Cobb

I don't know how much you follow education news. Closing the gap is, in my mind, THE civil rights issue that all....what, good-hearted people...ought to be focusing on.

Here's an article from the Boston Globe today:

http://www.boston.com/news/globe/editorial_opinion/oped/articles/2004/05/31/school_equality_a_black_responsibility/

(I don't know the Globe's policy on keeping things up. If you want the whole thing, e-mail me.)

School equality: a black responsibility?

By Cathy Young | May 31, 2004

[snip]
The panel was part of an event many would be quick to identify as a "conservative" venue -- a conference of the National Organization of Scholars, an 11-year-old group formed in opposition to "political correctness" in academia. The same conference offered a workshop on new legal strategies to combat race-based preferences in college admissions. Many, perhaps most, of those in attendance would have probably described themselves as right of center politically. Yet racial inequality in education was clearly seen as a matter of grave concern.

Abigail Thernstrom, a member of the Massachusetts State Board of Education and a commissioner on the US Commission on Civil Rights, presented the alarming data. (She and her husband Stephan Thernstrom, a professor of history at Harvard University and also a speaker on the panel, are co-authors of the 2003 book, "No Excuses: Closing the Racial Gap in Learning.") On the National Assessment for Educational Progress test, the typical black or Hispanic student at age 17 scores below at least 80 percent of white students. "On average, these non-Asian minority students are four years behind those who are white and Asian," said Thernstrom. "They are finishing high school with a junior high education."

What's more, Thernstrom added, differences in socioeconomic status account for only about a third of this gap. The rest is due to a variety of cultural factors -- some of which can be overcome by a concerted effort to provide better schooling. Thernstrom cited exceptional inner-city charter schools that seek not only to educate children in a safe, orderly environment but also, unabashedly, to impart "middle-class" cultural values such as discipline and responsibility.

[snip--more follows]

Ya know, one thing about being in a gang, you become a hard mutha. And that "hardness" is what makes me self-reliant. Excuse my language but ain't no muthafucka going to stop me from doing what or want to do. It's all about will Cobb. The damn will to smash a fool when they try to stop you. Call it rough. Call me a Klingon. But that's the way. Straight up!

I have a problem with the Thernstroms in that they don't understand or recognize the part the black pride plays in establishing the guts of what it takes to acheive and excel. Their clinical approach to matters or racial justice and equality unnerves me, and I simply don't find them insightful. I'd go as far to say that they're hacks trading on their names. But I suppose that applies to most think tank heroes.

Take what you can from their research and make it happen. That costs money of an order of magnitude more than it takes to come up with another research project. Show me something like Woodson's work and I'll be happy, but I doubt that will be coming from the Thernstroms anytime soon.

http://ncne.com/index.cfm

They just seem to be the kind of people who would adopt a black orphan to prove their point.

Cobb, I'm just a middle aged white woman who has always been privileged, what do I know? Except from watching white kids who fail....I had a very different response than yours to the Thernstroms' book--they were cold, but a in a clinical way: here are the numbers, here are our conclusions.

Did you read the whole article? I just quoted the two opening paras, cause I do try to respect copyright and I don't know how you'd feel about a gigantic comment like that.

I personally think (and believe) that the Whole Language movement has trashed a whole generation of kids (of all colors). Middle class to upper middle class kids whose parents were savvy about reading were able to do end runs with extracurricular programs like Kumon and Sylvan Learning Centers andthe like--which installed phonics at some level. Parents (of all colors) who didn't have that sophistication--well, it is their kids who are reading at 3rd grade level in 9th grade.

Here's the closing quote from that article:

"Abigail Thernstrom noted that she and her husband found themselves radicalized by working on their book. Without a "radical overhaul of American education," she said, too many black and Hispanic young people will find the doors of opportunity closed, and "ancient inequalities" will persist. "Is that acceptable? No decent American will say yes." "

I'm going to close this and ask another question.

Understand that I don't think the Thernstroms are the problem. The problem is fairly unreconcilable from my perspective. I know that's saying a lot but try to see where I'm coming from. (BTW, put whatever you like in these comments).

The political majority of Americans will not support what is required infrastructurally to solve the problem of inner-city undereducation. You can support affirmative actions OR bussing OR rotating the best teachers OR limiting class sizes. But it is politically impossible to level the educational playing field between the inner city and the suburbs. This is a nation of tax revolters. They don't want to spend the money. Period, end of story.

So what a decent American will say and what a decent American will accept fiscal responsibility for are two different things. Everytime any pundit of stature says parenting and personal responsibility are some part of the equation, most Americans take it to mean that has to come first, before dime one is spent in the ghetto.

Every new subdivision built in America is a slap in the face of people trapped in the ghetto. When we deal with that political reality, then we can start talking about personal responsibility. Also note the split between public accountability and personal responsibility.

OK, here is the next question:

I am aware of some programs in certain areas of California just south of San Francisco, whose aims are to help kids whose parents did not attend college (and who may not even have graduated from high school) get through high school and into college.

I also have heard about Prep for Prep and A Better Chance,plus a couple of charter schools.

Do you know of any other such programs? Or a national list?

I have no problem with black folk taking personal responsibility. I agree that it is way past time for us to take the lead in our emancipation. My questions are: where are our resources? and where are the incentives?

