when describing someone the way we speak of physical stature or hair and eye color. Making believe student achievement is related to race causes teachers to expect less and parents to accept less. Race is not the source so it should not be the focus; it is a correlation not causation.
You know exactly what a student needs to succeed in school:
“Talking to your child, correcting his mispronounced words, reading to him — these things require no money. If he’s at the homework stage, check it every night and make sure it’s done. Stay in touch with teachers and monitor your child’s progress. If there’s a problem, find out what you need to do on your end to help fix it. Join and participate in parent-teacher conferences. Parental involvement in education is crucial.”
Quality school where learning can take place is also important. Some schools are unsafe, the teachers are unqualified, and disruptive students are not removed from the learning environment. In such places teaching and learning do not occur.
I partly agree with Ellen. It’s not race per se, it’s culture. The difficulty is that in the inner city especially, race and culture overlap to such an extent that the one is a near-perfect predictor of the other.
When you have *cultural* celebrities engaging in shootouts on a regular basis, music that celebrates promiscuity, violence, and lawbreaking, when children are growing up in third-and fourth-generation families with no resident male, and no history or expectation of academic or economic success in living memory, it’s little wonder that they do poorly.
Restore the culture to one of civility. Fix the families. The schools will follow.
Perhaps I wasn’t as articulate as I needed to be on the race/subculture dynamic, but I think the issue is more prevalent in black communities for whatever reason: anti-intellectualism, poverty, family instability, etc., and I don’t think it’s confined to inner-cities or “poor” households. Just the opinion of someone who grew up in a middle class home in a middle class neighborhood and surrounded by middle class friends and acquaintances.
We live in world were negative behavior is defined as black and positive behavior is defined as white, however behavior does not have a color. We see a world where middle class black kids, do not know they are black because of what they see in the mirror. No, they rather define themselves as black based on the music they listen too, and the way they dress. Should we be surprised if they also think it is black to not study and not strive for success?
Deprive the victim culture, of the statistics they used to say black people cannot succeed. The statistics they used to get more money for more failed programs. The statistics they use to define what is black and what is not black.
I am just afraid it is part of a self-fulfilling prophecy. Read Senator Barack Obama’s book — Dreams From My Father: A Story of Race and Inheritance — Read how he, the son of a black Kenyan student and white American woman tried to define black. To him as a young man being black meant being involved in drugs and in basketball not in what he saw in his mirror, not the color of his skin.
As a black conservative, I’ve had to deal with having my “blackness” questioned, however it’s defined. Obama has his own issues to deal with, so I can’t speak for him.
I highly recommend you read a book called Authentically Black, by John McWhorter:
http://www.manhattan-institute.org/html/authentically_black_and_losing.htm
La Shawn,
The academic atmosphere in today’s high school seems to be going down wards in spite of vast sums of money being spent on computers and classroom facilities. Teachers who are parents are glad their kids graduated from high school twenty years ago. Children with one or more parents being or having been a teacher, do far better than the average student. Whether it is knowledge of the system or pushing at home or both there are results.
James M. Barber
“While focusing on low-achieving students, high-achievers get the shaft.”
I see that happening at DS#2’s high school. Although 90% of the senior class this year has passed the CA High School Exit Exam (CAHSEE), all focus has shifted to those who have not passed or are deemed “at risk” of not passing. (This exam, BTW, only requires middle-school level math and 10th Grade level English skills.)
I seem to recall a study that came out recently that showed that parents at a lower socio-economic level interacted differently with their children, especially infants and toddlers. The researchers noted that the parents gave more direct commands and spent less time interacting. Some of the parents were given the opportunity to attend parenting classes and many changed their style. And their children’s scores improved in several academic marker areas. (The children were pre-schoolers, IIRC.)
Why isn’t more attention being paid to the results of this study? If the results are correct, then we might have an way to bridge the gap. (The results seemed to be more a factor of socio-economic level than race, BTW.)
Also, I completely agree with LaShawn about public libraries. They are a marvelous resource and not only for books and literature! Additionally, children who listen to classical music (especially Baroque) seem to do better in math. Classical music is available at the library, but is also free on the radio. I’ve found it a wonderful alternative to television in the morning when the kids are getting ready for school. We also listen to classical music in the car on the way. I like to think that it prepares their minds for the learning ahead!
