Guest Post by Walter E. Williams
A recent report by Chris Stewart has shed new light on some of the educational problems faced by black youth. The report is titled “The Secret Shame: How America’s Most Progressive Cities Betray Their Commitment to Educational Opportunity for All.” Stewart is a self-described liberal and CEO of Brightbeam, a nonprofit network of education activists who want to hold progressive political leaders accountable.
The report asks, “So how do we explain outstandingly poor educational results for minority children in San Francisco — which also happens to be one of the wealthiest cities in the country?” “The Secret Shame” reports that progressive cities, on average, have black/white achievement gaps in math and reading that are 15 and 13 percentage points higher than in conservative cities. For example, in San Francisco, 70% of white students are proficient in math; for black students it’s 12% — a 58-point gap. In Washington, D.C., 83% of white students scored proficient in reading compared to 23% of black students — a 60-point gap.
Yet, three of the 12 conservative cities researchers looked at — Virginia Beach, Anaheim and Fort Worth — have effectively closed or even erased the gap in at least one of the academic categories studied, achieving a gap of zero or one. “The politically conservative Oklahoma City has even turned the tables on our typical thinking about race-based gaps,” says Stewart. Black students in Oklahoma City even have higher high school graduation rates than white students.
Had the “Secret Shame” study analyzed other cities, it would have found that educational outcomes for most black youngsters is a national disgrace. As of 2016, in Philadelphia, only 19% of eighth-graders scored proficient in math, and 16% were proficient in reading. In Detroit, only 4% of its eighth-graders scored proficient in math, and 7% were proficient in reading. In 2016, in 13 of Baltimore’s 39 high schools, not a single student scored proficient on the state’s math exam. In six other high schools, only 1% tested proficient in math. Only 15% of Baltimore students passed the state’s English test.
National Assessment of Education Progress tests (also called the Nation’s Report Card) give further testament to the tragedy. In Philadelphia, 47% of its students scored below basic in math and 42% scored below basic in reading. In Baltimore, it was, respectively, 59% and 49%. In Detroit, 73% scored below basic in math and 56% in reading. Below basic means that a student is unable to demonstrate even partial mastery of knowledge and skills fundamental for proficient work at his or her grade level.
Then there’s gross fraud practiced by the education establishment. High school graduation rates for black students range from a high of 84% in Texas to a low of 57% in Nevada and Oregon. However, according to ACT data, the percentage of black students judged to be college-ready in English, math, reading and science ranges from 17% in Massachusetts to only 3% in Mississippi. One concrete example of this fraud is the fact that Baltimore’s Frederick Douglass High School has a graduation rate of 70% while not a single student tested proficient in mathematics and only 3% did so in reading.
“The Secret Shame” report didn’t say why the black/white achievement gap was smaller in conservative cities compared to their progressive counterparts. But permit me to make a suggestion. An Education Week article reported that in the 2015-16 school year, “5.8% of the nation’s 3.8 million teachers were physically attacked by a student.” The Justice Department’s Bureau of Justice Statistics and the Department of Education’s National Center for Education Statistics show that in the 2011-12 academic year, there were a record 209,800 primary- and secondary-school teachers who reported being physically attacked by a student.
A National Center for Education Statistics study found that 18% of the nation’s schools accounted for 75% of the reported incidents of violence, and 6.6% accounted for half of all reported incidents. These are schools with predominantly black student populations. My guess is that part of the reasons black academic achievement is greater in conservative cities is that schools are less tolerant of crime whereas schools in progressive cities make excuses.
Walter E. Williams is a professor of economics at George Mason University. To find out more about Walter E. Williams and read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate webpage at www.creators.com.
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“a nonprofit network of education activists who want to hold progressive political leaders accountable” – almost fell out of my chair laughing….
Accountability ONLY comes when you can withhold the ONLY thing that matters to them or anyone else – YOUR MONEY!!! THAT is why private schools are superior, as is everything the private/voluntary sector does. They must EARN the money they receive (even if it is a charity). They are held 100% accountable to their customers.
The more government FAILS, the more it STEALS, justifying their failure on “a lack of funding.” Hopefully the monopoly day prison system will also collapse as a result of this virus.
I didn’t fall out of my chair but, I bumped my funny bone while laughing, does that count? I say fire them all and let them live on what they are going to pay everyone else for a living wage with the same healthcare benefits that the working class enjoys.
