NYT: 'Jaw-Dropping' Data on Black Male Student Achievement

well first of all there are two issues to address, all males are falling behind in school according to statistics, then there is the issue of black males

 

No, some money is needed. It also hurts when people fault changes in the way things are taught. Ebonics is a huge example.

Ebonics was never meant to allow students to use ebonics instead of academic language for school. It was meant to show teachers where the linguistic patterns come from, understand that it isn't just slang, but an actual linguistic pattern that follows rules, and how children exposed to that naturally pick up those rules etc.

The idea was that understanding that allowed teachers to make the necessary adjustments to teach standard academic English to students with different needs. It wasn't about lowering standards and allowing non-academic English to be acceptable for classroom learning.

Yet the press and people who didn't understand jumped on it. In order to train older teachers on the demands of students with different needs money will be needed to fund professional development. There also needs to be money spent on community outreach so that high value can be placed on education in the community. There is some money that will need to be spent, but that isn't the main thing that needs to change.

A lot of the problem is people who don't understand what they are talking about thinking that if you deliver material in a different way to different students you are lowering expectations or those students are getting an unfair advantage.

 

I don't think your report addresses achievement of pre kers

 

That's a good point. For years the educational literature focused on how schools were failing girls and advocated "GirlPower". It was a curious notion in the first place since most teachers are female. Beyond on that, the academics missed the fact that it was boys who were really struggling in school. They have finally caught on.

 

All your solutions are top down approaches that have already failed.

You can't force a community to value education when it does not want to.

 

Isn't is something along the lines of only 25% of African-American children are born in wedock?

If so, I think that is your problem. Single parents have to work and don't have time to take care of children and there is usually no 'father' figure to look up to.

Its probably a striking statement but I think welfare and the benefits given per child have done more harm to the black community than anything. It allows people to have children and recieve funding from the government thereby limiting the need to have men around to pay for anything.

If they had to deal with the financial ramifications of children and no government support they may decide to have safe sex, not have sex or make sure the male is going to stick around for fear of starvation and living on the streets.

 

400 years?

 

if you've delved off into "they're all on welfare" you didn't read the OP

 

So if a Hispanic person has no family members that graduated college, they should also get priority acceptance?

 

This goes back to Roanoke, and Jamestown, even Cabeza de Vaca brought an African that was enslaved with him in 1527.

 

Actually it depends on the situation, but possibly. For some reason Mexicans, Hawaiians, African Americans and Native Americans traditionally under perform. That is different than other hispanic groups, and African immigrants.

The reason is that people who were enslaved, colonized, and had genocide carried out against them are still overcoming the stigma. This is true of those groups even when adults were well educated and had high economic status.

 

I think addressing the underlying culture issue would get the ball rolling on both issues. Changing perceptions and outlooks of what you think and what others think of you isn't easy. I certainly think that if you or the school doesn't expect much, then the desire to persevere through education wouldn't be a priority.

I'm not discounting environmental differences, but it's already a complex issue without the emotional attachment of putting it on another scale.


And we're already seeing drops in male student achievement across races. If this isn't addressed, women will start occupying the technical and higher level fields.

 

But you can offer public relations to help demonstrate the value of education, outreach to help them help their children receive those benefits, and allow it to grow.

It isn't all top down, though every aspect of society including the top should look at what it can do. Passing the buck and saying nothing can be done because the community doesn't care, or the parents aren't helping etc. isn't helpful.

 

Not terribly surprising though for our good friend from 1981.

 

oddly enough, a good argument for affirmative action. Providing higher education at top quality universities and getting more and more minorities into well paid leadership positions in business would help create a community that could easily see the value of such things.

 

I think it is definitely a cultural thing. For whatever reason, just from my personal experience in school, the facts presented in the article were pretty clear. African American females I went to school with generally cared quite a bit about their education/grades, etc (girls in general always cared more than the boys). I also went to and still go to school with a good amount of native Africans (Nigerian and Senegalese mostly). The males in this group were some of the hardest working and diligent students I ever came across. I think it has to be a cultural thing with African American males specifically that is causing this lack of interest in education/learning. I'm not black, so I don't know what that is.

 

But that only addresses the problem on the margins. I'm not saying that is all useless, but I am saying that it's not going to make much of a difference.

For this to turn around, change must come from the ground up. In the interim we can do some of the you mentioned (sans ebonics) and we can do vouchers so that sufficiently motivated parents can escape bad schools. Although I support vouchers, it's no panacea because it leaves most kids SOL. The real trick is to make all schools better.

 

IT takes time. You start doing what you can, and over time little by little there is a change. It's why 45 years isn't enough undo all the damage. Especially when so little is being done right now.