“Singapore is instructive not just on a national level”
Singapore is a city of 5M, not a 350M country with the heterogeneity that the US has. It has some diversity, but not nearly the diversity of the US. The bay area is probably the closest to Singapore wrt population, diversity, percentage of Asians, among other things. It is more innovative, more open than Singapore, and you don’t get six lashes for vandalism. I’m not minimizing what that guy did but for sure you would have been given a trial since you have rights in the US. The Singapore education minister sometime back, said even though their kids do better on the international tests, they simply cannot match the creativity of the Americans. Most things written or said about Singapore are puff pieces.
@ucbalumnus I must admit that I do not know much about the political/racial standing of the people of Singapore. The inspirational part of their story for me was going from a developing nation to a 1st world country within a couple of generations (if that is true).
@Canuckguy Thank you for the JBHE link. I have family members with PhDs in engineering and my daughter is shooting for a MD/PhD or PhD, and looking at the numbers (~30 African American MD/PhDs yearly in the US and about approximately 1.5% of Physical Sciences PhDs going to African Americans yearly) in my daughter’s possible academic pathways gives some insight into how achievement gaps touch African American students at the highest levels of academia.
@ChangeTheGame Here is the first JBHE article I read years ago on this topic. The data is old but the analysis is much more comprehensive. I can not see how anyone can claim there is no education gap after reading this:
http://www.jbhe.com/news_views/50_black_doctoraldegrees.html
You have a very impressive family. My children are very ordinary in comparison. I am sure there are folks in your community accusing you of winning the genetic lottery and think you hit a home run, correct?
I don’t want to get into a politics discussion which is not allowed here, but Singapore is just a microcosm. The elephant in the room is China. Last year the African leaders went to Beijing for the FOCAC summit(?). They pressed the Chinese hard with a simple question: “How did you do it”?
@ChangeTheGame I have learned so much from your posts. You have amazing kids - and clearly have done an amazing job of parenting!
IMO the biggest hurdles to addressing, and then dismantling, the problems of AA lie in the fact that too many entrenched organizations have their livelihoods attached to a continued victimhood. There is a AA industrial complex 
In addition, certain PONC (people of no color) find self worth and social status by vocalizing their sympathy and empathy, and identifying themselves (and their ethnic group) as the cause of continued disparity in performance and outcomes of other ethic groups. It is so much part of their own self identity/social status/ and social worth that the possibility of some problems within an ethnic group originating within that community is simply not a possibility they are willing to entertain. Hence, no discussion is possible and any and all data pointing to problems within the African American community must continue to be due to their own PONC behavior.
@Canuckguy I tell people all of the time that my kids are definitely not geniuses or even close, but they “get it” (they see the ramifications of their choices more than the average teenagers) so they both work really hard for their academic achievements and I am most proud of that.
@dietz199 I have heard your theory before as to why some are so adamant about AA. I definitely don’t understand it or know how true it is, but I have been fascinated by the lengths that some AA supporters have gone to deny the existence of certain aspects of the general underrepresented minority experience (such as achievement gaps at all levels of education).
I have shared my own personal experiences as an African American male raised by a single parent with a low SES growing up in an inner city who was able to make good grades and high test scores (top 5% of all students) to go to college and helped raise 2 African American high achieving kids. Instead of asking how do we help URM students overcome and achieve on standardized testing (or any other academic criteria), the 1st answer is always that the tests are biased and are not relevant. Why are we not doing more to help students improve test scores or anything else that blocks access to higher education instead of creating a different standard (AA)? @dietz199, your theory is one more than I have ever been able to come up with.
