<p>Good post, Northstarmom. My Fall 2005 data for UT-Austin is slightly different but it’s close enough. I was also aware of Berkeley’s stats, especially the large Pell grant percentage. Of course, UT-Austin offers state grant programs in addition to the federal Pell grant. The percentage of UT-Austin students who received gift aid ranged from 48% in 2001 to 39% in 2003. I can’t find any more recent statistics but I suspect it is comparable. UT-Austin also had a drop-off in black enrollment from 2001-2004 due to the Hopwood/Grutter cases and the resulting changes in UT’s admissions policies.</p>
<p>"Quantity does not mean a thing. Actually, it may not promote interaction. </p>
<p>My son’s group consists of hispanic, african american, indian, singaporean, chinese, korean, russian, yugoslavian, pakistani, white jewish, and some WASPs." -simba</p>
<p>simba, no one questions the value of attending Princeton. Princeton alums are generally very satisfied with their experience: it’s certainly one of the best Ivies.</p>
<p>Using black students as an exemplar of a harder-to-recruit population:</p>
<p>Something to consider is that public universities that outshine Ivies et al. in black recruitment have a special duty to serve the citizens of their own states, and North Carolina, Virginia, and New York (among others) have a higher concentration of black citizens than does the United States as a whole. That is, in a perfectly fair world, an Ivy with a nationwide draw would likely have a black population of ~12%. In that perfect world, the flagship university of North Carolina or Virginia would likely have a black population of ~20%. In other words, some Ivies may be closer to providing equitable access to their target population than is frontrunner UNC-CH.</p>
<p>Viewpoint,
That’s true. If you only see each step in life as a means to an end, in a kind of touristy way, ticking off boxes on the way to the next box to be ticked off, then gaming the system is your m.o. for everything. Forget the vistas along the way, you’ve got to get to the summit!
I merely meant “a waste” if you see college as something other than a means to get to the next step. College is not (or not only, as the case may be) a means for landing a job.
I remember a Wharton grad who runs a search firm (also the President of the local chapter of A Better Chance where I was interviewing to be their Resident Tutor for the following two years) asking me about some of my academic choices, after which he intoned “You know, sometimes you need to do things in life for a very long time that you really don’t like, in order to get where you want to go.” I fundamentally disagree, but that’s just my personal philosophy, of course. Do you go to trade school (i.e. medicine or law) because you want to know as much as possible about your future endeavor so that you can be awesome at it? Or is it just a big pain you have to endure and wade through so that you can finally practice your profession, which is what you really wanted to do 4-8 years earlier?</p>
<p>view point: In Houston. The point I was making is that when you have too many from one group, they tend to stick together. At smaller places no group is large, all of them are ‘forced’ to co-mingle.</p>
<p>Lower black % enrollment at large state Universities does not equate to lack of URM presence. At top schools, it is easier to get 9-10% black population quota. For example at Harvard or Princeton that would mean about total 100-150 freshmen kids. They have applicant pool of 16,000+. While at UT where the freshmen enrollment is about 6,000, they may not even get qualified 600 black applicants. (Many qualified black applicants are going OOS or private. They get $).</p>
<p>I am sorry to say, but URM (African American and Hispanic) population in general does not value education. We live in second or third largest school district in Texas (and it is suburban). Pockets of my district are increasingly becoming dominated by URMs (actually the white flight has begun). My wife substitutes in elementary schools. Her observation: Schools with low URM presence are easy to deal. There are slow kids, but they dont have discipline problem. Schools with large URM population are taxing, kids do not behave, have no interest in learning, they just don’t want to learn, teachers have to constantly yell. Thus, 10% (national norm) of black kids will graduate from high school, but they will not have the minimum skills necessary to go to college. As a result, state schools can never have the % URM population that mirrors society.</p>
<p>Simba, has your wife ever seen the video, “Funds of Knowledge”?
