Black, Hispanic pupils see school as tough

From what information I can gather, 37.8% of Vietnamese immigrants had less than highschool education. Chinese immigrants, 23% had less than highschool education. Filipinos, 13%. Indian 12.6 %.

Chinese and Vietnamese have percentages that compare similarly with American Blacks and Hispanics who are at 29.1% and 48.5%.

The idea that the most uneducated Asians not immigrating isn't true. It's clear that there is a large percentage in some of the largets immigrating nationalities who are very uneducated.

http://www.asian-nation.org/enclaves.shtml

 

That's your problem. There is no bias against blacks. There's a bias against LAZY Americans regardless of skin color. I have no time for lazy people of any color.

As for your "model minority" bit, why is it wrong to expect the best out of EVERYONE? When you lower expectations, you get lowered results.

 

The sad part is that we have free education here, whereas, this is not available in most of the world. Parents in other countries scrap by to make it possible for their children to attend school. My tax money is going into the public school system whether I like it or not. Yet there are still people who don't seriously treat their education as priority and cherish the opportunity of a free education, but have gall to complain about standardized tests and having to speak English. Lazy is lazy. And add in lack of parental involvement and you have dumb kids.

 

I do not know about all countries but I figure that more industrialized countries have a public school system. Hell, Sweden for example, has free college for all of their citizens and will even pay for you to learn abroad.

Also, it isn't like we have a great education system here in the states. Here is an article that shows that we are #18 out of 24 countries that were used in the studies. I'm sorry but that is pretty piss poor to me considering that we are the "greatest country in the world".

U.S. falls in education rank compared to other countries

Story posted: 10-04-2005 07:07

By Elaine Wu
U-Wire

The United States is falling when it comes to international education rankings, as recent studies show that other nations in the developed world have more effective education systems.

In a 2003 study conducted by UNICEF that took the averages from five different international education studies, the researchers ranked the United States No. 18 out of 24 nations in terms of the relative effectiveness of its educational system.

Another prominent 2003 study, the Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study, shows a steady decline in the performance of American students from grades 4 to 12 in comparison to their peers in other countries.

In both studies, Finland, Australia, Belgium, Austria, Hungary, Netherlands and the United Kingdom beat the United States, while the Asian nations of South Korea, Japan and Singapore ranked first through third, respectively.

The TIMSS study is a comprehensive study done on a four-year cycle that measures the progress of students in math and science in 46 participating countries. It evaluates fourth, eighth and 12th-graders through questionnaires, tests and extensive videotaping of classroom environments.

The TIMSS results reveal a lot about the weaknesses of the U.S. education system, said David Marsh, a professor at the University of Southern California Rossier School of Education.
“In fourth grade, American kids do above average internationally. By eighth grade, they slip a bit, and by 12th-grade, they’ve slipped a lot,” Marsh said. “We’re the only country that slides down that much from fourth to 12th grade.”

Although studies have attempted to illuminate the reasons for this downward slide, no conclusive explanations have been drawn.

The UNICEF report finds that educational success or failure is not directly linked to funding, and that there is no clear link between student-to-teacher ratios and test results.
By international standards, the United States spends a lot of money on education, and in terms of class sizes, a lot of countries that do well have larger class sizes than the United States, Marsh said.

Marsh said that he attributes U.S. rankings to a different set of reasons —namely, the way material is being taught in classrooms.

“The United States focuses more on procedure, and we try to teach many topics fast. Other countries tend to break topics up and go much more in-depth. They work on the concept, not just the procedure,” Marsh said. “Countries that did well in rankings focused on teaching the ideas and taught a few topics a year. Kids will learn what a fraction really is, not just how to add or subtract them.”

For example, teachers in the United States tend to teach in whole numbers, while other countries use rulers so children are able to see that there are numbers between whole numbers, Marsh said.

When kids are taught the procedure, and not the concept behind a subject, they tend to forget more quickly, he said.

