Test results are in: Public education sucks

[Danno 1,228]

No matter how poor the results, two constants are 1. Do more research 2. allot even more money.

We saw headlined in the news this week 72% of black born out of wedlock, yet this "head scratching" look at education never even wondered if that might have an effect....

Even though white kids in poverty out scored Middle class Blacks.

The bottom line: Black boys are literally grades behind in the achievement.

Ironically they are scoring so bad, you hardly even notice the White scores are shameful too.

------------------------

Proficiency of Black Students Is Found to Be Far Lower Than Expected

By TRIP GABRIEL

Published: November 9, 2010

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. 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. In high school, African-American boys drop out at nearly twice the rate of white boys, and their SAT scores are on average 104 points lower. In college, black men represented just 5 percent of students in 2008.

The analysis of results on the national tests found that math scores in 2009 for black boys were not much different than those for black girls in Grades 4 and 8, but black boys lagged behind Hispanics of both sexes, and they fell behind white boys by at least 30 points, a gap sometimes interpreted as three academic grades.

The search for explanations has recently looked at causes besides poverty, and this report may further spur those efforts.

“There’s accumulating evidence that there are racial differences in what kids experience before the first day of kindergarten,” said Ronald Ferguson, director of the Achievement Gap Initiative at Harvard. “They have to do with a lot of sociological and historical forces. In order to address those, we have to be able to have conversations that people are unwilling to have.”

Those include “conversations about early childhood parenting practices,” Dr. Ferguson said. “The activities that parents conduct with their 2-, 3- and 4-year-olds. How much we talk to them, the ways we talk to them, the ways we enforce discipline, the ways we encourage them to think and develop a sense of autonomy.”

The report urges convening a White House conference, encouraging Congress to appropriate more money for schools and establishing networks of black mentors.

What it does not discuss are policy responses identified with a robust school reform movement that emphasizes closing failing schools, offering charter schools as alternatives and raising the quality of teachers.

The report did not go down this road because “there’s not a lot of research to indicate that many of those strategies produce better results,” Mr. Casserly said.

Other have a different response. The key to narrowing the achievement gap, said Dr. Ferguson, is “really good teaching.”

One large urban school district that has made progress is Baltimore’s, where the dropout rate for African-American boys declined to 4.9 percent during the last academic year, down from 11.9 percent three years earlier. Graduation rates for black boys were also up: 57 percent in 2009-10, compared with 51 percent three years earlier.

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/11/09/education/09gap.html?_r=3

[Heracles 417]

You obviously did not got the memo, apparently the reason for this is due to bad teachers. Cannot possibly be the reality that the neither the kid or his guardian gives a #### to learn, it's the teachers that are to blame.

I do love those get-out-of-jail-free cards so many have here, well the three minorities.

[Ken y Leidys 20]

Whenever I talk to Fundamentalists, I tell them how I fought tooth and nail to get out of the Christian and Catholic schools I was made to attend. Their main objective was mind control - pure and simple.

Edited November 11, 2010 by Ken y Leidys

[Ken y Leidys 20]

I am a High skool drop out! DUHHH!!!

Helloween 2010

[Ken y Leidys 20]

HOW THE FRIK DID I EVEN GET HERE I CAN'T EVEN TIE MY OWN FRIKKIN SHOE LACE!

[BishopM 114]

HOW THE FRIK DID I EVEN GET HERE I CAN'T EVEN TIE MY OWN FRIKKIN SHOE LACE!

Your shoes are tied there brother...blessings to you and all that you've done! Keep the path!

BishopM

[Ken y Leidys 20]

Your shoes are tied there brother...blessings to you and all that you've done! Keep the path!

BishopM

Thanx amigo...

[Jenn! 918]

"There's accumulating evidence that there are racial differences in what kids experience before the first day of kindergarten,"

I've heard that while many parents expect that kids will catch up quickly once they start school, that gaps in learning that exist when children enter kindergarten tend to persist throughout their schooling, After hearing these results, I would expect that black parents read to their preschool children less frequently than white parents.

[Ken y Leidys 20]

HOW THA FRICK DID I FIND FENDERS BALLROOM IN THE LBC BACK IN THE 80Z W/O MAPQUEST??? WAS YOUR SCARED DIXIE CHICK SELF THERE IN THE SLAM PIT PUNK?

[Danno 1,228]

I've heard that while many parents expect that kids will catch up quickly once they start school, that gaps in learning that exist when children enter kindergarten tend to persist throughout their schooling, After hearing these results, I would expect that black parents read to their preschool children less frequently than white parents.

Yeah, thats the problem... not enough bed time stories.

If we just had bed time stories we could turn the corner.

[Ken y Leidys 20]

Yeah, thats the problem... not enough bed time stories.

If we just had bed time stories we could turn the corner.

Hey Danno - Read me a bedtime story, will ya?

[Ken y Leidys 20]

[Ken y Leidys 20]

I learned how to read by listening and reading to 7" records in the early 80s...

City Baby Attacked By Rats

The memory lingers on when you were the same as us.

Three months old a child, still you lived off love and fuss.

City baby, city baby, city baby attacked by rats.

Residing in a squalid place, it can't be too much fun.

Your brain is getting eaten away by the rat living in your skull.

A mutant at the age of one, a human rodent cabbage.

It's hard to think a tiny thing can do that much damage.

Edited November 11, 2010 by Ken y Leidys

[Ken y Leidys 20]

Danno's National Anthem

Oh, I wish I was in the land of cotton,

Old times there are not forgotten, {Alt Original: Cinnamon seed and sandy bottom,]

Look away, look away, look away Dixie Land.

In Dixie Land, where I was born in,

early on one frosty mornin',

Look away, look away, look away Dixie Land.

I wish I was in Dixie, Hooray! Hooray!

In Dixie Land I'll take my stand

to live and die in Dixie.

Away, away, away down south in Dixie.

Away, away, away down south in Dixie

Optional Verses

Ole Missus marry "Will the weaver"

Willum was a gay deceiver

Look away! Look away! Look away!

Dixie Land

But when he put his arm around 'er,

He smiled fierce as a forty pounder,

Look away! Look away! Look away!

Dixie Land

His face was sharp as a butcher's cleaver

But that did not seem to grieve 'er

Look away! Look away! Look away!

Dixie Land

Ole Missus acted the foolish part

And died for a man that broke her heart

Look away! Look away! Look away!

Dixie Land

Now here's a health to the next ole Missus

An' all the gals that want to kiss us;

Look away! Look away! Look away!

Dixie Land

But if you want to drive 'way sorrow

Come and hear this song tomorrow

Look away! Look away! Look away!

Dixie Land

There's buckwheat cakes and Injun batter,

Makes you fat or a little fatter;

Look away! Look away! Look away!

Dixie Land

Then hoe it down and scratch your gravel,

To Dixie's Land I'm bound to travel,

Look away! Look away! Look away!

Dixie Land

[Danno 1,228]

Hey Danno - Read me a bedtime story, will ya?

Sure man..... got a fav?