Tag Archives: Education Disparity

Hard question: Does indigenous African-American culture support academic success?

19 Dec

Jesse Washington of AP has written a comprehensive article which details the magnitude of the disaster which is occurring in the African-American community. In the article, Blacks Struggle With 72% Unwed Mother Rate  which was reprinted at SeattlePI.Com Washington sounds an alarm which if you can’t hear it, makes you deaf.

This is not about racism or being elitist. This is about survival of an indigenous American culture. This is not about speaking the truth to power, it is about speaking the truth. The truth is children need two parents to help them develop properly and the majority of single parent headed families will live in poverty. Children from single parent homes have more difficult lives. So called “progressives” who want to make their “Sex and the City” life style choices the norm because they have a difficult time dealing with the emotional wreckage of their lives, need to shut-up when it comes to the survival of the African American community. This is an issue that the so called educated classes and religious communities have to get involved in.

Trip Gabriel reported about more fallout from the failure of the African-American family in the New York Times. In Proficiency of Black Students Is Found to Be Far Lower Than Expected  Gabriel reports:

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…

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.”

Brian M. Rosenthal’s  Seattle Times article reports about the achievement gap between native African-Americans and immigrant African ethnic groups in Seattle.

In the article, ‘Alarming’ new test-score gap discovered in Seattle schools, Rosenthal reports:

African-American students whose primary language is English perform significantly worse in math and reading than black students who speak another language at home — typically immigrants or refugees — according to new numbers released by Seattle Public Schools.

District officials, who presented the finding at a recent community meeting at Rainier Beach High School, noted the results come with caveats, but called the potential trend troubling and pledged to study what might be causing it.

Michael Tolley, an executive director overseeing Southeast Seattle schools, said at the meeting that the data exposed a new achievement gap that is “extremely, extremely alarming.”

The administration has for years analyzed test scores by race. It has never before broken down student-achievement data by specific home language or country of origin — it is rare for school districts to examine test scores at that level — but it is unlikely that the phenomenon the data suggest is actually new.

In fact, some national experts said the trend represented by the Seattle data is not surprising. They pointed to some studies about college attendance and achievement indicating that immigrant families from all backgrounds tend to put a larger emphasis on education than those families that have been in the country longer.

Traditional factors in low performance, such as poverty and single-parent homes, are generally shared by black immigrants and nonimmigrants alike….

The results, although preliminary, were eye-opening:

• Only 36 percent of black students who speak English at home passed their grade’s math test, while 47 percent of Somali-speaking students passed. Other black ethnic groups did even better, although still lower than the district average of 70 percent.

• In reading, 56 percent of black students who speak English passed, while 67 percent of Somali-speaking students passed. Again, other black ethnic groups did better, though still lower than the district average of 78 percent.

The numbers do have significant limitations, Teoh said. That’s because they are based on home-language information that is entirely self-reported, and the data exclude English Language Learners — an optional program for students who score poorly on an English proficiency test.

Most of all, Teoh said, because the English-speaking category includes students of many black ethnic groups, it’s impossible to compare specific ethnic groups.

At the recent community meeting, much of that distinction was lost on the parents in the audience.

“It’s very alarming that students that were born right here are at the bottom of the barrel,” said Vallerie Fisher, whose daughter is a senior at Rainier Beach. “How is that possible?”

Immigrant experience

The answer to that question may lie in the culture of immigrant families, national education experts said.

Many of those families, who often were relatively wealthy and well-educated in their home countries, have strong social-support systems that emphasize education, said Mike Petrilli, the executive vice president of the Thomas B. Fordham Institute, a conservative education think tank based in Washington, D.C.

Pamela Bennett, a sociologist at Johns Hopkins University, agreed. She conducted a study in 2009 that found that immigrant black high-school graduates attend college at a much higher rate than black or white students born in the U.S. The reason was that the immigrants had a higher socioeconomic background, she said.

But that explanation may falter when Seattle’s Somali population is considered.

Many of the Somalis, after all, did not follow a normal pattern of immigration. Their families came to the U.S. to escape their war-torn country, many by way of refugee camps. But they still did better than English-speaking African Americans on the tests.

Veronica Gallardo, the director of international programs for Seattle Public Schools, speculated that the trauma experienced by Somali families causes them to value the opportunity education provides. In addition, Somali community groups tend to prioritize education, said Alexandra Blum, who works with the Somali Community Services Coalition, a nonprofit that works to empower families in King County.

