by La Shawn on December 16, 2008
in Education
I guess it’s race week at LBC!
According to a new study, black students in their first year of college perform better academically when paired with a white roommate than with a black roommate. (Science News)
What to make of this? Natalie Shook, lead author of the study, said black students may adjust better because they live with someone who can help them adjust to college and its challenges.
While black students benefit from having a white roommate, white students don’t necessarily benefit from having a black roommate. For white students, the academic ability of the roommate is more important than the person’s skin color.
I went to a predominately black college, so I have no frame of reference. My youngest sister, on the other hand, roomed with white students. She said she could see how the study yielded such a conclusion.
“Watching them study helped me learn how to study,” she told me. “That was the main thing.”
Update: Points to consider, via Facebook friends – The study’s findings might indicate a fundamental flaw in race preferences (which involves lowering standards to admit a certain percentage of blacks) in college admissions. Black students may be poorly matched to their schools compared to white students. Did the researchers isolate for class background and academic preparation, i.e., are black students who attended private high schools better prepared for the college setting, etc.
Here’s the study’s abstract. You have to subscribe to the journal to download the full study.
by La Shawn on September 23, 2008
in Education
I’m a BIG fan of homeschooling, especially for Christians. Parents homeschool their kids for various reasons, but religion seems to be high on the list.
I think it’s a waste of time and resources to push for changes in the way government schools educate children. Don’t fight corruption and indoctrination. Get your kids out of there.
If you’re a homeschooling parent or considering homeschooling, check out This Old Schoolhouse magazine (see right sidebar and click on the ad). I recommend the magazine not only because it’s one of my advertisers; it’s a wonderful resource I’ve mentioned on the blog before. Other homeschooling resources:
Related posts:
If you’re a homeschool blogger or read homeschool blogs and other web sites, leave a comment with the name of the site and/or URL. Support homeschooling!
Update (11:32 a.m.): A reader sends a link to a related Thomas Sowell article. An excerpt:
“The redneck culture proved to be a major handicap for both whites and blacks who absorbed it. Today, the last remnants of that culture can still be found in the worst of the black ghettos, whether in the North or the South, for the ghettos of the North were settled by blacks from the South. The counterproductive and self-destructive culture of black rednecks in today’s ghettos is regarded by many as the only ‘authentic’ black culture–and, for that reason, something not to be tampered with. Their talk, their attitudes, and their behavior are regarded as sacrosanct.”
Later…Ugly numbers from The San Diego Union-Tribune:
“Statewide in English/language arts, only 30 percent of black students and 29 percent of Latino students scored proficient or better. In contrast, 62 percent of white students and 66 percent of Asian students scored proficient or better…In math, only 26 percent of black students and 31 percent of Latino students statewide scored proficient or better, while 54 percent of white students and 68 percent of Asian students scored proficient or better.”
More here (type “dontbugme” for username and password). An excerpt:
“[I]n some cases, the poorest white students are doing better than Latino and black students who come from middle class or wealthy families…The so-called achievement gap — the difference in performance between groups of students — has long been chalked up to a difference in family income. It makes sense that — regardless of race — students whose parents have money and speak English would do better in school, on the whole, than students whose families struggle with employment, food and shelter.
“But this year’s test scores show that the difference in academic achievement between ethnic groups is more than an issue of poverty vs. wealth.”
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Update (3:19 p.m.): How I got on the e-mail list is a mystery, but I just received a “media advisory” from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, Administration for Children and Families, about the “African American Healthy Marriage Conference,” scheduled June 19-21, at University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill.
Did I mention how much I loathe the term “African American”? Anyway, the theme is “Healthy People, Healthy Families: Connecting Marriage Research to Practice.” From the e-mail:
“The African American Healthy Marriage Initiative is an outreach effort to promote and strengthen the institution of healthy marriage in the black community. ACF has partnered with national, civic, faith-based and community organizations to offer marriage education services to Americans who may not have such opportunities in their neighborhoods.