Personal Note: My son got back his AP scores and got a 5 in AP Physics I and Calculus AB, and a 4 in AP US History. In 2018 only 3 black students in our home state of GA and 51 in the US got a 5 on the AP Physics I exam out of ~8000 black students. Almost 4X as many Asian American students took AP Physics I than African American students despite being a smaller percentage of the overall population. 9.04% of all Asian American test takers made a 5 on AP Physics I while 0.64% of African Americans made a 5 on the same test in 2018. There is an large statistically relevant gap across most AP exam score results when comparing African Americans to White and Asian American students.
https://secure-media.collegeboard.org/digitalServices/misc/ap/national-summary-2018.xlsx
Parent educational attainment tends to be a heavy influence on the kid’s educational attainment. Considering that Asian American populations in most parts of the US are heavy with recent (in generational terms) immigrants who came through an immigration policy that had a significant preference for skilled workers and PhD students, it is no surprise that Asian American populations have lots of high education parents (e.g. about 50% of Chinese and 70% of Indian immigrants to the US have bachelor’s degrees, far higher than the overall population of the US, or China or India) who pass on various advantages (whether you think it is nature, nurture, or both) to their kids in reaching high educational attainment.
In contrast, African American educational attainment has been heavily suppressed until recently (in generational terms), so it is not surprising that African American populations are starting from a disadvantage in parental educational attainment.
@ucbalumnus I agree with you that the educational attainment of the parents means a lot. But the real problem is among the actual students who took the AP Physics I exam, the ratio of the highest score (9.04% to 0.64%) between Asian American and African American students is different by a factor of 14 (14 Asian American students with a 5 for every 1 African American student with a score of a 5 if they had the same number of test takers). If African Americans had the same percentage of test takers with a 5, but just less test takers, that’s one thing, but that is a very large spread in the percentages of students excelling at the highest level on that particular AP exam.
"Parent educational attainment tends to be a heavy influence on the kid’s educational attainment …African American populations are starting from a disadvantage in parental educational attainment. "
You post this a lot, but I don’t think that’s a great message for African American families. If the parental educational attainment between African Americans and Asian Americans is such a big gap that shows up in their kid’s achievements, that changethegame talks about, do African Americans have to wait 2 or 3 generations so they can compete on the same level? Are you waiting for Asian American parents to come back to the pack given many of these future parents are at MIT and Stanford now?
“14 Asian American students with a 5 for every 1 African American student with a score of a 5”
@ucbalumnus this is now 14-1, when will this be 1-1?
I think that @theloniusmonk understands what I am truly looking at when I point at certain data points of academic data. The goal for my kids and underrepresented students in higher education is not just access into top schools and universities (AA gives that access although I disagree with with how it does that), it is to be in the ranks of top students at the same intervals as our percentage of the population would expect. AA will never get us there and it divides us at the same time.
“Being equal” for me does not mean we get to go to the same schools, it means that we are achieving across the many standards that make up the college admissions process and that we are equals in the classroom. It is hard to claim that level of “equality” as African Americans when we have numbers like the AP exam results or any other data set that measures aspects of academic achievement.
AP classes show a glimpse of the rigor that students chose to attempt and the AP exam scores give a glimpse into college course readiness. There are other ways to show that rigor/readiness factor (DE classes, SAT Subject Tests, IB classes/exams etc.), but it is easy to see that African Americans as a group are avoiding the highest levels of rigor in larger percentages when compared to other groups. I saw this at my magnet high school 25 years ago (80%+ of the student population was Black, but over half of the AP students were not Black), and I see it today in my son’s suburban high school/ wife’s suburban high school where she teaches gifted classes.
Or, in some cases, not being steered TO the higher/gifted/whatever track by their schools early on, thus not at the level that they can take AP Physics.
@OHMomof2 Totally agree that some are not being steered towards AP classes. In my county, students can have parents/guardians override them in to AP classes, but how students are doing in the prerequisites or earlier sequenced classes determine how the students are placed. I have also seen some students who stay away from the actual testing due to AP testing costs (although the Title I schools in our county pick up all AP exam costs). The only problem is that does not account for the statistically significant differences in the results of African American students who do take the AP exams versus other racial groups. Based on the 2018 numbers, for every 156 Asian Americans and 156 African Americans who took the AP Physics I exam, 14 Asian Americans would receive a 5 and 1 African American would receive a 5 on the exam. That gap to large to ignore.
^^^^^^
I also wanted to add that 97 of those 156 African American students received a 1. That is where my problem lies when people see no achievement gaps.
