Saturday, June 17: Commenter Carol writes:
“As for inner-city schools, my son attends a Baltimore City public school, and it’s interesting to note which children have two parents/middle class homes, and which children live in the projects down the street and have single moms. The vast majority of the 2-parent kids are well-spoken good students. They may not be the best-dressed in the latest and greatest, they may not have their hair done, the gold jewelry…but they have that foundation — and that’s priceless.”
Update II: Education blogger Joanne Jacobs writes: “I don’t think No Child Left Behind calls for equal results: It says that all children can achieve proficiency — and the definition of proficiency isn’t all that high in most states.”
Good point, and I should have stressed NCLB’s proficiency goal in the post, although I made brief mention of it. Some national educational organization released a bunch of data on proficiency levels, and I thought I’d bookmarked the link. I’ll post it as soon as I find it. By the way, I focused on the concept of “equality” in general because I believe it is the source of unrealistic expectations.
Later…Found it. Look at the achievement levels for white 8th grade students participating in the Trial Urban District. Notice the percentage in the Proficient category. Now look at the results for black students. A larger percentage of black students are in the Below Basic category.
The goal of NCLB is to move all underachieving students into the Proficient category, an ambitious endeavor, to say the least…
You can also look up results for each state. To pull up similar charts as the ones from the Trial Urban District, select the state, then scroll down and click any one of the “Achievement Levels” links on the right side. These charts don’t break out achievement levels by race, though. To get those, you’ll need to open the PDF documents linked under “Related Material.”
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Guess what? The No Child Left Behind law is failing its mission. Before I get to that, however, I have a few things to say.
There are academic achievement gaps between different groups of students. As a group, Asians tend to score higher on standardized tests than whites. Whites tend to score higher than black and hispanic students. Hispanic students tend to score slightly higher than blacks.
The gap that people talk about most is the one between blacks and whites. Given America’s past — enslavement of blacks and subsequent codified racial discrimination — these two racial groups will be locked in conflict until Christ returns. Nothing and no one else will come close to resolving it.
Diversity in itself is not a bad thing. Differences can be interesting, fun, or even exciting. Variety is the spice of life, they say. I recognize and appreciate different colors of skin and eyes, hair texture, body shapes and sizes, personalities and mannerisms, talents and motivation, and skills and abilities. I believe God has endowed each of us with something unique that only we can offer the world. The exhilarating part of growing and learning is discovering your gift, for lack of a better word. There is only one you, and God made you the way he did for a purpose.
Because of our fallen nature, however, we are prone to anger, envy, and jealousy. God made covetousness part of his law for a reason. The longing to possess what is not ours may cause us to neglect what is ours. This desire and lust can intensify, breeding anger and more discontent and polluting our hearts and minds to the point where we begin to believe we’re owed what belongs to others. This is why I think it’s wrong for so-called liberal Christians to support ill-defined ideas like “social justice” or wealth redistribution schemes, and then call them biblical. They clearly are not biblical but based on the faulty premise that government has an obligation to take another’s possessions and give them to “deserving” others.
But I digress.
The Civil Rights Project recently released a report on the No Child Left Behind law (NCLB). As predicted, the law is not working. The idea behind it — to bring all students up to the level of proficiency by 2014 — is a classically noble bit of social engineering. But in a country with diverse races, some which may possess greater abilities than others and emphasize achievement more than others, such an idea is impractical and unworkable. It should surprise no one that NCLB has not affected the gap between black and white students.
I was excited when I first heard about NCLB. Finally, schools would be held accountable for what they did and didn’t do. There’s no better motivator than accountability. I was skeptical, however, because I knew schools were not the only problem. In a column called Liberals and Their Advice, I wrote about some of my concerns:
While Democrats are drying the dinner dishes on the Titanic, hoping that tub won’t sink after all, Republicans are throwing out life jackets, offering parents real hope. Under President Bush’s No Child Left Behind law, 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 is no guarantee that even this policy will solve the education crisis, but it does provide incentives for school improvement.
To be fair, deteriorating government schools are not entirely to blame. Other factors include lack of parental involvement, a culture of anti-intellectualism and affirmative action, which is just a euphemism for “lowered standards.†Parents have to take some responsibility for their children’s subpar academic performances, and parents and schools must hold children to higher standards.
Read Bush education policy to miss goals: Harvard study. The writer does a nice job summarizing the study.
In what I’m sure has generated lots of hate mail, an article titled, Culture, Discipline, and the No Child Left Behind Act, comes closest to explaining why NCLB is not working and why the gap between diverse students is not likely to be closed or narrowed until a significant cultural shift occurs:
Banfield warned school reformers that their proposals to improve student learning were bound to run into a brute fact— large numbers of children in the United States were the product of “lower-class culture.â€
To be clear, by “lower class†Banfield did not mean “poor.†… [L]ower-class culture has a live-in-the-moment ethos. Thus, youths reared in lower class culture tend to find school difficult because their parents failed to help them develop the mindset that enables them to sit still and learn.
…
The idealism of “No Child Left Behind†is on a collision course with reality. NCLB aims only at the institutional side of the schooling formula; it does not, though, attempt to elevate “lower class†culture or turn all parents into good nurturers. Nor, quite frankly, is it clear how NCLB or any policy could.Schools, especially those serving large numbers of children whose parents don’t well prepare them for learning, cannot possibly see to it that 100% of children reach proficiency. To insist that they do is to imagine that a government institution can obliterate the effects of culture and parental child-rearing.
The writer also mentions the importance of long term planning and setting goals. Did you know that the Seattle Public Schools implied that long term planning was a racist idea? I briefly blogged about it in this post. And these people are teaching your children. A cached copy of the dumb statement has since been removed from the Google archives.
While there are no quick and clear-cut solutions to this cultural problem, it’s not as complicated as it’s made out to be, either. First, family stability does affect children and is correlated with life outcomes. Seventy percent of black children are born to unmarried mothers and tend to be raised in female-headed households. Such families, by definition, are unstable. The point of mentioning this is not to focus on single parents per se, but on the endemic and generational lack of emphasis on academic achievement that is perpetuated in these families.
This leads to my second point. There is a poisonous strain of “anti-intellectualism” coursing through the subculture generally speaking. People can deny it, offer a couple of fleeting anecdotes to try and prove me wrong, curse me out via e-mail, talk about me like a dog on other blogs, or whatever makes them feel better. As a black person who’s grown up in a black family and with black friends and acquaintances and spends time around black people of various socioeconomic classes, I know what I’m talking about.
(For the uninitiated, I recommend John McWhorter’s Losing the Race: Self-Sabotage In Black America.)
Actor and conservative Joseph C. Phillips writes about the tendency to focus on sports, for example, at the expense of academics in his book, He Talk Like A White Boy.
Another example: Instead of facing enormous problems in the “black community,” including the epidemic of fatherlessness, the NAACP is “studying” tripe like the paucity of black characters on sitcoms! Does this sound like a people concerned at all about educational excellence and intellectual competitiveness? To be fair, the NAACP is a bit of a joke, and I doubt that many blacks consider it influential. At least I hope not. 
I ranted and lamented about this in Turn Off That Idiot Box!, to no avail, I’m sure.
I don’t know whether it’s just the black American subculture that’s the problem or something about people of African descent in general. I’m inclined to believe it’s the subculture. (Incidentally, black American subculture is part of the American culture, so don’t be fooled into believing that it is heavily influenced by the African continent.)
Third, we’re almost two generations past the beginning of the Civil Rights movement, and the idealistic among us envisioned a future Utopia where all the races would get along and have an equal amount of stuff — however you want to define “stuff.” This became the goal, and falling short of this goal is evidence to some people that the Civil Rights “dream” has not been achieved and that racism is “institutionalized” and must be eradicated by any means necessary, hence, race preferences and quotas.
But the goal itself was unrealistic. Equality of opportunity, not equality of outcome, is the best you can do in a free, capitalist country; otherwise, you have to start discriminating in the other direction to ensure that people with vastly different talents and skills end up with equal outcomes. Such a notion is legally, morally, and logically unsustainable. (Equal has become an idol, by the way.)
The emphasis should be on opportunity. If people don’t seize it when it’s right in front of them, which I argue it is most of the time in a country like the United States, they can’t blame “the system.”
I wrote about diversity earlier for this reason. While I believe that generations immediately after Emancipation had a lot of catching up to do, we are too far past slavery for that excuse to work anymore. In my admittedly lay and amateur opinion, I don’t think we can even blame Jim Crow for the achievement gap and other ills. Many ethnic groups throughout the world at some point in the history of the world have been discriminated against, demeaned, enslaved, subjugated, beaten, and killed. There is nothing unique about the “African American” experience in this regard.