I have no trackbacks, but I blogged on this and want to give LaShawn her credit:
CHILDREN LEFT BEHIND
http://networdblog.blogspot.com/2006/04/children-left-behind.html
Actually, race does matter and needs to be broken out if there is a chance that the teachers and school administrators are treating the black kids differently, i.e. holding them to lower standards.
I’d like to mention that my church adopted an inner-city school. The test scores went up last year, and the principal credited the help they got from volunteers from my church. The volunteers thought they would be working to help the kids who were behind grade level, but as it turned out they were assigned to the kids who were at or above grade level, to keep challenging them and pulling them ahead. That way the teachers could concentrate on remedial work, which the majority of the students needed, without fretting that they were short-changing the kids who didn’t need it. Everyone benefitted.
- But I do think that if there’s a group of 20 or less black kids there’s no point to breaking out their score. It’s statistically meaningless. And really, in a school that only has that small number of black kids, it’s much less likely that they’re getting short-changed because of their race.
I’ve been calling NCLB a farce for some time now, and giving one of the reasons as what is now being reported.
Bravo! I totally agree with everything you are saying here. It is such a sad feeling for me to walk into an empty library and see books untouched while kids sit on the internet or play video games. It reminds me of my favorite film, The Neverending Story and the nothing that came and destroyed the realm of human imagination and inspiration. Our “nothing” is apathy and a general lack of intellectual curiosity. These kids out here deserve better, and I hope and pray that true reform occurs.
You know, every time people like you engage in ad hominem, it only solidifies my firmly-held belief about the general inability to certain people to control impulses or demonstrate a modicum of reasoning skills. Whatever good points such people make are outweighed by what I consider serious cognitive deficiencies. Disagree with everything on this blog, if you will, but you’re the only one getting off on the insults. It makes me doubly sad for black America. You’ve offered no argument for me to challenge, so I guess that’s all I have to say. – Admin
Do those numbers tell us “teachers and school administrators are treating the black kids differently…?” Can they tell us the why behind the results?
Result: 50% black children reading at grade level in the fourth grade. Do we know why or do we just say shame on the children, the school and the parents. We want results about schools to know which school to avoid sending our children to, and which schools we need to volunteer at to help the teachers and students. We need to know which schools fail and which schools succeed so we can improve failing schools.
We do not need to know if the kids being failed are black, white, or blue. We just need to know if significant portions of the students at a particular school are not learning. If learning is not taking place, changes need to be made. Are we better informed if we know the students not succeeding are black? I just think it one more way to talk down black people. It is just more bad sad news.
Black-on-black crime, black welfare rates, black poverty rates, black incarceration rates, black drop-out rates, black marriage rates, black abortion rates, black home ownership rates, it goes on and on and on making any black success seem like an exception to the rule. Black people think this way, black people vote this way, this buffoon is the leader of black people.
You can no more group people by race then you can by height or hair color it is too broad a category. With regard to school, I am not saying the data should not be collected; it just should not be distributed. It should be collected for internal diagnostic purposes only.
I’m feeling something unusual: pity. If this make you feel masculine and “smart,” Steve, knock yourself out. But at least try to engage me with a coherent thought. – Admin
This is as cynical as I can get on a Thursday: “NEA-liberal educators” are not educating our kids to keep the welfare rolls full, the nannystate populated; well-educated, motivated children instilled with a strong desire to learn become…conservatives. Uneducated,non-motivated children become…uneducated, non-motivated adults who can only survive in the Nannystate.
Of course I don’t deny it. Never have, never will. In fact I’ve blogged about such topics on this blog before, but I choose to emphasize what I consider a more pressing matter: immorality in the black community, from which other pathologies flow. I wish you’d put as much energy into criticizing black men who doom their children to fatherless homes and poverty, and blacks who prey on each other and terrorize their neighborhoods, instead of whining about a BLOGGER. My words are more harmful than those acts???
There is plenty of room out there for you, so I suggest you start a blog and write about what YOU think is more important: calling La Shawn Barber names: http://www.blogger.com/start
Do something other than obsess over me. Time is fleeting. – Admin
Race plays a huge role in the difference in achievement levels between the races.
