Report: Black male academic achievement is 'national catastrophe'
More bad news about the academic status of black males: Only 12 percent of black male fourth-graders are proficient in reading, compared to 38 percent for white males, according to NAEP scores highlighted by the Council of the Great City Schools in a newreport.
Poverty alone isn’t the difference maker, says the report, which was released Tuesday: Poor white males do just as well as on reading and math tests as black males who are not poor.
“There’s accumulating evidence that there are racial differences in what kids experience before the first day of kindergarten,” Ronald Ferguson, director of the Achievement Gap Initiative at Harvard, told the New York Times in a story on the report. “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.”
Among them: “Conversations about early childhood parenting practices,” Ferguson said. “The activities that parents conduct with their 2-, 3- and 4-year-olds. How much we talk to them, the ways we talk to them, the ways we enforce discipline, the ways we encourage them to think and develop a sense of autonomy.”
The academic struggles of black males has been a hot topic in Tampa Bay lately, withpoor graduation rates in Pinellas making news and the Council of the Great City Schools holding a national town hall meeting on the subject in Tampa last month.
The council looked at test scores for black males in a handful of big urban school districts including Miami-Dade, but Pinellas and Hillsborough were not among them.
It called for a White House conference: “This is a national catastrophe,” the report said, “and it deserves coordinated national attention.”
Any educator working with our African American population would affirm these findings. While it is all-too-easy to balme teachers for the massive gap, there will not be any real progress until the familial, societal, and cultural issues that exisit within the African American community are addressed.
Until the community stakeholders take ownership of this issue, and shed victimhood and blame, we will never see progress.
This is not politcially correct, but it is true. Until we deal with anti-eduaction, anti-family, self-destructive paradigms being promoted by popular culture and embraced by segments of the african american communtiy, we will contiune chasing the wind and wasting our time rolling out ineffective and expensive programs and interventions.
Public education is not the arena to fight this battle...the local community and family structure is.
The majority of black society is a national tragedy.
Poverty alone isn’t the difference maker, says the report, which was released Tuesday: Poor white males do just as well as on reading and math tests as black males who are not poor.
Maybe it is simply an evolutionary thing.
lillapoyka... then explain Benjamin Banneker, George Washington Carver, Booker T Washington, W.E.B. Dubois, Clarence Thomas, Colin Powell, ML King Jr, James Baldwin, Henry Louis Gates, etc... etc... etc.
Please don't inject ignorance into this discussion.
The solution to the "national catastrophe" resides within more then with-all. I recall when Bill Cosby tried to bring attention to a similar issue he was vilified by the black community.
In spite of poverty and hardships, there are plenty of successful smart black entrepreneurs and educators. This is their battle, so why is that they do not step to the plate? They are the ones that have to start talking tough about what went right during their early years. Just with that knowledge others can replicate successes.
This won't change until the culture at home changes. I apologize if this sounds racist, but 1st generation Asians come into this country and excel in education - why? Parents force the youngsters to study and do well in school. If the African-American families would instill that same work ethic into their children, then their results would be much better. Until that happens we will still have poor results. Newspapers, administrators and everyone else will blame the teachers. We're great scapegoats for everyone's failures.
maybe they should start showing rap videos to the kids in kindergarten to make the black males feel more accomadating!
bet they'd really like the b*tch*s and ●●'s one!
Sad but true reality. Honestly the only way for schools/government to affect such trends would be to end the "school as right" model we now employ. That would solve many problems in one move (though no political payment for that one - so out of the question).
Until then it's just help where you can for a few months and move on to the next kid (however it would be nice if policy makers would recognize all I can do is basic first aid, rather than provide the cure).
Bill Cosby tried to help the black community and they blew him out of the water.
It's cultural, for sure. Entreprenurship, love of education, work ethic all lacking. Schools can only do so much. The major influences--parents and peers-- aren't helping.
It is a question of priorities. When a black males number 1 priority is to see how many white and black girls he can get pregnant and place on the welfare rolls his priorities are misplaced. To get an education you must put forth an effort. The effort begins at home. 72 percent of children born to black women are fatherless. Young black males need to pay more attention to their education versus procreation !!
Why don't people ever listen to what people are saying on these blogs? Many of us, for months have been saying there is inequity. Did we have to hear it from a national report? Come-on guys, if you have eyes to see, you'll see. But evidently a lot of people want to be blind, at what expense. I certainly don't want these boys to become men that rob, steal and take, because it wasn't given to them, while they were young and malleable. When they become old and 'set in their ways' we send them to prison because they're bad, what else can they be? I don't want to hear the rhetoric, that 'there are plenty of those who have "made-it", frankly those are the ones who have been "saved", while in their youth.' But I'm talking about the ones who haven't made it, we're filling the prisons up with them. And are you willing to pay your tax dollars for hardened criminals, instead of building school programs to reach these kids before they get to that point? I'd rather believe the latter is better.
Pretty soon, there will not be enough prison-space or money to deal with that problem. Who are we fooling? OURSELVES. Hippocrates said, "Only the Educated are Free." So true when you think about these boys and their future. They have God-given talents and those talents are going un-tapped. They are not being allowed to gain skills and knowledge to better themselves. I saw a show on "School Pride" about a group of students in a Detroit Public School System that had a 97% graduation rate, 97% no-absentee rate. And yet, the School District was going to close their school,Why? Because the school itself was dilapidated! Can you imagine that? Kids asked "School Pride"[NBC TV] to help them keep their school. And School Pride joined them to do just that. It was a riveting show, that shows that kids want success, they just need the adults to stop paying them platitudes, and put-up or shut-up. Those kids got to keep their school & still excel and help others to do the same. Come-on Adults!
Come to school with the right attitude, and you will excel.