Seattle School Board member Betty Patu, who has worked for decades with community groups serving students of color, said she has noticed that all immigrant families, regardless of socioeconomic status, place high value on education. http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/localnews/2017046660_newgap19m.html

If you are a young unmarried woman of any color, you probably do not have the resources either emotional or financial to parent a child(ren). If you don’t care about your future, care about the future of your child. If you want to sleep with everything that has a pulse, that is your choice. BUT, you have no right to choose a life of poverty and misery for a child. As for those so called “progressives?” Just shut-up.

There are some very uncomfortable conversations ahead for the African-American community about the high rate of unwed mothers, about the care of women during pregnancy, and about early childhood education in the homes of children.Most important, about the lack the active involvement of fathers of some children.

Time to start talking. The conversation is not going to get any less difficult.

See:

We give up as a society: Jailing parents because kids are truant

https://drwilda.wordpress.com/2011/12/18/we-give-up-as-a-society-jailing-parents-because-kids-are-truant/

Jonathan Cohn’s ‘The Two Year Window’

https://drwilda.wordpress.com/2011/12/18/jonathan-cohns-the-two-year-window/

Dr. Wilda says this about that ©

Tags: , , , , , ,

Online for-profit K-12, good for bankers, bad for kids

14 Dec

We all make assumptions about other people. To assume what a person is like based upon limited bits of information may often lead to an incorrect assessment. This training exercise Assumptions – a training exercise demonstrates that some assumptions are at best premature or often incorrect. Nisbett and Wilson conducted an experiment to demonstrate the halo effect

 The halo effect is generally defined as the influence of a global evaluation on evaluations of individual attributes of a person, but this definition is imprecise with respect to the strength and character of the influence. At one extreme, the halo effect might be due simply to an extrapolation from a general impression to unknown attributes. Global evaluations might color presumptions about specific traits or influence interpretation of the meaning or affective value of ambiguous trait information. Thus, if we like a person, we often assume that those attributes of the person about which we know little are also favorable. (Politicians often seem to capitalize on this tendency by appearing warm and friendly but saying little about the issues.)

Many of us assume that most folks should be like us and have a similar outlook on life and value system. We all know what the right thing to do in a situation, right? How do educators who may have not encountered those of a different social class, religion, or value system deal with children who do not share their attributes? Because we all make assumptions, it is one type of survival skill, the question for educators is how to minimize the effect of negative assumptions on children.

Teachers will increasingly face declining and inadequate resources, an increasingly challenging student population, and institutional structures in crisis. Students will come to school at different levels of readiness for instruction because of language challenges, family challenges, and inadequate prior foundation for learning. Parents, will face economic challenges and demands on their time and attention which impact their ability to parent. Given this teaching environment teachers often must put aside normal assumptions in order to save children from succumbing to the chaotic world outside the school.    

Yes, the child’s mother may make Dolly Parton look demure or their dad may be so tricked or pimped out that 50 Cent looks tame by comparison, that doesn’t have to be the future for child. Most parents do care in an emotional sense for their children. Many don’t know how to be parents and don’t know how to set boundaries or to work within a system which is oriented toward those that understand and know how to use middle class rules. For many parents English is not their first language and they may have many success values which they cannot express. For those who may teach in more affluent areas, there are different challenges. You may teach extremely bright, capable, well supported children who are slackers. Should you give one of these children the grade they earn rather than the grade which is expected, there may be consequences. You may challenged by a parent who feels you are preventing their child from becoming the next Ivy League standout and Rhodes Scholar. The focus should not be on any perceived inadequacies of the parent, but helping the child to overcome their challenges. A Hoover Institute article by Jacob and Lefgren describes a study of the types of teachers parents request. The findings of In Low Income Schools, Parents Want Teachers who Can Teach is in line with my personal observation.

Even more interesting, however, we find stark differences across schools in the type of teachers that parents tend to request. We find that parents making requests in high-poverty schools place less value on student satisfaction than those in lower-poverty schools. Conversely, parents in high-poverty schools value a teacher’s ability to improve student achievement considerably more than parents in lower-poverty schools.

At the end of the day, it is really about producing academic achievement in the population of children the teacher is responsible for.   

Don’t try to fix the students, fix ourselves first. The good teacher makes the poor student good and the good student superior. When our students fail, we, as teachers, too, have failed.

There is a brilliant child locked inside every student.  