“Sessions during the conference include good news about African American fathers; the three anchor institutions of family, education and faith; and military couples with children and the impact of separation on their relationships. Speakers scheduled to appear include Ronald Mincy, Ph.D., of Columbia University , School of Social Work ; Robert Franklin, Ph.D., presidential distinguished professor of social ethics at Emory University ; Wilson Goode, Sr., director of Amachi and former mayor of Philadelphia ; and Jerry Regier, Principal Deputy Assistant Secretary, ASPE, HHS.”
The conference will be useful to someone, I’m sure. It’s sad things have gotten so bad in the “black community” (as far as marriage is concerned) that the government has to hold conferences like this. 
I forgot to link to “The frayed knot” this morning. Check it out.
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Update III (5/23): I am SHOCKED that this piece made it into a newspaper. It’s the ugly, barely-reported truth.
Update II: I forgot to mention a study that showed black students from intact “religious” families perform better in school than their counterparts.
Also, choice is key. Libertarian Andrew Coulson notes that “the school system itself affects parents’ and students’ attitudes towards education. The current system gives parents no power, no control, no responsibilities. When parents can choose their kids’ schools – better yet, when they HAVE to choose their kids’ schools – they become more savvy and more involved.”
See his post at Cato-at-liberty on poor and marginally educated parents choosing schools for their kids. I reviewed a book of essays about the late libertarian Milton Friedman. One essay discussed private schools in Third World countries. I wrote:
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I was going to develop the piece below as a column, but since it’s gotten somewhat stale, I’ll post it here instead. Hey, that’s what blogs are for!
Is sending students to a “white privilege†conference with government funds intended to be used to close the academic achievement gap an appropriate use of those funds?
That’s what Seattle Public Schools (SPS) will soon find out. The U.S. Department of Education is investigating the race-obsessed school system to determine whether its use of a Smaller Learning Communities Program grant to send students to the annual White Privilege Conference was improper under the terms of the grant. (Source)
The grants are to be used “to support the development of small, safe, and successful learning environments in large high schools as a component of comprehensive high school improvement plans.†How a white privilege conference fulfills this purpose is a mystery.
According to the conference web site, its mission is to offer “a means to develop and sustain ongoing work to dismantle this system of white privilege, white supremacy, and oppression.†Although the conference is “not about beating up on white folks,†why else would people gather to discuss such ideas as “white man’s pornography,†“transforming whiteness in the classroom,†“multiple systems of oppression,†homosexual “oppression,†and to denigrate that whitest of white traits, individualism?
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Last year I blogged about Muslims in Baltimore County, Maryland, demanding that Muslim holidays be added to the government school calendar.
Last week, school board members refused the request. From the article:
Baltimore County public school officials have said that adding Muslim holidays to the school calendars is unlawful and “irresponsible,” marking another setback in attempts across the region to add the holidays…School officials, however, stood firm by a state law that disallows public schools from endorsing any religion, saying the school calendar can include scheduled closures only for holidays that cause low attendance rates countywide.
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The anti-discrimination committee has pushed its request for the past several years, calling it an issue of equality because schools recognize Jewish and Christian holidays.
So it isn’t a matter of discriminating against Muslims. If followers of Allah become a large enough majority that schools are half-empty during Muslim holidays, the state may choose to close schools. Is it all about…economics?
Being the very opinionated person I am, my view (that the religion of Islam is incompatible with the West) is on the record . What’s yours?
Related posts:
The post on the Virginia Tech rampage drew thousands of visitors from Canada and the UK and a few from Australia yesterday, thanks to Google listing my blog among two others for searches on “Virginia Tech.”
Some of those visitors expressed condolences, while others used the tragedy as an opportunity to rant about gun ownership and possession in the U.S. and how banning guns would solve the problem of violent crime. Not only is that untrue, but it sounds downright un-American to me, no offense to the foreigners.
I just don’t understand that kind of thinking. Like locks on doors, gun control works for honest, law-abiding people. Just ask D.C. residents. But the nature of a criminal is to commit crimes, that is, break laws, and laws against possessing and owning guns will prevent honest and law-abiding people from possessing and owning guns, not criminals. The logic is so simple a child can follow it. What’s wrong with so-called adults?
