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.

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.

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!

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.

Do something other than obsess over me. Time is fleeting. – Admin

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’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.

CHILDREN LEFT BEHIND
http://networdblog.blogspot.com/2006/04/children-left-behind.html