There is a problem: African Americans, in particular, score significantly lower on standardized tests than Asian, Jewish and White Americans. This puts African Americans at a disadvantage getting into the best colleges that in turn will allow them opportunities to serve real leadership roles in American society. The problem has nothi…
There is a problem: African Americans, in particular, score significantly lower on standardized tests than Asian, Jewish and White Americans. This puts African Americans at a disadvantage getting into the best colleges that in turn will allow them opportunities to serve real leadership roles in American society. The problem has nothing to do with race blindness but actively repairing American Education to rectify the shoddy education Black Americans now receive. Poor kids in poor school districts receive sub-par education. Local funding of public schools dooms the poor, particularly Black Americans, to generation after generation of lousy education. The attempt to give Black Americans an advantage by ignoring ability is the ultimate Potemkin repair job, a false facade to cover America's real failure at equal education. We need to invest much much more in Public Education and that investment should be based on fair distribution, meaning the most of it goes to the most disadvantaged. No prizes for taking the test, the prize goes for acing it. Do you want a surgeon who knows surgery or one who was simply given the surgeon's credentials?
Chicago Public Schools spent $20,486 per pupil in 2021. That's over half a million dollars for a class of 25. There's plenty of money. It just pays for the wrong things. Those elected, appointed and hired to run the schools seem to care less for the students and parents than for themselves since moms, dads and kids come and go while teachers, administrators and service personnel are permanent.
If you want to fix education for poor kids, give their parents a choice for where they attend. Give them a voice in choosing where those funds are spent. Some may just not be able to be saved but how could we do any worse than we are now?
Investing more in public education is not the answer......The money by in large has no effect on the students. Expecting schools to fix what is wrong with the neighborhoods and the households that many of these kids are coming from is fools gold...
States that spend more on education get higher outcomes, with the notable exception of Utah. Paying teachers more gets you better teachers. This is true on all other professions.
Look where the money invested in education is going. How little of it actually reaches the classroom or addresses the students needs and how much of it goes to "experts" who have never been in a classroom or taught that subject. There are true experts teaching in classrooms and know how to navigate the negatives to get positive results but they are overshadowed by "experts" that have seminars on white privileges.
The SAT/ACT are a snapshot of a student, but grades show the ability of the student to perform and "grind" through the demands of education year after year. This is why experts state that grades are the best tool for gauging whether a student is ready for the demands of college & why universities should rely heavily on the grades.
Education money is frequently supporting the "victim role" rather than promoting the ability to succeed. When a district in CA was concerned about STEM test scores in the minority population, they hired a white sociologist from Stanford who concluded that math standards needed to be lowered. The board failed to include any African Americans. Dr. Nelson, a professor of computer science and EE at UC Berkeley and an African American, strongly criticized the lowering of standards rather than implementing a better curriculum.
As for the surgeon, medical boards select from very highly qualified candidates and the weeding of candidates continues through their internship and residency so I trust that my surgeon is qualified whether wearing a kippah or pagri, or the color of the skin, etc.
You think so? Here are three articles found in a 1 second google search that describes the changing of standards to increase the amount of URM (Underrepresented minority students) and increase "anti-racist" practices in medicine. Once you get into specialties, there are even less URM students, and that type of racism can't be allowed. Again, standards must be changed.
I wouldn’t be as confident in newly-minted physicians and surgeons if I were you. Medical schools and now residencies have been infected with DEI, so accepted students are less qualified, get by with less education, and are passed with less proven expertise. I am a retired physician who is horrified by the priorities and goals now espoused by medical schools and specialty organizations. (Ignore the AMA, as only a small fraction of practicing physicians belong. Unfortunately, the insanity has metastasized to the working specialty organizations. It’s alarming.)
My experience is that the doctors training may or may not have the changed, but the healthcare system has definitely changed. It is rare to meet a physician who recognizes that you or your loved ones are human beings and not just a body part or an insurance payment.
I don't know much about how doctors are educated, but at 75, I have watched the decline in quality of practicing doctors. And it's not just training but also attitude. In my lat visit to see my long time dermatologist, the doctor directed his attention to the pretty intern walking with him, instead of my problem. As a result, he failed to diagnose the aggressive cancer growing in me. The four months delay that occurred while I found a doctor who recognized the problem and acted on it almost killed me, and may still. I don't and didn't care what color my doctor was, but I am certainly not ready to leave my family prematurely because a doctor didn't care..
