<p>Social pressures real.</p>
<p>Social</a> costs of school success are highest for blacks, U-M study shows</p>
<p>“For black students and for Native Americans, the relationship between GPA and social acceptance was reversed: the higher their GPA, the lonelier they were likely to report feeling, and the more they were likely to report that others had been unfriendly or disliked them.”</p>
<p>Sorry. But this sounds like nonsense to me.</p>
<p>Keepin’ it Real: School Success Beyond Black and White by Prudence Carter tries to put the “nerd penalty” into a cultural context. In brief, she explains that minority students do not reject school success, but rather white cultural norms that are present in many schools. Students who can adapt to or adopt these norms tend to perform better than those that do not. (Note, the scope of her research is limited to children surveyed and interviewed in Yonkers.</p>
<p>Social costs to teenagers get in the way of a lot of productive activity…regardless of race. Its one of the messages of achievement oriented families and organizations (including athletic teams).</p>
<p>Does not sound like nonsense to me–just confirms many stories I have heard/read of academcis being equal to “acting white”(not a good thing) in some minority communities.</p>
<p>Glady, the remarkableness of this phenomena is diminishing because African-American parents who nuture and provide emotionally rich environments for their children prepare those children to successfully navigate the nonsense of envy and cultural insecuries that they may confront in school. Put more colloquially, when the knuckleheads realize that the good and motivated kids don’t really care what they think, the knuckleheads slink back into eventual obscurity.</p>
<p>The achievement gap continues to be a huge issue all the way into law school. I’m running a panel discussion about the lack of minority judicial clerks at a conference in April. The statistics in the law school context are appalling.</p>
<p>Hanna, the blame for that problem lies squarely at the feet of judges, many of whom have very strict ideas about what schools they will favor for clerkship candidates.</p>
<p>It might sound like nonsense to YOU but that doesn’t make it untrue. I know people who not only endured the phenomenon but are now working with youngsters who are also enduring it.</p>
<p>many of whom have very strict ideas about what schools they will favor for clerkship candidates.</p>
<p>From what I hear this is very true.
a friend has a friend who is a federal judge & although she didn’t attend one of the schools on her shortlist, she will only consider clerks who have.
:rolleyes:</p>
<p>( sounded like a * very short list* three or four schools)</p>
<p>Is it that simple? At law schools throughout the four tiers, URM students get top grades and make law review at a tiny fraction of the rate of their white classmates. It’s true in the top 14; it’s true at John Marshall. I don’t think it is unreasonable for judges to look for high grades and law review in clerkship candidates, especially if they’re looking at students from lower-ranked law schools. I think that law schools need to do more to help these students build better resumes. We can’t put all the responsibility at the judges’ feet.</p>
<p>Law reviews at some schools (including Harvard and NYU) have diversity slots in order to address this problem, but as you can imagine, that’s very controversial.</p>
<p>This rings true from both my observations many years ago when I was a student and now from those of my kids. There are many issues that impact lower overall achievement of some groups when compared to others, and of the U.S. as a whole, when compared to other countries. One of those is that, we, as a nation, do not covet or favor high academic achievement. Some cadres or subgroups may; certainly there are families that do value academics and learning. But as a whole, we seem to prefer the “regular guy” to the scholar, and the athlete to the poet. Further, defiance and toughness are part of popular culture for teens. Of course, family, community, church or place of worship can provide countervailing messages; if they do not, kids conform to the overall message that it is not cool to be smart.</p>
<p>Denise, it appears as though you completely misinterpreted my post. Read it again, please.</p>
<p>Mamita; well said. There’s an American tendency to minimize the value of achievement.</p>
<p>^ Tell that to the kids at my school</p>
<p>^Agree with scales. At Ds school, lack of achievement (or not trying to achieve) is generally looked upon very negatively. Of course, this is a school where 96% of the kids go on to either 2-year or 4-year colleges.</p>
<p>BTW. I don’t doubt that there are negative social consequences that arise between a high-achieving black or native American child and their low-achieving black or native American friends, but this article implies that the relationship between high-achieving black and native American children and other high-achieving non-minority children is problematic as well. This is what I find hard to believe.</p>
<p>If, however, this is the case for most high-achieving blacks and native Americans, it would indeed be sad and extremely disappointing.</p>
<p>I’d be interested in seeing the actual study. Per the quote in the article, “The negative social consequences of getting good grades were particularly pronounced for black and Native American students in high-achieving schools with small proportions of students similar to themselves,” said University of Michigan developmental psychologist Thomas Fuller-Rowell, the lead author of the study.</p>
