The Other Side Column for June 25, 2009
Parental involvement keys success
Unfortunately for the advisory group, I believe this problem must be solved from the bottom up, not the top down. Parents more than teachers. And the gap isn't genetic, it's cultural.
There have been studies that show the focus on black underachievement actually encourages blacks to do poorly on tests. The late Berkeley Professor John Ogbu found that black parents often didn't know they needed to be more involved in their children's homework and were less likely to confer with their children's teachers.
The African American Advisory Committee wants to do things such as incorporate successful techniques that schools like the KIPP schools use. Such schools require longer hours, have more homework and spend more time on task, complete with summer sessions that have erased the so-called achievement gap between blacks and whites.
The problem is such efforts require money, something no district has these days. But the biggest thing they require is parental involvement, the Holy Grail of education. That's something that doesn't cost us in dollars but can reap huge rewards.
Without a premium placed on education, without parental involvement, and coupled with less homework and more television watching than other groups, it's not surprising that a gap persists.
My parents weren't geniuses. They had high school educations. But they did possess the belief that education was valuable. They not only encouraged my brothers and me to do well, they expected it. Perhaps we didn't know we were 'supposed' to underachieve, so we didn't.
I've told the story of when I was in 5th grade at Tolenas and my mother helped me learn the capitals of all 50 states in one night. My mother sat me down and we worked hard that night. When I went to school the next day, I found out I'd misheard the assignment and really only had to learn five capitals. But it taught me that I could accomplish tasks beyond what I believed were my limits.
We benefited from growing up in a two-parent family. My dad started off helping me with book reports in the second grade and by the 10th was still attending parent-teacher conferences with me at Armijo.
But if most black kids live in single-parent families and that parent is busy trying to make ends meet and/or is uneducated themselves, parental involvement is most likely going to lack.
Ms. Keys was a no-nonsense instructor and she's a valuable asset to the Legislature. But what's going to turn this around are charter schools, homeschooling and parents like mine. The solutions start with us. Peace.
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The conversation is continued on The Other Side DR Blog, which I will reprint on this page.
Beating The Achievement Gap
By Kelvin Wade
So what do we do with a persistent achievement gap in black and white test scores? In today’s Daily Republic Other Side column I wrote about the value of parents and the need for a cultural change. But what do we do in the meantime? What about kids in single parent homes and kids with uneducated, unmotivated parents?
We need extended family. We need friends to step in. We need whoever can come in and help support the educational goals of black students.
Kids have to know that they can learn. I’ve faced this problem with my 12 year old granddaughter, Lauryn. When she would get frustrated and think she couldn’t learn something I’d remind her of how she performed in other areas. She could remember the lyrics to dozens of songs. She could recall the dialogue from many TV shows she’d watched again and again. And she’d been a hula dancer, dancing long elaborate dances. She was able to do that through practice and repetition.
What teachers can do is create a climate of excellence. Lauryn’s grade school principal, saddled with the achievement gap problem, made the mistake of calling a meeting of all African-American students in the school and told them they weren’t scoring as well as the white students. Setting aside the fact that she called all the kids in as a group, regardless if some of the kids were scoring well, her pep talk demoralized the students by leaving them thinking they were “stupid” as some kids said as they left the rally.
This isn’t just feel good stuff. There are actual studies that show that the focus on underachievement by blacks undermines their achievement. You see this with sports teams and team psychology. When a team keeps losing, a losing mentality sets in. Even if they don’t expect to lose, they don’t expect to win. (See Raiders, Oakland.)
One of the things that was successful when I was in grade school was that the teacher split the class up into groups. Each group had about five students in them. And the kids in that group worked together to make sure each member understood math formulas, vocabulary words and completed their assignments. It was helpful being part of a team.
Mentoring has to be part of any plan to help young black youth. It’s important that they see people that have made it to the top and are coming back to help them. Beyond that, I think it’s important that young people mentor other young people. I think it has a greater impact when someone closer to their age delivers a message about turning the TV off, doing homework, reading and setting goals.
That’s why although it may make older people happy when Bill Cosby speaks out it doesn’t have nearly the impact as some young hip hop star. Today’s youth have no connection to Bill Cosby. They don’t know him from his classic comedy albums, cartoon show or even The Cosby Show.
This is one of the reasons why young Matt Garcia was so effective with the youth. Now of course, he had a charisma and personality that was off the charts but the fact that he was only a few years removed from high school himself, made him accessible when he’d meet with young people.
While we can come up with different strategies to motivate and help put young kids on the path to closing the so-called achievement gap, in the end it’s going to come down to more reading, more homework, and more time on task. Reaching for the sports metaphor once more, if you want to win on the field, you’ve got to practice, practice, practice. And believe.
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