Posted on 11/09/2010 10:24:07 AM PST by lbryce
An achievement gap separating black from white students has long been documented — a social divide extremely vexing to policy makers and the target of one blast of school reform after another.
But a new report focusing on black males suggests that the picture is even bleaker than generally known.
Only 12 percent of black fourth-grade boys are proficient in reading, compared with 38 percent of white boys, and only 12 percent of black eighth-grade boys are proficient in math, compared with 44 percent of white boys.
Poverty alone does not seem to explain the differences: poor white boys do just as well as African-American boys who do not live in poverty, measured by whether they qualify for subsidized school lunches.
The data was distilled from highly respected national math and reading tests, known as the National Assessment for Educational Progress, which are given to students in fourth and eighth grades, most recently in 2009. The report, “A Call for Change,” is to be released Tuesday by the Council of the Great City Schools, an advocacy group for urban public schools.
Although the outlines of the problem and many specifics have been previously reported, the group hopes that including so much of what it calls “jaw-dropping data” in one place will spark a new sense of national urgency.
“What this clearly shows is that black males who are not eligible for free and reduced-price lunch are doing no better than white males who are poor,” said Michael Casserly, executive director of the council.
The report shows that black boys on average fall behind from their earliest years.
(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...
“Black mothers have a higher infant mortality rate and black children are twice as likely as whites to live in a home where no parent has a job. “
The solution is simple. Just assign every black mother a white husband.
Why does the NYT never come up with creative solutions?
The buried the lead!
The lead is: Only 38% of white fourth-grade boys are proficient in reading!
Sub-lead is Black fare worse.
Incredible and disgusting.
Look in your public school text books and you will NOT FIND A PICTURE of a European American male teenager. Unless they're CRIPPLED!
I believe the white births were over 50% to unwed mothers.
This growing problem may be the real trojan horse leading to the downfall of a once thriving nation.
Black kids did good in school in NYC when they went to the dozen or so Catholic schools.
Well, if we could go back to the old days when more black babies were born into stable nuclear families with both parents present (and who tended to have traditional values as good or better that white families), and got to see blacks who benefited from academic achievement on a more regular basis, maybe that wouldn’t be the case.
Only Bill Cosby was brave enough to identify this as the root cause of this problem and he was ignored or vilified by the Black community. This is the problem that needs to be addressed and Jesse Jackson, Al Sharpton and all the other professional race hustlers could care less.
Black kids did good in school in NYC when they went to the dozen or so Catholic schools.
I think it’s more a cultural thing. The performance of West-Indies born blacks versus US born blacks the West-Indies born blacks do very well.
They're thinking of all the money "we" should spend.
Possible causes:
Genetics
Socioeconomic factors
Culture
I’ll explain culture using an analogy of 2 greyhounds. One is raised by responsible owners who make sure the dog is well fed, trained, is in good physical condition, and is exercised often. The other is owned by someone who rarely takes it outside, feeds it junk and has little interest in it. If those 2 dogs raced each other, which do you think would win?
It still could be genetics, just not racial genetics.
The principal made less than no effort to help him. My brother called the boy's mother to talk to her about her son's behavior, and she (get ready for it) bitterly accused him of racism and threatened his job. No danger of her having his father threaten my brother, though. Dad was no where to be found. Quelle surprise!
The current situation in inner city schools is beyond a joke. At least half of the math teachers are complete incompetents and the other half have mostly given up. I suspect that black kids could do much better with incentives. Money isn't the problem. If the black kids were as diligent and disciplined as the Asian students in the suburban schools, I would not be one bit surprised if they did just as well. But they are manifestly undisciplined, the unruly and dangerous kids rule and intimidate the others and diligence is pointless in that environment and rarely encouraged at home.
Are the 'evil white males' who are poor, presumably also in need of free or reduced-price lunches, somehow racistly stealing their intelligence?
What this 'study', exhaustively 'distilled' from 'test' data, shows is the incomprehensible and unabashed racism of its authors - proponents for even more funding for blacks simply because they are black. We've thrown trillions of dollars at this 'racist' outcome and it will never change. If you want 'change' then change their damn misogynistic and counterproductive victim culture. Don't produce academic horseshit and call it a study.
“And if you are 1/2 White & 1/2 Black = 1/2 A Bell !!!!”
Mix in some hispanic and get a Taco Bell.
Why do you think we have affirmative action?
Why do people who get jobs with affirmative action always cry because they dont get promoted?
You cannot lower test scores on hiring and then expect these same people to pass a promotional exam which hasn’t had it’s score lowered.
Early literacy is so key to kids’ later literacy. I did a research paper on the importance of parents both talking to/engaging and reading to their children. What was surprising when I did my research, however, and not often cited was just how important the DAD’s role was in early literacy. If Dad shows that he reads and that reading is cool, it impacts both sons AND daughters! How about THAT, dads!?
“I suspect that black kids could do much better with incentives.”
Maybe now is the time to roll out the sure to be controversial “Heroin for Homework” program in the inner cities.
This explains why they vote for democrats so often.
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