What is unique about the “African American” experience is that we live in a country that has bent over backwards to make amends for past injustices. That some people are “left behind” is not evidence of racism. I believe that in 2006, it is imperative that blacks understand this and embrace the idea of self-help, self-improvement, and accountability for our lot in life as individuals.
Let me tie this jumble of ideas together. True diversity means that we’re different physically, mentally, intellectually, psychologically, etc., and for whatever reason, differences between racial groups are real and discernable.
Living in a capitalist, competitive, technologically advanced, and free society means that some people will be left behind, especially when objective standards are applied. One racial group may have more members fall short of those standards, and that’s when all the social engineering, standards-dropping, and blame games begin.
This blogger doesn’t have the answers. My only quest is to urge people to look within before looking without. If your child is failing or under-achieving, why? What can you do that doesn’t involve blaming George Bush or your great-great-great grandfather’s white owner? Do you encourage achievement in the home? Is it filled with books and other learning materials, or is it filled with vapid DVDs and the sounds of vacuous TV shows? Is the TV on from the time your kids get home from school until they go to bed, or are they required to complete their homework and engage in activities that stimulate and develop the intellect?
It’s a shame that individuals often don’t realize how much power and control they have over their own life outcomes and those of their precious children! If they only had the courage to harness this power.
Related posts:
- Acting White
- Montgomery County Dumbs Down ‘Gifted’ Programs
- Prince George’s County: Grade F
- Are Government Schools ‘Hiding’ Blacks’ Test Scores?
- I’m A Libertarian on Education
Update: Commenter Annie tells us about a conversation she had with a former prosecutor. He told her why he wouldn’t pick someone like her for a murder case with a black defendant. More important is the kind person he would select for such a case, based on experience and common sense:
You’re a single woman who lives downtown. You work for a do-goodey nonprofit. You’re clearly university educated. Everything about you screams, ‘bleeding heart liberal who’ll vote to acquit if she feels sorry for the guy.’ †(Wrong, and wrong again.)
“So who WOULD you want on your jury?†I asked.
“An old black guy with a hat on. Give me some 60-70 year old black guy in clothes that are downmarket but that he’s taken the trouble to iron carefully, wearing a hat. He grew up during Jim Crow. He knows what racial suffering was about. It’s his neighborhood that kids like the defendant are destroying, and he DOES.NOT.WANT.TO.HEAR about how the kid simply had to hold up the store and shoot the cashier because mama couldn’t afford to buy him a pair of Air Jordans.â€
Commenter Cedjan writes:
It sickens and saddens me to see a grown Black male (not worthy of being called a man) living with his Momma, when I know he isn’t trying to better himself. These guys spend their time making babies that they will never support and existing on the fringes of society.
I speak from experience, and I know I’m not alone. I’ve got a brother and cousins and know many other Black males who are just existing and taking up space. They act foolishly because usually their mothers enable them to, and have enabled them to all their lives. There are no fathers to speak of…I wish it wasn’t so, but it is. No amount of money or social programs will fix this problem. Liberal thinking has destroyed the Black family.
There is another aspect of NCLB that should be discussed more often as a bad idea, although I understand why you would focus on the race equality aspects of the law. The aspect I am referring to is the artificial levels of achievement that are set for each year, then raised again the following year. It is as if the government has mandated that all children in the school should run a four minute mile in order for the school to remain complaint. If the school is not complaint, funds are cut. Whether the children succeed at running that four minute mile or not, the following year they are expected to run a three minute and 45 seconds mile.
Where NCLB has affected my children is the Attendance assessment. Because my children are sick often (we have a weak immunity system passed along the generations), they missed a lot of school. In the past this would not be a problem because they would just catch up with whatever work they missed. But now NCLB demands a set percentage of attendance schoolwide. Since the new hatchetman/principal was called in to get the school into compliance, he revoked my children’s transfer permit since we lived outside the school boundaries. Now we must go to the high risk, lesser quality school nearby or homeschool. There is no forgiveness for being sick, even though my kids completed all their work AND scored high academically, especially my eleven year old who was sick the most.
NCLB is just a terrible thing to do to children. It hasn’t benefited us, or the other 12 families that had their transfer permits revoked. In essence, our children are being punished for getting sick, despite their best efforts to keep up with their studies. Simply insane.
Wow. What a long rant. I appreciate a forum where I can post this. I’m sure other parents are just as frustrated with this law as I am, and as you are.
Comment by Douglas Cootey — 06.16.06 @ 9:32 am
What a brilliant and well reasoned entry this is LaShawn. There is another facet to this argument as well.
My mother raised me to be an orphan - which sounds really horrible, but it is something for which I have been grateful all my life. She was orphaned at age 14 - when she was a senior in high school. Her contention (supported by my father) was that she never, ever wanted me to be a burden on anyone - least of all MYSELF! Therefore, school was paramount in our household and dinner conversation was lively and mildly contentious at times since if I made a sweeping statement - as the young are wont to do - my parents forced me to DEFEND that statement (if I could, which was seldom), so I also learned critical thinking skills.
None of this cost any money either - it is a matter of focus. My parents had a very full life as a couple and in business, but they devoted an enormous amount of energy to nurturing ME and now that I am nearing age 64, I realize what a magical and important gift they gave me. My best wish for every single child born into this world is that they benefit from the parenting I received. If they do, they won’t need designer clothes or the latest sports-related shoes because their internal riches will be so vast that they will be complete within themselves.
Comment by Gayle Miller — 06.16.06 @ 9:38 am
“The longing to possess what is not ours may cause us to neglect what is ours. ”
That says a lot. I never looked at it that way.
Comment by Renee — 06.16.06 @ 9:58 am
Beautiful essay, La Shawn, as usual. (”Truth is beauty, beauty, truth.”)I wanted to comment on one of your ideas, which was essentially: Is the low performance and live-for-the-moment ethos specific to the black subculture here, or general to people of African descent? Probably unknowable. But here is what I have observed.
I am a white woman married to a black man . . . but he’s Haitian. Heaven knows, that is not a society on which I am suggesting we should model our own. But he has a certain poise and joyfulness and freedom about him that is so different from the chip-on-the-shoulder approach to life that I witness in so many black men raised here. We discussed and he said, “It is one thing to be black when you are the only black face in a sea of white ones. It is another to be black when every single person you see everywhere you go is also black. It gives you the great gift of not having to *think about yourself* all the time.”
Of course, this is not possible in the United States absent segregation, which I am most emphatically not arguing for (and which, when it was the law of the land, was not in place for the comfort of blacks). But it did get me thinking. I had also observed that one thing the women I most admire in leadership positions had in common was that they all went to all-female colleges. We have this idea that places like Smith and Sweet Briar are teaching elocution or cucumber-sandwich- making or something. What they’re really doing is giving young women a chance to focus on academics without distraction or pressures, and to develop formidable leadership skills.
After that discussion with my husband (then boyfriend), I started keeping my eyes opened. And I did notice that the people I met — Togolese cab drivers, Ghanian schoolteachers, you name it — did seem to have that blessed freedom from self-consciousness. The fallacy of positive instances? Sure, maybe. But I think it’s also possible that one of the biggest things kids need, especially in order to learn, is the permission to just be themselves. It’s tough to focus on something outside yourself if you feel like you have to focus on yourself.
One final anecdote. Ten years ago, I was called to jury duty. I didn’t get picked, which was a relief, because it was a murder trial which would likely take a long time, and I was due in LA on business the following week. So I’m on my flight to LA and my seatmate struck up a conversation with me (normally, I read or do work, but what the heck). So I told him about jury duty, and I said, “On the practical side, it’s a relief, but it would have been an interesting experience, and anyway, it a bit hurt my feelings. I mean, ‘What? You think I’m not smart? You think I can’t be fair?’ ”
To which my seatmate, a federal prosecutor as it happens, replied, “If I were prosecuting that case, no way would I let you on that jury. You’re a single woman who lives downtown. You work for a do-goodey nonprofit. You’re clearly university educated. Everything about you screams, ‘bleeding heart liberal who’ll vote to acquit if she feels sorry for the guy.’ ” (Wrong, and wrong again.)
“So who WOULD you want on your jury?” I asked.
“An old black guy with a hat on. Give me some 60-70 year old black guy in clothes that are downmarket but that he’s taken the trouble to iron carefully, wearing a hat. He grew up during Jim Crow. He knows what racial suffering was about. It’s his neighborhood that kids like the defendant are destroying, and he DOES.NOT.WANT.TO.HEAR about how the kid simply had to hold up the store and shoot the cashier because mama couldn’t afford to buy him a pair of Air Jordans.”
So, in the US as opposed to Haiti or Togo or Ghana, how should we help black kids just be themselves, absent everyone living via segregation among people who all look like themselves? It’s easy to say, Well, just get over seeing black vs white, but how? If we could do it by ourselves, we would have, years ago.