“Before some audiences not even the possession of the exactest knowledge will make it easy for what we say to produce conviction. For argument based on knowledge implies instruction, and there are people whom one cannot instruct.” – Aristotle
“My guess is that part of the reasons black academic achievement is greater in conservative cities is that schools are less tolerant whereas schools in progressive cities make excuses.”
more broadly, leftist educational systems will lower or eliminate educational standards to enable universal graduation, while conservative educational systems will fail and dismiss from consideration those students who fail to meet fixed educational standards.
This read is a pretty rich serving of pure bullshit. I always laugh at articles where the authors and contributors never mention what has been the cause of the decline of American Education. American literacy has been in decline since 1920 when suddenly every education changed the reading education methods. Prior to 1920 there were two methods by which people learn how to read. The more abstract student learns by the look-see method. The working class person learns by the phonics method. Once both methods were a part of literacy instruction, but starting in 1920 the phonics method was gradually eliminated, henceforth guaranteeing a vast number of people who never learned how to read.
I dare anyone to compare literacy standards of today to those before 1920. The U.S. military never changed their standards, and they claim literacy means you must be able to read at a 4th grade level. That is the pre-1920 standard.
Now, take any 12th grade textbook of today and compare it to that of the past. That text features readings of a 3.5 grade reading level.
The only way something so inane could be accepted over the last 100 years is that IT HAD TO BE PLANNED BY DESIGN THAT WAY. The problems has been laid out there like raw meat to see and smell for the last 100 years but few talk about it. That is called another form of brain-washing.
“So how do we explain outstandingly poor educational results for minority children”
Their average IQ is 15 to 30 points lower than for the white kids.
mean iq for american blacks is about 85.
and the mean IQ for the daddies of those children is unknown.
It’s near 70 for sub-Saharan Africans, which we keep importing more of for some reason.
hence the 15
My kids have been home for a week or two and I get little info from their schools about opening again. I have decided I am through with the common core crap and the bullying and pushing of advanced math at the expense of everything else. The bringing home of various plagues from all the kids whose parents need a daycare for their future convicts. So I am homeschooling my kids.
It can make the most difference possible.
My daughter was being bullied by a clique of the “in” girls in sixth grade. When notified, the school did – nothing. She was expected to fight it out, somehow, and get over it. She didn’t.
At about the same time my son was being pushed into being “mainstreamed” out of special ed. (he had ADHD, was medicated, but was not very social). The special ed teacher who was delighted to have a kid who COULD learn, and had spent extra time, effort and patience teaching him to speak properly, read EVERYTHING, do math and write (passably) was going to be “reassigned” to a regular classroom the next year.
We pulled them both out, and started homeschooling.
Daughter wanted to be an author / writer, and got a B.A in English. Son was computer-oriented, and got a B.S. in IT. Both were homeschooled, daughter got her G.E.D. by examination and son just found a junior college that needed no high school diploma, took two years and transferred to finish up. Both are full, functioning human beings; they are thoughtful, productive and have friends online more than real life.
But it will take some time, every week, to plan out the lessons (and relearn them yourself if it’s been too long!). The freedom to set your own curriculum (as long as you cover the materials and the basics, can’t teach math without long division or probably algebra II) and include the things you find important outweighs the investments of time and effort and $ needed. Look online for things like Saxon Math, Great Courses, and other premade stuff that you can use.
Your children are your investment in eternity; treasure them and help them grow.
Walter E. Williams is a smart guy. He has to know that even the very best funded and equipped schools with highly qualified and motivated teachers cannot turn shit into ice cream. That said most big city public schools couldn’t turn the best ingredients into ice cream.
But he is also one to point directly at the single parent black families, welfare programs, racist war on drugs, and all the rest as major contributors to why what exists in the black community is crap. Any criticism of one article misses the vast truths that are covered by his extremely extensive writings AND RESEARCH on the subject. He has also seriously criticized the teaching profession, and regularly points out that education majors score among the LOWEST of all majors (except political science…shock) on standardized tests, etc. So the “best ingredients” are lacking all around as well.
There are so many issues that are raised and each has its salient points. The ability to maintain order in a classroom began to disappear when there was NO WAY to support that order. Dr. Williams (and Dr. Thomas Sole) make the great point, “anything for free, has no value”. This is through the process of “Affirmative Action” and it allows individuals to move ahead when they have NO SKILLS. Add to this the fact that, today, those children are the children of a group that was “crippled” in the same manner so the ability for parents to do “proper Parenting” is lost. It is my guess that at least one of the reasons “Conservative Communities” do better is they are comprised of individuals that share similar values. Note, no where in that sentence did a hint of race nor ethnicity occur… As one of the commentors mentioned there has been a change in techniques for teaching reading (as I know “Oldtimer505” would say, “Look at how the shift in the teaching of mathematics was made by teaching “New Math” in the mid to late 60’s”) He would have said it was introduced to create a group of “Blue Collar workers” because it was unintelligible. We see that gap widening even more with the “insane” way they teach math today. The problem has been created from so many directions it is difficult to sort some of it out. We had better get started or we are going to lose more of the “Future of Our Country”. If one steps back and looks at what is happening, it has ALL the hallmarks of “Divide and Conquer” and that strategy has been successful over and over. We must do our level best to STOP IT!