I wonder if they could do the same for tuition…
A Detroit music festival has sparked outrage by offering half-price tickets to “people of color” — with at least one biracial artist pulling out in protest.
The AfroFuture Fest has early-bird ticket prices of $10 for POC (“people of color”) while anyone else has to pay $20. Tickets eventually rise to $20 for POC and $40 non-POC for the August 3 event.
https://nypost.com/2019/07/07/outrage-after-music-festival-charges-half-for-people-of-color/
I disagree. Recent Asian immigrants aren’t all skilled or highly educated. For example, there’re plenty of Asian families in the outer boroughs of NYC who came to the States poor and relatively uneducated, but their children are attending the likes of Stuyvesant. Even though they didn’t have quality education themselves, they desperately, and almost single-mindedly, want their children to have one. Another example would be China after the Cultural Revolution. A generation of parents there were uneducated or minimally educated post the Cultural Revolution. Less than a generation later, their children are performing better than almost any other country based on OECD PISA tests. The reason for this is they culturally value education despite the Cultural Revolution.
African Americans culturally don’t value education nearly to the same extent. They value other things (e.g. sports, music) much more and they naturally excel in those. There needs to be a cultural change, which will probably take generations, for African Americans to excel in education in the same way.
“African Americans culturally don’t value education nearly to the same extent. They value other things (e.g. sports, music) much more and they naturally excel in those. There needs to be a cultural change, which will probably take generations, for African Americans to excel in education in the same way.”
I am not sure why you believe the above statements. However, am fairly sure that surveys of public opinion consistently indicate that African-Americans (and Hispanics) value all levels of education (primary, secondary and college) more than the U.S. population as a whole and consistently rate educational attainment as the most important factor for economic success and social mobility. As for believing that African-Americans “naturally” excel in sports and music, I certainly know why people believe that stereotype, but I don’t think that it has any basis in reality. Certainly many African-Americans value music and sports, and many have experienced success in those areas, but I don’t think there is any evidence that the success is due to the “natural” excellence of the race.
You’re misrepresenting my position. I don’t believe race is a factor in music or sports. But I do believe that culturally African Americans generally value these undertakings significantly more than Asian Americans as a group. The opposite is true for education. When a large group of people put significantly more effort into something than another group on average, they’re more likely to succeed as a result.
This! I have seen this first hand. Despite my kid having a 98 average in his honors math class, he was not recommended next year for AP math. I asked him to ask his teacher why and her response was she did not think she adequately prepared him for a AP math class next year. So, at the beginning of the school year we will be at the school to have his schedule changed. But, what about those parents that trust the teachers are always right and do not know they have any power over their children’s schedule? Those kids will never get the rigor they need and will never be on a track to be sufficiently challenged and may never get a chance for AP classes despite being able to handle the rigor. My son took two AP classes this year and received a 5 in both subjects.
I think you (and others here) are using the term “education” too restrictively.
Many people place a very high value on education, but not all people equate “good education” with high test scores or earning PhD’s. Some have a broader or more holistic view and place higher value on different factors.
For example, during childhood some may place a higher value on social or moral values tied to educational choices. As the kids grow older, they & their families might place higher value on ideas such as social responsibility / giving back to their community. So, for example, they might prefer a school that is geared more to community service over one that is academically more competitive. There is also the whole issue of competition vs. cooperation-- many people feel that education is better served in an environment that prioritizes cooperation.
I’m not tying these values to any particular race or culture, but I do see that this gets lost in the shuffle when one places outsized value over one type of achievement over another.
I agree AA as we know it is unlikely to survive the next SCOTUS decision, although it may take several years before that happens. In Fisher II, there was a blistering dissent from C.J. Roberts, J. Alito, and J. Thomas.
Obviously not all, but 50% (from China) or 70% (from India) with bachelor’s degrees is much higher than in the US (or in China or India). I.e. immigrants are, overall, a subset of the origin population selected for educational attainment, even though there are some with lower educational background attainment.
Consider also similarly selected recent black immigrants whose kids are more likely to be high achievers, but who do not define their racial stereotype because they are small in numbers compared to other black people who were subject to widespread educational suppression until recently.