I don’t need fancy studies and statistics to tell me that gun-toting thugs would think twice about mugging or attacking someone if they believe the person might be armed. In a state with concealed carry laws, the chances probably are greater that a random person might be packing.
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I like reading studies. They’re funny, the way they observe and state the obvious: “Study finds that on average, men are, in fact, stronger than women” and “Report concludes that oxygen deprivation can lead to death.”
There’s a new study in a journal called Child Development about early learning skills. It seems to state the obvious, but I’d like to read it. From now on until the end of the world, academics, educators, politicians, and others will be discussing the academic achievement gap and how to narrow/close it. According to the study, a child’s “self-regulation skills” are associated with his abilities in his early education. From the article:
Although intelligence is generally thought to play a key role in children’s early academic achievement, aspects of children’s self-regulation abilities-including the ability to alternately shift and focus attention and to inhibit impulsive responding–are uniquely related to early academic success and account for greater variation in early academic progress than do measures of intelligence. Therefore, in order to help children from low-income families succeed in school, early school-age programs may need to include curricula designed specifically to promote children’s self-regulation skills as a means of enhancing their early academic progress.
One of the study’s authors said, “Children’s ability to regulate their thinking and behavior develops rapidly in the preschool years.”
The bottom line, it seems, is that children must learn to control their impulses, learn to behave, sit still, and concentrate on their work in order to perform well in school. Author Abigail Thernstrom believes such skills are of primary importance, particularly for children in inner city schools. She says children in these schools can and do succeed, but qualified the statement:
Superior schools in today’s inner cities counter the isolation of black kids from mainstream norms by…[insisting] that their students learn how to speak standard English; show up on time, properly dressed; sit up straight at their desks, chairs pulled in, workbooks organized…walk down halls quickly and quietly…listen to teachers politely and follow their directions precisely; treat their classmates with respect; and shake hands with visitors to the school, introducing themselves.
Although the study’s conclusions are obvious, some parents may not associate these traits with success in school. There is the very human tendency to blame others for problems, failures, and deficiencies, and parents — especially black parents — must look beyond the bureaucrats and politicians and to themselves and other black parents (like Club 2012) to help their kids excel in school.
I requested a review copy of the study so I can write about it more knowledgeably. I’ve never asked for a “review copy” of a study before, so I have no idea whether I’ll get it. In the meantime, check out my latest column, “Parental involvement, family stability and the achievement gap.”
Update: In response to my Examiner column, Heritage Foundation fellow Patrick Fagan (I met him last year at this event) sent me a PDF copy of his study called Why Religion Matters Even More: The Impact of Religious Practice on Social Stability.
Update II: Good Lord. Summer vacation, says Seattle schools, is racist. Danny Westneat, a level-headed white parent unencumbered by guilt, lays it out. Good read.
Update (4/3): A professor at California State U analyzed the National Education Longitudinal Study and found that living in an intact family and being religious play important roles in closing the academic achievement gap. Since living in two-parent families isn’t the norm for black children these days, at least one part of the equation is missing for them. Fatherlessness. What’s being done to black kids in this country is criminal.
Giving government schools more money, blaming whites, eliminating tests — these things make people feel good, but they don’t help kids learn, retain what they’ve learned, apply what they’ve learned, and excel. See my latest Washington Examiner column, “Parental involvement, family stability and the achievement gap.”
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It sounds unbelievable, but black parents in Pinellas County, Florida, are suing the school district over the black-white academic achievement gap.
Black students need programs “uniquely tailored” to them, they claim. Although black and white students are sitting in the same classrooms receiving the same instruction, pursuant to Brown v. Board of Education, black parents contend, with a collective straight face, that Pinellas County Schools failed in its duty to provide an “adequate education” for black students.
The people involved in the case that I contacted said the plaintiffs didn’t indicate what sort of programs were “uniquely tailored” to blacks. Let’s speculate: textbooks with lots of pictures? teachers who speak ebonics? a curriculum laced with watered down, intellectually light instruction designed to raise self-esteem? elimination of tests that measure academic progress and knowledge?
