Black education gap: "There is nothing mysterious about it..."

Townhall ^ | September 24, 2003 | Thomas Sowell

[yankeedame]

School performances

Thomas Sowell (archive)

September 24, 2003

Everyone knows that black students in general do not perform as well in school as white students, much less Asian American students. But few realize how painfully large the gap is.

Even fewer know that there are particular black schools, even in low-income neighborhoods, where students perform above the national average.

Discussing racial gaps in education is taboo in some quarters. But this subject is discussed deeply and thoroughly in a new book titled "No Excuses: Closing the Racial Gap in Learning" by Abigail Thernstrom of the Manhattan Institute and Stephan Thernstrom of Harvard.

They are also the authors of the best book on race relations -- "America in Black and White" -- so there are high expectations for this new book.

"No Excuses" lives up to those expectations. If you read just one book about American education all year, this should be the book.

It not only goes into the causes and cures of racial disparities in education, in the process it punctures many of the fads, dogmas, and pious hypocrisies of the education establishment.

First, the existing gap: Black high school students graduate an average of four years behind white students in academic skills. In other words, the high school diplomas they receive are given -- not earned -- for a junior high school education.

The excuses for this range across the spectrum from poverty to racism and even innate lack of ability. Yet none of these excuses stands up to the facts.

As the Thernstroms show, there are some schools where the students are equally poor and equally black, where test scores are outstanding. Moreover, such schools seldom get any more money than the schools that are failing.

Some of the most heavily financed schools are doing miserably. Even spending $17,000 per pupil, Cambridge, Massachusetts was still left with a huge gap between the test scores of its black and white students.

In fact, black students in Cambridge scored lower than other black students in nearby communities with less than half as much spending per pupil.

Those who believe that money is the answer are not going to be stopped by anything so mundane as facts. To many in politics and in the media -- and to everyone in the teachers unions -- "improving" the schools means spending more money on them.

But what is called "investing" in better education could more accurately be called pouring money down a bottomless pit.

Don't suburban schools with high levels of spending do better than other schools with lower levels of spending? Usually, yes. But Olympic-sized swimming pools and tennis courts do not make you any smarter. Nor do generous-sized parking lots for affluent students with fancy cars.

"No Excuses" does not limit its comparisons to blacks and whites. In some cases, the educational performances of Asian American students exceeds that of whites by more than the performances of whites exceed that of blacks.

There is nothing mysterious about any of these differences. Asian students put more time into study and homework and watch less television. They behave themselves in class. Their parents don't tolerate low grades -- or even medium grades.

In those rare black schools where the students follow a pattern similar to that of Asian Americans, they get educational results similar to those of Asian Americans.

What about the role of the schools in all this?

American schools waste an incredible amount of time on fads, fun and propaganda for political correctness. Those students who come from homes with highly educated parents, or parents whose values stress education, get a lot of what they need outside of school, as well as making the most of what they get within the school.

It is those children who do not come from these kinds of homes whose futures are forfeited when class time is frittered away. Low-income black students are the biggest losers when educators fail to educate and when courts create so many legal obstacles to enforcing school discipline that a handful of classroom clowns or hoodlums can prevent everyone else from getting a decent education.

More money won't cure any of this.

[mhking]

Thomas Sowell bump!

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[governsleastgovernsbest]

Who is this Sowell? He's obviously some kind of privileged white guy, a racist who has never stepped foot in a black neighborhood, let alone a black school. Why, I bet . . .

What? You say Thomas Sowell is black? Uh, never mind.

[Republic If You Can Keep It]

More money won't cure any of this.

Tell that to Ted Kennedy.

Actually, never mind. Better to save your breath to cool your porridge.

[Jimmy Valentine's brother]

The reformed socilist hits another one out of the park.

JVOB, maybe the book Dr. Sowell references here would make a good companion to the "Bell Curve".

[Jimmy Valentine's brother]

socilist socialist

Spell Check impaired.

[cyborg]

There is nothing mysterious about any of these differences. Asian students put more time into study and homework and watch less television. They behave themselves in class. Their parents don't tolerate low grades -- or even medium grades.

In those rare black schools where the students follow a pattern similar to that of Asian Americans, they get educational results similar to those of Asian Americans.