Peter Luevano, assistant principal at Jefferson High School, cites different reasons for the decline in the U.S. education system.

“There are environmental factors that are involved. I think there’s a shift in the mentality of both kids and parents,” he said. “Kids value different things these days, and schools are more diverse than they were 15 or 20 years ago. We’re more open culturally, but that has caused more division rather than unity in the country. Parent involvement has also decreased, and there are also discipline factors involved. Schools have lost a lot of control.”

But the United States is taking steps toward improving education standards in the country.
In 2002, the Bush administration signed the No Child Left Behind Act, which places accountability for progress upon schools and doles out regular standardized testing.
The act is geared toward encouraging higher academic achievement among students, particularly those that come from poor minority backgrounds.

But some students at USC cannot see how the law is proving effective.

“Because the only way we measure how well students do is through testing, teachers end up teaching how to take the test, and not necessarily the subject matter,” said Megan Baaske, a sophomore majoring in history and communication. “Great, students can take a test, but they don’t know anything.”

“The U.S. caters to students’ needs and wants,” said Matias Sueldo, a sophomore majoring in international relations who spent part of his education in Argentina. “Kids here learn to pass a test, but they don’t learn the concepts. In Argentina, you either know it or you don’t.”
Emily Gamelson, a junior majoring in history, thinks that the low student achievement in U.S. schools has a lot to do with the lack of competition.

“Ambition and the motivation to achieve aren’t really inspired in our education system,” Gamelson said. “Since education is available to everyone, there’s not a lot of competition in our schools. Other countries force kids to focus at an earlier age, and there’s more competition to deal with.”

Some countries offer more incentives for students to do better. In Denmark and Finland, for instance, ninth and 10th grade are separated from 11th and 12th grade, encouraging students to do better and compete to get into the higher grades.

“It’s basically the teaching system, the values and cultures of a country that underlie its education system,” Sueldo said. “Other factors like funding really have nothing to do with it.”
But Luevano said that he thinks there are difficulties in even comparing U.S. schools, especially public ones, to ones abroad.

“Other countries might have a more homogenous population,” he said. “(Here) you have different cultures, different communities and kids who come from different backgrounds. You don’t have the same socioeconomic standards. It’s hard to be compared.”

Nevertheless, the published education rankings remain displeasing to some people.

“I think it’s ironic that the United States is the richest and most powerful country in the world and yet we can’t even properly educate our own students,” Baaske said. “Our priorities are in the wrong place.”

But Marsh believes we can make a change for the better.

“If we do this right, we can be a real educational leader in the world,” he said. “But the state of education in the United States is a serious situation that demands our attention.”

 

the above^, universal healthcare, and freedom of speech ought to be the benchmarks of any great democratic nation that truly cares about its citizens. we barely have one of those things.

 

Just a heads-up, the 2006 National Spelling Bee competition is going to air in prime time live. To make it to the national tourney is no small feat in itself. These kids are wizkids, simply amazing. You get a feel of the ethnic/racial compositions of the well-educated kids by watching the Spelling Bee. Black and Hispanic kids are clearly not proportionally represented, a stark contrast to, say, hoop competitions. An interesting phenomenon is that many of these kids are home-schooled.

 

I apologize in advance if this is un-PC and offensive - but haven't we all noticed the phenomenal success of Indian kids, often with long, multi-syllabalic names, in national spelling bees? They're like the Kenyan distance runners.

 

I completely agree with you.

 

*sighs*

 

No, there's no bias against blacks. They are on a completely level playing field.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/13081865/

Study: Blacks, Latinos pay more for mortgages


CHARLOTTE, N.C. - Black and Hispanic home buyers are more likely to pay high mortgage rates than white borrowers with similar credit ratings and income levels, an advocacy group found.

The Center for Responsible Lending said either loan sellers are charging higher rates to the minority customers or those borrowers are being steered to loan sellers that specialize in higher rates.