I am with you, La Shawn, that it’s through Christ, but not necessarily through his coming again. The people I know who self-identify as Christians pretty much stop right there. If you’re serious about it, it’s all the self-identification you can really manage.
Comment by Annie — 06.16.06 @ 10:30 am
I always kind of doubted the reasoning behind NCLB. When I was in grade school they used to break us up into reading groups based on ability. To me, NCLB is kind of like having all of 3rd grade in one reading group and dedicating your attention to the 2 or 3 kids who don’t get it — who, in effect, slow everyone else down. Does it make sense to drain finite educational resources away from average kids and high-achieving kids in order to bring the bottom end up to simply being marginal?
Comment by Greg — 06.16.06 @ 10:48 am
As you know I will agree with you on certain aspects of your piece in particular aspects of black subculture that are extremely detrimental to us as a people (fatherlessness being the main one) I can’t fully agree with the notion that 40 years is enough to redress Jim Crow. I think that progress should be measured perhaps a century out.
I do think that some racism is institutionalized and I mean that in the sense that some of the folks in power in this country have institutionalized it within themselves and since they hold the power to either affect change or not, they choose not to. More than likely some of these folks are white. I think perhaps when the boomer generation starts to die off and this will be some time away, maybe will some better measurements be able to be made.
American culture as a whole has been more rude, crass, less wholesome, less respectful, dare I say it, less Christian in the truest sense of the world. What transpires in the main culture, trickles down I suppose.
I still don’t have much hope though for race relations in this country though. I’m a realist, not an idealist.
Comment by Tiffany in Houston — 06.16.06 @ 11:05 am
La Shawn, a couple of questions:
1) What do you mean by: “But in a country with diverse races, some which possess greater abilities than others …”? I want to make sure I’m not reading something into that statement you didn’t intend.
2) Can you explain for me what effect, if any, the fear of “acting white” has on overall black achievement? Where I come from, there’s a largely white demographic, the communities are basically middle class, but the schools are all good and well-funded and there’s still an achievement gap. A news reporter was asking local guidance counselors about it, most of whom gave the standard liberal party-line responses.
Then, he asked the black counselor who gave an answer I don’t think the reporter expected. He didn’t blame institutional racism, etc., but instead talked, among other things, about how smart black kids are afraid to do well in school for fear of being labelled by their black peers as “acting white”.
I wasn’t familiar with that term and am curious what you would make of it.
Comment by Greg — 06.16.06 @ 11:07 am
Doesn’t it depend on what you mean by “acting white”?
If acting white is defined as being respectful to others, speaking clearly and intelligently without slang or hateful epithets - then far too few of us “act white” and I AM white!
Comment by Gayle Miller — 06.16.06 @ 11:20 am
Greg, I added the word “may” to the statement because I based my opinion on apparent differences. It may not be the case that one race, generally speaking, is smarter (for lack of a better word) than others, but it’s a perception that won’t disappear with politically correct rhetoric.
As for “acting white,” it is the idea that “being smart,” studying, and using proper grammar are white traits, and that a black youngster engaged in these things is acting contrary to his nature. I must emphasize that this is typical among YOUNG PEOPLE. We have to keep their naivety and inexperience in mind. It’s a type of peer pressure that’s probably more destructive than the usual kind.
Please follow the links in the post, including the ones to previous posts. I’ve blogged about these ideas many times. Also, you may want to buy a copy of black actor Joseph C. Phillips’s book He Talk Like A White Boy. The title says it all. Read my review:
http://books.nationalreview.com/review/?q=MjA4MWM3ZWMwNDVmZDcxMmI3MmMyMDM5OTY5ZDFlOGE=
Comment by La Shawn — 06.16.06 @ 11:23 am
Tiffany, you might not have much hope for race relations but isn’t it an awesome opportunity for us to have a forum like this where a white guy like me can exchange ideas with a black woman like you in an atmosphere where we’re trying to achieve understanding?
And we have much in common. Like you, I agree that “American culture as a whole has been more rude, crass, less wholesome, less respectful, dare I say it, less Christian …” It bothers me that I don’t get to raise my kids in as wholesome a world as the one I had the opportunity to grow up in.
I suppose we could point all kinds of fingers of blame: the entertainment media that bring garbage further and further into the mainstream; liberal/progressive notions of “nonjudgmentalism”, for example, which excuse bad behavior and remove shame from our cultural make-up.
How many times have you looked at a pregnant 15 or 16-year-old and thought to yourself, “that kid isn’t even born yet and he doesn’t have a chance”? Of course, is it any surprise that we have all these kids running around pregnant with all the images and messages they see in the culture around them?
And the parents who dress their 8-yr-old daughters to look like 18-yr-old sluts bare some of the responsibility. When parents don’t take the time to know what their kids are up to, they bare some of the responsibility.
Parents these days are afraid of being parents. Instead, they want to “empower” (gag) their kids by treating them as equals, as friends. Because, quite frankly, there’s a lot less work involved in being a friend than being a parent.
And what we end up seeing is what La Shawn described above. NCLB won’t work because there are significant barriers to children learning that are beyond the control of the schools. La Shawn hit the nail on the head. We have a lot of crappy parents running around this country (some of whom, for example, stay out all hours of the night stripping for Duke Lacrosse players).
Instead of making excuses for crappy parents (e.g., don’t call her a stripper, call her a woman or a student or a mother), we, as a society, need to start condemning their crappiness. We need to reject the idea that it’s enough to be your child’s friend. And maybe then we won’t need a NCLB.
Sorry, La Shawn, if this drifted somewhat. I wanted to answer Tiffany’s post. I tried to keep it germane to the NCLB issue insofar as it relates to your point about parenting.
Comment by Greg — 06.16.06 @ 12:10 pm
NCLB Mission Creep
No Child Left Behind: La Shawn Barber contends that the program has yet to reach its goals….
Trackback by Pajamas Media — 06.16.06 @ 1:21 pm
There are problems with NCLB, no doubt. Still, on the whole, I think it’s a good idea if there are changes that can be made. It needs some tweaking.
I’m a board member for a small fairly rural school (”fairly rural” means that we’re our own school district, close to but still outside a couple of cities) with virtually no blacks (speaking %s) but nearly half of our school are Mexican derived. You could also say that the school’s children are pretty much the children of the owners of local Ag properties and the children of those who work for them. The rich and the poor. NCLB has had it’s impact on us - both good and bad, imo. It has required us to break down the categories so that we can identify as a group those who are not succeeding. Not surprisingly, they aren’t black, white, or mexican - they’re poor(I think the term is “socio-economically deprived”). We are required (because this identifiable group didn’t meet the required standards improvement)to set aside money for individual tutoring from an independent source. This seems like a good idea, but after one year’s application, maybe not. Why not is a different question. I asked our administrator if she thought that the problem was one of family background or if the kids were just “dummies”(defined by me as kids who don’t qualify as special ed, but who are just plain slow learners). In her opinion, the problem is due to the failure of the home environment to adequately socialize the kids and failure to expose them to language. By the time they get to us in first grade, they are already 2-3 years behind in language capability. I asked her if she thought they could _ever_ catch up - she didn’t sound very hopeful, but apparently there is a software program that has been proven very successful. It’s also very expensive - not only in the cost of the program itself, but also due to the fact that in order to benefit from it, we need to nearly double our computer inventory. Fortunately, Calif is providing us with a large amount of “one time” money this year - and that’s where we’re going to spend it. Will we succeed? I hope so. I don’t think the standards are so high that it’s impossible to meet them. The goal of NCLB, I believe, is to counteract the “soft” prejuidice that allows teachers to ignore kids that have a disadvantaged background with the aphorism of “s/he did really well for a __________(fill in the blank)”. This says we have to address the capabilities of _every_ child.
The reason I am in favor of NCLB is that it provides a national standard against which parents can - if they care - measure the “A’s” their school gives agains the “A’s” that everybody else gives. It’s up to the parents - if they care - to act against their board to get people elected who will change the system if it needs changing. If I were to be able to wave my magic wand and change _anything_, it would be to break down school districts and the boards which manage them so that no more than 1-3 schools would be managed by any one board. I’d do that so that the vote of the people served by that board wouldn’t be diluted, but would allow the voters to make changes if change is needed. It’s true that money spent in administration can be saved by concentration, and often efficiency is increased. That’s a plus, but it must be weighed against the loss of control by the voters. The less local, the less responsive to the voter, and the harder it is to get change. I also think boards should be volunteer, but that’s a different issue.
I know that you, La Shawn, are against public schools - and I understand why. It pains me to hear some of the horror stories I hear. I don’t believe those problems _need_ to exist in the public schools, but I agree that public policy which is controlled by state and federal law ouside the schools’ control can be detrimental to young people and unless we can get a reversal of some of those policies, public schools are going to have a tough time changing anything.
By the way - our very small school - 260 full time students, grades 1-8 - also has a home school and a charter high school(home school). I don’t claim that we’re your typical public school!