There are millions of dirt poor Asians that came here, not knowing English and not getting the affirmative action grift, that have succeeded in those schools. It’s not easy and it requires hard work. The failures are systemic, Administration >curriculum >teachers >parents.
Recently, the most successful immigrant group is Nigerians with a population of over 60% of them having an advance degree. They are even more successful than "Asians" (how does a whole continent of people from countries as diverse as India and China count as one group...only in stats.) This total blows the idea that skin color is an insurmountable barrier.
I agree that parents are of foremost importance to the success of their kids but I don’t believe their personal education level is the driving force. Prioritizing your children’s education, sacrifice, and hard work are far more valuable traits that parents offer. I have seen several kids whose parents lacked even a complete high school education prioritize and champion a better education for their own children and succeed in doing so.
It’s difficult to succeed in an inner-city school if your classmates beat you up for “acting white” when you study hard and excel academically. Very hard to persevere under those circumstances.
I saw that first hand when my kids where in elementary school. My kids had friends with amazing parents and struggled when their son, who was smart, athletic and good looking, was making good grades. His friends told him to stop acting white.
It appears the problem is cultural as well as socio-economic. Of course noticing this issue gets you labeled a racist.
Ibram Kendi himself adopts many of these self-destructive values in his treatise on antiracism, calling such ideals as hard work and getting good grades in school white supremacist notions. Really, it seems he is making excuses for any perceived failures of black people by somehow labeling them as failures of white society.
I’m sorry but don’t all of us have access to same materials for learning? How is it possible race determines your ability to take a test? You either know the answer or you don’t.
"We need to invest much much more in Public Education and that investment should be based on fair distribution, meaning the most of it goes to the most disadvantaged."
Bullshit.
New York City spends over $28,000 per student. Do you think maybe the problem lies in what is taught, how it's taught and by whom the kids are taught. Why is Harlem Academy so successful while 63.8% of all city public school students were proficient in reading, and 51.5% were proficient in math.
I have lived in both an urban community and a wealthy suburb in MA - I know it is not the same as NY, but I had to pay for so much more in the suburbs. We had excellent grant writers in the city and the programs got lots of money. The Boston teachers were paid better than the suburbs. But in every case, it's how the administration spends the money.
I have seen this waste myself, and consequently started a charter school in Allegheny County. But charter schools do not receive the same money per student as the other public schools; so for charter schools to remain afloat they pay their teachers even less than the public schools, and their educational outcomes scarcely surpass the other public schools. Money alone, as you accurately recognize, will not fix the problem. I also agree with many here that this is cultural problem: Asian and Jewish parents for example, are much more culturally equipped to promote their children's education than many other minorities. And that itself comes from our own cultural focus on the value of reading, mathematics and education in general. So what is to be done? The answer is expensive but entirely possible. Education in poor communities with awful academic performance cannot end at the school house. A real federal commitment to improving educational outcomes for poor, predominately Black communities, must include wrap around care for the entire family. That will take significant focused federal funding. The experts are already there and they know how to do it too. But we need to do it as a nation. First, without a doubt, eliminate leftist racist ideologies that promote the fundamentally destructive nonsense so clearly described in the above article. Make lying wrong again. Follow the real science and not the politically correct gibberish of Kendi and DiAngelo.
School choice seems to be the answer to this. But the teachers unions fight it. They then vote for democrats who defeat school choice. However, I think parents are rising up.
I agree on this. I watched the city I grew up in go from small, local schools to bigger schools. You could still walk, mostly, to the schools, but you were not as attached to the community. But, as a grandchild of immigrants, and someone who did not have a lot of money growing up, you can get a good education with a good work ethic and support from a loving family and community.
I hadn’t heard of Harlem Academy, so I looked it up. The difference seems to be that the families value education and want their kids to succeed academically--enough to pay at least some tuition. I suspect that this crucial difference in the home environment leads to a far more conducive learning environment in the school.
Bruce, I’m not sure what you’re asking by “and?” Obviously there are plenty of black parents who care about their kids’ academic and ultimately, financial success. I’ve seen that as someone who attended private school and as someone who lives in a suburb where families of all races send their kids to our very good public schools. It’s a very different story in inner city environments, where kids are dealing with drug addiction, gang violence, extreme poverty, and antipathy/resentment towards models of success perceived as rewarding whites and oppressing blacks. Part of the downside of public education is that people tend to value less what they get “for free”--in this case, taxpayer funds not being directly visible.