Using an industry database, the Durham-based nonprofit center compared credit scores, down payments and other financial information on about 177,000 loans made in 2004 by "subprime" lenders — companies that charge higher interest rates than banks. The lenders provided the borrowers' income and race.



Race disadvantages today are far more subtle than the outright open discrimination of 50 years ago, but it's still there. As SF noted with the Korea example, when a group is constantly beaten down with these types of discriminations, it takes a toll - regardless of the "inherent qualities" of the race. So no, the bias isn't againt lazy Americans - it's specifically against blacks and hispanics in many areas of life.

 

The question is not why Blacks and Hispanics does not perform well at schools but how to solve this problem. Or is this a problem that will never be solved?

Does anyone believe that if a school said kids who are under performing have to stay after school for 2 hours every day to do extra math problems or complete more writing assignments instead of allowing them to go to sports practices that the parents of these kids would say "Wow what a great idea to improve my kid's grade?" I bet the school get taken to the court by these parents for discrimination practices.

 

What have I got to do to make you love me
What have I got to do to make you care
What do I do when lightning strikes me
And I wake to find that you're not there

What do I do to make you want me
What have I got to do to be heard
What do I say when it's all over
And sorry seems to be the hardest word

It's sad, so sad
It's a sad, sad situation
And it's getting more and more absurd
It's sad, so sad
Why can't we talk it over
Oh it seems to me
That sorry seems to be the hardest word

What do I do to make you love me
What have I got to do to be heard
What do I do when lightning strikes me
What have I got to do
What have I got to do
When sorry seems to be the hardest word

 

The quality of a child's school should not be determined by where the child lives. That's a big part of what is wrong. As long as public schools are funded locally wealthier neighborhoods will have better schools and be able to attract better teachers (I am not saying city schools don't have good dedicated teachers but many have fled for the suburbs).

I'm not sure how to fix this but all schools should be equally funded.

 

A lot of stuff here to respond too.

First off I hate it when Asians are used as the foils whenever the topic of race and ethnicity in regard to achievement is discussed. As many have noted the many of the immigrants who come here are a self selected group that represent the best, brightest and most importantly the most ambitious of their populations so its no wonder why Asian, and other immigrants, who come here are the most successful. Further these immigrants have had the opportunity to come here after the civil rights movement and came here with essentially a clean slate free of a family heritage of having been oppressed.

There's nothing endemic about being Asian that makes Asians more likely to be more intelligent or hardworkng than blacks or Latinos. Since prior to the wave of Asian immigrants starting in the 1960's Asians were for the most part poor and uneducated in the US largely being limited to farming and small business. The stereotype of Chinese prior to the 1960's waemsn't as hardworking and morally upright but lazy and decadent. They weren't considered as intelligent per se but as cunning and prone to use that cunning for evil, the inscrutable Oriental mind, and up until the 1960's it was very unlikely to think of Chinese Americans as mathematicians or scientists. Even now in many Chinatowns there still are Chinese who are mired in poverty who have and whose families have been in the US for decades. The Chinese immigrants of my parents generation and my generation could bypass all of that and weren't saddled with a family and cultural legacy of a society that limited their achievement. In fact for my Dad coming to America he was escaping that sort of society of growing up poor in British Hong Kong. The only reason though he even had that possibility was because he was one of the most intelligent and students Hong Kong that gave him the chance to get out of there.

Not quibbling with these statistics but they don't tell the whole story. You can't necessarily compare high school graduation standards in countries like India and the Philipines with the US considering that for many in those countries even going to highschool is an achievement and the quality of the highschool they're getting isn't that high. Consider that 87% of Filipino immigrants coming here have graduated highschool that is likely a much higher number than the percentage of Filipinos that graduate highschool in the Filipines. The other thing that skews these numbers is how many of those immigrants are older or younger family members of immigrants who have come here. When most of my mother's family came here in the 1970's out of that family of 9 only 5 had graduated highschool. Yet out of that group their are 3 PHD's 2 Master degrees and 3 millionaires and when they came the five who graduated highschool 4 already had Bachelor's degrees. The family as a whole was a self selected group who already were achieving but who happened to bring along relatives who were old and grew up at a time and place where highschool wasn't relatively available or too young to have started highschool.