Comment by suek — 06.16.06 @ 1:25 pm
La Shawn:
You are tiptoing around the word “diversity”. Like oxygen, water, food, and affirmative action, in moderate amounts they are healthy, in excess fata.
Diversity is unhealthy in the context of the NCLB law.
The expectations that students of such differing natural ability (IQ - not open for discussion by liberals), family backgrounds, school environment (discipline, association woth peers that attack them for “acting White” etc.)will perform the same in school is just nonsense.
Some degree of “uniformity” is reasonable.
I recently took a great course in online teaching. One of the topics was “modifying your methods for people with “different learning styles”. There is some merit to this, but much of this emphasis on “learning styles” is focused on low achievers. Leftist think - “If we just figure out what this low achiever’s “learning style” is, and modify OUR teaching style with this in mind, the low achieving student just might learn. This was just a little too close to the NCLB mentality.
My ideal of diversity is that people of different colors will still study from the same books and read English and try as hard as they can to beat eveyone else in school. Asians appear to have no trouble doing this when their parents come to the USA with the shirts on their backs. Others can do the same.
The people may be of diverse colors, but to be American, goals and methods must be somewhat “non diverse” - otherwise, we will not be the USA anymore.
Comment by Frank Zavisca — 06.16.06 @ 1:29 pm
LaShawn, as usual you keep it hard hittin’, and you’re dead on. The problem in the underachieving Black community IS lack of adherence to moral and educational standards IN THE HOME.
It sickens and saddens me to see a grown Black male (not worthy of being called a man) living with his Momma, when I know he isn’t trying to better himself. These guys spend their time making babies that they will never support and existing on the fringes of society.
I speak from experience, and I know I’m not alone. I’ve got a brother and cousins and know many other Black males who are just existing and taking up space. They act foolishly because usually their mothers enable them to, and have enabled them to all their lives. There are no fathers to speak of.
I wish it wasn’t so, but it is. No amount of money or social programs will fix this problem. Liberal thinking has destroyed the Black family.
Comment by Cedjan — 06.16.06 @ 1:54 pm
I’m not an educator like suek, but I’ve had a chance to watch the way the US school system has evolved, and have the unfortunate fortune to have an older sister who is a school teacher and a great example of why NCLB is required, but will fail.
The truth is that its not just the schools that fail. Society has failed these children, often before they are born. Too many are born to parents who just don’t understand the importance of an education, and who lack the grit to be parents rather than ‘friends” to children who need guidance and discipline before they need that new pair of Air-Jordans.
So children arrive at school socially unprepared for the environment which requires attention paid to work and to studies. They lack positive role-models and in many cases the TV is the place where they get most of their “parenting” Teachers can try to fix this, but honestly, most don’t care. My older sister (who’s name and school will be kept out of this post) openly has said she became a teacher so she could have her summers off. She’s an english teacher who doesn’t care if her students can spell the words right. (her sentence one day while grading an exam at my parents house when asked about a misspelled word on one test, “Oh, I don’t worry abuot that.”)
The schools do need to be held to a high standard, to push teachers to do their best and to eventually weed out teachers, like my sister, who are in the profession for the wrong reasons. However, we also have to hold society to a higher standard, and NCLB doesn’t do that.
So while its a good idea, its doomed to failure.
Comment by Mark — 06.16.06 @ 2:17 pm
LaShawn says 70% of black children are born into unmarried black female headed households. The U.S. Census Bureau says it’s more like 56% which is still very very bad, but the raw number is about 6.1 million. In unmarried white female headed household it’s only 18% of white children but the raw number is about 8.9 million. So if we compare these two groups, are there differences that are split along racial lines? And if so, are those differences attributable to genetics or access (or denial of access) to resources. I don’t know, but I’m curious if there are studies out there.
I grew up black in a black family with black friends. Went to school with whites all the way up to the professional level. But my daughters attended 98% black Detroit (Michigan)Public schools. My 20 yr. old graduated with honors from high school and is a Junior at Michigan State University. My seventeen year old is, sadly, no longer an all A student but she is like 3.9 and a member of the national honor society. Both of them speak very articulately and ran into a little of that “you talk white” stuff but it didn’t bother them or us, the parents. Most of their friends are of the same demographic; middle class black families. I attribute their success primarily to strong involvement from loving parents/caregivers. I agree that NCLB is failing. Partly because the federal government put a heavy burden on the state and local governments to bring all children to a competent level without providing sufficient funding and resources. But I also agree that it’s nearly impossible to legislate strong, loving parental/caregiver involvement.
LaShawn says slavery in America was not unique, but a close study will show that there were differences. Southern slave owners in particular, broke up families, banned education and wreaked violence on slaves much more so than northern slave owners and those slave owning countries in the Caribbean and in South America. My source was:
Inhuman bondage: the rise and fall of slavery in the New World,(2006) by Davis, David Brion. Black males from other countries will often note the differences they have with American born black males. I’m not making any judgmental statements about the differences but I think the comment by Annie’s husband has a ring of truth: that is, it is different growing up black in a sea of black faces versus growing up black in a sea of white faces.
Another good comment. Re: the out of wedlock birth rate, the oft-quoted 70 percent figure is more accurate than the purported 56 percent rate, which is still high, as we both agree. In some places the rate is closer to 80 percent. - Admin
Comment by Leon — 06.16.06 @ 2:29 pm
Cedjan observed I speak from experience, and I know I’m not alone. I’ve got a brother and cousins and know many other Black males who are just existing and taking up space. They act foolishly because usually their mothers enable them to, and have enabled them to all their lives. There are no fathers to speak of.
I wish it wasn’t so, but it is. No amount of money or social programs will fix this problem. Liberal thinking has destroyed the Black family.
Comment by Cedjan — 06.16.06 @ 1:54 pm
I’d like to make a point that is based off of what he posts here. He observes that many black males live with their mother’s and are enabled by them. I saw something in a book once that described another culture which had a high incidence of problem families. (although in a different way.) and the problems might be similar here.
What we are seeing is Black women who are single mothers end up spoiling their sons, the way they wish they could spoil a husband (but they don’t have one unfortunately.) The sons grow up and since they’ve been spoiled their whole lives don’t really try hard to get a job or move forward, but they often are very charming and have no problem getting women into bed, getting them pregnant. But.. they won’t marry or help with the children.
So the next generation of black women once again find themselves spoiling their sons rather than their husbands….
can I say “Vicious circle, please do not feed.”
Comment by Mark — 06.16.06 @ 2:38 pm
The stay behinds
No Child Left Behind has failed to close the racial achievement gaps, writes the Harvard Civil Rights Project in a new report. It’s the culture, stupid, responds LaShawn Barber. While there are no quick and clear-cut solutions to this cultural…
Trackback by joannejacobs.com — 06.16.06 @ 2:44 pm
She calls NCLB “a classically noble bit of social engineering,†and posits that it will never work because of the true diversity inherent in our society, (I.E., Asians score higher on standardized tests than whites, who score higher than Hispanics, who score higher than blacks, as well as the observation that everyone has unique abilities and talents, which will automatically place students on different levels, some lower and some higher).
Pingback by customerservant.com — 06.16.06 @ 2:50 pm
>>I’m not an educator like suek>>
I’m suek, and I’m not an educator either. Members of the board set policy(when we can - policy is frequently highly restricted and determined by the state)and most importantly hire administration which puts those policies in place. People often think that it is a good thing to have educators as members of the board. I disagree. I prefer to have parents of school children and other members of the community on the board. While I don’t totally agree with that old saw that “Those who can,do. Those who can’t, teach”, nevertheless, I think it’s frequently the penchant of the educated(and over-educated) to intellectualize and debate way too much, and decide too little. That probably includes me…but we also have a hardware store owner(founded 1906), a member who runs the transportation department of a large sod producing company, a former personnel manager, the owner/manager of a lemon grove and me. I have no credentials other than basic education, 5 kids, obviously a sucker since I was the 4-H local leader, and at the time we all were elected to replace the board which was recalled at the same time, the only female. I was the “token” female, but I never let that bother me. As I said, it’s a small school. Small town. Good place to be.
Only one of us now has a child still in the school, but we all did at one point or another.
Sometimes board members run for election thinking that’s a good way to get into bigger and better political office - fortunately none of us presently on the board are so inclined. We all look on it as a job _someone_ has to do and for now, we’re IT.
Comment by suek — 06.16.06 @ 4:01 pm
>>I agree that NCLB is failing. Partly because the federal government put a heavy burden on the state and local governments to bring all children to a competent level without providing sufficient funding and resources.>>
What sort of funding do you think is required? where should it be spent? Higher salaries? better books? newer schools? where do you think the money is lacking? what burden have the feds placed on the schools and local governments?
