<p>I agree 100%. Yes, there are racial/cultural problems - illustrated, perhaps, by the Vietnamese example. But, those problems probably can’t be solved by the educational community, or they can be solved by creating a new generation of leaders to fix those problems. I would absolutely love to see graduation rates broken down by income. I think that many (middle and upper income) Americans believe America is such a meritocracy. I believe it may have been in days past, but with the way things have changed…</p>
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<p>Well, I think the solution is deceptively easy. I think the steps we have to take are clear… but given bureaucracy (and occasionally unpopularity: witness, financial aid on these boards), the changes are difficult.</p>
<p>1. Drastically improve k-12 education.
2. Improve higher education in some areas; i.e., enough sections offered so that students can graduate on time.
3. Provide better financial aid for all students.</p>
<p>^^ You’re missing the most important item - </p>
<ol>
<li>The home life. The ideal of having a supportive family, of having a family that values and puts an emphasis on education, a family that instills the correct values and work ethic in the kids. Given this, the other points are just details that can be dealt with.</li>
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<p>How to go about the above? Well, that’s a complex issue.</p>
<p>A cautionary note–colleges that graduate URMs at the same rate as nonURMs play a statistical game by cherry-picking high socioeconomic URMs who have been advantaged from preK-12. These colleges thereby avoid the cost of support services, and the extra time for remedial work that might delay graduation. I wouldn’t infer from a high URM graduation rate that a particular college is doing a better job in addressing different levels of preparedness in their URMs.</p>
<p>I can see that happening. I can see that happening in my own neighborhood. If any one college only enrolled the URM children in my neighborhood, they probably would have a 100% grad rate for URMs. They have 2 parents in the home, high income wage earners, and they mostly go to private schools for grades K-12.</p>
<p>ucsd - obviously home life is a huge issue, but it isn’t something the educational system can efficiently fix, so I didn’t include it in my list of educational reforms.</p>
<p>^And while home life factors into high school performance, I think it factors much less into college performance, because at that point you assume student has overcome challenges presented there and done well enough to be accepted to a decent college (again, this is probably different for a CC case or regional public case). But in terms of the schools mentioned in the article, don’t tell me these kids never learned work ethic, value of education, etc. or they wouldn’t be at UWisconsin Madison, Bowdoin, etc.</p>
<p>Of course home life can impact FINANCES, but this would be drastically improved by schools meeting 100% of need, etc.</p>
<p>Quote - The home life. The ideal of having a supportive family, of having a family that values and puts an emphasis on education, a family that instills the correct values and work ethic in the kids. Given this, the other points are just details that can be dealt with. - Quote</p>
<p>This is where it all starts. Without this support it is virtually impossible te get a child safe and sound through the educational rigmarole (and yes, there have been and will be exceptions). It helps if the parents are well educated because the whole process requires a lot of realistic planning (from KA - grad school). However, less educated parents can be equally successful even if they do not have a clue about the educational system in the US. I’ve met hundreds of Asian parents in Asia who not only supported their children, but who ALSO communicated a lot with each other. Maybe at times their perception of the US educational system was not that good, maybe at times they were far too ambitious (Ivy, Ivy, Ivy …), but bottom line their children understood perfectly well what was expected from them plus the local schools couldn’t ignore the parent’s voices simply because there were too many of them demanding the same. (Please note: I’m not saying that this only happens in Asia.) </p>
<p>Life is more complex than what it used to be and naturally this has an impact on the educational system. To compensate for this extra complexity, parents need to be even more supportive than in the past, but I’m afraid that this is not happening. Hence the increase in drop-outs. The complexity of society is widening the gap between those who are on top of the educational ‘game’ and those who are not. It is sad and I’m afraid that nothing will change as long as the less supportive parents do not feel responsible. </p>
<p>I do agree that education is too much focused on ‘theory’ only. Where I’m coming from (Europe) there is a small revival of lower level technical schools. It is all extremely vocational (painters, plumbers, electricians etc.) Kids are going to these schools at the age of 12. It is very easy for them to get a job at the age of 16. They are liking school school again and hardly anyone is dropping out. Interestingly enough the initiative did not come from the government. Companies in need of people with some basic technical training initiated this revival.</p>
<p>“A cautionary note–colleges that graduate URMs at the same rate as nonURMs play a statistical game by cherry-picking high socioeconomic URMs who have been advantaged from preK-12”</p>
<p>Not all URMs at such schools are high socioeconomic ones. I know plenty of URMs who went to top colleges and were were first generation college and poor. This includes African Americans from nonimmigrant families.</p>