Marva Collins 

All children can learn. Stephanie Saul of the New York Times is reporting on the cynical operation of for-profit charter schools in the article, Profits and Questions at Online Charter Schools which describes how the dreams of some children are being hindered.

By almost every educational measure, the Agora Cyber Charter School is failing.

Nearly 60 percent of its students are behind grade level in math. Nearly 50 percent trail in reading. A third do not graduate on time. And hundreds of children, from kindergartners to seniors, withdraw within months after they enroll.

By Wall Street standards, though, Agora is a remarkable success that has helped enrich K12 Inc., the publicly traded company that manages the school. And the entire enterprise is paid for by taxpayers.

Agora is one of the largest in a portfolio of similar public schools across the country run by K12. Eight other for-profit companies also run online public elementary and high schools, enrolling a large chunk of the more than 200,000 full-time cyberpupils in the United States.

The pupils work from their homes, in some cases hundreds of miles from their teachers. There is no cafeteria, no gym and no playground. Teachers communicate with students by phone or in simulated classrooms on the Web. But while the notion of an online school evokes cutting-edge methods, much of the work is completed the old-fashioned way, with a pencil and paper while seated at a desk.

Kids mean money. Agora is expecting income of $72 million this school year, accounting for more than 10 percent of the total anticipated revenues of K12, the biggest player in the online-school business. The second-largest, Connections Education, with revenues estimated at $190 million, was bought this year by the education and publishing giant Pearson for $400 million.

The business taps into a formidable coalition of private groups and officials promoting nontraditional forms of public education. The growth of for-profit online schools, one of the more overtly commercial segments of the school choice movement, is rooted in the theory that corporate efficiencies combined with the Internet can revolutionize public education, offering high quality at reduced cost.

The New York Times has spent several months examining this idea, focusing on K12 Inc. A look at the company’s operations, based on interviews and a review of school finances and performance records, raises serious questions about whether K12 schools — and full-time online schools in general — benefit children or taxpayers, particularly as state education budgets are being slashed.

Instead, a portrait emerges of a company that tries to squeeze profits from public school dollars by raising enrollment, increasing teacher workload and lowering standards.

Current and former staff members of K12 Inc. schools say problems begin with intense recruitment efforts that fail to filter out students who are not suited for the program, which requires strong parental commitment and self-motivated students. Online schools typically are characterized by high rates of withdrawal.

Teachers have had to take on more and more students, relaxing rigor and achievement along the way, according to interviews. While teachers do not have the burden of a full day of classes, they field questions from families, monitor students’ progress and review and grade schoolwork. Complaints about low pay and high class loads — with some high school teachers managing more than 250 students — have prompted a unionization battle at Agora, which has offices in Wayne, Pa. http://www.nytimes.com/2011/12/13/education/online-schools-score-better-on-wall-street-than-in-classrooms.html?emc=eta1

The Illinois Online Network has a good synopsis of the pros and cons of online education at Strengths and Weaknesses of Online Learning  K-12 for profit schools exhibit many of the deficiencies of other for-profit schools. See, For-profit colleges: Money buys government, not quality for students, https://drwilda.wordpress.com/2011/12/12/for-profit-colleges-money-buys-government-not-quality-for-students/

Technology can be a useful tool and education aid, BUT it is not a cheap way to move the masses through the education system without the guidance and mentoring that a quality human and humane teacher can provide. Education and children have suffered because cash sluts and credit crunch weasels have destroyed this society and there is no one taking them on. They will continue to bleed this society dry while playing their masters of the universe games until they are stopped.

Dr. Wilda says this about that ©

Tags: , , , , ,

The next great civil rights struggle: Disparity in education funding

2 Dec

Plessy v. Ferguson established the principle of “separate but equal” in race issues. Brown v. Board of Education which overturned the principle of “separate but equal.” would not have been necessary, but for Plessy. See also, the history of Brown v. Board of Education

If one believes that all children, regardless of that child’s status have a right to a good basic education and that society must fund and implement policies, which support this principle. Then, one must discuss the issue of equity in education. Because of the segregation, which resulted after Plessy, most folks focus their analysis of Brown almost solely on race. The issue of equity was just as important. The equity issue was explained in terms of unequal resources and unequal access to education.

