Why Are Black Students Lagging?

New York Times | 11/29/02 | FELICIA R. LEE

[kattracks]

he persistent academic gap between white and black students has touched off difficult and often ugly debates over the question why. Are racist stereotypes to blame? Substandard schools? Cultural attitudes?

This long-running argument may bubble up again next year with the arrival of a book that argues minority communities themselves contribute to student failure.

The book, "Black American Students in an Affluent Suburb: A Study of Academic Disengagement" (Lawrence Erlbaum Associates), is by John U. Ogbu, an anthropology professor at the University of California at Berkeley and a well-known figure in the field of student achievement for more than three decades. Indeed, it was Mr. Ogbu's research that popularized the phrase "acting white" in the mid-1980's to help explain why black students might disdain behaviors associated with high achievement, like speaking standard grammatical English.

Now Mr. Ogbu is back, arguing with renewed fervor that his most recent research shows that African-Americans' own cultural attitudes are a serious problem that is too often neglected.

"No matter how you reform schools, it's not going to solve the problem," he said in an interview. "There are two parts of the problem, society and schools on one hand and the black community on the other hand."

Professor Ogbu's latest conclusions are highlighted in a study of blacks in Shaker Heights, Ohio, an affluent Cleveland suburb whose school district is equally divided between blacks and whites. As in many racially integrated school districts, the black students have lagged behind whites in grade-point averages, test scores and placement in high-level classes. Professor Ogbu was invited by black parents in 1997 to examine the district's 5,000 students to figure out why.

"What amazed me is that these kids who come from homes of doctors and lawyers are not thinking like their parents; they don't know how their parents made it," Professor Ogbu said in an interview. "They are looking at rappers in ghettos as their role models, they are looking at entertainers. The parents work two jobs, three jobs, to give their children everything, but they are not guiding their children."

For example, he said that middle-class black parents in general spent no more time on homework or tracking their children's schooling than poor white parents. And he said that while black students talked in detail about what efforts were needed to get an A and about their desire to achieve, too many nonetheless failed to put forth that effort.

Those kinds of attitudes reflect a long history of adapting to oppression and stymied opportunities, said Professor Ogbu, a Nigerian immigrant who has written that involuntary black immigrants behave like low-status minorities in other societies.

Not surprisingly, he said, the parents were disappointed when he turned the spotlight on them as well as the schools. Peggy Caldwell, a spokeswoman for the Shaker Heights City School District, said that minority families cared deeply about their children's academic achievement and the district was working with education experts to reduce the racial achievement gap. She noted that while Professor Ogbu called most of the black families in the district middle class, 10 to 12 percent live in poverty.

Also not surprisingly, many researchers take issue with some of Professor Ogbu's latest findings.

"When we asked if friends made fun of kids who do well in school, we don't find any racial difference in that," said Ronald F. Ferguson, a senior research associate at the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard who analyzed a new study of 40,000 middle and high school students in 15 middle class school districts, including Shaker Heights.

Indeed, the study, which was administered by the Minority Student Achievement Network, an organization that explores ways to close the racial achievement gap, found that African-American and Latino students work as hard and care as much about school as white and Asian students do.

Mr. Ferguson said that while minorities lag behind whites in things like homework completion, it is wrong to infer that they aren't interested in school. "High achievers are more often accused of acting white than low achievers, but it's because the low achievers suspect the high achievers believe they are superior."

"It's things like talking too properly when you're in informal social settings," he continued. "It's hanging around white friends and acting like you don't want to be with your black friends. It's really about behavior patterns and not achievement."

Mr. Ferguson speculated that what Professor Ogbu saw was a clumsy attempt by black students to search for a comfortable racial identity. "What does it mean to be black?" he said. "What does it mean to be white? The community needs to help kids make sense of their own identity."

"I would agree with Ogbu that there are youth cultural patterns and behaviors that are counterproductive for academic success," he went on, mentioning socializing in class and spending too much time watching television. "But when they engage in those behaviors, they are not purposely avoiding academic success."

Other researchers have zeroed in on other culprits, whether inferior schools, lower teacher expectations, impoverished family backgrounds or some combination.

Theories of black intellectual inferiority, too, have popped up from the 1781 publication of Thomas Jefferson's "Notes on the State of Virginia" to "The Bell Curve" in 1994 and beyond. Given that sensitivity and the implications for policies like school desegregation and affirmative action, virtually every aspect of the academic gap has been examined.

Where Professor Ogbu found that some middle class blacks were clueless about their children's academic life, for example, Roslyn Arlin Mickelson, a sociology professor at the University of North Carolina, instead concluded that such parents were often excluded from the informal networks that white parents use for information about courses, gifted programs and testing. "I believe, based on my own research, that the center of gravity lies with the school system," she said.

