Theological and other musings from Fr. Neo. You might call it ‘Mere Christianity with an edge.’ Vade retro Satana! Nunquam suade mihi vana! Sunt mala quae libas. Ipse venena bibas!
You are looking at posts that were written in the month of May in the year 2011.
Posted on May 27th, 2011 by fatherneo.
Categories: Uncategorized.
The Black White Achievement Gap: Why Closing it is the Greatest Civil Rights Issue of Our Time. By Rod Paige and Elaine Witty. (American Management Association, 2010)
“In The Black-White Achievement Gap, renowned former U.S. Secretary of Education Rod Paige and Elaine Witty provide a wake-up call to black leaders and communities, urging the kind of action that is essential if this blight on African American achievement is ever to be defeated.”
Rod Paige, United States Secretary of Education from 2001 to 2005, and Elaine Witty, longtime educator in both childhood and higher education, call the gap in academics between African Americans and their white counterparts ‘the greatest civil rights issue of our time.’ As long as there is an academic achievement gap between African Americans and whites, there is an indispensable component missing in the quest for civil rights and quality of life among African Americans living in a free society. The problem of academic underachievement is the seed of the germinated myth of African American inferiority. It can also lead to poverty, joblessness and/or lower wages (and often lack of health care or inadequate health care), greater risk of incarceration, and even early death.
What is the Black-White achievement gap?
Briefly put, the black-white achievement gap is the disparity in academic performance between African American students and white students. Black children begin their school careers slightly behind but by the time they reach middle school find themselves significantly behind, especially in reading and math. Paige and Witty say, “Only 13% of black 8th graders, compared with 40% of their white peers, were proficient readers in 2007” (32). They continue, “On average, the reading and math proficiency of 8th grade black students in this country is much closer to that of white fourth graders than it is to that of white 8th graders” (36).
Paige and Witty provide data that shows African Americans are behind in many states in reading proficiency, math proficiency, and college readiness. In 1940, 1% of African Americans earned a college degree and in 2006 19% did. While there is some improvement, African Americans still, by and large, do not receive college diplomas and therefore, find themselves once again in the lower tier of society. Many do not finish high school. As Paige and Witty say that 46% of black high school dropouts “don’t have jobs and have stopped looking for them” (52-53).
For Paige and Witty, even a modest closing of the gap—that is a 5% increase–in African Americans simply finishing high school, would significantly shift the quality of life for many African Americans and supply more income into African American households. More modest gains (attending some college and earning Bachelor’s Degrees) would provide radical improvement in African American wages, security and well-being. A 10% improvement in African Americans completion of their Bachelor’s degree would put billions of dollars into African American households.
Why is there a Black-White achievement gap?
Paige and Witty make it clear that unraveling the reasons for the black-white achievement gap is a complex process. They also make it clear that it has nothing to do with African American inferiority to whites. They contradict the Richard Hernstien and Charles Murray’s ‘Bell Curve’ theory which suggested that “blacks score lower than whites on tests (on average) because they are genetically inferior” (14). Paige and Witty believe that there is more at play in this issue.
Paige and Witty do a masterful job of tracing the history of African Americans in the United States. The effects of slavery are far-reaching and cannot be underestimated in any discussion of the black-white achievement gap. What Paige and Witty underscore are not only the physical effects of slavery, but the permeation of slavery rhetoric and the mindset that still lingers.
Under slavery in the South, black illiteracy was enforced under penalty of heavy fines or jail time for any whites who taught their slaves to read. It was not so much the violence that made black slaves vulnerable to the institution of slavery, it was the idea that blacks were ‘abominable mixtures…barbarous…and savage’ (79) unworthy of the dignity that literacy and education provides. Paige and Witty quote French historian Alexis de Tocqueville during his travels in the United States. He said, “The only means by which ancients maintained slavery were the fetters of death…but the Americans of the South of the Union have discovered more intellectual securities for the duration of their power. They have employed their despotism and their violence against the human mind” (82). Paige and Witty then outline the slave owners indoctrination: “Generally, each slave’s indoctrination encompassed at least five areas: strict and immediate discipline, a sense of his own inferiority and of whites’ superiority, an unwavering belief in the master’s superior power, acceptance of the master’s standards, and a deep sense of his own helplessness and dependence” (82).
As Paige and Witty describe, the legacy of slavery only gave birth to reconstruction discrimination after the Civil War and the creation of the Jim Crow laws that segregated and further enslaved the minds of African Americans. ‘Separate but equal’ schooling was constitutional throughout the U.S. and it was not until Brown vs. Board of Education that ‘separate but equal’ was overturned, prompting many African Americans and whites to fight together for civil rights.
