19 Public University Systems Commit To Closing Achievement Gap
African-American college students earn bachelor’s degrees at nearly half the rate – Hispanic students are nearly worse at less than a third – than white students. Low-income students get their undergraduate degrees at one-eighth the rate of economically more advantaged students.
Now, nineteen public higher education systems across the country have banded together to try to reverse these trends.
November 1st, 2007 at 9:41 am
Intelligence is strongly hereditary. And less-intelligent people have poor earning power. So it is only natural that students from low-income backgrounds (offspring of low-earning less-intelligent parents) tend to do less well academically. Affirmative_Action can only go so far…
November 1st, 2007 at 4:02 pm
I applaud the efforts of the Cal State University system for going to churches and spreading the word. However, in this article and in conversations with the Cal State Long Beach University President, I have yet to hear or see what are the education departments/colleges actually doing to assist local school districts to improve the education for “minority” students? Is there scholarship devoted to this effort, think tanks, and/or direct action research? Spreading the word about “money for college is great” but what about having the skills necessary to pursue higher education? Underneath all this is America’s increasing effectiveness at locking up college-aged Black and Latino youth. What are criminal justice programs, sociology programs, and/or finance programs doing to address the achievement gap from their prospective? I am disheartened by the lack of sophistication with these efforts but the NCLB crowd to catch to work that people have been doing for years.
November 1st, 2007 at 4:17 pm
In response to the “intelligence is heredity” comment, environment can also wreck havoc on physiological development. What can also be inherited is a mindset of inferiority vs. superiority. Eugenics arguments aside, this issue has less to do with America’s Department of Education’s tardiness to the conversations about the achievement gap. As the gap was originally designed it was illegal to teach Blacks in America to read. In California, even in the 1940’s at many schools Chicanos and other Latinos were not allowed to attend the same school as Whites. Keeping a certain group of people illiterate and out of the political consciousness benefits those who need workers. Yes, survival of the fittest is at play but the arguments about intelligence have to also do with a certain strain in the American population that has decided to oppress others with violence, economic poverty, and/or harsher prison sentences which creates and perpetuates a permanent underclass. “Affirmative action” is a simple and demeaning concept in light of America’s cross-purposeful efforts to address this issue. A complex understanding of economics, sociology, psychology, and high quality education practices are what is needed to address the achievement gap. Not worn ideas like eugenics, affirmative action, and/or ideas the question the intelligence of America’s “so-called-minorities.”
November 1st, 2007 at 7:43 pm
Schools in Cal had to abandon affirmative action (which may be demeaning but it’s what even the most complex and deceptive plans are after) yet they are scrambling to find ways to dole out racial preferences without being caught. Giving breaks to low-income kids from certain areas of the country is another attempt at masking affirmative action. You can put a mask on a donkey’s butt all you want but you won’t make it smell any better and when the mask comes off it’s still really ugly.