Only 17% Of Black Students In Maryland School District Scored Proficient In Math

[Swirv]

Google and YouTube for math help. There are a million ways to learn these days, choose one.

 

[EndDomination]

The achievement gap baffles me. When I was a pre-teen we moved from Detroit to Ann Arbor. At the time there was a lot of debate over why the achievement gap persisted between black and white students in Ann Arbor, a city with high income levels/tax base where black families were solidly middle class. Yet the black kids were still behind.

My mom argues that white teachers don't hold black students to the same standard they hold white students to. Meaning that if a black student gets a C, the teacher says "good job" and that's that. But if a white student gets a C, the teacher calls the parents and tells them little Johnny has to apply himself harder. I'm sure that happens...but I can't imagine it would be the dominating explanation for this issue. I don't have any answers.

The thing I do remember is, coming from Detroit, I was surprised that many of the black kids in the suburbs tried to act like they were from the projects. Many were imitating behavior I was quite familiar with, yet these kids had two parents and were from nice neighborhoods, unlike a lot of the kids I grew up with in Detroit. While I did well in school, a lot of these suburban black kids struggled because they didn't apply themselves. I never understood it nor did I have any interaction with their parents, so I can't comment on whether the parents were on their ass or not.

This is a big problem, and you end up w/ a solid example with the "Shaker Heights problem" where affluent Black kids, in the same neighborhoods and schools as their White peers do worse across the board.
It is cultural, its also a manner of their parents upbringing and stability.

You do realize there are literally hundreds of text books out there right? And each individual state sets their own curricular based upon generic templates set forth by the Federal Government. That's why Texas can keep Moses in the history books and Helen Keller out.

When I was growing up these text books did not show me any real world application of math. It was just, here's a formula, now do it. Why do you think so many people who could excel at this stuff at one point are no longer able to comprehend it? There was little to no real world application taught. It was just enough memory of one formula to carry you over to the next. When I was plotting points on a number line or graph that's all I was doing. It was not showing me the real world application of this skill or how learning these basic formulas are the essential building blocks to more advanced concepts that shape the world around us.

I'm glad you had some good textbooks but everyone wasn't/isn't so fortunate. You all have the fatal white flaw in your thinking; "if it went this way for me assuredly everyone else had this same advantage and squandered it."

To be fair, this is the case for all of the ****, McGraw and Pearson math textbooks, I'm talking a sample of at minimum 60% of all mathematics textbooks in the US, and on the higher end, nearer to 80%
I see what you mean though. Real-world application isn't the end-all be all w/ some students. You're far more likely to just have students who don't want to learn, or get caught up goofing off in class. As a teacher, this was my biggest problem not the textbook or the coursework.

They do cheat. I’ve went to school with them my whole life.

Some do. The idea that the majority of Asian students are cheating their way through school is laughable.
They're not cheating on the ACT/SAT/PARQ/MCAT/GRE or any of the other standardized tests.
I grew up w/ four Vietnamese kids and one Laotian kid, from elementary school through college, and they were always the top of the class, it was pure grind, no cheating. Two of the kids had a breakdown in college, and when they came back they were still out of control. The worst academically was the Laotian kid, and it was because she was the most "hood" of all of them (they all grew up in my neighborhood, but their parents insulated them from the poor-culture immersion).
They were also all poor as hell.

 

[Thanos]

I think the issue is much more multifaceted than culture. But I really don't want to put the benchmark of ablity on state standardized tests.

 

[get these nets]

This is embarrassing. I came from the PG public schools and know plenty of us who were great students in elementary, middle and high school and ended up doctors and engineers etc. But even as a kid I wasn't cool with how they separated us in the 3rd grade between "Talented and Gifted" and "Comprehensive" and just left us on that track for the rest of our career. I guess this is the result...we gotta do something about this

It makes sense to separate the G&T students. Smaller class size and faster pace of instruction with fewer distractions (class clowns or slower students).
There is a fast track at all levels of academia .

 

[BigMan]

This is a big problem, and you end up w/ a solid example with the "Shaker Heights problem" where affluent Black kids, in the same neighborhoods and schools as their White peers do worse across the board.
It is cultural, its also a manner of their parents upbringing and stability.

To be fair, this is the case for all of the ****, McGraw and Pearson math textbooks, I'm talking a sample of at minimum 60% of all mathematics textbooks in the US, and on the higher end, nearer to 80%
I see what you mean though. Real-world application isn't the end-all be all w/ some students. You're far more likely to just have students who don't want to learn, or get caught up goofing off in class. As a teacher, this was my biggest problem not the textbook or the coursework.