Finally leaving aside the issues of degrees if there was something endemic about being Asian or Asian cultures then why are there so many Asians living in poverty and ignorance? If you go to rural China and India you don't see a lot of math wizs you see some of the most dirt poor people who know little of the World let alone things outside of their villages. The streets of Manilla aren't teeming with scientists and spelling bee winners. They're poorer, dirtier and more crime ridden than any American city. What we see in America is a small percentage of the best and most ambitious out of the billions that are as lazy and stupid as any American of any race or ethnicity.

So it annoys me that Asians as a model minority are used, and allow themselves to be used, in this way. First by arguing that there is something endemic about Asians that sets them apart as more intelligent from other minorities and secondly as a club to argue that there is no racism and that blacks, latinos and Native Americans are lazy. That just enforces a soft racism that stratifies ethnicities and becomes an excuse to refuse to address the historically different treatment that various races have had in the US.

 

That is the right question and the answer is far more complex than just saying "well look at how well Asians are doing so blacks and hispanics must just be lazy."

I don't like to blame everything on racism but racism and its legacy cannot be dismissed outright. There is a problem of cultural perceptions regarding the races and IMO there's no easy fix to it its just a matter of time for those perceptions to be changed. The flip side of racism is the expectations that its bread among African Americans and Native Americans where many of them distrust education and have developed the attitude that becoming educated or successful through anything short of sports or entertainment is to be "white" or selling out. I think Wnes brought it up that that's a matter of role models and how those particular minority cultures developed in opposition to a majority culture that oppressed them. Tying this back to the Malcolm X thread this is one area where I think if Malcolm X had lived he might've made a huge difference since his argument was that African-Americans could and should have their own culture apart from white America but that culture would be one that valued education and economic achievement. The problem with things like that though is that they can't be fixed externally and that is a matter of leadership in those communities to lead the change and not for non-blacks chastise black America as being lazy.

 

What a pathetic response. If you have an opinion, at least state it. What about that statement do you disagree about?

 

I have to disagree with you. I think the fact that Asians, generally, excel academically does tell us something. If anything, it tell us that the "big bad white man" conspiracy may be overblown - and that everyone can perform well in school regardless of skin color - that ideas such as racial quotas are unnecessary and harmful.

One thing I don't like about these "minority" studies is that they tend to overstate the race issue and categorize Asians to some sort of non-specific non-minority status.

 

While things such as guaranteed free college education and universal healthcare may be noble goals, I don't think they are should be considered benchmarks of a democratic nation.

When people start getting into the realm of human "rights" for education, healthcare, etc. - it can cultivate a rather dangerous mindset. YES - a nation with the surpluses and wealth to provide some sort of safety can very well provide tax-payer funded services to those who cannot afford them. But they should not be considered "rights" or "benchmarks of a democratic nation". What happens when all our best medical minds become plastic surgeons or refuse to treat people on tax-payer funded subsistence? Do we hold guns to their heads? What happens when the public school teacher go on strike. I believe they should have the right to strike. By doing so - are they violating my "rights" to education? Does my "right" to free schooling supercede their "right" to strike or quit their jobs?

Would a poor, fledgling, democratic nation bereft of any surpluses be a-holes for not providing free education and healthcare to it's citizenry?

As for free speech? We have it. Here you go:

I HATE GEORGE BUSH. DOWN WITH THE UNITED STATES. I AM GOING TO COMMIT TREASON. I HATE GEORGE BUSH. I AM GOING TO BURN AN AMERICAN FLAG.

 

No one's ever said anyone can't perform well in school. The question is whether all groups are being given equal opportunity to succeed.