Due to the anniversary of Brown Vs. the Board of Education, there have been an overwhelming number of articles written on the education system nationwide. Most come to the consensus that black children are under achieving. I disagree. I believe our kids and our people as a whole are achieving beyond what is expected given the resources that we are given to work with. I can only speak from personal experience.

I'm a college educated mother of two children in elementary school. I live in an urban area surrounded by "projects" so I sent my children to private school until I can to the realization that by taking my kids out of public school, I'm selling out. I say this because I gave up on equality in public education. In my kids school, there are only 30 computers in the school. The kids are given access to them only during their computer class which they have once per week. I have a colleague whose kids go to a school (not 3 miles away) which is located in the heart of a "gentrification zone" and has a very large white and asian population. This school has a computer lab, 3 computers in the library and a computer in each classroom. Where are our resources?

Bill Cosby is right. Instead of buying those expensive sneakers, buy a computer for your kid, enroll your kid in a college prep course or in some other programs to encourage education and a college education. However, you also must prepare this same child for the disparities in what their college education will be worth when compared to their white counterpart.

Once again, I'll speak from personal experience. My family comes from a very small town in southern Virginia where approximately 35% of the population is black. Only a very small percentage of the black population has a college degree. The best job they can hope for is working at the local dam cleaning up or working at the trailer factory or traveling 100 miles a day to the nearest major city to find gainful employment. Why? Their white counterparts with degrees have taken all of the professional/good-paying jobs because of whom they know or whom their grandfather knows or simply because they are white. Why save all the money to send my child to college when they can't do much better than me when they get out of school? Where's the incentive?

That's not to say that we should not send our kids to college. On the contrary, WE MUST SEND OUR CHILDREN TO COLLEGE. But we must also go beyond Brown Vs. the Board of Education and demand quality education, quality housing and equality in the jobs and resources. Yes, yes, Brown did a lot but we have so much to do. I'm just afraid that Bill Cosby and other black folks who “made it” may think that we've arrived, when in fact, we've only just begun!!

My younger brother Robert was a graduate of the ABC program. It works. How does it work? I works by taking kids out of the ghetto (although we were from the 'hood) and putting them into the suburbs. In his case, he went to highschool in Edina, Minnesota.

So please explain to me why, in order to give a black child from Los Angeles a first-class education, he must be sent halfway across the country? It's a rhetorical question of course. We understand why no such resources are available, it's because affluent whites and others have voted with their feet. It's a rare private school you will find in this country whose history predates Brown. Public education is an unfunded mandate, and the scarce resources of well-qualified teachers and administrators have all been quietly sucked into the private system.

This bodes ill for the overall health of the nation, and I don't know how long the center will hold. But the smart money has gone private and it's not coming back. In the meantime, one off programs like ABC and the handful of charter schools don't make a dent, they merely siphon off another fraction from communities which are doomed to remain part of America's internal third world.

"...So please explain to me why, in order to give a black child from Los Angeles a first-class education, he must be sent halfway across the country?..."

It's not necessary to send him halfway across the country. It's sufficient to seperate him from a culture of gangs & waste motion & failure, and move him a few miles to a culture of learning.

Call it Black flight if you like, but street smarts won't buy much more than lunch in the 21st century America. You have to be able to do an x-y scatter plot, use standard vocabulary and grammar, know where the Czech Republic is, what "The Wealth Of Nations" or the communist manifesto say, to make a decent paycheck.

And it's NOT the dollars. Edina, Minnesota probably spends about the same per pupil as most inner cities. Some of the best school districts in Ohio have the lowest expenditures. More resources are wasted on security/discipline/administria than spent learning in the poorer districts.

When a school won't make a DEAD SERIOUS attempt to establish a learning culture, it deserves to go down the tubes.

Cobb, you said "...Self-reliance is the key to all progress...". My neighbors and I (a real rainbow coalition) beg to disagree. Self-reliance is a big piece of success; take responsibility for your actions and behavior.

But that's only one notch of the key to all progress. The ability to team with others with differing talents & different perspectives but a common goal is AT LEAST as important as self-reliance. I'll take synergy any day.

Black pride is fine. Black arrogance gets us SBE.

Well, I'm also a global capitalist. In fact, today I'm meeting with a partner who's Ukrainian fresh back from Beijing. If I measured my life against garden variety American whiteboys, how could I do that kind of business?

On the whole African Americans do fine. We are not in revolt because times on the whole are not that rough. It will never be as bad as it was without the nation falling apart. (Too many blacks in the upper ranks of the military for that.) So the black nation will persist. Everybody ought to be happy we love America.

See people forget black arrogance comes from being better than other Americans who are among the best in the world. Sure you can pick on the okey doke knucklehead blackfolks, but enough of that and you won't even realize where the rest of us are.

We travel incognegro.

I think we're down to a minor issue of semantics: "...See people forget black arrogance comes from being better than other Americans who are among the best in the world..."

Hell, being better is simply called competence. Bring it on! Flashing it in whitey's face is arrogance. Arrogance destroys teamwork and synergy. I see too much of it to ignore the difference.

"...We travel incognegro..."

ROFL!!! May I quote you?