You have to make education relevant to the kids. The kids have to see that if you are educated, there is a pay-off.</p>
<p>If you can understand a kids’ culture, history, and present circumstances, you can communicate with the kids and then teach them by using aspects of the kids’ everyday lives, and bringing these things to the classroom. </p>
<p>One way to do this is you cook in the classroom what the kids eat at home. What does this do? This teaches organizational skills. This teaches teamwork. This teaches math skills. </p>
<p>When you teach about the Civil War, you teach it from the African American point of view. For example, you have the kids build little compartments and then have then crawl inside so they can in a small way see how their ancesters fled the south. The pride of the kids goes up as they see, and feel what their ancesters went through. </p>
<p>dstark: Most of the time she subs for special ed or co-teaches. She works with a group of (slower) kids in a regular class.</p>
<p>Even when she has a whole class, she has to follow the lesson plan.</p>
<p>And here we are talking about mostly pre K- 3 grade.</p>
<p>I must say that has observed that large majority of kids that have problems are kids of hispanic origin. I think, black community organizations have tackled the education issue better than hispanic organizations.</p>
<p>I agree that a teacher must be sensitive to URM students’ psyche and backgrounds to be effective with them.</p>
<p>I plan to be a teacher and find a position to teach URM students (I’m not a URM) to try some of my ideas on education. I have recently read Washington’s UP FROM SLAVERY, Douglass’ NARRATIVES, and the book about ESCALENTE (the best teacher in America.) and believe I could make much difference at a URM school.</p>
<p>I suspect that some URM students don’t like schools because they don’t believe that education is a practical way for them to advance in society. The reality is that most of them are better off dropping out of high school and joining the military. That is the reality and I won’t blame them.</p>
<p>It is really my hope that yoru teacher ed program gives courses in taching cross culturally as this is not the mindset of most URMS. It is not even the mind set of a remote group of URMs.</p>
<p>This is definitely not my reality or the message that I send to my kid. It </p>
<p>According to the Frederick D. Patterson Research Institute of the United Negro College Fund .</p>
<p>from: Differences in the Decision To Attend College among Blacks, Hispanics, and Whites.</p>
<p>In the National Education Longitudinal Study which examined the extent to which the relative influence on college investment decisions of economic, academic, structural, social, and cultural capital varied by racial/ethnic group the study found that, on average, Blacks and Hispanics had less economic and academic capital than Whites. Black high school graduates were observed to have more of some types of social and cultural capital than high school graduates of other ethnic groups, in that they were more likely to express interest in earning advanced degrees, receive help from their high schools with college admissions materials, and use more than one tool to prepare for college admissions tests. After controlling for differences in economic, academic, structural, social, and cultural capital, the probability of enrolling in a four-year college or university in the fall after graduating from high school was 11 percent higher for Blacks than for Whites. The probability of enrollment was about equal for Hispanics and Whites.</p>
<p>Data produced by the Patterson Research Institute shows that between 1976 and 1997: </p>
<p>· Undergraduate enrollment of African-American men increased by 21%.
· Undergraduate enrollment of African-American women increased by 68%.
· Graduate enrollment of African-American men increased by 34%.
· Graduate enrollment of African-American women increased by 91%.
· Professional school enrollment of African-American men increased by 27%.
· Professional school enrollment of African-American women increased by 209%.
· Bachelor’s degrees awarded to African-American men increased by 30%.
· Bachelor’s degrees awarded to African-American women increased by 77%.
· Professional degrees awarded to African-American men increased by 22%.