Comment by suek — 06.16.06 @ 4:07 pm
First there are several red herrings in this debate…
RH- Asians are smartest. Huge red herring. The modern Asian immirgrant is a merchant. Their culture _IN THIS_COUNTRY_ is one of being a merchant and educating your child as completely as possible (this too is a stereo-type — growing up in Philly I can tell you, they have their own set of ignorant-yet-dangerous.)
RH- Blacks are intellectually inferior. Huge red herring. The creation two of the most popular American art forms - Rock and Roll and Hip Hop, not to mention Jazz, Gospel and disco (I know. Don’t blame us, you white folks ruined it)– is not the work of an unintellegent person.)
RH-Inner city white =inner city black. Huge red herring. The two are not equal. Black folk make up approximately 70% of Washington DC. But of DC’s poor? Over 90%.
Look, the determining factor in this matter is environment.
And Lashawn, I am disappointed that you so readily concead matters of intellegence so easily. The intellegent “negroid” is no more an anomily than the “slack jawed caucasian”.
Say what you want about public education. But I won’t let your white readers assume that they are just naturally more gifted than I am.
Disappointed or not, I’m going by objective measurements, such as scores and grades. While there are other factors that contribute to the underachievement of black students, I think it’s wise to focus on things like raising IQ scores and standardized test performances. If you don’t like the measurements, don’t take it out on me. I don’t make the rules. I’m just reporting the facts. When I write what I do, I’m always referring to generalities.
At any given point a black student can outscore and out-test a white student. But generally speaking, black students lag behind their white peers. That’s a fact. And speaking of red herrings, where did I say that an intelligent black person was an anomoly? Please don’t read into the post what I didn’t communicate and don’t use my blog as a dumping ground for your frustration. - Admin
Comment by sonnyredd — 06.16.06 @ 4:48 pm
I am not against home schooling. Neither am I against public schooling. Nevertheless, after reading the article below, I fear for the future unless we demand adherence to our Bill of Rights. (Article from AmericanThinker.com)
http://tinyurl.com/lr665
Comment by suek — 06.16.06 @ 4:49 pm
“The longing to possess what is not ours may cause us to neglect what is ours. â€
Or it could be used to help drive and motivate us to achieve more.
Comment by Jack — 06.16.06 @ 4:54 pm
LaShawn. I don’t know if you have ever read this paper but I think that these excerpts are interesting and something that I can relate to. I hope it’s ok to post the excerpts.
http://www2.english.uiuc.edu/405%2D1999/teaching.htm
Aside from critical classroom discussions on race, using direct instructions is crucial in teaching black students. This can be considered “explicit teaching” of race because one who uses direct instruction is using a communication style that is “culturally appropriate” for black students (Ladson-Billings 16). Direct instructions means telling students exactly what is expected of them in an assignment or even in a behavior. It may mean giving an order like “stop talking right now,” as opposed to, “let’s try to be quiet.” In Shirley Brice Heath’s classic ethnographic study, Ways With Words, she studied the learning style of black children from a working class town in North Carolina. Heath explores the idea that black students’ respond better to teachers who give direct commands rather than teachers who simply hint at what is expected.
Although Health’s study pertained to black children, the idea that black students respond better to direct commands also holds true for college age students. Delpit supports the idea of direct instruction or what she calls “explicitness,” even in the college classroom. She says that “explicit” instruction is often criticized by progressive white educators because it is such an obvious expression of power. However, Delpit argues that this is what black students respond to and need in classroom instruction. She insists that teachers do have power in the classroom and to de-emphasize that power is to force middle class white values on all students (Delpit 27).
In addition to direct instruction, experts on educating black students argue that black students also respond better to authoritarian teachers. Irvine and Fraser explore the pedagogical style used to teach black students in working class urban schools. They call tough-minded, disciplinary, no-nonsense, teachers, “warm demanders” (1). This perspective argues that most black students expect teachers to act authoritarian like “warm demanders.” The more authoritarian a teacher is, the more respect his or her students will have. Michelle Foster discovered that black students were often “proud of their teacher’s meanness.” Foster reported that black students felt authoritarian teachers advocated for their academic achievement, limited classroom distractions and managed the class in such a way that contributed to students’ success.
Some white educators might argue that taking on an authoritarian style of teaching at the college level seems unnecessary or that students who require it are simply immature. However, this authoritarian style may translate into becoming an effective teacher because it demands the attention of all students and offers a rigorous work load. Ladson-Billings discusses an especially “tough” black teacher in college:
“I found myself in the dreaded Dr. Jones’s class…She was demanding—there were volumes of reading and tests every week. And she was crazy!…She seemed to be able to stare a hole right through you with her dark-ringed eyes. Every class was a performance. Yet once I got over my fear of this woman I found that I sat with my eyes riveted on her. And I never missed one class. I could not recall ever learning so much from one person…” (24).
Ladson-Billings’s college professor appears to be the college-version of Irvine and Fraser’s “warm demander.” Like Ladson-Billings, Black students may respond better to college instructors that require difficult tests and a heavy work load because a “tough” approach to teaching is respected in black culture.
—————————————————————————
Post excerpts, links…anything to keep the discussion interesting. Thanks, Shade. - Admin
Comment by Shade — 06.16.06 @ 4:58 pm
I’m not dumping a thing, Lashawn. Your preamble about coveting that which you weren’t given may be read in multiple ways. It needed to be addressed.
And the use of statistics does not address the point that you just made…that any single black student has as good if not better a chance to outscore any single white student on any single exam or test.
But when test scores are offered as evidence of something, more often than not, that something takes us down a very un-cool, and un-true, path.
Thanks for clearing that up for me, though!
You knew we weren’t going to agree on everything, anyway.
“Dumping” is exactly how it read to me. - Admin
Comment by sonnyredd — 06.16.06 @ 5:40 pm
No Child Left Behind Act Failing?
As you may already figured out, I’m a strong propnent of quality education for our children. So, it’s understandable that with great interest, today, I read La Shawn Barber’s post on how Bush’s No Child Left Behind law is failing.
Trackback by Ron's Random Ruminations — 06.16.06 @ 6:07 pm
When I was in grad school for education (after receiving an MA in US History) we were told quite explicitly- direct instruction is bad, don’t use it. Students don’t learn from direct instruction because it doesn’t give them “ownership” of their education. We were also told that they had just as much to contribute in terms of subject matter as we did, and because we were teachers, we shouldn’t assume we were the guards of a secret storehouse of knowledge. I found this absolutely preposterous.
My professional teaching didn’t last long.
Comment by juliem — 06.16.06 @ 6:24 pm
LaShawn, No Child Left Behind isn’t failing. It’s right on course to accomplishing what it set out to do, create a national standard in education.
We can’t fall into the trap of believing this is about the children. From the state’s point of view that this is about the state. Ed. Secretary calls it “getting a return on their investment”.
This is about the state first and their goals. That is, to create a workforce for the 21st century. That’s why you have people like Governor Jeb Bush of Florida passing a law recently to require 14 and 15 year olds to declare a career major like you do in college. Most kids can’t decide what to wear to the prom let alone decide what to be when they grow up. Yet, that state and South Carolina both require it. Michigan, my home state, is headed in that direction too. You watch, more states will follow suit in the next few years.
If we were serious about educating in the best interest of the child, we would quit testing and start teaching. Black, white, and everyone else. Instead, we test, test, test. This benefits no one but the state and the union leaders who elect them. Most rank and file members hate the testing aspect of their job.
In a public Q&A recently, I asked Micheal Flanagan our State Superintendant of Public Instruction what it meant to be “well educated”? He stammered and said, he hadn’t thought much about it. No one had ever asked him that before! I’m serious. My only regret was not having my video camera handy. It was a comedy routine. Except that it was sad. Here’s the man in charge of educating the children in our state and he couldn’t tell me what it means to be “well educate”!?! Yet, he was there to give a talk on reforming our education!
Don’t be fooled, this isn’t about what’s best for the children. No Child Left Behind leaves ALL children behind at the benefit of the state. We all suffer when we allow the state to have this much control over the minds and hearts of our nation’s children.
Comment by spunkyhomeschool — 06.16.06 @ 6:26 pm
I think it is REALLY interesting what Shade posted. My mother is a teacher that is a strict disciplinarian and she reports that the students who did the worst in her classes loved her to death. I can’t tell you how many of her class hooligans come up to her in public and have gone on to be productive citizens and all of them state that because my mom “didn’t take no mess” that’s why they had respect for her and seems like maybe themselves after a while.
I will say that my mother says it is harder to teach the Gen X kids…She’s retiring in 2 years.
Comment by Tiffany in Houston — 06.16.06 @ 6:26 pm
>>If we were serious about educating in the best interest of the child, we would quit testing and start teaching.>>
How do you know what the child knows if you don’t test? How can you teach if you don’t know where to begin?
>>It’s right on course to accomplishing what it set out to do, create a national standard in education.