<p>There is, unfortunately, still a significant correlation between ethnicity/race and SES, and between SES and achievement. So, for example, a Native American student is more likely to be low-income than a “white” child chosen at random, and more likely to have parents who have had limited educational attainment or opportunity. (I am NOT saying that this is true of all NAs, African Americans, Mexican Americans, nor am I saying that poor white children with parents who have less than high-school do not exist.)</p>
<p>Adolescents are exploring and establishing their identities, and at least in the schools that I attended, and that my children attend, can self-segregate by race or ethnicity as a way of establishing their closest friendship bonds. (Does not mean that friendships across races or ethnic groups do not exist…) I sort of find this fascinating and a bit disturbing that after all these years, this self-segregation by ethnicity continues, but I also have wondered if it isn’t really an important part of kids deciding who they are, as long as the group identification does not cross over into prejudice toward other groups. My kids are mixed ethnicity/race and this has been an interesting issue for them.</p>
<p>So, a high-achieving minority student in a high-achieving school with a low minority population may be less likely to be in classes with peers of the same minority group (less of them, less high-achieving overall due to SES issues). The other students in that same minority group may then treat him or her as an outcast or “traitor” to the group. In schools that have many minority students, there will be other minority students in the upper-tier classes. This is what I think the study refers to. </p>
<p>If I think of my kids’ school in CA, it is about 40% Latino (mostly Mexican American), 30% Asian (mix of Asian, but mostly Southeast Asian, and of that mostly Vietnamese), and the remaining students are white, African American, Native American, South Asian, Middle Eastern, quite the melting pot. </p>
<p>In their school, it is sad to note that though they are the largest ethnic group, there are a minority of Latino students in honors and AP classes. However, there are some, maybe 10-20%, enough that a high-achieving Latino student is not going to seem to be a total anomaly. Same for African American students. Year after year, though, the preponderance of valedictorians are Asian students… I also find this fascinating, because not all of the parents of these Asian students are highly educated either.</p>
<p>Sorry, long post, and I’ve been interrupted too many times to maintain a coherent train of thought. Thanks for tolerating my ramblings!</p>
<p>Another fine point by Mamita. No one is talking about ‘most’ or the ‘majority’ of students. As Mamita said, within non-white student populations there are high-achievers [OBVIOUSLY] such that their presence among less motivated peers “is not going to seem to be a total anomaly.” And my earlier point was…there are people in America, including community leaders [we’ve all met some] fellow parents, etc. whom minimize academic achievement. I mean, there have been significant community battles over tracking and acceleratered/gifted courses in public school districts, for example. Maybe such conflicts are a thing of the past?</p>
<p>I strongly agree with you that there are lots of Americans who minimize academic achievement, but I don’t think opposing tracking is the same thing.</p>
<p>Thoughtful people: Do you think that it is efficacious to cluster high achieving minority students together in classes to enhance social support? Does anyone have any experience with this?
Does anyone have experience with students who “code-switch” between groups?
Or with students who are “not black enough” and “not white enough” to fit in with other students?
Or with 90/90 schools? (90% minority, 90% proficient)
I agree with those posters who recognize that adolescence carries with it a task of development to establish identity!</p>
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<p>That’s what KIPP, Leadership, Aspire Schools do, because of location – which are inner (and some “outer”) City, usually with 100% minority enrollment. The entire mission is to address the minority community(ies) and to reverse the traditional attitude toward schooling. It is, in my view, the only successful approach so far to moving from low motivation and low achievement to high motivation and high achievement. Nevertheless, to extend that success, very often what is needed (and what is done) is to remove the most promising of those students at some point and put them into east coast boarding schools, further immersing them in an expectation of academics as the norm, and removing them from conflicting sub-cultures which reject academics on the basis of cultural identity.</p>
<p>Further, it has been proven time and time again that young black men especially benefit from gender grouping in school, as well as by race/ethnicity. Single-sex, single-message, longer-day, high-motivation, and preponderance of black male faculty – are factors which together have been shown to sustain achievement. That is the key to utlimate economic assiimilation in most cases. </p>
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<p>Well, I’ve taught in 90/100 and 100/100. Some of the schools above have a Take No Prisoners Attitude about college enrollment. It is a mantra that everyone will go to college, and immediately after graduation, not postponed. And the emphasis is on a 4-year. All the stops are pulled out for promoting matriculation to a 4-year.</p>