I repeat......"and?" You say, "It’s a very different story in inner city environments, where kids are dealing with drug addiction, gang violence, extreme poverty, and antipathy/resentment towards models of success perceived as rewarding whites and oppressing blacks." Whose fault is that? You don't have to have a lot of money or education to care about your children's success. My parents were not college educated nor did we have much money. But my mother brought all seven of us to the library several times a week, read to us and took our schooling very seriously.
It is not care, it is resources and expectations. My daughter teaches high school math in a poor community. Some kids are homeless or have drug addicted parents. We need to support the children at that level. Hungry, homeless children have a hard time learning.
If "we" have an obligation to support the kids, then "we" also have to stop coddling the parents and demand accountability. Otherwise we're just dupes.
The single most important determiner of success in school is the attitude of the child's parents toward school.
I agree that we need to try to help children in bad circumstances to do as well as they can. But in too many cases, there is no way to overcome the problem of parental attitude.
Another problem is that these attitudes seep into whole communities. I have read too many essays by successful black people who were accused by their peers of "trying to be white" because they took school seriously. What are you going to do to overcome that?
It has nothing to do with wealth. Wealth is the end product of a lifetime of studying and hard work. I can almost guarantee that those wealthy parents have a strong work ethic and expect their children to study and succeed. That is the difference. (There are plenty of wealthy spoiled kids whose parents don’t pay any attention to them and who, in turn, act out and don’t do well in school). Also, lots of very successful people (like Colin Powell and Thomas Sowell) come from very poor homes. The difference is in their parents’ (or parent’s) investment in their children. Wanting them to succeed. Requiring them to study and work hard. It all begins with the parent(s)- ideally both a mother and a father.
There is a problem: African Americans, in particular, score significantly lower on standardized tests than Asian, Jewish and White Americans. This puts African Americans at a disadvantage getting into the best colleges that in turn will allow them opportunities to serve real leadership roles in American society. The problem has nothing to do with race blindness but actively repairing American Education to rectify the shoddy education Black Americans now receive. Poor kids in poor school districts receive sub-par education. Local funding of public schools dooms the poor, particularly Black Americans, to generation after generation of lousy education. The attempt to give Black Americans an advantage by ignoring ability is the ultimate Potemkin repair job, a false facade to cover America's real failure at equal education. We need to invest much much more in Public Education and that investment should be based on fair distribution, meaning the most of it goes to the most disadvantaged. No prizes for taking the test, the prize goes for acing it. Do you want a surgeon who knows surgery or one who was simply given the surgeon's credentials?
Chicago Public Schools spent $20,486 per pupil in 2021. That's over half a million dollars for a class of 25. There's plenty of money. It just pays for the wrong things. Those elected, appointed and hired to run the schools seem to care less for the students and parents than for themselves since moms, dads and kids come and go while teachers, administrators and service personnel are permanent.
If you want to fix education for poor kids, give their parents a choice for where they attend. Give them a voice in choosing where those funds are spent. Some may just not be able to be saved but how could we do any worse than we are now?
Investing more in public education is not the answer......The money by in large has no effect on the students. Expecting schools to fix what is wrong with the neighborhoods and the households that many of these kids are coming from is fools gold...
States that spend more on education get higher outcomes, with the notable exception of Utah. Paying teachers more gets you better teachers. This is true on all other professions.
Look where the money invested in education is going. How little of it actually reaches the classroom or addresses the students needs and how much of it goes to "experts" who have never been in a classroom or taught that subject. There are true experts teaching in classrooms and know how to navigate the negatives to get positive results but they are overshadowed by "experts" that have seminars on white privileges.
The SAT/ACT are a snapshot of a student, but grades show the ability of the student to perform and "grind" through the demands of education year after year. This is why experts state that grades are the best tool for gauging whether a student is ready for the demands of college & why universities should rely heavily on the grades.
Education money is frequently supporting the "victim role" rather than promoting the ability to succeed. When a district in CA was concerned about STEM test scores in the minority population, they hired a white sociologist from Stanford who concluded that math standards needed to be lowered. The board failed to include any African Americans. Dr. Nelson, a professor of computer science and EE at UC Berkeley and an African American, strongly criticized the lowering of standards rather than implementing a better curriculum.
As for the surgeon, medical boards select from very highly qualified candidates and the weeding of candidates continues through their internship and residency so I trust that my surgeon is qualified whether wearing a kippah or pagri, or the color of the skin, etc.