Many black pupils come equipped with a poverty of spirit and do not accept the challenge to achieve academically. Also, they have an ingrained belief that the system is rigged against them. They pick this up at home, on the street and when they ride “old yeller.”
We went whacky forty years ago when we decided to piddle around with “creating” self esteem. Self esteem is earned through diligence and breaking through individual barriers. But the liberal society running public education settled for the process of lowering the standards until success occurred by default.
Gifted and talented programs are the biggest joke of all. They started out as programs for extra smart and extra talented kids. Then someone counted male and female noses and black and white noses and they reconfigured the program to balance the numbers.
If a student is in a special ed program, his scores are normally not averaged into the school pool. This dirty little secret has been the school system’s best friend for many years. It keeps the school stats inflated.
A lot of time and effort has been poured into trying to raise the achievement level of all students. Nothing works better than attentive parents, intelligent sleep patterns and nutrition, regular attendance and a positive attitude.
Hello La Shawn,
I just happened to stumble upon your blog. I am a card carrying Liberal, but I am in agreement with your assessment of the situation. I am a black man who was born and raised in Colorado by my grandfather. He stressed the importance of education above all things except my relationship with my God. I remember before I could go outside to play, my homework had to be done; then my chores.
I am a STRONG advocate for father-figures in the home. I also believe that one can achieve in any situation. We can look back to our ancestors (Yes, even during slavery) to prove this. I am not a supporter of NCLB, but let’s face it. This isn’t really about improving children’s education as it is about money. Let us not forget how much money our school districts receive for every student.
In my humble opinion, I think we (parents) have to really take charge of our children’s education or suffer the consequences for their achievement.
Thank you!
One problem may be that modern progressive educators often criticize “explicit” instruction as being an expression of power, yet Ladson and Billings, Shirley Brice Heath, Delpit, Michelle Foster and other researchers have seen evidence that black students respond better to teachers who give direct commands rather than teachers who simply hint at what is expected and in addition to this, experts on educating black students argue that black students also respond better to authoritarian teachers. The more authoritarian a teacher is the more respect black students have for that teacher and many black students actually express pride in how mean their teachers are. Black students felt authoritarian teachers advocated for their academic achievement, and managed the class in a way that contributed to students’ success.
My parents as well as their contemporaries often express how much better the black schools were back in the 40s and 50s as far as discipline and learning. Those schools were strict and I recall once asking my father why he felt that they learned better than black kids now and his answer simply was that you either learned or you got your a** kicked.
I think that a lot of that which was done successfully in black schools during segregation was lost afterwards as the result of embracing the norms of white schools. Also, integration resulted in no more than the top black students pushing to enter the white schools, thus lowering the standards for the black schools where most black students remained. There was practically no voluntary push for whites to integrate black schools, so what we ended up with is a circle of black chasing and whites running. This is the failure of integration and the push for integration as opposed to simple desegregation was a mistake in my opinion.
If you want to get a better idea why some students do not learn in schools you must defeat the teachers unions obstructionism in having cameras monitoring classrooms. There are many students who simply do not care and worse, are distractions for some who do care. It would also hold teachers accountable for their competency. I do not advocate a witch hunt, just a better understanding of what some of the problems are so they can be fixed. I believe it would show that most (most) teachers are committed to doing a good job but they are hamstrung by unruly, undisciplined brats and wanna-be thugs. Isn’t the goal improving education regardless of whose ox is gored? BTW, if you want to see what is possible when students are held accountable try looking at how the military takes sub-standard high school students, applies strict codes of discipline, and manages to make them learn- even excel- where public teachers fail. It’s all in the discipline.
This is an old story that re-telling does not fix.
I am a second generation Polish American whose father and 11 of his 12 brothers and sisters never finished high school. They grew up in an environment where formal education wasn’t valued. That’s culture. It’s not just racial. They were fortunate and able make their way through life without a formal education. Not all are so fortunate.
Although teachers and the teaching environment have a significant role in getting someone educated, I put it to you that the culture of the family has the greatest effect on whether students actually learn what they need to know… and then some. If your family convinces you that you should and can learn for your own good, no amount of stupid teachers and educational bureaucracy can stop you.
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