People tend to cluster in neighborhoods based upon class as much as race. Good teachers tend to gravitate toward neighborhoods where they are paid well and students come from families who mirror their personal backgrounds and values. Good teachers make a difference in a child’s life. One of the difficulties in busing to achieve equity in education is that neighborhoods tend to be segregated by class as well as race. People often make sacrifices to move into neighborhoods they perceive mirror their values. That is why there must be good schools in all segments of the city and there must be good schools in all parts of this state. A good education should not depend upon one’s class or status.

I know that the lawyers in Brown were told that lawsuits were futile and that the legislatures would address the issue of segregation eventually when the public was ready. Meanwhile, several generations of African Americans waited for people to come around and say the Constitution applied to us as well. Generations of African Americans suffered in inferior schools. This state cannot sacrifice the lives of children by not addressing the issue of equity in school funding in a timely manner.

The next huge case, like Brown, will be about equity in education funding. It may not come this year or the next year. It, like Brown, may come several years after a Plessy. It will come. Equity in education funding is the civil rights issue of this century.

Sabra Bireda has a report from the Center for American Progress,Funding Education Equitably

The old axiom that the rich get richer certainly plays out in the American classroom—often to the detriment of achieving academic success. Data on intradistrict funding inequities in many large school districts confirm

what most would guess—high-poverty schools actually receive less money per pupil than more affluent schools.1 These funding inequities have real repercussions for the quality of education offered at high-poverty schools and a district’s ability to overcome the achievement gap between groups of students defined by family income or ethnicity.

The source of these funding inequities is not a deliberate scheme designed to steer more state and local funds to affluent schools. Rather it is often the result of an accumulation of higher-paid, more senior teachers working in low-poverty schools. High-poverty schools typically employ less-experienced, lower-paid teachers, thereby drawing down less of the district’s funds. The imbalance in funding created by this situation can total hundreds of thousands of dollars school by school.2 Archaic budgeting practices that track positions instead of actual school expenditures only serve to reinforce this inequity.

Bireda’s findings are supported by a U.S. Department of Education (Education Department) report.

In the report, Comparability of State and Local Expenditures Among Schools Within Districts: A Report From the Study of School-Level Expenditures, the Education Department finds:

For the study, Education Department researchers analyzed new school-level spending and teacher salary data submitted by more than 13,000 school districts as required by the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA) of 2009. This school level expenditure data was made available for the first time ever in this data collection.

Using the data from the ARRA collection, Department staff analyzed the impact and feasibility of making this change to Title I comparability. That policy brief finds that:

  • Fixing the comparability provision is feasible. As many as 28 percent of Title I districts would be out of compliance with reformed comparability provisions. But compliance for those districts is not as costly as some might think—fixing it would cost only 1 percent to 4 percent of their total school-level expenditures on average.
  • Fixing the comparability provision would have a large impact. The benefit to low-spending Title I schools would be significant, as their expenditures would increase by 4 percent to 15 percent. And the low-spending schools that would benefit have much higher poverty rates than other schools in their districts.

Joy Resmovits discusses the report at Huffington Post.

In the article, School Districts Shortchange Low-Income Schools: Report, Resmovits reports:

It’s been long suspected that schools serving low-income students receive less money to pay their teachers than those in nearby affluent schools. Now there’s data from the U.S. Department of Education to back that claim up.

“The facts are out there like they’ve never been before,” U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan said on a conference call with reporters Wednesday.

And the spending disparity affects teacher quality: As veteran teachers move to more affluent schools that can pay them more, students in poorer schools are more frequently taught by unseasoned teachers with little classroom experience.

In the the 13,000 districts surveyed, which encompass 82,000 of the nation’s 100,000 schools, more state and local money went to teacher salaries in high-income schools than in the district schools serving poor children, according to the new data. And 40 percent of low-income schools spent less on school employees in the 2008-2009 school year than other well-off schools within their districts.

“Low-income students need extra support and resources to succeed, but in far too many places, policies for assigning teachers and allocating resources are perpetuating the problem rather than solving it,” Duncan said.

According to the report, between 18 and 28 percent of low-income schools aren’t adequately staffed to meet their students’ needs. The report, titled “Comparability of State and Local Expenditures Among Schools Within Districts,” used data collected from 13,000 school districts that had to self-report information on how they spend money to receive 2009 stimulus dollars.

The report attributes the gap to a loophole in the Elementary and Secondary Education Act, the sweeping federal law on public education passed in 1965. That law created a special class of schools known as Title I that explicitly serve poorer students. The law aimed to ensure that those schools were appropriately funded.