As soon as I find out, I’ll let you know…
Related posts:
by La Shawn on February 23, 2007
in Education
This post is dedicated to every black liberal who has ever said I never write anything positive about black folks or offer solutions to problems disproportionately impacting blacks. Most of the time, positive news and solutions are implicit in my posts, though sometimes I’m explicit.
For instance, suggestions like, “Get married and build a nest before you have children” or “Take responsibility for your own lives and accept the consequences of your actions” or “Take responsibility for your children’s education” apparently are not detailed enough for some people. And I never mention white people or what they ought to do to help blacks or what they owe blacks, which seems to tick people off the most. Since I can’t please everyone, I aim to please no one.
When I read “Black Parents Seek to Raise Ambitions” this morning in the Washington Post, I almost cried. Why? An excerpt:
Twelve-year-old Alex Carter is an A student who loves science and reads a book a week. So it surprised his father when he announced last year that he didn’t want to enroll in an honors class that his teacher recommended for the following term.
“That class is for the smart people, the nerds,” Alex told him. His father replied, “Well, who are you?”
Alex is a junior league football player, an avid golfer and a lifelong suburbanite. He’s also one of only a handful of African American students in his seventh-grade class at Eagle Ridge Middle School in Ashburn. He dreams of becoming a professional athlete like his dad, Tom, who played cornerback for the Washington Redskins. But as he nears his teenage years in a predominantly white school in Loudoun County, his parents are concerned that he could abandon academic pursuits because he thinks they are better left to his white classmates.
How did young Alex come to believe academic pursuits are for white people? Blame the subculture or gangsta culture or the mainstream media or the rain, if it makes you feel better. The point is that the kid’s head was in the wrong place. But instead of invoking the “legacy of slavery” or classroom bias or a lack of government funds (although some urban school districts tend to have the country’s highest per pupil expenditures) or any excuse with the word “racism” attached to it, Alex’s parents did their job: took matters into their own hands and pre-empted a potentially huge problem:
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As baby boomers retire, the American workforce will become dumber and dumber…
…according to a new report from the Educational Testing Service.
Specifically, three factors are converging in a “perfect storm” that is turning the American labor force into a highly illiterate one, profoundly impacting our ability to compete: 1) the educational and skills gap between the races, 2) a global economy that rewards the educated and highly skilled; and 3) the influx of non-English speaking hispanic illegal aliens into the workforce.
Download the PDF version of “America’s Perfect Storm: Three Forces Changing Our Nation’s Future.” The report also includes a brief history of the U.S. economy and the role education has played. I suggest you read it and draw your own conclusions because this post provides only a snapshot of its findings, interspersed with my highly biased commentary. This post by no means includes all arguments and points mentioned in the report or arguments relevant to education, jobs skills, poverty, the economy, or whatever else you can think of.
This Christian Science Monitor story summarizes the report.
Educational and Skills Gap
According to the report, blacks and hispanics “lag considerably” behind whites and Asians in educational achievement. The high school graduation rate for blacks is 50 percent, hispanics 53 percent, whites 75 percent, and Asians 77 percent. Although the U.S. ranks near the top in per-pupil spending, it ranks in the middle among international achievement.
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I used to work for an organization with “connections” to then-Council Member Adrian Fenty, currently the newly elected mayor of the District of Columbia. This high-profile op-ed almost got me in trouble at the day job, and this direct response from Fenty (who didn’t know me from Adam) made them even more nervous.
My libertarian pal Casey Lartigue responded to Fenty’s letter here.
While at that day job, I was itching to write about local politics but couldn’t. Since leaving, the itch went away. Now it’s back. I’ve decided to blog more city government and what I don’t like about it.
For instance, after reading this Washington Post story, “D.C. Schools Considering Unusual Deal With Nonprofit,” I was shocked to learn that neither the Post nor any other major newspaper seemed concerned that EdBuild, a non-profit formed and operated by elected officials, is on the verge of landing a fat, no-bid government contract ostensibly to improve academic performance in schools and modernize facilities, for which is has very little experience, although more qualified companies were rejected. There is a $2.3 billion pot at stake. EdBuild’s founders served in Mayor Williams’s administration, and Fenty just hired one to serve in his. The connections are deep, yet no one is raising ethical or conflict of interest objections.