Claude Steele, a Stanford University psychologist, meanwhile, has hypothesized that black students are responding to the fear of confirming lowered expectations.

And Walter R. Allen, a professor of sociology at the University of California at Los Angeles, said that even when racial minorities and whites attended the same schools, they could have radically different experiences because of tracking and teacher expectations.

Professor Allen is conducting a long-term project on college access for African-American and Latino high school students in California. In his view, black students sometimes underperform because of subtle exchanges with teachers who convey the message that they find the students inferior or frightening. And, he said, minority schools still overwhelmingly lack good teachers and adequate teaching tools.

He also pointed out that comparing the income level of black and white families, as Professor Ogbu did with his Midwestern subjects, can be misleading. Black incomes might be derived from two-career families juggling several jobs compared with a single breadwinner in white households.

Professor Ogbu is no stranger to controversy. His theory of "acting white" has been the subject of intense study since he first wrote about it in the mid-80's with Signithia Fordham, then a graduate student and now a professor of anthropology at the University of Rochester. They studied an inner-city Washington high school where students listed doing well in school among the "white" behaviors they rejected, like visiting the Smithsonian and dancing to lyrics rather than a beat.

The two anthropologists theorized that a long history of discrimination helped foster what is known in sociological lingo as an oppositional peer culture. Not only were students resisting the notion that white behavior was superior to their own, but they also saw no connection between good grades and finding a job.

Many scholars who have disputed those findings rely on a continuing survey of about 17,000 nationally representative students, which is conducted by the National Center for Education Statistics, an arm of the federal government. This self-reported survey shows that black students actually have more favorable attitudes than whites toward education, hard work and effort.

But that has by no means settled the debate. In the February issue of the American Sociological Review, for example, scholars who tackled the subject came to opposite conclusions. One article (by three scholars) said that the government data were not reliable because there was often a gap between what students say and what they do; another article by two others said they found that high-achieving black students were especially popular among their peers.

"It's difficult to determine what's going on," said Vincent J. Roscigno, a professor of sociology at Ohio State University who has studied racial differences in achievement. "`I'm sort of split on Ogbu. It's hard to compare a case analysis to a nationally representative statistical analysis. I do have a hunch that rural white poor kids are doing the same thing as poor black kids. I'm tentative about saying it's race-based."

Indeed, Professor Mickelson of the University of North Carolina found that working class whites as well as middle-class blacks were more apt to believe that doing well in school compromised their identity.

All these years later, Professor Fordham said, she fears that the acting-white idea has been distorted into blaming the victim. She said she wanted to advance the debate by looking at how race itself was a social fiction, rooted not just in skin color but also in behaviors and social status.

"Black kids don't get validation and are seen as trespassing when they exceed academic expectations," Professor Fordham said, echoing her initial research. "The kids turn on it, they sacrifice their spots in gifted and talented classes to belong to a group where they feel good."

[Fzob]

Excellent analysis of the problem.

Bump

[Darling Lili]

I did a study once on Korean children, why they do so well academically in the U.S. It's the family. Education is highly valued in Korean tradition, it was the way to get ahead for the entire family.

They then turn around, and perpetuate the rot in the education system by voting for democrats.

[Capt. Tom]

Why Are Black Students Lagging?

Probably for the same reason whites lag behind blacks in foot races and other sports. - Tom

[Crawdad]

Sociology= The painstaking pursuit of the obvious.

[Darling Lili]

Did you write that post yourself, or is it from a source?

[stainlessbanner]

It's popular not to achieve - why? Because you don't see or hear of your favorite television star or favorite musician going that route.

Honestly, I don't see that being isolated to blacks; Pop culture has created a generation of "feel-good slackers" who do as they please.

[Amelia]

In any event, when households are steeped in traditional values, either black or mainstream or both, the offspring of those houses prosper academically.

Professor Ogbu was invited by black parents in 1997 to examine the district's 5,000 students to figure out why....For example, he said that middle-class black parents in general spent no more time on homework or tracking their children's schooling than poor white parents. And he said that while black students talked in detail about what efforts were needed to get an A and about their desire to achieve, too many nonetheless failed to put forth that effort....Not surprisingly, he said, the parents were disappointed when he turned the spotlight on them as well as the schools.

As a teacher, I find it amusing that the parents themselves hired Professor Ogbu, presumably to find a scapegoat in the school system for their children's lack of success, but were offended when he found the problem was closer to home.

[MAKnight]

Mr. Ferguson said that while minorities lag behind whites in things like homework completion, it is wrong to infer that they aren't interested in school. "High achievers are more often accused of acting white than low achievers, but it's because the low achievers suspect the high achievers believe they are superior."