<p>“Also, I’m not sure why a kid who was born and raised in the US but whose parent(s) were born in Africa or the Caribbean is not considered American. If a kid has a parent who was born in Poland, for example, but the kid was born in the US, no one considers that kid Polish for admissions purposes, but it seems that a black kid who was born in the US of immigrant parents somehow isn’t considered black.”</p>
<p>Leaving aside the terminology you use, there’s a distinction between groups of black Americans because there’s a huge difference between coming to the U.S. by choice and being brought here as a slave. The importance of that difference, even ten generations later, is pretty easy to see when you look at outcomes for the descendants of black immigrants and black non-immigrants. All Polish-Americans are immigrants to the U.S., regardless of how many generations they’ve been here. That’s not true of black Americans.</p>
<p>Hear. Hear. The United States has a sorry history of racism explicitly supported by state and even federal law, but the way the way to undo the worst effects of that racism may not be continuing to track people by racial categories that are approximate and debatable. Sometimes a purported cure can be worse than the disease.</p>
<p>^^also agree that there are far better ways than race or ethnic heritage. It’s time to “rethink and retool” the entrenched concepts of affirmative action.</p>
<p>Well sure, I’m not saying they don’t have educational value. But let’s say someone from a poor high school and someone from a great high school both start as mechanical engineering majors. The kid from the poor high school, despite a great work ethic, is almost certainly going to have to take remedial calculus and physics classes - simply by means of not being taught much at his school (and perhaps not realizing what he was missing). That puts him a year behind the girl from a great school, who likely has a better calculus and physics preparation by means of better teachers. That’s where the problem lies, not in the work ethic, educational values, or intelligence of the poorly-schooled child.</p>
<p>And, look at it this way. Let’s say they both start out in, I don’t know, international relations. The student from the decent school has written numerous research papers, but maybe the student from the poor school has never been assigned anything longer than a few pages. Writing something of that caliber is a task of guidance and practice as much as it is one of natural ability. In that way, the poorly-schooled boy may struggle whereas the better-schooled girl has a much easier time - not by means of her work ethic, educational values, or intelligence, but simply because she has had better preparation.</p>
<p>Thank you Hanna for your accurate description of the situation regarding the legacy of enslaved and Jim Crow-oppressed African decendants in the U.S. (Creoles, if you will) contrasted with that of recent immigrants from Africa and or the Caribbean Islands.</p>
<p>It’s time to give up that old blame it on slavery excuse. Nobody alive remembers it. Many white workers came to the US as indentured servants and many Chinese were brought here under very dubious circustances to labor on the railroads.<br>
Slavery has nothing to do with acting like jackasses, not taking school seriously, and generally trying to live in some sort of altered social reality.</p>
<p>Indentured workers chose to indenture themselves. They remained human beings in the eyes of the law (and everyone else in the community), retained their culture, their religion, their language, their relations with their families. They were determined to find some path to a new start in America. It’s not even on the same planet as chattel slavery.</p>
<p>Are you arguing that the way people act, how much they prioritize education, and their perception of reality is not affected by the culture they were brought up in? Or that somehow the legacy of slavery and Jim Crow has been erased from culture (in one generation)?</p>
<p>It is absolutely affected by the culture in which one is raised. So who is responsible for changing that culture? Should the community living with that culture wring their collective hands and cry “poor me, that’s just our culture” or should the leaders of said community work to change the culture?</p>
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<p>In one generation? What history book have you been reading? Slavery was abolished in 1863, (ok, so not really law until the end of the Civil War, so we’ll use 1865). That’s about five generations ago. I agree with barrons, it’s time to retire that excuse.</p>
<p>I suspect that many schools do as part of their “holistic” approach. That’s been what I’ve seen at our local high school. Low income URMs, often from single parent homes, do much better in college admissions than middle income URMs from intact families. Not much, if any, boost I can see given to the second group…</p>
<p>Barrons, please don’t misconstrue the point. No clear thinker minimizes the effect of anti-social behavior by [some of] the poor and by persons who unfortunately generally disassociate themselves from egaliltarian societal norms (like valuing eduction). But as I was reminded on a recent weekend visit to Virginia, racial segregation in public education was allowed to fester stubbornly in some areas until the 1970s, implicitly helped along by some school officials and politicians.</p>
<p>“In one generation? What history book have you been reading?”</p>
<p>That would be the one where Jim Crow didn’t die until the 1970s.</p>
<p>Even if we use the innovative “living memory” test to determine what history is affecting us today, plenty of living people remember being denied the vote, riding in the baggage car while German prisoners of war rode in first class, watching people be beaten and murdered for seeking civil rights, etc.</p>
<p>So maybe, until those people die, we can think about how this legacy affects groups of Americans. Once they die, I suppose we’ll have to stop?</p>