So I did a bit of investigating of my own and wrote “The EdBuild-D.C. government connection.”
If you have information on insider dealings and political connections between the D.C. government and EdBuild or other organizations, e-mail me in confidence: barbersview [at] yahoo [dot] com.
More to come…
Note: This is a long post but keep reading. I have questions for you at the end.
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Yesterday afternoon I faced the possibility of going on a talking head cable news show today.
The topics were going to be such sensational, plucked-from-the-headlines stuff as the black guy found hanging in the carport of a “white female friend” in Mississippi (Was it suicide because the girl dumped him, or a racially-motivated lynching, or retaliation from a rival for the girl’s affections?) and a teenaged lesbian who wants to start a homosexual club in her school and take her girlfriend to the prom. The school said no to both. As expected, she’s suing.
Because of Bush’s Iraq speech last night, the cable news show decided to bump the segment in favor of Iraq talk, but I was so intrigued by the “gay club” topic, I wanted to generate a discussion about it here.
As some homosexuals are wont to do, they confuse disapproval of their lifestyle with hostility or intolerance. I don’t hate homosexuals and wouldn’t dream of harassing them; I just don’t like how they’ve chosen to live their lives. But that’s their business and their right. I don’t impose my views on them, but I’ll be damned if I’m going to keep my mouth shut while they push for special rights and impose their views on me.
Yasmin Gonzalez, a student at a government school in a socially conservative Florida town, wanted to use school grounds to organize a club to promote “dialogue and tolerance” about homosexuality. (Source)
This case is unusual in that the majority of people in the town seem to be Christians or at the very least, opposed to the homosexual lifestyle on moral grounds. According to the article, the school engaged in a bit of deception to keep Gonzalez from forming the club: We don’t allow clubs…wait a minute…yes we do, but there are too many clubs — that sort of thing.
My answer to the cable show host’s questions would have been along these lines: If the school allows other groups to meet on campus after hours, I can see no rational reason for denying the Gay-Straight Alliance. While I’m opposed to the lifestyle, I don’t think a government school can prohibit homosexual clubs for the same reasons I don’t think it should prohibit faith-based clubs.
(In “Incompatible Kerry’s Immaculate Deception,” I briefly discuss the confusion over so-called separation of church and state.)
I strongly advocate Christian parents taking their children out of government schools and homeschooling or sending them to private Christian schools.
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I’m not an Oprah Winfrey fan. I used to watch her show years ago, but after I became a Christian, her “godforce” talk became unpalatable. Being an unbeliever, she tends to get caught up in “various and strange doctrines” and fads.
I watched her show about a year ago to live-blog her dressing-down of James Frey, the Oprah Book Club darling who told big lies about his life in his disgraced memoir, A Million Little Pieces.
Oprah is in the news again. She recently built a girl’s school in South Africa, the Oprah Winfrey Leadership Academy for Girls, to the tune of $40 million. Part vanity project, part personal therapy, part charity, the school will educate impoverished young African girls for free. (Newsweek)
The school is downright luxurious compared to what the girls are used to: 22 acres, a beauty salon, high-quality sheets, spacious rooms and closets, china. Understandably, some natives think the school is a bit too opulent, especially for girls who come from extreme poverty. People love to tell other people how to spend their money. Sure, Oprah could have built a very nice school for a fraction of the price, but she wanted the girls to have lavish surroundings because “beauty does inspire.”
“I wanted this to be a place of honor for them because these girls have never been treated with kindness. They’ve never been told they are pretty or have wonderful dimples. I wanted to hear those things as a child,” Oprah said. (This is the “part therapy” I mentioned earlier.)
Some may wonder why Oprah didn’t build such a school right here in the U.S. and why she hasn’t taken a similar hands-on approach. Although she’s given money to inner city schools, she said she stopped visiting them. American children — or should we say poor American children, inner city American children? — don’t value education the way kids in other countries do. Oprah said (emphasis added):
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