This is about the state first and their goals. That is, to create a workforce for the 21st century.
Don’t be fooled, this isn’t about what’s best for the children.>>
These three sentences jumped out at me…I’m very confused by them. What do you see as best for children? What’s wrong with a national standard for education? Don’t you think children need to be raised to work to support themselves and their families in the future?
>>… he couldn’t tell me what it means to be “well educate(d)â€!>>
So…what does “well educated” mean to _you_?
Comment by suek — 06.16.06 @ 7:41 pm
This is a lot to answer in one comment box. I’ll try but I’m going to have to reference my blog for further details.
How do you know what the child knows if you don’t test? How can you teach if you don’t know where to begin? What’s wrong with a national standard for education?
Testing what the child knows isn’t the issue. A teacher testing what is taught is not the same as a state determined proficiency. When the state decides to test, they determine what is taught, what is taught is what is thought. I don’t want the state determining what my child thinks. That’s not there job. If you don’t believe that testing drives curriculum you haven’t talked to many educators. They all teach to the test.
You asked, “What’s wrong with a national standard for education?”
The states goals for what they want our citizens to think, are not my goals or standard. Equality in education is a myth because we don’t have the same educational goal. That’s why it is so important for parents to think about WHY they want to educate before they think about HOW or WHAT they should teach.
For more information read the link
http://spunkyhomeschool.blogspot.com/2005/08/why-do-we-educate.html
It explains the myth of an equal education.
You also asked,
Don’t you think children need to be raised to work to support themselves and their families in the future?
Sure I do, but that’s not the goal of education. That’s the fruit of a well educated person. When the goal is “job training” the mind is closed to learning beyond the scope of that occupation. That’s why choosing a “career major” at a young age is so damaging to our society. An auto mechanic may never need poetry but he is a better individual and better educated if he studies the great poets. Limiting his education to job usefulness limits our whole society from greatness.
Lastly you asked, “What does a well educated child mean to you?”
My children’s success in education is not determined by a degree or a dollar. A well educated child is one who knows and loves the Lord their God with all their heart, mind, soul, and strength, and loves their neighbor as themselves.
And I can guarantee you this, that IS NOT the state’s goal. And it may not be your goal either. That’s why a national standard and equality in education is a false premise from the start. Whose standard do we choose, yours? Mine? My Muslim neighbors? The default is the state because they control the funding. They didn’t ask the parents what they wanted the children to know. They know if they did they would have mass chaos. The state chooses and sadly most parents just go along with it all.
Comment by spunkyhomeschool — 06.16.06 @ 8:12 pm
The failure of No Child Left Behind
Before the blame game begins, look at why it is not working
LaShawn Barber has a great article on the failures of the No Child Left Behind program. You should really read the whole thing, but this leapt out at me.
Trackback by Pagan Vigil — 06.16.06 @ 9:49 pm
I am staggered when I remember that Abe Lincoln had only about 2 years’ total schooling (and perhaps it only added up to as little as one year).
And yet he knew Shakespeare and the Bible and the Noah Webster Dictionary and Euclid.
Like most men of his era, he was mostly self-educated (sometimes in a cabin, reading by firelight). But at least he had the best stuff to read!
Imagine if he had been raised by the state–told that as a poor farmer he was the “victim” of eastern factory interests; that he was given dumbed-down books to read with easy vocabulary he was never expected to progress beyond; that he was told the only reason he would want to study Euclid was because he wanted to ape the Eastern factory crowd (and hence he would be accused of selling out); and so on.
What might he have become?
George Washington only had about a 6th grade education. Yet his letters are examples of elegance in prose. He must have something other to read better than “Hiawatha had two mothers”.
No Child Left Behind fails because was is needed is No Family Divided. Begin with that, and then feed the kids with the “meat” of our civilization instead of pablum. And don’t waste our future Lincolns.
Comment by Seahawk — 06.17.06 @ 9:04 am
I agree with most of the points here.
This is why the U.S. needs national standards, because currently some States/Counties have much weaker standards and poorer results than others.
Yet the standardized testing is pretty much the same. I have never understood that… they have standardized testing, but no standard education. That makes no sense. Of course this sets up a condition of poorer test results for certain areas.
This is going to become a big problem for the U.S. within the next 20 years or so. We don’t have enough doctors, scientists, engineers, computer scientists, inventors, etc to stay competitive. This is because of the lack of students are being prepared for these kinds of positions.
I also agree about the dumbed down Pop culture & television and so forth… I agree about the NAACP as well. The organization has lost its way. It has a good legacy and did some great things in the past…but now its sort of a waste of time.
I almost had a Nervous Breakdown a few years back when the NAACP “Image” awards program honored thug and child rapist R. Kelly. And that’s not the only case of the NAACP getting cozy with thug culture. This is an ongoing thing.
It seems as though the NAACP lost any moral standing that it may have had in the past. I’m not even sure what it really stands for anymore.
It should either be eliminated…or rebuilt to become a more useful, practical, effective and relevant organization (and a name change might be nice as well).
Comment by The Angry Independent — 06.17.06 @ 9:05 am
Since we just cant seem to get away from classifying problems as just problems, but rather in skin color…..though I agree in part with what has been written…
I must be different because I grew up with alot of incredibly smart black peers who were consistently in the top 10% of the class in a majority white school. One of them became valedictorian.
Then again, I had both parents who stressed education and achievement and I was a great student. I was blessed to have this. I have four brothers and we all graduated with honors from college. I even equated my self-worth with getting good grades all the time.
I no longer think this way. It is infinitely important that kids today off all races learn that getting good grades and achieving great things in school and life is not all that matters.
Joseph C. Phillips says that black kids want to be basketball players and hip hop stars rather than doctors and lawyers…but so does every other color of kid…what is so wrong with that?
I’ll bet he wanted to be a ball player of some sort at some point in his childhood. We all did.
First and foremost, kids today of all colors need to learn about Christ, about morality, about character, telling the truth, honoring their parents, their elders and etc. Very few are being taught these things. Is this part of the NCLB law?
Black families, White families, Asian, all colors and creeds worship the almighty dollar. Worth is determined by what you own and how much you have. It’s all about me me me. Even christians talk about being successful in life and business all the time. We worship the blessings of life, not the One who does the blessing. Achievement in school, career and business is the measuring stick today.
It wont matter if you got into Harvard or made straight A’s when you pass away…it will matter if you believed on Christ.
The family unit is being destroyed by bad decision-making, deception, idolatry and a lack of morality. It is in no way unique to “black” families. It is just evidence of our downward spiral as a nation in these last days….
Now, I’m the anti-intellectual…
Comment by lukeNC — 06.17.06 @ 9:53 am
As a parent, I agree wholeheartedly with the woman who wisely attributed her daughters’ success with the love and attention they received over the years from parents and caregivers. Parents are the foundation of everything the child does, from day one. You wouldn’t build a house on half of a foundation — it would surely collapse…why build a family on one??
As for inner-city schools, my son attends a Baltimore City public school, and it’s interesting to note which children have two parents/middle class homes, and which children live in the projects down the street and have single moms. The vast majority of the 2-parent kids are well-spoken good students. They may not be the best-dressed in the latest and greatest, they may not have their hair done, the gold jewellry…but they have that foundation — and that’s priceless.
Comment by Carol — 06.17.06 @ 10:04 am
Spunky said “Sure I do, but that’s not the goal of education. That’s the fruit of a well educated person. When the goal is “job training†the mind is closed to learning beyond the scope of that occupation.
Hmmm. Or, you could have it backwards. A student with no idea what he wants to do has no impulse to take hold of his education at all. You can tell a kid who wants to be a mechanic, “learn this because it will help you in this way.” But there is no handle at all for a child who just plain doesn’t want to do anything.
That’s why choosing a “career major†at a young age is so damaging to our society. An auto mechanic may never need poetry but he is a better individual and better educated if he studies the great poets. Limiting his education to job usefulness limits our whole society from greatness. “
I don’t recall any initiative that said that the kids in mechanic track could not take English. That straw man is a little silly.
Comment by Twill00 — 06.17.06 @ 12:38 pm
Neither NCLB, nor any other program, will fix what is inherently broken: gov’t schooling of any sort. I resent having money taken out of my pocket w/o my consent to pay to educate someone else’s children, particularly when they are not being educated in a Godly fashion. Debates about the details of gov’t education are simply rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic. Let it sink. Homeschool your kids, or form/support a good church school if you must. If you’re a ‘redstater’, have kids; lots of them. We’ve got to keep outbreeding the wingnuts.
Comment by Doc — 06.17.06 @ 12:39 pm
TWillOO, my comment was referring to the choosing a “career major” in ninth grade. Sure they take English but that’s not the focus or concentration. We are moving towward carerr cluster high schools. So a child who declares a major is then tracked for the next four years and beyond.