"It's things like talking too properly when you're in informal social settings," he continued. "It's hanging around white friends and acting like you don't want to be with your black friends. It's really about behavior patterns and not achievement."

Mr. Ferguson speculated that what Professor Ogbu saw was a clumsy attempt by black students to search for a comfortable racial identity. "What does it mean to be black?" he said. "What does it mean to be white? The community needs to help kids make sense of their own identity."

Mr. Ferguson doesn't make sense. Low achievers / Minorities are "[just as] interested in school" argues Mr. Ferguson, but they also automatically assume / 'suspect' that the "high achievers believe they are superior." Does Mr. Ferguson bring up anything that shows that high achieving minority students talk "too properly" in informal settings? Does he bring up anything to show that high achieving minority students hang around with white friends more than their black friends?

The answer to all those questions is no. Has this Mr. Ferguson checked to see that these high achieving black kids that supposedly only hang around white friends are not doing so because they've been rejected by their black friends for their high achieving ways? Hell, there are probably teachers who don't hand out graded test papers in class precisely because to do so would make their star pupils' lives a living hell.

"When we asked if friends made fun of kids who do well in school, we don't find any racial difference in that," said Ronald F. Ferguson ...

Sure ... the white kids call white star pupils "nerds" and "geeks". The black kids call black star pupils "Uncle Toms" and call them "wannabe whites". [sarcasm] This works out pretty much even, right? Black and white nerds suffer equally, right? [/sarcasm] Why won't black kids do it when they see "heroes" like Jesse Jackson, John Conyers, Harry Belafonte, etc. slam Condi Rice, Clarence Thomas, Colin Powell, etc for their success?

Ferguson actually managed to talk himself into a circular argument. If the automatic assumption amongst low achieving minority students is that anyone who is a good student thinks himself superior to them, then it's quite obvious that they would reject him for this crime. The good student soon realizes that the only to fit in (which is incredibly important to school kids) is to not be a good student anymore. Everyone stays in the gutter of low achievement because anyone who tries to pull himself up gets punished by the group.

In the end, this Ferguson guy is simply clutching at straws. If one is interested in school, then it shows in the quality of one's work. This study that Ferguson ran probably just asked the black and Latino students if they "worked hard" and they answerred "yes" as much as white and Asian students did. But then it didn't investigate what "working hard" meant for both groups. It simply reported, and did not observe.

I mean, how is it possible that Ferguson can say that black and Latino students are definitely just as interested in school and work just as hard as whites and Asians ... and then acknowledge that black and Latino students lag behind in "things" like Homework Completion??? If you were interested in school, you would damn well do your homework. It's one of the best ways of measuring one's interest in school.

Ferguson is obviously a Leftie; he actually has the answers in front of him, he's just not gonna let himself admit it because it goes against the victim ideology. All his "identity" bullshit also pisses me off. It's obvious that whatever meaning these black students have come up with regarding being black, it doesn't involve getting As. Why do we need to actually have some meaning of what it is to be black? Isn't that seriously limiting?

[Cacique]

ping

[mhking]

Did you write that post yourself, or is it from a source?

No, that was all mine...

[mhking]

Honestly, I don't see that being isolated to blacks; Pop culture has created a generation of "feel-good slackers" who do as they please.

A very good point - just take a quick look at MTV (Yes, I know you don't watch it, but it's on your cable or satellite system...go on take a quick look for illustrative purposes). The types of folks they have as VJ's, and the artists that appear, not to mention the kids that show up on drek like "Jackass" and "The Real World" all reenforce that slacker-eduction-don't-mean-jack mindset that we're talking about here.

[Tijeras_Slim]

go back to the pre-1960 timeframe, when you can and will see black cuture in it's pure form, you will find that there is a huge emphasis on education and on intellectual advancement within the culture.

Indeed, and consider the Reconstruction period as well. The first things many former slaves did was start schools and try to re-unite their families - two things that fly in the face of much of the current "popular wisdom" of black culture.

[mhking]

As a teacher, I find it amusing that the parents themselves hired Professor Ogbu, presumably to find a scapegoat in the school system for their children's lack of success, but were offended when he found the problem was closer to home.

That's how liberals teach statistics: determine what you want as your outcome, then find someone, anyone, who will support it, no matter how outlandish it sounds.

[Teacher317]

You have to take an entrance test to get in.

That's why it is successful. Public schools are not allowed to pick-and-choose their students... and they are rarely allowed to get rid of those whose only interest within the building is disruption and indulging their appetites. If school attendance were not compulsory (as is espoused by the Communist Manifesto), schools would then have the power and responsibility to eject those who intentionally destroy the system for everyone.

Keep in mind that those disruptors behave that way primarily because they are rebelling against being forced to do something they have absolutely no interest in doing. That's the typical American attitude, and I don't hold it against them... but I do expect the schools to enforce proper behavior.