But a loophole in the law’s reporting system that aimed to prevent school districts from using Title I dollars to plug overall budget gaps has allowed them to do just that. The law “often results in low-income schools subsidizing their high-income counterparts,” Sen. Michael Bennet (D-Colo.), the former Denver schools superintendent, said in a Wednesday statement.

“Too many disadvantaged children living below the poverty line are getting short-changed now,” Duncan said. Duncan called attention to a legislative fix his department proposed that’s included in a stalled draft of the reauthorization of No Child Left Behind Act ….

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/12/01/school-funding_n_1122298.html?1322748997&ref=education

Poorer schools have been subsidizing their more affluent counterparts.

See: 3rd world America: The link between poverty and education https://drwilda.wordpress.com/2011/11/20/3rd-world-america-the-link-between-poverty-and-education/

Race, class, and education in America https://drwilda.wordpress.com/2011/11/07/race-class-and-education-in-america/

Citation:

“Comparability of State and Local Expenditures Among Schools Within Districts: A Report From the Study of School-Level Expenditures” and “The Potential Impact of Revising the Title I Comparability Requirement to Focus on School-Level Expenditures” are available from the Department’s website at: http://www2.ed.gov/about/offices/list/opepd/ppss/reports.html#title. The ARRA data set of school-level expenditures also is available on the same webpage. This data can be used to further explore disparities in school-level expenditures, the impact of district budgeting practices, and Title I comparability reform.

Related Resources:

Related Resources icon School-level expenditures report Related Resources icon Press call Related Resources icon Transcript of press call

All children have a right to a good basic education.

Dr. Wilda says this about that ©

Tags: , , , , , ,

The GED as a door to the future

17 Nov

There are a variety of reasons why people fail to complete high school and fail complete their high school education, According to the July 24, 2011 NPR report, School Dropout Rates Add To Fiscal Burden by Claudio Sanchez and Linda Wertheimer, “Nearly 1 million kids who start high school every year don’t make it to graduation.” http://www.npr.org/2011/07/24/138653393/school-dropout-rates-adds-to-fiscal-burden

There are many reasons why kids drop out of school. Kate Convissor lists the following reasons in the EduGuide article, Why Kids Drop Out of School:

While the reasons kids drop out vary, the following are six important risk factors:

  1. Academic difficulty and failure. Struggling in school and failing classes is one of the main reasons teens drop out, and this pattern often shows up early. Students who fail eighth grade English or math, for example, are seventy-five percent more likely to drop out of high school.
  2. Poor attendance. Teens who struggle in school are also absent a lot, and along with academic failure, absenteeism is an important future predictor for dropping out. As with the previous example, students who are absent for twenty percent of their eighth grade year (one day per week) are also highly likely to drop out in high school.
  3. Being held back (retention). Linked to academic difficulty, students who are held back and who are older than the kids in their grade also tend to drop out.
  4. Disengagement from school. Many kids who drop out say that school was boring and teachers did little to connect learning to real life. They didn’t feel invested in their school and they didn’t feel that adults seemed interested in them or their high school experience.
  5. Transition to a new school. A poor transition from the smaller, more protected environment of middle school to the anonymity of a high school can cause a teen to have difficulty catching up-and some kids never do.
  6. Other life factors. Pregnancy, family problems, and financial difficulties are all factors that distract a student from schoolwork and make keeping up more challenging.

http://www.eduguide.org/library/viewarticle/2132/

Because many entry level jobs require at a minimum a high school diploma, the General Education Development Test or GED is often substituted for the high school diploma to show that an individual has reached a basic level of education achievement.

The GED Testing Service describes the GED in their Fact Sheet:

The GED Tests provide adults who did not complete a formal high school program the opportunity to certify their attainment of high school-level academic knowledge and skills

The tests are field-tested and normed on graduating high school seniors before becoming final test forms

Only 60% of graduating high school seniors would pass the GED Tests on their first attempt

The GED Test battery comprises five content area assessments:

Language Arts, Reading

Language Arts, Writing

Mathematics

Science

Social Studies

The GED Tests are currently offered only in a paper-pencil format at Official GED Testing Centers – they cannot be taken online

Completing the entire test battery takes just over 7 hours

http://www.acenet.edu/Content/NavigationMenu/ged/pubs/GED_Testing_Program_Fact_Sheet_v2_2010.pdf

Because of the competition for jobs in the current economy, there appears to be an “arms race” for completion of degrees and training.