You think so? Here are three articles found in a 1 second google search that describes the changing of standards to increase the amount of URM (Underrepresented minority students) and increase "anti-racist" practices in medicine. Once you get into specialties, there are even less URM students, and that type of racism can't be allowed. Again, standards must be changed.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7855342/
https://journalofethics.ama-assn.org/article/how-eliminate-deficit-centered-mindset-about-medical-students-color/2021-12
https://www.mountsinai.org/about/newsroom/2022/medical-students-lead-nationwide-movement-to-excise-racism-from-nephrology-curricula
I wouldn’t be as confident in newly-minted physicians and surgeons if I were you. Medical schools and now residencies have been infected with DEI, so accepted students are less qualified, get by with less education, and are passed with less proven expertise. I am a retired physician who is horrified by the priorities and goals now espoused by medical schools and specialty organizations. (Ignore the AMA, as only a small fraction of practicing physicians belong. Unfortunately, the insanity has metastasized to the working specialty organizations. It’s alarming.)
My experience is that the doctors training may or may not have the changed, but the healthcare system has definitely changed. It is rare to meet a physician who recognizes that you or your loved ones are human beings and not just a body part or an insurance payment.
I don't know much about how doctors are educated, but at 75, I have watched the decline in quality of practicing doctors. And it's not just training but also attitude. In my lat visit to see my long time dermatologist, the doctor directed his attention to the pretty intern walking with him, instead of my problem. As a result, he failed to diagnose the aggressive cancer growing in me. The four months delay that occurred while I found a doctor who recognized the problem and acted on it almost killed me, and may still. I don't and didn't care what color my doctor was, but I am certainly not ready to leave my family prematurely because a doctor didn't care..
There are millions of dirt poor Asians that came here, not knowing English and not getting the affirmative action grift, that have succeeded in those schools. It’s not easy and it requires hard work. The failures are systemic, Administration >curriculum >teachers >parents.
Recently, the most successful immigrant group is Nigerians with a population of over 60% of them having an advance degree. They are even more successful than "Asians" (how does a whole continent of people from countries as diverse as India and China count as one group...only in stats.) This total blows the idea that skin color is an insurmountable barrier.
I agree that parents are of foremost importance to the success of their kids but I don’t believe their personal education level is the driving force. Prioritizing your children’s education, sacrifice, and hard work are far more valuable traits that parents offer. I have seen several kids whose parents lacked even a complete high school education prioritize and champion a better education for their own children and succeed in doing so.
Well said.
It’s difficult to succeed in an inner-city school if your classmates beat you up for “acting white” when you study hard and excel academically. Very hard to persevere under those circumstances.
I saw that first hand when my kids where in elementary school. My kids had friends with amazing parents and struggled when their son, who was smart, athletic and good looking, was making good grades. His friends told him to stop acting white.
“Stop acting white.”
It appears the problem is cultural as well as socio-economic. Of course noticing this issue gets you labeled a racist.
Ibram Kendi himself adopts many of these self-destructive values in his treatise on antiracism, calling such ideals as hard work and getting good grades in school white supremacist notions. Really, it seems he is making excuses for any perceived failures of black people by somehow labeling them as failures of white society.
"Stop acting white."
Do people say that to you a lot?
It’s unbelievable
School choice/vouchers. Less administrative burden. Much higher expectations for teachers. We spend a great deal already, just poorly
I’m sorry but don’t all of us have access to same materials for learning? How is it possible race determines your ability to take a test? You either know the answer or you don’t.
"We need to invest much much more in Public Education and that investment should be based on fair distribution, meaning the most of it goes to the most disadvantaged."
Bullshit.
New York City spends over $28,000 per student. Do you think maybe the problem lies in what is taught, how it's taught and by whom the kids are taught. Why is Harlem Academy so successful while 63.8% of all city public school students were proficient in reading, and 51.5% were proficient in math.
Wealthy suburban schools get much more money per student than NYC. But you probably already knew that.
That is simply not true. NYC spends $28 K per student. Greenwich Ct spends the same. Westport $26 K and Stamford $21 K.
I have lived in both an urban community and a wealthy suburb in MA - I know it is not the same as NY, but I had to pay for so much more in the suburbs. We had excellent grant writers in the city and the programs got lots of money. The Boston teachers were paid better than the suburbs. But in every case, it's how the administration spends the money.