[SauronOfMordor]

If one compiles all the IQ tests, blacks average 15 points less than whites -- as a group. But there are many, many thousands of blacks of superior intellect, just as there are millions of below-average whites.

The reality is that blacks tend to not do well on mental tests. This is not in factual dispute. For example, UC Berkley's Freshman Admission statistics To get enough blacks to admit in 2000, Berkley had to choose from those with SAT scores in the range 990-1210, while white guys had to be in the range 1250-1440 to be considered

[Teacher317]

I defy anyone to closely examine today's black culture and point out one aspect of it.......just one........that suggests a desire to excel, improve, educate, edify, or prosper beyond thuggism or pro sports

Great point, and I agree 98%, but I think music and dance are two areas where black culture encourages, admires, and rewards excellence... unfortunately, music and dance alone won't make a civilized social construct.

(However, if you rephrase that quote to read, "suggests a desire to excel, improve, educate, edify, or prosper beyond thuggism or entertainment," then I'd be in 100% agreement.)

[Polybius]

Not at all; "black culture" in and of itself is not anti-education or anti-intellectual. On the contrary, if you examine black culture in it's purest form, and go back to the pre-1960 timeframe, when you can and will see black culture in it's pure form, you will find that there is a huge emphasis on education and on intellectual advancement within the culture.

The contemporary problem is two-fold. First, thanks to the race warlords and poverty pimps and liberal enablers, it has become "OK" for blacks to relish within their "victim" status. The be-all, end-all for black America, thanks to the Jesse Jacksons of the world, is to play the victim. Unfortunately, this has spread to education. John McWhorter pointed this out in his book, "Losing the Race."

Culture does change with time. Imagine an American World War II soldier magically transported from 1942 Berkley, California to 2002 Berkley, California. He would be wondering what planet he had landed on. "Black culture" overall has declined just as "white culture" overall has declined since the 1940's. Unfortunately, the decline of black culture has outpaced the decline of white culture because of the race-pimps.

In current "white culture", it is accepted in school that there will be "jocks", "nerds", "stoners", "brains", etc. They may harass each other but no one group claims to represent "whiteness".

As a black Conservative, you not merely harassed. You are demonized by the Jesse Jackson-Harry Belafonte crowd. There is only one "black culture", it is the True Black Culture and that culture is the Victim Culture. Thus, self-sufficiency is frowned upon and failure is not only excused but actually demanded.

I had a black friend in medical residency that I tutored for Boards on a subject she was weak in. She had come from a well-off family with her father being an airline pilot for a major airline. She told me that, in high school, when she went to a white private school, she did fine in school. However, when they moved and she transferred to a school with a large black student body, she experienced the "acting white" attacks from the other black students because of her academic excellence. Peer pressure is a very powerful force in a teenager's life. After a while, she decide to let her schoolwork slide and be accepted as as "black" rather than remain an "Oreo" with a high grade point average.

It is the tragedy of modern American black culture that the popularized ideal of "black culture" is the culture of the most dysfunctional sub-culture that Black America has to offer. It's cool to be the black equivalent of "white trash".

For that, black youth is not to blame. They had no control over what culture surrounded them when they were born.

For that, the race and poverty-pimps and the Liberal media who sign on to their Victimhood agenda are to blame. They have replaced the black culture of Booker T. Washington with black culture of Snoop Doggy Dogg.

[ladylib]

This is a public school and we also have a science academy in my county that requires an entrance exam. Some of the very good high schools in New York City require entrance exams.

I've always said that school leaving ages should be at 14 or 15, with kids who opt out of school going into apprenticeships, taking full-time jobs, or even taking on-line courses or college courses at junior colleges -- not in a high school setting. If kids want a diploma, let them get a GED and a college education at the same time, like my brother-in-law who dropped out of school at 16 (and drove for the Mob Omigod) and is now the vice president of a pediatric care firm. There is more than one way to skin a cat to get an education in this country; however, the almighty teachers unions don't like it. My opinion on that is if they limit kids' ability to choose what they want, they deserve all the grief they get.

[ladylib]

This is a public school and we also have a science academy in my county that requires an entrance exam. Some of the very good high schools in New York City require entrance exams.

I've always said that school leaving ages should be at 14 or 15, with kids who opt out of school going into apprenticeships, taking full-time jobs, or even taking on-line courses or college courses at junior colleges -- not in a high school setting. If kids want a diploma, let them get a GED and a college education at the same time, like my brother-in-law who dropped out of school at 16 (and drove for the Mob Omigod) and is now the vice president of a pediatric care firm. There is more than one way to skin a cat to get an education in this country; however, the almighty teachers unions don't like it. My opinion on that is if they limit kids' ability to choose what they want, they deserve all the grief they get.