Laura Pappano is reporting in the New York Times article, The Master’s As the New Bachelor’s

Call it credential inflation. Once derided as the consolation prize for failing to finish a Ph.D. or just a way to kill time waiting out economic downturns, the master’s is now the fastest-growing degree. The number awarded, about 657,000 in 2009, has more than doubled since the 1980s, and the rate of increase has quickened substantially in the last couple of years, says Debra W. Stewart, president of the Council of Graduate Schools. Nearly 2 in 25 people age 25 and over have a master’s, about the same proportion that had a bachelor’s or higher in 1960.

Just as there is an “arms race” in the completion of university degrees, there is a push to look at what successful completion of a GED means.

Catherine Gewertz is reporting in the Education Week article, Higher Education Is Goal of GED Overhaul about proposed changes to the GED.

The project to redesign the GED is far-reaching. It includes not only reworking the content in the five subject-matter tests and transferring them from pencil-and-paper to computers, but also overhauling professional development for GED teachers, reworking curricula, and adding strong counseling supports to help students pass and plan their next steps.

Pivotal to the ambitious initiative is repositioning the GED as a step in a journey toward postsecondary training, rather than as an end in itself. Epitomizing that shift in thinking, the new exam, due out in 2014, will have two passing points: the traditional one connoting high school equivalency, and an additional, higher one signaling college and career readiness….

Value Questioned

Situating the GED as a pathway to higher education echoes its original intent. The first exams, in 1942, were envisioned as a way for returning World War II veterans to complete high school and use the GI Bill to attend college. In 1949, the first year statistics are available for nonmilitary test-takers, 39,000 people took one or more of the five sections of the test: reading, writing, mathematics, science, and social studies. By 2010, that number had risen to 750,000….

The GED is widely used as a high-school-completion tool by those in the military and in prisons, and by dropouts who are too old for the public school system. Although one-quarter of those who take the test are 16 to 18 years old, the typical GED candidate is 26, has completed 10th grade, and has been out of school nine years, according to ACE data….

Even as the GED is overhauled, scholars continue to debate its value.

Some research has found that GED recipients earn no more than high school dropouts; a 1993 studyRequires Adobe Acrobat Reader found them “indistinguishable” from high school dropouts in the labor market. Other research concludes that they earn moreRequires Adobe Acrobat Reader than dropouts, and nearly as much as those with high school diplomas. But a 2010 studyRequires Adobe Acrobat Reader attributed that added earning power to personal traits and family characteristics that GED passers shared with diploma earners, such as higher levels of parental education.

One of the co-authors of that study, Nicholas S. Mader, said that any next-generation GED program would have to incorporate “soft skills,” such as persistence and study skills, if recipients are to stand a better chance in work and higher education than dropouts….

Shift in Content

When it comes to some postsecondary measures, GED recipients do better than high school dropouts. According to a 2010 studyRequires Adobe Acrobat Reader by the Washington-based ACE, 43 percent enroll in certificate or college programs within six years, compared with 20 percent of those who don’t pass the test and 64 percent of high school graduates. But few complete more than a year of coursework.

A 2009 studyRequires Adobe Acrobat Reader by the ACE followed 1,000 people who took the GED and found that only 307 had enrolled in postsecondary education five years later. Three-quarters dropped out after one semester, and only 17 completed a degree or certificate.

Such outcomes have fueled criticism of the widespread view that a GED is “equivalent” to a high school diploma….

http://www.edweek.org/ew/articles/2011/11/16/12ged.h31.html?tkn=OLNF%2BDEky%2BnV0%2B%2FJLiSY2K1xeBkjdbsk1elT&cmp=ENL-EU-NEWS1

This world is in a period of dislocation and upheaval as great as the period of dislocation which ushered in the “industrial revolution.” The phrase “new, new thing” comes from a book by Michael Lewis about innovation in Silicon Valley. This historical period is between “new, new things” as the economy hopes that some new innovator will harness “green technology” and make it commercially viable as the economy needs the jump that only a “new, new thing” will give it. Peter S. Goodman has a fascinating article in the New York Times, Millions of Unemployed Face Years Without Jobs

Unless, children are given a meaningful education which provides them with basic skills to adapt to a changing environment, the education system is producing a permanent underclass which will not be able to participate in the next “new, new thing.”