Some do. The idea that the majority of Asian students are cheating their way through school is laughable.
They're not cheating on the ACT/SAT/PARQ/MCAT/GRE or any of the other standardized tests.
I grew up w/ four Vietnamese kids and one Laotian kid, from elementary school through college, and they were always the top of the class, it was pure grind, no cheating. Two of the kids had a breakdown in college, and when they came back they were still out of control. The worst academically was the Laotian kid, and it was because she was the most "hood" of all of them (they all grew up in my neighborhood, but their parents insulated them from the poor-culture immersion).
They were also all poor as hell.

never said it was the majority of Asians. i already explained why i brought it up.
i grew up with south asians and chinese whose parents were doctors/economists and they were dumb af. and large amounts of them grinded/cheated their way to ivy league and similar type schools. the difference was they had different expectations and pressures on them to perform as well as an establish network to supplement what they learned in schools. (chinese schools/after school enrichment, tutors etc.) so i will always reject anyone insinuating that asians are inherently smarter than black people.

 

[EndDomination]

Surprised Asians are less proficient than whites, on average. The culture does need an adjustment. The worse thing you can be in the BC is an educated lame. I remember reading somewhere that black overachievers we're more like to be ostracized by their peers than other groups, not sure how factual it is, but when I was in school, the emphasis on black boys was on how cool you were.

This is true. Asian students that underperform are also dealing w/ equal amounts of poverty on average, as the other groups underachieving.

The thing that scares me is how we often can't even have a convo about "personal responsibility" without someone getting upset, accusations of victim blaming, etc etc. What is going on with black parents and standards for children? We know what Asian parents demand/expect. We know what white parents demand/expect. What are the demands and expectations of black parents? What can be done? My problem with BLM and so much of the "black activist" movement is that it's almost entirely focused on reacting to white people, demanding white people do certain things, etc. Where is the focus on the black community?

My mom made me and my brothers read multiple books to her each year. That alone increased my vocabulary and diction significantly from an early age, past my peers. Obviously this thread is about math but if you don't have a proper grasp of English you're not gonna be able to grasp anything in school, including math. I was never great at math but my parents pushed me. They made me study math throughout the summer. If I watched sports with my dad as a kid, he would constantly ask me sports math related questions ("how much are the Lions up by?") and if I couldn't answer quickly, I couldn't watch sports with him.

I don't get it. Yes being in economically disadvantaged plays a huge role in how you do in school. If you're poor and don't have much food as a kid, you'll do terrible in school. We know these things. But we also know parental involvement is essential. And based on these numbers I just don't get the impression black parents are doing their part.

BLM is about police brutality, not the Black community focusing on internal issues, its an external focus.
nikkas got mad and cried anytime BLM turned inward, because they were "attacking Black men" and shyt like that.
But personal responsibility does come across as less than favourable because there has been a divide in Black America along those lines as well. The groups of Black kids that excel are still largely from the same class and often the same communities.
Black kids with successful parents are also far more likely to be successful, and a lot of them are no where near the underachieving Black kids. They're at the day/boarding schools, the magnet schools, and the regular privates.

 

[EndDomination]

It makes sense to separate the G&T students. Smaller class size and faster pace of instruction with fewer distractions (class clowns or slower students).
There is a fast track at all levels of academia .

I was in G&T/Major Works/Honors from 3rd Grade on, and it definitely is good. That is, when the teachers actually treat it like an advanced group of kids and push you to excel every day. I had a few teachers that gave us the exact same curriculum as the other students and it wound up being useless. That's how it is in a lot of other schools, particularly low-performing schools overall.
It also tends to exclude Black students, even when they test at the same level as other students. While this was not a problem at the school I went to for the most part (pretty much all the guys in my class were Black), the school almost didn't put my brother in G&T even though he tested highly.

 

[EndDomination]

During segregation, we USED to know what worked.

After the Civil Rights and Black Power movements, the complete breakdown of the cohesive two-parent black family, and the marketed culture of the Crack Trade, successful strategies for youth achievement were all but abandoned.

Its time to take a look backwards, in order to move forward.

"Dunbar High School in Washington, DC, defied the odds and, in the process, changed America. In the first half of the twentieth century, Dunbar was an academically elite public school, despite being racially segregated by law and existing at the mercy of racist congressmen who held the school’s purse strings. These enormous challenges did not stop the local community from rallying for the cause of educating its children. Dunbar attracted an extraordinary faculty: one early principal was the first black graduate of Harvard, almost all the teachers had graduate degrees, and several earned PhDs—all extraordinary achievements given the Jim Crow laws of the times.

Over the school’s first eighty years, these teachers developed generations of highly educated, high-achieving African Americans, groundbreakers that included the first black member of a presidential cabinet, the first black graduate of the US Naval Academy, the first black army general, the creator of the modern blood bank, the first black state attorney general, the legal mastermind behind school desegregation, and hundreds of educators.

By the 1950s, Dunbar High School was sending 80 percent of its students to college.

