Guest Post by Walter E. Williams
Black politicians, civil rights leaders and their white liberal advocates have little or no interest in doing anything effective to deal with what’s no less than an education crisis among black students. In city after city with large black populations, such as Baltimore, St. Louis, Detroit, Philadelphia and Washington, D.C., less than 10% of students test proficient in reading and math. For example, in 2016, in 13 Baltimore high schools, not a single student tested proficient in math. In six other high schools, only 1% tested proficient in math. Citywide, only 15% of Baltimore students passed the state’s English test. Despite these academic deficiencies, about 70% of the students graduate and are conferred a high school diploma.
Ballou High School is in Washington, D.C. Five percent of its students test proficient in reading and 1% test proficient in math. In 2017, all 189 students in Ballou High School’s senior class applied to college. All 189 members of the graduating class of 2017 were accepted to universities. In November 2017, an investigation showed that half of Ballou’s 2017 graduates had more than three months of unexcused absences. One in five of the graduating class was absent more than present, therefore missing more than 90 days of school.
Examples of academic underachievement can be seen at predominantly black public schools across the nation, but that’s only part of the story. The strangest part of this is that poor academic performance is accepted and tolerated by black politicians, civil rights organizations and white liberals. Poor performance is often blamed on finances; however, the poorest performing schools have the highest per pupil spending. New York, Washington, D.C., and Baltimore rank among the nation’s highest in per pupil educational spending.
The underachievement story is compounded by the gross dishonesty of colleges that admit many of these students. I cannot imagine that students who are not proficient in reading and math can do real college work. In a futile attempt to make up for 12 years of rotten education, colleges put these students in remedial courses. They also design courses with little or no true academic content. Colleges have their own agendas. They want the money that comes from admitting these students. Also, they want to make their diversity and multiculturalism administrators happy.
Poor black education is not preordained. Dr. Thomas Sowell has examined schools in New York City and student performance on the NY State English Language Arts Test in 2016-17. Thirty percent of Brooklyn’s William Floyd elementary school third graders scored well below proficient in English and language arts, but at Success Academy charter school in the same building, only one did. At William Floyd, 36% were below proficient, with 24% being proficient and none testing above proficient. By contrast, at Success Academy, only 17% of third graders were below proficient, with 70% being proficient and 11% being above proficient. Among Success Academy’s fourth graders, 51% and 43%, respectively, scored proficient and above proficient, while their William Floyd counterparts scored 23% and 6%, respectively. Similar high performance can be found in some other Manhattan charter schools such as KIPP Infinity Middle School.
Liberals tell us that racial integration is a necessary condition for black academic excellence. Public charter schools such as those mentioned above belie that vision. Sowell points out that only 39% of students in all New York state schools who were recently tested scored at the “proficient” level in math, but 100% of the students at the Crown Heights Success Academy tested proficient where blacks and Hispanics constitute 90% of the student body.
There’s little question that many charter schools provide superior educational opportunities for black youngsters. The New York Times wrote, “Over 100,000 students in hundreds of the city’s charter schools are doing well on state tests, and tens of thousands of children are on waiting lists for spots.” But here’s New York Mayor Bill de Blasio’s take on charter schools, expressing the interests of the education establishment: “Get away from high-stakes testing, get away from charter schools. No federal funding for charter schools.”
Black people cannot afford to buy into any attack on education alternatives. Charter schools across the nation offer a way out of the educational abyss.
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Every day is Groundhog Day for poor Walter.
I think he has written a form of this essay at least 20 times.
Educating your child is your responsibility. Schools are gladiator academies for dealing with midwits, bureaucrats and learning how to navigate your way through a totalitarian regime. Not going to one leaves your children defenseless against the majority, going to one can– if parents aren’t watching very closely and doing their own work outside of school-lead to psychic defeat.
Like all of life there is a balance between what is necessary and what is desired.
HSF – when you have an IQ of 85, cannot read or write, cannot add or subtract, there is no way you will educate yourself or your kid. Compounding this, they do not value education, at all.
And they have zero understanding, zero, of personal responsibility of anything whatsoever. Feedin’ dems chilruns is someone else’s responsibility.
Can’t turn shit into ice cream.
“Poor black education is not preordained”. Yes it is for 99% of them. They are what they are.