Resources:

GED Testing Service

http://www.acenet.edu/AM/Template.cfm?Section=GED_TS&CFID=4438019&CFTOKEN=45604581&jsessionid=1630edd8748a$D9$60$C

Trends in High School Dropout and Completion Rates in the United States: 1972–2008 Compendium Report

December 2010 http://nces.ed.gov/pubs2011/2011012.pdf

Dr. Wilda says this about that ©

Tags: , , , , ,

Hard truths: The failure of the family

6 Nov

This is a problem which never should have been swept under the carpet and if the chattering classes, politicians, and elite can’t see the magnitude of this problem, they are not just brain dead, they are flat-liners. There must be a new women’s movement, this time it doesn’t involve the “me first” philosophy of the social “progressives” or the elite who in order to validate their own particular life choices espouse philosophies that are dangerous or even poisonous to those who have fewer economic resources. This movement must urge women of color to be responsible for their reproductive choices. They cannot have children without having the resources both financial and having a committed partner. For all the talk of genocide involving the response and aftermath of Katrina, the real genocide is self-inflicted.

One of the mantras of this blog is that education is a partnership between the student, parent(s) or guardian(s), teacher(s), and the school. All parts of the partnership must be involved. 

Christine Mac Donald is reporting in the Detroit News, Worthy Proposes jail For Parents Who Skip Kids’ Conferences    Now, the Detroit Free Press is reporting that the Detroit Public Schools have come up with a department store “rewards program” to get parents to participate in their children’s lives. Peggy Walsh-Sarecki reports about the program in the article, DPS Has Perks For Parents

Jesse Washington of AP wrote a comprehensive article which details the magnitude of the disaster which is occurring in the African American community. In the article, Blacks Struggle With 72% Unwed Mother Rate Washington sounds an alarm which if you can’t hear it, makes you deaf.

This is not about racism or being elitist. This is about survival of an indigenous American culture. This is not about “speaking the truth to power,” it is about speaking the truth. The truth is children need two parents to help them develop properly and the majority of single parent headed families will live in poverty. Children from single parent homes have more difficult lives. So called “progressives” who want to make their “Sex and the City” life style choices the norm because they have a difficult time dealing with the emotional wreckage of their lives, need to shut-up when it comes to the survival of the African American community. This is an issue that the so called educated classes and religious communities have to get involved in.

Trip Gabriel reported about more fallout from the failure of the African American family in the New York Times. In Proficiency of Black Students Is Found to Be Far Lower Than Expected Gabriel goes on to describe the situation:

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….

This next comment is in no way PC. Prosecutor Worthy is correct that parents MUST be involved in the lives of their children. Problem is, jailing them will not force the majority of them into meaningful involvement and interaction with their child. Society has a couple of options to counter the “it’s my life and I’ll do what I want” philosophy. The first is discouraging and condemning out-of –wedlock births, particularly among low-income women. Too bad the First Lady doesn’t want to take this one on. The second thing is to intervene early and terminate the rights of negligent and abusive parents, freeing children up for adoption earlier. Finally, this society needs to support adoptive parents with financial and counseling resources. Not PC, but there it is.

Michael J. Petrilli writes in the article, We Have a Parenting Problem, Not a Poverty Problem at Huffington Post what moi has been saying for years and years:

So let’s get specific: What can parents do to increase the chances of their children doing well in school? Let’s just start with the zero-to-five years.

  1. Wait until you’ve graduated from high school and you’re married to have children.
  2. Stay married.
  3. Don’t drink or smoke when you’re pregnant.
  4. Get regular pre-natal check-ups.
  5. Nurse your baby instead of using a bottle.
  6. Talk and sing to your baby a lot.
  7. As you child grows, be firm but loving.
  8. Limit TV-watching, especially in the early years.
  9. Spark your child’s curiosity by taking field trips to parks, museums, nature centers, etc.
  10. Read, baby, read.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/michael-j-petrilli/parenting-education_b_1076064.html?ref=education

If you are a young unmarried woman of any color, you probably do not have the resources either emotional or financial to parent a child(ren). If you don’t care about your future, care about the future of your child. If you want to sleep with everything that has a pulse, that is your choice. BUT, you have no right to choose a life of poverty and misery and misery for a child. As for those so called “progressives?” Just shut-up.

Michael Jackson said it best with the lyrics to Man in the Mirror

Dr. Wilda says this about that ©

Tags: , , , , , ,

Newer Entries →