The fact is that all schools in all communities have standards that are based on what some high-paid college “education” professor has to say. They never ask questions as to how poor the standards are, and where the decline began. We have these poor education outputs in our youth today because it is all done by design. Seek out who the college education professors and departments dance to and you will see who really runs our world. They have a lord, a master, and so far no one has dug enough to figure out who it is. If someone would follow where the money goes in developing “standards” and who lobbies legislators I think the identification of that lord could be determined.
I cannot/willnot disagree with you. However, we have started to do what you suggest. I believe in the saying “Those that can do! Those that can’t, teach”! We (those of us that care) have turned to “Home Schooling”. You can see the pressure that puts by the response of the local school districts in the state in which I live, Wisconsin. Those school districts that prevent the purchasing of existing school buildings because the proposed (outside the Public System) schools would be taking money away from the Public sector. I believe many school districts get money based on a “head count”. Move the “Heads to a more acceptable school system. Push on those that were hired (and, as you know, we have managed to hire the most accomplished “Confidence People” in the USofA) to change strategy or put OUR money where we can educate our children. This does not address what Dr. Williams is talking about, the Gap in education. It may take time or (who knows)an insurrection to change some of the “Political Minds”. If it were to go that far, I fear it would take on the appearance of the French Revolution. When driven to that extreme the French started to have a hard time turning off the “Guillotine”. God help us!
“When driven to that extreme the French started to have a hard time turning off the ‘Guillotine’.”
can you imagine some of the hysterically angry posters here in charge of the guillotine ….
Hard to get ahead in the classroom when the rest of the students turn on you for “acting white.”
When you get to the very root of this issue, the issue is that we are not all the same. The lie of equality has to be addressed.
We are not all equal. We are all individuals with different strengths, weaknesses, and cultures. Some cultures value education, others do not. When you attempt to impose your values upon others, they often will simply reject it. The arrogance of liberals who think their values apply to everyone, and should be enforced by threat of violence by government is simply ignorant thinking.
The notion there is such a thing as a homogeneous multi cultural society is a blatant lie. Not all cultures share the same values, ethics, and morals. Different cultures tend to impose upon, and insult each others values when they are forced to share communities. Minority cultures tend to reject the values of the majority cultures, and no amount of spending on programs is going to change that.
People should be able to live together in their own spaces based on their beliefs and culture. Stop trying to impose your opinions on others. Allow people to decide what is important to them and live accordingly with people of similar beliefs.
Naturally the leftist education agenda in control of predominantly black populated areas are failing because of the desire to claim all black students are equal to white students , they are not !
Reality sucks as does the reality of the Baltimore City school system . A system that spends more per student than any other system of similar size and is a total failure . However the Baltimore system has more administrators making over $100 thousand a year obviously it does not need more money it needs less dead weight at the top !
Another uncomfortable fact is only about 20% of the black students are capable the rest fall about 10 points above where mental retardation starts . One thing for certain they all have a very inflated self esteem and zero integrity !
Who has been in control of the city government and all its services and hiring practices ?
Democrats and blacks , what could go wrong ?
Every damn thing the touch !
Jdog and Anon. are not giving the Black Community nor the Perps that have put so many of the members of that Community “behind the ‘8’ ball”. There has been a “seduction” of that minority, and likely secondary to the easy identification that takes place. I believe that Dr. Williams and Dr. Sowell understand this well and would suggest that the Group (like the American Indian has been by the BIA) has been compromised by getting things for “Free”. It is an effective seducer of humans. It has been seen in the “Unions” of all societies and I am sure there are other examples. They all start out with the best intentions but since, “Anything for Free has NO value”, the community is crippled. I do not believe that there is as large an intellectual divide but one created by “Free Stuff”. (Affirmative Action, Welfare that requires no participation by the recipient). The first of these is the one that has been the most crippling since it places people in positions where they are going to fail because the competition is way above their capabilities. This is NOT race nor ethnic specific but is orchestrated for failure. Note Dr. Williams reference to “Conservative vs. Liberal” communities. And, as noted about the Baltimore School System, as in ALL Socialism Systems, the Bureaucrats will always get paid and, since the money is “finite” in amount those for which it was intended will get shorted.