· Professional degrees awarded to African -American women increased by 288%. </p>
<p>I agree with Dstark that teaching is a profession that is definitely situational as one cannot take a one size fits all approach to teaching and really be an effective teacher.</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>This sounds more a reflection of a teachers inability to effective manage a classroom, because when one decides to be come a teacher or a subsitiute teacher especially in a large metropolitan area there are no guarantees as to what kind of enviroment you will be placed in. However, there is still an expectation that the teacher will have the classroom management skills necessary to be able to conduct a class. After all, who is the adult and who is the child. Who is the person in the postion of authority in the class room. Even as a sub, are you there to teach or are you just there to collect a per session check and to make sure that the classroom doesn’t burn down on your watch.</p>
<p>One could make a sweeping generalization that most subs don’t teach and that all they do is sit behind the desk and drink coffee or read the paper, but it would be disingenuous to the subs that do come to class with a lesson plan in hand and effectively teach a lesson.</p>
<p>I was going to cite the NELS as well, but I doubt there are many folks who want to hear it. ('cause then you’d have to figure out how to “control for the differences”;)).</p>
<p>Many of the students you are talking about also do not have mentors and come from backgrounds where education may not be valued. They are not getting messages of why education is important and get messages to the opposite effect. It is a complex issue. They need to believe in what education can do for them. Mentors and those who believe in them and motivate them and encourage them to pursue this path are needed when other influences are working against that. </p>
<p>By the way, I also used to teach primary grades. I rarely had URM students as there are barely any in my area, but I have had many students whose parents are not educated. Often these kids do not end up going to college.</p>
<hr>
<p>PS…I currently substitute in elementary schools.</p>
<p>Dstark wrote:
“Viewpoint, you can make a difference.”</p>
<p>I agree! Teachers make a difference and in order to be one, you have to believe that you can and be motivated to do so, rather than think that students will be better off if they drop out of school, etc. A teacher can be a mentor who encourages a different path, and a positive one.</p>
<p>sybbie: what you are talking about is the general expectation in society. All want teachers to be every thing, make their kids study, take care of their emotional and other needs while placing so much restriction on teachers themselves. In her training, she was specifically told not do do certain things e. g. don’t touch a child, never say shut up…There are many parents who think once they produced the kids, it is other people’s problem to raise them. All they have to do is sit in front of a TV and guzzle beer.</p>
<p>No matter how good a teacher is unless they get co-operation from parents the kids will always be at the bottom of the barrel. There are certain social skills that only parents can instill. Unless the kids learn to behave in schools they will never learn.</p>
<p>BTW your snide remark at per session check was insulting. Do you have any idea how much is per session check?</p>
<p>Ok, anyone who works with children in any type of setting is taught this. But it does not negate the fact that one still has a job to do and there is an expectation that they do that job well.</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>Yes. In NYC it is about $140 per day. Granted it is not a lot of money. </p>
<p>I have a lot of friends who are principals/ department APs who refuse to bring in 1 day subs (especially in high schools). They would just rather let their teachers earn the per session money for covering an additional class so that there is some sort of continuity of a lesson going on in the class.</p>
<p>On the note of economic diversity: two of my d’s friends told me that they were heavily recruited by Harvard and were explicitly told that because of their low family income and high test scores, Harvard really wanted them to apply. One received not one but a series of phone calls from Harvard. Neither applied, however, because Harvard didn’t have the kind of campus they wanted.</p>
<p>Both girls are white, private school students living in a highly represented state. If you were to take them in that context instead of as economically disadvantaged students, you might think that this kind of recruitment proved that Harvard was elitist, looking only for white, private school students.</p>
<p>When I substitute, as I will be this week, the pay is $65/day. I have a graduate degree in Education from Harvard but that is irrelevant…sub pay is a set pay for anyone who subs. I imagine my college aged kid could sub. She’d be paid the same. </p>
<p>Simba wrote:
“No matter how good a teacher is unless they get co-operation from parents the kids will always be at the bottom of the barrel.”</p>
<p>I don’t know if they will always be at the bottom of the barrel but they will surely have way more hurdles to overcome. Some do rise up. However, I agree that the cooperation from the parents is essential in the education. Here is a little anecdote along those lines…</p>
<p>Years ago, I used to teach a multi-age gr. 1/2/3 class. One little boy was a discipline problem. I had rules and consequences in my classroom. Once you got past steps 1-4 in the discipline plan, you go to step five, a note or call home to your parents. The idea is not to be punitive but the assumption is that once the parent knows, the child will also be dealt with at home and that there will be some support to get the child to behave or further consequences at home may also kick in if more reports from school come home. I recall notifying this little boy’s mom about some issues he had had in class and hoped that she’d follow through at home or at the least talk to him and be wanting me to let her know if it continued, etc. In other words, I considered her another adult with the same aims with the child. What did she do? She wrote me back a scathing letter that said to never report to her again about any discipline problems I was having with him in school because “I don’t come running to you when I have a problem with him at home!!” So, I showed that to the principal and we agreed that it was not effective to use the “note home to mom” consequence with this child and that when he got to step 5 in the discipline plan, he’d have to go down to her office or whatever it was that we worked out. We’d no longer be counting on mom or working WITH her. It was useless. He was not URM (this is a very white state) but was low income single parent family.</p>
<p>“But it does not negate the fact that one still has a job to do and there is an expectation that they do that job well.”</p>
<p>Don’t you think parents are also obligated to do their job when they produce children?</p>
<p>It is not other people’s fault that your kids don’t learn - it is your duty and responsilbility that you do your part and be part of the process.</p>