Today, as with too many troubled urban public schools, the majority of Dunbar students struggle with reading and math."

These analyses miss a small part of the necessary whole.

Dunbar High School, and a few others like it were anomalies, not representatives by any stretch of the imagination.
They had the best Black teaching talent in the nation, par-none, they acted essentially as a magnet school, attracting the best Black talent not already feeding into the day/board schools, and their curriculum was by far above and beyond the best. Black students still dropped out in elementary school, the school was riding a wave of systemic poverty and segregationist brutality that allowed it to pick and reproduce the cream-of-the-crop.

It'd be like if someone took my high school, the best public in Cleveland and wrote about it 70 years from now if it changed from ultra-successful to mediocre.

 

[Copy Ninja]

It makes sense to separate the G&T students. Smaller class size and faster pace of instruction with fewer distractions (class clowns or slower students).
There is a fast track at all levels of academia .

I'm in Howard County and it's the same. My son is all in GT classes so it works out. He's around high achieving students and in a good learning environment.

It's unfortunate for the lower achieving students because unless they pull up, they're always gonna be a step or two behind. That's why it's important from early on that parents stress education to their kids. Habits are formed early on and if they don't develop good habits they are going to struggle. There are some kids who just are inherently curious and want to learn. But a majority of kids need to be pushed and guided.

It's a competition out there.

 

[gldnone913]

Interesting thing from the article at how right across the river in VA, scores are almost 50 pts higher:

In Virginia, which uses the Standards of Learning (SOL) test, 64 percent of African American students were proficient in math compared with 84 percent of white students and 92 percent of Asian students. The racial achievement gap certainly appears to be smaller compared with the District and Maryland. On the other hand, Virginia expels and suspends black students at higher rates than the other jurisdictions. So those black students most likely to do poorly on the test may not have been around to take it.

In Fairfax County, VA they kick black kids out at a ridiculous pace. I think the issue is more than just Maryland's standardized math scores.

It makes sense to separate the G&T students. Smaller class size and faster pace of instruction with fewer distractions (class clowns or slower students).
There is a fast track at all levels of academia .

I'm in Howard County and it's the same. My son is all in GT classes so it works out. He's around high achieving students and in a good learning environment.

It's unfortunate for the lower achieving students because unless they pull up, they're always gonna be a step or two behind. That's why it's important from early on that parents stress education to their kids. Habits are formed early on and if they don't develop good habits they are going to struggle. There are some kids who just are inherently curious and want to learn. But a majority of kids need to be pushed and guided.

It's a competition out there.

My son is in "GT", and he was in a class where the teacher was certified to teach "gifted" kids. One of his buddies skipped a grade, but wasn't "GT" . Family friend's son was in private school, transitioned over to public and was excelling in the classroom, but one teacher didn't think he was "GT" . Seems like our kids don't get the benefit of the doubt - teachers will reach and put a kid in that is maybe not gifted, but not for the black kids that are obviously advanced.

 

[get these nets]

I'm in Howard County and it's the same. My son is all in GT classes so it works out. He's around high achieving students and in a good learning environment.

It's unfortunate for the lower achieving students because unless they pull up, they're always gonna be a step or two behind. That's why it's important from early on that parents stress education to their kids. Habits are formed early on and if they don't develop good habits they are going to struggle. There are some kids who just are inherently curious and want to learn. But a majority of kids need to be pushed and guided.

It's a competition out there.

Exactly. COMPETE. That's why I go so hard against anybody who has a hand in dumbing down Black people. People have to compete in this world for resources and these other MFers are not playing games out here.

These young Black kids have potential and talents in all types of fields, but parental neglect holds them back.

I'm always gonna be puzzled by this because to me....telling parents to get involved in their children's education is like having to tell somebody to bathe and groom themselves.

 

[Copy Ninja]

Interesting thing from the article at how right across the river in VA, scores are almost 50 pts higher:



In Fairfax County, VA they kick black kids out at a ridiculous pace. I think the issue is more than just Maryland's standardized math scores.





My son is in "GT", and he was in a class where the teacher was certified to teach "gifted" kids. One of his buddies skipped a grade, but wasn't "GT" . Family friend's son was in private school, transitioned over to public and was excelling in the classroom, but one teacher didn't think he was "GT" . Seems like our kids don't get the benefit of the doubt - teachers will reach and put a kid in that is maybe not gifted, but not for the black kids that are obviously advanced.

I'm Asian and my wife is mixed (she's from South Africa). So he's mixed but you can definitely tell he's got Asian genes in him. I don't know if that worked in his favor or not but his grades have always been A's since he started. He always places in the 1% when it comes to the state's standardized testing so when teachers suggested he should be in GT classes it made sense to me. He's naturally bright, gets bored easily if not challenged so we welcomed GT courses. Plus my wife and i are on him when it comes to school.