*** Black middle-upper class students study and work as hard as any asians do. I was in class with a bunch of black kids. The white teacher ONLY paid attention to the asian kids because she thought they were smarter just by being asian. I'm glad she was the only witch who thought so. I just studied and scored better than the Philipino girl just to prove that whites and others did have a brain. In the end, a mixed race boy was valedictorian and I came in second in my class by one test grade.

Schools in Africa and the West Indies are very similiar in structure to Asian schools. Many asian go to these schools, esp. in countries that were former British colonies. This is more of a class issue than race issue. Class in the way of finances and class, for respecting what is important. BOTH my parents grew up poor. My mother was poor in the West Indies and my father was poor in a nasty immigrant ghetto in Brooklyn. They both knew the value of an education and passed that on to me. My parents sacrificed and sent me to the best schools,etc. I was the only kid on my block to have a computer. It was not because my parents were foreigners or because my father was white either. They saw it as a tool of education. While the neighborhood girls were busy getting pregnant, I went to library.

That's all this whole issue is about. Plus poor people aren't thinking about school for the most part. They're thinking about paying bills, working and keeping food on the table.

[cyborg]

Actually it would refute the Bell Curve since this article is basically about poverty and education, and what happens when poor blacks value education as much as asian immigrants. Bell Curve is bunk. It's as bad as anything Leonard Jeffries says.

[Tailback]

This is very simple. Most black kids come from single parent households. Some white kids come from single parent homes. Few Asian kids come from single parent homes.

Study after study has shown that kids from single parent homes have more emotional problems, higher chance of drug abuse, drop out more frequently, and have higher teen pregnancy rates no matter what color they are.

[cyborg]

Fix the social issues and you fix the problem. I hate liberals. They don't want to address social problems seriously and honestly, like you mentioned single parenthood, teen pregnancy,etc. They hate abstinence education,etc. Kids the world over are going to have issues unless parents first take RESPONSIBILITY then schools do their part.

[Jimmy Valentine's brother]

I haven't read the "Bell Curve" but am going to do so as it raised such a stink. However, based on Doctor Sowell's commentary I suspect that you are correct that the two books reach different conclusions.

I am a big fan of Doctor Sowell and have found his commentaries on education illuminating. His books are also on my list to read.

[zook]

I'm the book review editor of a major education journal and I'm going to try to include a review of this book in a forthcoming edition.

[TRY ONE]

"Black high school students graduate an average of four years behind white students in academic skills..."

Is this why Blacks can't punch out chads in Florida or Kalifornia?
What if they made the chads to look like basketball hoops and "basketball pencils" were used to punch 'em out???

[junta]

Actually cyborg is probably another person who has not read the book. It has exactly one chapter where it specifies race other than that one chapter it deals with the widening disparity between the top and the bottom of the IQ distribution regardless of race. It is well worth reading if one has an interest in intelligence and its distribution.

[cyborg]

I remember when the Bell Curve came out. One's visceral reaction to say, oh what a racist piece of crap. what scumbags. Actually, if one's considers a more in depth intellectual study, it makes more meaningful refutations and maybe even positive solutions. Yes it was very controversial. I think that's because I think it gave a few white people (who aren't too smart themselves) license to say blacks are stupid. Even more so than a few whining whites, were the shrill voices of black liberals. Ugh.. I'm glad the 1990s are OVER.

BTW, whenever Walter Williams subs for Rush, he almost always has Thomas Sowell on. Sowell has written some good books too. I like his books on ethnic America.

[cyborg]

I read the book, and it's still crap.

[blam]

"Study after study has shown that kids from single parent homes have more emotional problems, higher chance of drug abuse, drop out more frequently, and have higher teen pregnancy rates no matter what color they are."

I raised my son in a single parent home (I'm a male), my son has a PhD in physics. I didn't tolerate low grades. His first, entry level, job after college started at $88K.

[cyborg]

I didn't tolerate low grades.

*** That's why your son has a doctorate.

[Luke Skyfreeper]

As the Thernstroms show, there are some schools where the students are equally poor and equally black, where test scores are outstanding. Moreover, such schools seldom get any more money than the schools that are failing.

It would be nice, wouldn't it, to see a study of the results being achieved by black home schoolers?

[L,TOWM]

The children of one of the associate pastors of my church seem to be doing well.

They may not count, though. Their mom is horribly melanin deficient...