And to your first point, The goal of education is not a job. That type of motivation works well for a time, but in the long run it locks kids in and is actually a demotivator toward work in long term.
These are things that require quite a bit of background information to totally understand completely. It is so hard in a one or two comments to fully establish the concepts completely.
Comment by spunkyhomeschool — 06.17.06 @ 1:37 pm
And one more thing, even if I agree that job preparation is a good motivator. It’s none of the state’s business what my child wants to be when they grow up! Why should we as parents be required by law to tell them what our children’s long term plans are? And to make that determinination based on a state standardized test taken when the child is in 10th grade is just plain wrong.
Comment by spunkyhomeschool — 06.17.06 @ 1:43 pm
Baltimore City College, a high school, has a high concentration of poor students who are Black.
The same high school scored in the top 5 in Maryland on the Maryland tests.
The KIPP charter middle school in Baltimore is the only middle school in the city where most students performed at or above grade level. KIPP students are mostly poor.
Why am I writing this “ancedote”?
Because poor kids, even if they come from single family homes, can learn.
Too many people don’t expect them to learn, so they live down to those expectations. Even those who claim to be concerned with education, have low expectations for these students.
On a personal level, I am seeing the affect of those “kids from single mother homes are most likey to fail” comments. People don’t realize, or care, about the added damage they are doing.
I do care.
It’s one reason why I try to keep positive. It’s one reason why I point out the studies that show the “acting white” claim is overblown.
But what do I know? I’m called a “liberal”, a “pollyana” or it’s said “I have my head stuck in the sand.”
How many of you have talked to a poor Black “kid” who is achieving, and have listened to that kid say they get discouraged with the comments that because of their background, they are not expected to achieve?
You want to say that’s liberal comments only? Take a look at this thread.
Not sure whether this comment is for my benefit or whether you’re responding to someone else. But let me address a few points. I never said poor kids couldn’t learn, and the terseness and absurdity of such a remark leaves me speechless. But I’ll force myself to continue. My point is that kids growing up in unstable, low-income homes where education is not a priority have a much harder time succeeding academically. Not only that, but because of living in fatherless homes and “fatherless” neighborhoods, these kids have an even harder time learning and internalizing the qualities that give them a good fighting chance earning a decent living and becoming married fathers and mothers themselves. Traditional values, so to speak, are not instilled and passed down through generations of families that don’t bother getting married before they produce offspring. Since I don’t want to risk misreading your comment, as you sometimes misread my posts, that’s all I’ll say for now. - Admin
Comment by DarkStar — 06.17.06 @ 2:37 pm
I’m a teacher who works with high school students who have failed enough classes that they are in danger of not graduating.
Regarding direct instruction, we are told that direct instruction is expected. I’ve been teaching 15 years, and while I’ve heard the arguments of “coaching” vs. “sage on the stage”, administrators, at least recently, prefer the latter. Personally, I feel I’m being paid by the citizens of the state to educate students and it’s my job to teach them literature,and reading and writing skills they don’t already know…or I’m wasting their time and your money. So direct instruction is necessary.
Regarding the effect of race on students learning: Except for my Mexican students who have recently moved here and, therefore, don’t speak English fluently, the reasons for my students’ failures cannot be categorized according to race. I have some students who are just low ability, some who are disaffected
(I can’t figure these guys out-but they do take personally responsibility for their failure), some who recognize they made bad decisions in 9th grade, some who are lazy, and some whose parents’ legal and/or personal problems have caused them to get behind. It’s my job to motivate them, get them caught up, and teach them grade level materials.
Annie’s remarks about her Haitian husband are interesting in light of the multicultural literature we usually read. While the Mexican and Mexican-American kids (more than 60%of each class)like reading stories that are considered Hispanic, my black students always seem uncomfortable when reading stories about the black experience. After reading a short story by Dick Gregory, one of my students asked me if we were reading this story because I’m racist. When we read Killer Angels (primarily because I was trying to address their absolute ignorance of any history), another student said he didn’t want to read about the racist Civil War. While the Civil War comment is a different issue, I think the multicultural focus is not good. Rather than bring students together as part of the American experience, it tends to set them apart, particularly if they are a minority in the class.
The black kids seem to feel “other” and this discomfort leads to bad performance.
I think maybe Morgan Freeman was right when he said we need to stop talking about race all the time. (Hopefully, I’m not misquoting.) I don’t think race has an effect on students’ ability other than what parents, teachers, and society as a whole allow or expect.
Comment by Kelsey J — 06.17.06 @ 2:49 pm
“the longing to possess what is not ours may cause us to neglect what is ours”- absolutely brilliant LaShawn!
Now on to my points…
Point 1: Anti-intellectualism is running rampant in MAINSTREAM American culture. Any mention of black American anti-intellectualism should acknowledge that it is a microcosm of the dumbing down of mainstream, white America.
Point 2: Southern culture in its origins, is anti-intellectual, and continues to be so to this day. Recall the ideological differences between the Puritans who went north, and the other colonialists that went south. The former was focused on developing intrinsic human capabilities through liberal education & moral groundings, while the latter was focused on improving materal life through labor and capital.
Point 3: To say there is nothing unique about the black experience in the West is to claim that all slave systems have been identical throughout history. Any thorough reading of history shows this to be false. I think even Thomas Sowell would acknowledge this. What differentiates slavery in America from various other forms of slavery worldwide was the destruction of social norms surrounding gender relations/breeding. A common misconception among conservatives is that the primary reason for the plight of today’s black underclass is the decline in family values and rise in out-of-wedlock births. While this is true, the assumption that the black family was once strong is false, at least when compared to whites in America. Yes marriage rates were higher 50-100 years ago, but slavery made it difficult for blacks to adopt normal marriage customs, and gender relations. 100 years ago black marriage rates were substantially lower than white marriage rates, as they continue to be today.
Read Harvard sociologist Orlando Patterson’s Rituals of Death. Take solace in the fact that Patterson is definitely not a liberal, and often criticizes the liberal/ feel-good tendencies of his discipline…which is why he’s one of the few sociologists that is widely respected outside of the field. He is probably the best contemporary scholar on slave societies worldwide.
Point 4: To say that we can’t blame Jim Crow for the achievement gap is akin to saying that environment means nothing. “Culture” is a prouduct of environment…it’s not innate, as racialist scientists would have you believe.
While I’m critical of liberal policies rooted in white guilt, reasoned compassion calls for further attempts to remedy the injustices of the past. LaShawn I agree with you on government sanctioned wealth redistribution…I have trouble believing that financial reparations are the answer to black America’ problems. Like your companion Star Parker, I believe that black America’s problems are America’s problems on a much smaller scale.
-the progressive conservative
Comment by Frank — 06.17.06 @ 2:57 pm
“It is the trials and tribulations that temper the man.” Didn’t St. Paul say that?
Talk, talk, talk, more and more money being thrown at a problem that at its roots has a very simplistic answer, an answer which involves taking responsibility for one’s own actions or inactions, knuckling down and doing hard work, aspiring towards excellence and (dare I say it today?) — discipline.
The teachers aren’t guilty, it’s the parents.
The parents aren’t guilty, it’s the teachers.
The curriculum (or severe lack thereof) isn’t guilty, it’s the students.
Along comes the loony who pulls out the race cards, decides whether to play the positive or negative race card, reality is that it doesn’t matter which one you pull, neither represents any sort of solve for the situation because both are based on fundamental lies.
Two things and two things only are at the heart of responsibility for our current educational nightmare and if you can’t face them you will not find a solve for the situation ever.
Put the paddle back into the schools.
Put prayer back into the schools.
What those two things must have is a fundamental TRUST in other human beings to be fair minded and exercises justice and not anything else. That would involve a few “old” terminologies like “Honor,” “Decency,” “Trustworthiness,” “Honesty,” and a few others, applied to EVERYONE involved in the situation, to include taxpayers, educators, parents, students and… politicians.
Loving someone is not letting them have their way when you can see that their way is going to hurt them in the long run.
But it goes even further than that, for once enough of the miscreants among us have their way long enough, it affects all of us as well.
This is not a problem, the under-education of America is an EMERGENCY that we might not be able to back away from at this stage of the nightmare.
Meanwhile well-intended people of all races and both sexes continue to try to be polite about the thing while our collective children lose bigtime.
We truly cared about this situation when our kids were of elementary school age back in the 90s — we pulled ‘em out, took hiatus from the university and home-schooled them. We lost money, we lost prestige, we certainly lost time toward the retirement kitty, but we both considered things to be in a state of triage, time for action.
Those who do not want to give up their day job in order to focus on their REAL job of properly raising and educating the children that they so easily brought into this world should look in the mirror first and foremost. As much as we wanted and would have liked to fight the education bureaucracy, our children did not have the time needed for that battle. Bite the bullet or continue shopping at the wrong store, what else can I say?