What I have noticed in the area i'm in is the parents who are involved in the PTA are kind of like the cliques of popular kids when you were in HS and they have influence on how their teachers treat their kids.

My wife is also a teacher and she knows the kids who's parents are involved are the kids who typically do well. Some kids are naturally brighter and understand concepts quicker, but if a kid has the work ethic to put in time to learn, he can keep up.

 

[the bossman]

It's multifaceted. I'll start with nutrition. Fat is food for the brain. She doesn't carb up in the morning ( or hardly ever) so there's no crash. A lot of kids with behavioral issues in school act out because blood sugar levels are inconsistent. She's been eating high fat / high protein / low carb her entire life. I've only dealt with meltdowns when we let her eat a lot of carbs. No need to punish her for them either because it's our fault for feeding it to her.

The second thing my wife and I decided not to do was punish her for things we caused ourselves or for little mistakes. Its easier to drive this point home with examples. When she was 18 months i was fed up with buying diapers so I used an alternative method of potty training. I let her walk around the house bottomless. I read that by that age, for some kids as early as 7 months, they are aware that piss and shyt is nasty. What they aren't aware of is theres a magical place outside of the diaper to put piss and shyt. Even if you try to tell them to use the potty they may not want to because its easier not to.. or any other reason. What they do know is piss and shyt doesn't belong on the floor. When you take the bottoms off they'll do all they can to hold it. And when desperate enough they'll sit on the pot. It worked day one. If for some reason it didn't work and she pissed on the carpet do she deserve a spanking? No, if anyone deserves a spanking it'd be me, right? I'm the dumbass that took the diaper off a un potty trained kid

Still on the diaper thing. I didn't want to do night time diapers either. I read the most reliable method of potty training was to set your alarm every hour after your child sleeps and check the bed for wetness until you can narrow down when they usually piss the bed. Once you figure it out (it took me 3 days, should've took 2 but I fukked up) you set the alarm an hour before they piss and wake them and walk them to the potty. Within a week they should do it themselves. So she went a few days and had success but one day she wet the bed. Should I spank her for that, no. So many people punish their kids while setting standards kids can't live up to. People make mistakes at work all the time and get a pass. Kids should have the same liberty. It makes them unafraid to fail.

Another thing we did was set her up for failure and praise her effort while she fails. That way failure doesn't bother her. We always set the bar higher than her ability without stressing her out. No pressure, she's a kid. We don't lose sight of her age. We never tell her she's unable. You know. "That's too hard." I generally don't use that language. I'll reword it to "Don't be upset if you're not ready". The reason is we wanted her to have grit. Not the ability to try but the ability to try hard.

I mentioned in another thread there's an industry you can make over 6 figures with 4 weeks of training and cat's were clowning or coming up with excuses but I don't speak about things I don't live. I work in this industry and leave my family for months at a time to give her the ability to go further in life than I have. I found the type of school (Montessori) she could thrive in. The public schools around here are broken. I knew if we sacrificed for a few years things would pay off. This year she was able to test into a STEM school in our area and we researched the fukk outta it. It's free but you have to be accepted. Now that she's in they're willing to keep her in the 1st grade while giving her 4 grade work.

Some people might think those concepts are disconnected but they aren't. Prep the mind. Set the stage for failure. Make her feel capable. Then set the stage for success. It's all connected.

I can go on but this post is already too long. I got carried away

Breh fukk all that "this too long" this type of information is priceless. Actual techniques with the positive results to back it up.

Can you share 2 or 3 of the most influential books you read which led you to try stuff like this with your daughter?

 

[daboywonder2002]

It makes sense to separate the G&T students. Smaller class size and faster pace of instruction with fewer distractions (class clowns or slower students).
There is a fast track at all levels of academia .

I can see all sides to this argument. if you're a teacher, it's hard to teach if some students are on a high level and then other students are trying to catch up. You would like all students to be on the same page academically. But then no parents like to be singled out either. So for example. I have a 6 year old daughter. She has a speech IEP you know to help with her sounds, making her more articulate. I wouldn't want her around a bunch of dumb kids. I want her around the gifted kids because I believe it will rub off on her too.

 

[Copy Ninja]

I can see all sides to this argument. if you're a teacher, it's hard to teach if some students are on a high level and then other students are trying to catch up. You would like all students to be on the same page academically. But then no parents like to be singled out either. So for example. I have a 6 year old daughter. She has a speech IEP you know to help with her sounds, making her more articulate. I wouldn't want her around a bunch of dumb kids. I want her around the gifted kids because I believe it will rub off on her too.

They do this in Howard County. They'll identify kids who, while they might not necessarily have the grades that warrant them in Honors or GT classes -they do the work, participate in classes, are none disruptive- and put them in a higher level.