Perhaps they are getting the wrong kind of education for their capacity. Humans are a very adaptive species, not all branches of our species are cut out for the same standards and outputs. It is just as cruel to expect the same outcomes out of them as it is for any other group to accept the same outcomes from some other alien standards.
Why ONLY a fully-competitive free market in education will ever deliver what each “customer” truly needs. We understand the concept of science-focused education, music-focused education, but fail to appreciate the truth that everyone does approach problems and learning in their own unique way. Government mandates then guarantee that flexibility will never be available to address each of these unique needs.
Depo Provera——-The “vaccine” for 85 IQs.
“Perhaps they are getting the wrong kind of education for their capacity”.
That’s what the cotton fields were for. That was the right kind of education for their capacity.
One of my best friends in elementary/middle school was black. Both he and his sister were outstanding students. He went on to become a dentist and a doctor (sophisticated dental surgery I suspect). Both of his parents were well-educated, had good jobs, and most importantly, cared about their children’s education. They were also willing to pony up good money for the school we all attended. Race is not the issue – parents (ideally having two) that care and put real value on education are.
IQ
Yes, all at the school were “gifted” by IQ standards. But was that all “nature,” or “nurture” for my friend and his sister (and the other blacks at the school)?
Mr Liberty – the average IQ of a US black is 85. That said, that cohort has a thickish right tail on the bell curve – ie there are more blacks with an IQ over 100 than would be expected on a normal bell curve. That does not mean there are many, though, as there are not. There are very, very few high IQ blacks out in the general population.
As someone who falls on the farther right end of the curve, it has always been my experience that one’s ability to learn (IQ) can also be increased over time (or decreased). I am no “education professional,” but that has been my experience. The comments that universally condemn, fail to take into account that slaves used to go out of their way to risk death just to educate themselves. They fair to recognize that, regardless of average IQ, blacks used to do quite well when schools were segregated, parents were married, government left people’s pockets and lives alone (well, much more alone than today), and guilty white liberals weren’t fucking over the black community trying to assuage their own guilt.
Mr Liberty – some of what you say is true, but some of it is complete horseshit. You say that blacks used to do quite well in school, but that NEVER happened. Not fucking ever.
Do not make shit up to support a narrative. It does not go well here.
To whit, in 1960, blacks had a high school grad rate of under 20%. And a college grad rate of around 2.5%.
In no fucking universe can that be considered doing well. They have never done well. Never.
Before make such absurd comments, look the answer up.
Before the welfare state kicked into high gear, they did however maintain family structures. But they never did well in school. And still do not.
Walter Williams is one of the “talented tenth”, blacks who were supposed to show the world that blacks are capable of competing in the modern world.
Unfortunately, he is wrong.
There is no “talented tenth” or even “talented one percent” in the black community.
All one has to do is look a the feral blacks that populate the government schools who consider “learning” to be a white man’s “trick” to “keep them down”. The (few) blacks who do want to learn are criticized and even threatened by their fellow blacks for “acting white”.
The constant disruptions, the inability to “settle down” in class, and the raucous atmosphere are all contributors to the inability of blacks to learn. For blacks, government schools are academies that lead to “finishing school”-the Department of Corrections.
My theory is, that with the institution of slavery, the united States got the “bad end of the deal”. Imported slaves were not the “best and brightest”, but were the dregs of the societies that they were taken from. The village chiefs sold off those who were troublemakers, slow, dull-witted, and others that they wanted to get and be rid of.
While I respect Walter Williams and wish there were more blacks like him, he cannot put the blame entirely on the schools but has to turn inward and look at his own people. He misses the mark on this article.
One simply cannot separate the current black community from the horrific effects of the “Great Society” and every other federal and state effort to fuck over the black community, pander to the race baiters in the black community, create a dependent voting block, etc. And NO, that is not me letting any individual off the hook for their OWN personal choices and decisions.
And the issue of schools directly speaks to the community as well. Parents who don’t give a shit don’t get off their asses to stand in line, jump through hoops, etc. to get their kids into “good” charter schools. And once the effort has been put into the admission, they sure as hell follow up with home support, encouragement, discipline expectations, etc.
“People are generally better persuaded by the reasons which they have themselves
discovered than by those which have come into the mind of others.”
— Blaise Pascal, Pensées
I’ve posted the above before….Black ‘identity based political’ culture will not change until each individual Black citizen decides to change. From the long term trends rehashed by people like Sowell and Williams, its getting worse not better. Based on voting, ~90% of Black citizens (and ~30% of Whites) are happy with their results.