I have seen this waste myself, and consequently started a charter school in Allegheny County. But charter schools do not receive the same money per student as the other public schools; so for charter schools to remain afloat they pay their teachers even less than the public schools, and their educational outcomes scarcely surpass the other public schools. Money alone, as you accurately recognize, will not fix the problem. I also agree with many here that this is cultural problem: Asian and Jewish parents for example, are much more culturally equipped to promote their children's education than many other minorities. And that itself comes from our own cultural focus on the value of reading, mathematics and education in general. So what is to be done? The answer is expensive but entirely possible. Education in poor communities with awful academic performance cannot end at the school house. A real federal commitment to improving educational outcomes for poor, predominately Black communities, must include wrap around care for the entire family. That will take significant focused federal funding. The experts are already there and they know how to do it too. But we need to do it as a nation. First, without a doubt, eliminate leftist racist ideologies that promote the fundamentally destructive nonsense so clearly described in the above article. Make lying wrong again. Follow the real science and not the politically correct gibberish of Kendi and DiAngelo.
School choice seems to be the answer to this. But the teachers unions fight it. They then vote for democrats who defeat school choice. However, I think parents are rising up.
I agree on this. I watched the city I grew up in go from small, local schools to bigger schools. You could still walk, mostly, to the schools, but you were not as attached to the community. But, as a grandchild of immigrants, and someone who did not have a lot of money growing up, you can get a good education with a good work ethic and support from a loving family and community.
I hadn’t heard of Harlem Academy, so I looked it up. The difference seems to be that the families value education and want their kids to succeed academically--enough to pay at least some tuition. I suspect that this crucial difference in the home environment leads to a far more conducive learning environment in the school.
Is that what the previous administration called charter schools?
And? Or do we say black parents can't care about their kids as much as "entitled" or "privileged" white parents? Where does the madness end?
Bruce, I’m not sure what you’re asking by “and?” Obviously there are plenty of black parents who care about their kids’ academic and ultimately, financial success. I’ve seen that as someone who attended private school and as someone who lives in a suburb where families of all races send their kids to our very good public schools. It’s a very different story in inner city environments, where kids are dealing with drug addiction, gang violence, extreme poverty, and antipathy/resentment towards models of success perceived as rewarding whites and oppressing blacks. Part of the downside of public education is that people tend to value less what they get “for free”--in this case, taxpayer funds not being directly visible.
I repeat......"and?" You say, "It’s a very different story in inner city environments, where kids are dealing with drug addiction, gang violence, extreme poverty, and antipathy/resentment towards models of success perceived as rewarding whites and oppressing blacks." Whose fault is that? You don't have to have a lot of money or education to care about your children's success. My parents were not college educated nor did we have much money. But my mother brought all seven of us to the library several times a week, read to us and took our schooling very seriously.
It doesn’t end, it’s either milked or gaslighted until we all implode into this madness.
It is not care, it is resources and expectations. My daughter teaches high school math in a poor community. Some kids are homeless or have drug addicted parents. We need to support the children at that level. Hungry, homeless children have a hard time learning.
If "we" have an obligation to support the kids, then "we" also have to stop coddling the parents and demand accountability. Otherwise we're just dupes.
What is frustrating is how much money is spent on the homeless, etc. and how little meets the "children at that level".
The single most important determiner of success in school is the attitude of the child's parents toward school.
I agree that we need to try to help children in bad circumstances to do as well as they can. But in too many cases, there is no way to overcome the problem of parental attitude.
Another problem is that these attitudes seep into whole communities. I have read too many essays by successful black people who were accused by their peers of "trying to be white" because they took school seriously. What are you going to do to overcome that?
The single most important determiner of a child’s success in school is their parents wealth. Look it up!
Not necessarily.
It has nothing to do with wealth. Wealth is the end product of a lifetime of studying and hard work. I can almost guarantee that those wealthy parents have a strong work ethic and expect their children to study and succeed. That is the difference. (There are plenty of wealthy spoiled kids whose parents don’t pay any attention to them and who, in turn, act out and don’t do well in school). Also, lots of very successful people (like Colin Powell and Thomas Sowell) come from very poor homes. The difference is in their parents’ (or parent’s) investment in their children. Wanting them to succeed. Requiring them to study and work hard. It all begins with the parent(s)- ideally both a mother and a father.
Family wealth is the biggest indicator of academic success.
https://cew.georgetown.edu/cew-reports/schooled2lose/