

Proficiency of Black Students Is Found to Be Far Lower Than Expected - Alex3917
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/11/09/education/09gap.html?_r=2&src=twt&twt=nytimesnational

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JabavuAdams
I suspect that home and community culture is the main reason, and race is
somewhere off in the noise.

I'd like to see research on different home cultures. I'd especially like to
see a way to assign a metric to a family to rate how "scholarly" the
environment is for the children.

You couldn't ask people directly, because pretty much every parent will agree
with the statement: "We think education is important." It's just that a lot of
them don't translate that into action. E.g. "What, why would you read to a 1
year old? They can't understand it."

Instead, go to substantive things like:

1) How often did you read to your child at age 0-3 months

2) When did your child first start watching TV?

3) Do you have books or magazines in the house?

4) Do you read with your kids every day?

...

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Alex3917
Reading to your kids doesn't seem to help them read more proficiently, at
least not on average. The 1994 Scarborough & Dobrich paper on this is one of
the most famous in education literature, and there are a bunch of good
responses to it as well.

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stevie
I think this is wrong.

Reading does help, but it has to done in the correct way, like much else to do
with education in general.

The Success For All study done in 2006:

"Conclusion The quantity and quality of research on Success for All, and the
positive outcomes found in almost all studies by more than fi fty
investigators in eighteen different research institutions worldwide, clearly
establish that Success for All is highly effective in increasing student
reading. The effects can be quite substantial, averaging more than half of the
national white-minority achievement gap and almost a full grade equivalent by
second grade (see Slavin et al., 2006). In a time when educators are
increasingly being asked to use proven programs, Success for All is the best
demonstration in existence of the idea that rigorous research on practical
programs can be done and can show substantial positive effects. Every child
should have a right to participate in a program with this level of evidence."

~~~
Alex3917
Right, that's why I said 'at least not on average'. If you are asking your
kids questions while you read that are phrased in the proper way then there is
benefit, but most people wouldn't do that unless they were trained to.

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asmithmd1
I started to develop a little skepticism when I came across this quote:

"In college, black men represented just 5 percent of students in 2008."

Isn't that exactly how many you would expect based on the demographics of the
US?

~~~
nickpinkston
Wikipedia says they're 14% of US population - I'm not sure how the age
distribution is, but that's plenty high enough to show a problem.

~~~
billpaetzke
But the stat is about black men only--excluding women. So 7% then.

Is 5% actual vs 7% desired a big enough gap to cause alarm? I don't know.

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kmak
I suppose it depends on the way you're framing it. If it gets to 7% as
desired, it is 40% more!

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Towle_
The more excuses any given demographic has available to it, the worse it will
fare.

~~~
maxklein
That's a terribly dismissive thing to say about people who are just one
generation away from not being able to vote because they were born darker than
others.

~~~
Towle_
It should be noted that it matters not whether those excuses are valid. When
an entire group buys into the idea, correctly or incorrectly, that their lack
of success is someone else's fault, the group as a whole stops trying at all.
"What's the point in trying? _They_ won't let us succeed."

edit 1: A strong, telling corollary is that forced immigrant groups always
fare poorer than willful immigrant groups. Always.

edit 2: How many generations removed from communist tyranny are America's
Chinese and Taiwanese immigrants? How're they doing?

~~~
maxklein
'Communist tyranny' as you term it, is very different from systematic racism.
I doubt that the attitude of 'they won't let us' is really without merit -
just 20 years ago, MTV would not play music by black artists.

Black America has come vey far, and is one of the most dominant cultural
forces on the planet. That's for the peak of the society. The bottom of the
society still has to deal with a lot of legacy problems, and attitudes like
yours don't help the problem.

I doubt that the majority of problems comes from a sense of entitlement, like
you strangely enough, seem to believe.

~~~
Towle_
_I doubt that the majority of problems comes from a sense of entitlement, like
you strangely enough, seem to believe._

What? I'm not making value judgments.

This is absurdly simple. If people have reason to believe that their efforts
will be in vain, then they make no effort. But it's worse than that with
socio-economic groups. Some members come to rely on the group's official
explanation for lack of success, in order to maintain self-dignity. Those
members hold back the others in their group to the best of their ability, else
the official defense of mediocrity be disproven.

A great example is the Irish Catholics in America. "No Irish Need Apply"
signs? Never happened (in America). <http://tigger.uic.edu/~rjensen/no-
irish.htm> The myth of The Other keeping them down was necessary for them as a
group. Even up through the first half of the 20th century, they insisted they
were being held down as the explanation for their much lower income levels
relative to white Protestants. Then came 1960. JFK was elected. If one of your
group can get elected president, there's no more need for excuses. Since 1960,
Irish Catholics have grown more and more like white Protestants. Both have
almost the exact same income distribution now. Catholic church attendance has
plummeted since 1960, asymptotically approaching Protestant church attendance.
The group stopped reaching for excuses, and things got better for them. Fast.

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maxklein
Catholics and protestants are indistinguishable from one another.

~~~
Towle_
Yeah, they are _now_. That's the freaking point. Two groups who slaughtered
each other for centuries are now indistinguishable to observers.