Paige and Witty make the case that the African American experience is like that of an immigrant. It takes decades for immigrants to acclimate and adjust to a new culture. What is compelling about Paige and Witty’s argument, is that they place the African American ‘entry point’ into American culture long after the slavery days. They say, “The appropriate entry date [like any immigrant population] for African Americans should be April 1954, when the Supreme Court handed down its decision in Brown vs. Board of Education. Under that scenario, African Americans have been in this country as a free ethnic group for less than a century” (106).
The Civil Rights movement and the advances made in the 1970s and 1980s brought many improvements in African American educational opportunities. The 1990s and the 2000s still showed need for improvement, however. For Paige and Witty, racial discrimination is not as much of a barrier now but what they call ‘racial stigma.’ That is, how African Americans perceive themselves, especially in terms of education. Racial “stigma is about who, at the deepest cognitive level, they are understood to be” (11). Paige and Witty say that this stigma is so powerful that African Americans feel worse about African Americans than whites feel about African Americans. Using researchers Sinderman and Piazza’s survey data in their work The Scar of Race, Paige and Witty say, “A large percentage of African Americans surveyed indicated that they felt that African Americans were more aggressive or violent, boastful, complaining, lazy and irresponsible than whites” (97).
What can be done?
In Paige and Witty’s language, the solution of the problem is to “prove the stereotype wrong” (98). To do this, they make a clarion call for African American leadership to address the issue head on and find ways to close the gap. There are no genetic reasons for failure. Discrimination is not as much of a barrier as it was in the past. They call for not good schools, but great schools; not good teachers, but great teachers. They call for what was aimed at in the No Child Left Behind legislation: “An act to close the achievement gap with accountability, flexibility and choice” (107).
While no district or school system has shown great gains, they provide success stories from individual schools. From a charter boarding school in Washington D.C. to a college preparatory school in Houston. The key on a micro level is to find “an adult with high expectations who [takes] the time to connect to the student. That adult can be a teacher, coach, parent, religious leader, or community leader” (104).
On a wider level, Paige and Witty call for the six most important things authentic African American leaders must do:
1. Understand the issue.
2. Accept leadership responsibility for closing the gap.
3. Develop a sense of urgency about closing the gap.
4. Help constituents understand the issue.
5. Think education before politics.
6. Pay close attention to local school board elections.
Developing point 5, they use Washington D.C. Public school system as an example of a broken system that needs change. In D.C., the charter schools are gaining momentum over and against the public schools while parents are looking for alternatives to public schools that need changing. However, charter schools are difficult to get into and private schools are too expensive. In 2003 there was an opportunity to give parents a voucher choice, enabling them to choose private or parochial schools for their children. The political leadership chose to deny vouchers and school choice and keep the status quo. Paige and Witty said that in effect, they “imprisoned” the primarily low income African American children of D.C. “in schools that were not serving them well” (167). They also state, “Authentic leadership would be open to change…this is not an argument for vouchers. Rather, this is an argument about figuring out which policies and practices are good for African Americans students and having the courage to support them even when they conflict with one’s political agenda” (166).
Closing the gap not only takes place on the leadership level, but also the grassroots level. At the end of the book, Paige and Witty issue a call for service. The scope of the service they envision has these goals:
1. Improving elementary and middle school African American students’ performance in reading.
2. Improving elementary and middle-school African American students’ performance in math.
3. Enhancing African American students’ belief in the value of education and their own role in it.
They then offer five levels of service that African Americans can offer as a part of any community. Below are key points in their plan:
Level One: Personal direct service to children and parents—offering to your child or others mentoring, tutoring, volunteering at schools, help elect high quality individuals to serve on school boards, volunteer at Big Brothers and Big Sisters or a similar organization.
Level Two: Service through African American organizations such as NAACP, National Urban League, etc. and making academic achievement of African American students a priority for the organization.
Level Three: Service through public organizations, agencies, and businesses—monitor and report African American achievement in local schools, facilitate school—community partnerships and promote the development of scholarships.
Level Four: Service through historically black colleges and universities—encourage colleges and universities to direct resources towards the black-white achievement gap; work with public schools to enhance the quality of their reading and math pedagogy.
Level Five: Service through advocacy with schools and education policy makers—become educated in matters of local, state, and national education policy. Also, read the literature on education…express your views to your local representatives through letters, phone calls, op-ed articles, etc. (175-179)
Paige and Witty’s call is a challenge to African Americans leaders and any who wish to see the academic disparity change in our country change and to provide necessary effort and priority this goal deserves. In their words, “The message is clear: we must take effective actions aimed at closing the black-white achievement gap. We are presented with a great opportunity with national significance. By closing the black-white achievement gap, we will be eliminating many disparities between blacks and whites, thereby creating a better America” (184).