Shocking School Achievement Gap for Black Males

[apples and oranges]

The California Academy of Mathematics and Science in south Los Angeles is one of the top high schools in the country, and senior Danial Ceasar is one of its top students, reports CBS News correspondent Bill Whitaker. He's got an A average, and he's ambitious - he wants to be a psychiatrist.

But here's a troubling sign of the times: achieving, black, male students like Danial are increasingly rare in America's schools.

"The overall academic achievement of African American males was appallingly low, not only in cities, but nationwide," said Michael Casserly, the executive director of the Council of the Great City Schools.

According to a new study released Tuesday by the Council of the Great City Schools, by fourth grade only 12 percent of black male students read at or above grade level, while 38 percent of white males do. By eighth grade it falls to just 9 percent for black males, 33 percent for whites. Black male students are almost twice as likely as white males to drop out of school. And in some big American cities the dropout rate is around 50 percent.

http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2010/11/09/eveningnews/main7038804.shtml

What should be done about this?

[jwirr]

1. I see something like this in my own family. When there is no incentive

to excel then there is not reason to work toward the goal. These kids have seen their fathers fill our US jails for decades now, seen a very high unemployment rate even when everyone else was working.

Most of my grandchildren have been raised on the reservation but most of them rejected the idea that they could not be what they wanted to be because of discrimination. However, one has bought into the why bother attitude. He quit school even though he was getting excellent grades. He sets back and lives on whatever he can bring in. It almost seems that he like being the victim. Many of you have read his troubles with pain killers when I asked for help. He just seem to have a doom complex. He is trying to raise his children and I fear that the children will be the ones who are talked about by the OP.

[BlueIris]

2. Awful.

:cry:

I can't submit any solutions, I'm afraid, although public awareness and caring about this problem couldn't hurt.

[XemaSab]

3. The New York Times covered this too

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=389x9526049

Is it still a crisis after 160 years? :(

[hfojvt]

4. it should also be noted though

that average scores are going up for whites, and for blacks.

"Is ten points on the NAEP scale “sometimes interpreted as one academic grade?” If so, then black fourth-graders have made remarkable progress in math in the past thirteen years! In the 1996 testing, black fourth-graders averaged 198 on the NAEP math test; by 2009, that average score had risen to 222. That represents a gain of 24 points in just thirteen years—a gain of 2.4 academic years, if we apply the rule of thumb Gabriel has dragged out here."

http://www.dailyhowler.com/dh110910.shtml

Here's the raw data, unfiltered by the M$M

http://nces.ed.gov/nationsreportcard/pdf/main2009/2010451.pdf

[racaulk]

5. Those sorts of statistics are so depressing.

Reaching out and mentoring our young people will help. So will making a true investment in public education, not the current NCLB/cut funding/underpay teachers model that has been in existence for far too long.

Reading this sort of thing just breaks my heart. I really wish I had a good solution.

:(

[ProgressiveProfessor]

7. Its not clear to me that the solution lies in the classroom

Teachers are working their hearts out. Doubling of their pay could not make them work any harder. If the student comes unprepared for school or is not interested, there is little that can be done to change that in the class room.

[FarCenter]

6. A middle school math teacher recently said that none of his students like math

On further reflection it occured to me that I couldn't remember any students liking math -- some were better at it than others, some worked harder at it than others. A few got satisfaction out of doing well, but they were a small group.

But mainly it was a matter of discipline. Self-discipline if the student had it, and discipline by parents and teachers if the student wasn't doing the work.

[lumberjack_jeff]

8. Black males are suffering in school not because they are black, but because they are male

The authors of the study worked very hard to avoid confronting that issue.

[BlueCheese]

9. Then why are they doing worse than white males?

[lumberjack_jeff]

10. Males of all races do worse in 4th grade english than girls.

The differences between students in the same socioeconomic background has much more to do with gender than race.

The factors which most harm a student's 4th grade reading success;
a) being male
b) having a disability
c) being poor
d) being black
... in that order.

Read pages 33-42 of the study.

http://www.cgcs.org/publications/Call_For_Change.pdf

[BlueCheese]

11. Okay, thanks.

I wouldn't be surprised if poverty accounted for most of the difference between the races.