All this wasteful nonsense has been going on, very well-funded, and fawned over by politicians, liberals, plus the ubiquitous race hustlers, since Brown vs. Board of Education (1954).
Nothing will fix it. No amount of money, time, or effort. What the hell has been accomplished over the last seven decades? Destruction of once great municipal school systems for one thing.
Empirical knowledge is perfect: the situation displays itself in all of its inglorious results. Jamel cannot read or accomplish arithmetic because of there being 80% of Black children being born and raised in a fatherless home. LaKaneesha can’t read at middle school level because whoever is raising her doesn’t, or cannot, give a good God damn. In any case she makes more (welfare) money as an underage baby making machine.
Parenting is the foundation of a civilized society. Parents are responsible for the raising and education of their offspring not the schools. When that most fundamental aspect is held, literally, in no regard by a social subset one gets what Walter Williams laments about Baltimore City Schools, Washington D.C. and all those other places.
ignorance is bliss
The solution is near at hand for this problem. This fall most public schools will not be opening. Many teachers will be laid off.
There are many jobs unfilled right now. Like farm labor in picking, ditch digging, and a host of other jobs that don’t require a school education.
With the public schools closed for the foreseeable future the school tax burden on many can be reduced to nothing; however, State & municipal governments will be struggling for finances as their leaders chose to shut down their tax incomes due to their lockdowns, so they may be wanting to use the school tax to fund their operations. Good luck with the angry tax payers who will not want that money used for that.
The upside to all this is one never misses the water until the well runs dry. That means when school is gone people will realize the value of what they lost.
It is then that people will want to learn and a new education system can be created.
The first things to go will be extra-curricular activities, clubs, and sports not funded by the parent organizations. That means less money spent on transportation, fuel, bus maintenance, and driver pay.
COVID lockdowns have driven distance learning with Chromebooks in my district and it’s going to be interesting to see the graduation numbers and teacher issues when the property taxes can’t fund local school budgets.
I’ll have absolutely no pity for the school board politicians or the overpaid admins and faculty. NJEA has been a tick on the ass of many people who not only hate the taxes but the state-sponsored curriculum they’ve shat out into the educational system, like PARCC tests and Common Core garbage.
Don’t expect much in the way of results from chromebook education. Just saying.
I’ve done some comparative checks among local school systems. Graduation and attendance data doesn’t favor blacks and non-English speakers in NJ, even though it’s one of the states spending large amounts of money for K-12 education. NJ administers proficiency tests and you’ll find that even within districts that have high scores in math, reading, and English the blacks ALWAYS lag as a demographic despite rare individuals.
It’s a cultural problem, not an economic problem. You can’t force people to learn if they don’t want to.
All three of my kids have, or will have, a minimum of a bachelor’s degree. All of them have had jobs.
I’ve watched the low-rent, no value kids with disciplinary problems disparage the nerds, Honor Society people, or JROTC with scholarships as “stupid”.
As a 50-some year-old man watching these ignorant kids badmouth a system that offers far more opportunities in education than I had 40-some years ago, I wonder … who’s really stupid, and why?
It’s the parents who are incapable or unwilling to support their kids, and I’ve seen it too many times.
A practical historically tested fix for the problem exists – require year end testing to pass each grade. Do it for all kids of all colors. Make the results matter – if ya’ flunk the 3rd grade math final you repeat 3rd grade and your pals move on. Kids want to be in the same grade with their pals, which gives ’em the motivation to pass. If the teaching staff want kids motivated all year long then post all the weekly test scores on a bulletin board. Kids will compete not to be on the bottom of the list. Make the shame of being last and fear of being left behind yield positive results.
That’s Racsis.
Geez Louise with the spelling. It is “Raysiss.”
The black and white liberal education establishment do not give a shit about student performance . Their concern is keeping their phony Boloney 6 figures incomes and golden parachute retirement in their mid 50’s .
As long as the kids are failing and the administrators put lip stick on the pig the money rolls in and any attempt to fix the system that requires a harsh dose of reality is tagged RACIST !
Baltimore City’s school system was a top system in the country when it was majority white now its majority black !
I wonder what could be the problem ?
Dump the entire violence-funded system, abolish ALL mandatory attendance laws, allow a fully free market in education to exist (no government involvement whatsoever), and sit back and watch things work themselves out. An education that is “free” is valued at exactly that level.