The problems in today’s public, private AND parochial schools started a long time ago with Dewey and the introduction of the Communist Manifesto into the US public school system. It is now heavily ingrained by orders of generations. They are not there to educate your children, make no mistake about that, they are there to INDOCTRINATE them while teaching them nothing of truth, nothing of real value, certainly not how to read and understand what they have read.
And any schoolteacher of today who has the audacity to complain about the system while remaining a paid up member of the teacher’s unions that take your money and spend it on political campaigns of their choosing and not yours are not standing up for anything real, they’re just talking. Want to stand up, put your union pension and your job on the line. That takes what we used to call, “balls” people. Time we got ‘em back.
Happy Father’s Day.
I trust that some can still remember fathers as something good…
Comment by The Machine — 06.17.06 @ 5:25 pm
La Shawn, no wonder there is so much of a time lapse between your posts. Not only are you a busy lady, but you provode such profound discussions! WOW!
Comment by DagneyT — 06.17.06 @ 9:13 pm
As a parent of high-achieving, privileged white children, I have to say that the effect of No Child Left Behind in our schools has been to hold back the achievers to let the rest of the kids catch up. I am so thankful that my youngest goes to high school next year, where he can move into the college-bound track and take accelerated, honors and AP classes. My kids are not gifted, so once the gifted kids are removed from the class, they have been among the top students. Since the school isn’t allowed to differentiate kids based on any sort of achievement, they have been thrown into a mishmash of students, where the main problems are behavioral. I can tell you that based on the behavior of the parents at 8th grade graduation, it is no wonder the children don’t know how to behave. Very little learning occurred for either of my children in middle school. Both my children have had private tutoring in math to make sure they are ready for high school, a luxury that not every parent can provide which adds to the achievement gap.
I don’t know what the solution is but NCLB doesn’t seem to be it. Had I known what it would be like today, I would have put my children in private schools from the beginning, but there are no openings for those who wish to start in high school and my kids don’t want to leave their friends, sports, etc.
Comment by Liz — 06.18.06 @ 11:19 am
I agree with Liz’s opinion of one weakness of NCLB. The focus is on low achieving students. I was a pushy enough mother that I made sure my kids qualified for the gifted program by junior high. I knew that there would be fewer discipline problems and less repetition because teachers wouldn’t have to deal with students who didn’t do the work.
Tracking students according to skill level is held in very low regard by most administrators today. But I think it is essential. In every other field, we put students in classes according to skill level: music, dance, athletics. But in academics, high achieving students are expected to sacrifice their own potential to bring the low achieving students up. And I don’t see any evidence it works. And why would it. We all have strengths and weaknesses. I recently took tap dance at age 50. I was not good, but there were people who were worse than I was…they were frustrated by their lack of progress and dropped out. The better ones were bored; they also dropped out. We were down to the two of us middle people, who stayed because basically we don’t like to quit things in the middle, and we really wanted to tap dance. This illustrates what happens in mixed classrooms…only you have mandatory attendance, so now you have discipline problems.
We need to somehow influence administrators to see the importance of tracking.
Comment by Kelsey J — 06.18.06 @ 2:34 pm
>>I was a pushy enough mother that I made sure my kids qualified for the gifted program by junior high. >>
Parents are a critical part of the equation. I believe that there are at least 2 reasons that private school children do better than public school children:
1) the parents _care_ enough to pay a tuition
2) the school can expel - really expel - children who either disrupt the classroom or don’t do the work. If the children don’t do the work (as opposed to being slow learners), go back to 1). That usually corrects the problem.
>>Tracking students according to skill level is held in very low regard by most administrators today.>>
Probably every state is different, but in my state (California), tracking is prohibited by law. It doesn’t matter whether the administratot/teacher holds it in high regard or low - if a parent can demonstrate that a child has been assigned to a particular class on the basis of ability, all heck breaks loose.
Last point:
For those of you who blame the public schools for problems in the curriculum etc, look again. Please consider the actions of the ACLU and the courts in repression of the local schools’ decision making process. Public schools don’t have the money to defend court cases, so they avoid them in almost any way possible. Schools aren’t so likely to be anti-Christian as anti-lawsuit. The question isn’t so much “will someone be offended” religiously by some action/event/name as it is “will someone be able to take us to court over this”(although sometimes they’re one and the same). If it’s possible that someone _will_ be able to take them to court, bam! it’s out. The result is that the courts, which are frequently outside of voter control, are making policy decisions, not the school board, which _is_ subject to voter control.
If you want to change the schools, return them to local answerable-to-the-public control. Control the court activism. Stop the ACLU. (which is a website, by the way - I don’t remember if it’s a .com or a .org). It’s worthwhile looking in on that site - the protection they seem to offer to _anybody_ except Christians is astounding.
Comment by suek — 06.18.06 @ 4:14 pm
But let me address a few points. I never said poor kids couldn’t learn, and the terseness and absurdity of such a remark leaves me speechless.
You think it terse and absurd. I agree it is terse, but that’s my nature. I don’t say a lot when a little will get the point across. You think it absurd, but I don’t because of what I hear some young Blacks say about the “conversations” about them. This is from mostly direct conversations. So, while you wonder at the absurdity of the comment from me, can you also wonder how those young people have derived their thoughts from the conversations of older people about them?
[The ABSURDITY I was speaking of, DS, is you thinking I wrote or implied that poor kids couldn’t learn. You are so quick to be contrary that you don’t read carefully enough. I never said nor do I think that poor kids can’t learn. You are misreading my words once again. And I have no doubt whatsoever that some kids feel discouraged when people quote negative statistics, but it doesn’t mean we should ignore facts and pretend it’s all about money or teachers’ attitudes. The primary problem, in my opinion, is in the home. As long as I’m able, I won’t stop writing or talking about it, and my doing those things doesn’t stop anyone else from doing or saying what they believe is important. - Admin]
My point is that kids growing up in unstable, low-income homes where education is not a priority have a much harder time succeeding academically.
Yes, and my thought is the grouping of these young people into a group that is more likely to fail, potentially kills the spirit of those kids who have potential.
A husband and a wife, loving and respecting each other and their children, leading a household is the best atmosphere for children. But given that is not the case for some, right now, now what? What is a solution from that point?
If you have a parent that doesn’t place an emphasis on education, how do you help the children of said parent?
An interesting stat that I heard years ago and have heard supported, is that Black kids respond more positively or negatively to the attitude of the teachers than white kids. So if the teachers are down on them, even if the parents are not down on them, the Black kids seem to take the teachers comments “to heart” more.
So what happens when the schools that Black kids are in are filled with new teachers, teachers who are known to under perform, or teachers that jyust don’t care?
YEARS ago it was “Black liberals” who were saying urban schools were filled with these types of teachers, now conservatives are saying it and it’s an issue.
How can a single-parent home school?
What is the solution for that situation, now?
On the “anti-intellecutalism” of the “subculture”, I can’t understand why people don’t see this anti-intellectualism throughout the American culture as a whole.
I lived in Montgomery County and heard from people I knew who were teachers or married to teachers about the kids, white kids, who did the minimum to get by, who cheated using the internet, who felt entitled to get a good grade “just because.”
I’m in contact with university/college level profs or teaching assistants who are blow away by the masses of students who do nothing, then are shocked when they get a D or an F and call mommy and daddy to complain, only to have mommy and daddy then call them.
The word “nerd” is not looked upon as a good thing, is it? Is the use of “nerd” a “Black thing”?
I talked to the wife of a teacher in Howard County, Maryland. The wife, white, said the husband thinks within 15 years, Americans are going to realize that many white children don’t take education seriously when they wake up and see colleges and the bosses at their jobs dominated by Asians and Middle Easterns.
Has anyone ever spoken with a Black kid who was accused of “acting white” and asked them if the person doing the name calling was someone who did well in school or were they doing poorly?
I’ll bet you it’s from those who are doing poorly. And if I’m right, what does that say?
Meanwhile, in D.C., Mother’s Day causes D.C. streets to be jammed with Black families celebrating the graduation of their children from UDC and Howard.
NCLB stinks because a child can enter middle or high school, have the school placed on the list for needing improvement, but the child can’t transfer until his last year if the school doesn’t improve.
Then they can only transfer if there is space in another school. If they can’t the parents have to decide if they can afford to place the kids in private school.
I work with 2 people who are in that situation right now and are paying a lot of money to have their children in private school. Both parents live close to an achieving public school but both are zoned for a school that is under performing.
I’m done. That was a rant that I hope makes sense.
Comment by DarkStar — 06.18.06 @ 4:39 pm
The ABSURDITY I was speaking of, DS, is you thinking I wrote or implied that poor kids couldn’t learn. You are so quick to be contrary that you don’t read carefully enough.
*SIGH*
Again, YOU missed what I wrote: