<p>This is definitely a class issue. While there are still injustices towards black people, the black community needs to stop pointing the finger at every single thing they believe to be an injustice towards them, and start pointing the fingers back at themselves because the main failures within the black community are due to the black community along with a failure of leadership up top (ie NAACP, Jesse Jackson etc).</p>
<p>I live in in a zipcode that is about 42% african american, 55% hispanic, and 3% other. The housing projects are here and are just about completely filled with african americans. I don’t see any hispanics there. The gas station is filled with people asking for handouts. Some are healthy and in their 20s to 30s (even though the unemployment rate here is around 5%). They are all african american. I don’t see hispanic kids walking to/from school by themselves at around 5 yrs of age, but I do see little african american kids walking by themselves like that (in one of the roughest areas of town).</p>
<p>Who are the people in the area mowing lawns? Hispanic. Pushing ice cream carts in intense 100+ degree heat? Hispanics. If I want a new fence put up by someone in my neighborhood who will do it. Hispanics. If I want my floor tiled who will do it, hispanics. Etc etc etc. Some of these guys can barely speak english but they bust their ass and still make it.</p>
<p>How do you think it is for these illegal alien kids in school? I’m not saying we should do things to help them, but what I am saying is that many are able to succeed despite the system not going out of it’s way to coddle them. In fact, I know one that now makes $29 an hour.</p>
<p>Yeah, public schools suck. We know. However, where is the parenting ? Where are the fathers? Where is the concept of busting your ass as much as it takes to make money the right way?</p>
<p>I’ve been told by twice by high school teachers that I shouldn’t bother pushing for school support for an after-school robotics program because (paraphrased, but awfully darned close), “Don’t even ask. All the kids who would do robotics are going to pass the WASL anyway. We cancelled the robotics class we used to have because it wasn’t a core course in helping kids pass the WASL.”</p>
<p>It’s not that it’s a bad test, it’s that my sons both spent a couple of months before the WASL doing “test review.” In my opinion, for my kids, this was a complete waste of 2/9ths of the school year. They both passed the WASL as 8th graders, and therefore didn’t have to pass it again, but they did have to sit through all the review. It’s the dark side of using test scores to evaluate school administrators.</p>
<p>"I know of one majority black/Latino HS in the metro area that is fighting to get AP classes in its curriculum. They were told by the educrats that they might qualify, “…even though those kids will only get 2s on the tests” </p>
<p>– BigDaddy, same happened at the well-respected urban/diverse Denver high school my D attended. There was a major discrimination lawsuit – settled just 2 years ago, I believe – when it turned out that the poorer minority kids weren’t encouraged to sign up for AP classes, and some were actively DIScouraged. So your point is well taken. </p>
<p>However, this does not change my thought that when talking ELEMENTARY education many parents (minority parents in particular) VALUE the back-to-basics, test-driven approach precisely because it is verifiable, because it can be a tool for demanding accountability from teachers & administrators.
I myself think that benchmarks set by some of these tests are very useful. And they could have been used at the fancy-pants-artsy-expeditionary-learning magnet school my D attended for elementary school – where I was astounded to hear a teacher tell a parent that it was “OK” her child didn’t know her time tables yet. This was toward the end of 5th grade!</p>
<p>But they will benefit from the rigor of A.P. Scores on the A.P. exam are the least important reason to institute/take/offer an A.P. program. That’s not to say scores are unimportant but relative to the other benefits they are the least important.</p>
<p>A.P. students, (if they and their teachers take the courses seriously) will grow intellectually from the experience and be far better prepared for college.
The same is true I’m sure of IB programs as well.</p>
<p>The only sticking point is that there have to be teachers who are committed enough to the program to not water down the standards. They need to hold firm and require the students to raise their efforts to the expectations, not lower the expectations to meet the students. </p>
<p>My experience as an A.P. teacher in a system where my course is the first A.P. experience offered to students is that there are some early shocks to the kids’ systems but once they realize they need to improve their effort they almost without fail rise to the occasion.</p>
<p>WashDad:
The 8th grade WASL is not the same as the 10th grade WASL. </p>
<p>I agree that the test prep is silly–because it’s not an easy test to prep for. Test prep should be an after-school activity for kids who’ve flunked.</p>
<p>It’s also ridiculous to get rid of robotics. FIRST robotics gives out huge numbers of scholarships.</p>
<p>An interesting article from USA today on a study that addresses some of the issues we discussed here. Excerpts followed by the link to the article. </p>
<p>"State learning standards may help high school teachers focus their coursework, but college faculty say they’re focusing on the wrong things, says a report that finds a “significant gap” between what high school instructors teach and what college faculty think entering freshmen ought to know. </p>
<p>Math:
High school teachers put more weight on advanced content, while college instructors said “a rigorous understanding of fundamentals” was more important. More than half (55%) of faculty ranked “basic operations and applications” most important, compared with 40% of high school faculty. Among material most desired by college faculty but covered the least in high school were algebraic problems such as solving quadratic equations and factoring.</p>
<p>Science:
High school teachers consistently rated factual knowledge more important than process and inquiry skills, such as understanding a hypothesis. But that’s what college instructors said they want most. For example, college faculty generally ranked “evaluating the similarities and differences, or strengths and weaknesses, of scientific viewpoints” important, while high school teachers were more likely to cite “understanding the physics principles involved in collisions” and “knowing the processes of how proteins are made inside of cells.” </p>
<p>English and writing:
More than a third (35%) of college instructors placed high importance on basic grammar and usage such as sentence structure and punctuation, compared with 10% of high school teachers. Similarly, high school faculty said the “ability to write an effective introduction and conclusion to a piece of writing” was the most important skill, but college instructors ranked it 30th.</p>
<p>Reading:
High school and college teachers generally agreed on the relative importance of specific skills and identified the teaching of “main ideas and author’s approach” as the top skill. But other ACT data show a decline in performance in reading between middle and high school, suggesting that reading skills acquired in middle school are not being deepened in high school. While educators in college and high school agree that reading skills are important, such skills “need to be incorporated into state standards,” the study says. </p>
<p>I think businesses have greater impact on school curriculum. Schools are trying to build skills that are necessary in work place. Team work, working with other gender, race, presentation, writing effective conclusions and introduction etc.</p>
<p>People do refer to college professors as people who live in ivory towers.</p>
<p>That’s true, simba - on the other hand if the purpose of high school is, among other things, to prepare kids for college - shouldn’t they at least take into consideration what college professors expect? Because otherwise, aren’t the high schools setting up the kids if not for failure, at least for a harder time in college?</p>
<p>My son informs me that I was mistaken. He took the 10th grade WASL in 9th grade, which was offered as an option, and did not include the prep time the 10th graders went through.</p>
<p>mini, I think you’re out of date with your pessimism.
Sadly, these days you can pass 10th grade math and even pass your college courses & graduate – and still don’t deserve health insurance.</p>
<p>But it’s important to also note that college professors do not have to prepare their students to pass state mandated assessments as proscribed by NCLB.
That’s not to argue with NCLB, that’s an entirely different discussion, but it is a recognition of an obvious difference between colleges and public high schools. </p>
<p>Professors are not going to have their colleges placed on a watch list or have their school otherwise evaluated on the basis of state mandated assessments.</p>
<p>Oiram, I think Katlia’s point is that it’s even worse than what Mini says, who I think doesn’t approve of it even if his facetiousness makes it sound like that.</p>
<p>There is a great book which highlights your concerns and I recommend you read it. It is called The Shame of the Nation: The Restoration of Apartheid Schooling in America and written by Jonathan Kozol. Your point is one of many that Kozol discusses.</p>
<p>I have my super-bright kid in an inner city public high school. Lots of problems, but also lots of money. Businesses, philanthropic organizations, etc. just back the bank trucks up to the school. The amenities are astounding.</p>
<p>“Professors are not going to have their colleges placed on a watch list or have their school otherwise evaluated on the basis of state mandated assessments.”</p>
<p>I rather wish they would…I’d like to see states require colleges’ marketing materials to include graduation rates and the rates of default on student loans. Low-end private schools, in particular, are ripping people off right and left.</p>
<p>The populations served by colleges mirrors that of the schools. You have elites in both that serve only the cream of the crop and have great numers. But then you have the worst of the Chicago publics and schools like Chicago State that serve the lowest levels of students. Of course their numbers will stink. It solves nothing.</p>