Top 10 Metro Atlanta High Schools SAT scores (2011) (Roswell, Alpharetta: racist, best)

[northwinds]

Originally Posted by RainyRainyDay

C'mon, people, doesn't everyone know that the biggest predictor of school success is household income? The best scoring schools are in areas of uniformly middle-class-and-above population.

Poor peoples' children don't have a problem with their DNA (despite the loathsome prejudices of some folks on this forum). They just don't get the stimulation, example and encouragement that set children up for school success. "On average, poor children enter school with far fewer vocabulary, literacy, math, and social skills than their middle-class peers. They start off a step behind and never catch up; the gap in academic proficiency follows them to the end of their schooling." A Head Start for Poor Children

I'm not saying that we should just give up and accept the proficiency gap. Just that it's really hard to address, and putting more money into schools doesn't necessarily fix it.

A couple of suggested books for you:

The Bell Curve

Black American Students in an Affluent Suburb: A Study of Academic Disengagement

But you won't get much out of these readings if you go in thinking that the authors have "loathsome prejudices"

And, by the way, I've been funding "head start" through my tax dollars for about a generation now......when do you think we can start getting a little bang for our buck?

[roadtrip75]

Originally Posted by RainyRainyDay

C'mon, people, doesn't everyone know that the biggest predictor of school success is household income? The best scoring schools are in areas of uniformly middle-class-and-above population.

Poor peoples' children don't have a problem with their DNA (despite the loathsome prejudices of some folks on this forum). They just don't get the stimulation, example and encouragement that set children up for school success.

The funniest part of this post is the header where it says that you live in East Cobb. You certainly took DNA into account when choosing your neighborhood.

[matt8325]

Shocker. All 10 high schools are in the northern suburbs. Is the rest of Metro Atlanta just dumb or something ? Why are all the best high schools clustered in the same general area ?

[RainyRainyDay]

Originally Posted by roadtrip75

The funniest part of this post is the header where it says that you live in East Cobb. You certainly took DNA into account when choosing your neighborhood.

Try rereading the very first line of my post, which you chose to omit from your selective quotation.

[northwinds]

Originally Posted by roadtrip75

The funniest part of this post is the header where it says that you live in East Cobb. You certainly took DNA into account when choosing your neighborhood.

Too funny and so true......I encounter this mentality all the time.

[cwkimbro]

Actually I'd say Rainyday so far is the most correct.

However, I disagree in one small, but major way. It is also what the others need to understand the most.

The biggest predictor of academic performance has more to do with the academic achievement performance of their parents, family, and peers. It is often confused with money/class, since well the highly educated make more money.

but that is just the point being made... indirectly... when rainy day says poorer students enter school w/o the same amount stimulation and early education (vocabularly, language, early reasoning skills, social skills) than their middle and upper class peers.

Of course some people with deep filled prejudices will say DNA.... typically they are racists, but who knows... not all prejudices based on DNA are just racism.... there are other isms

Gwinnett Co. recently won the Broad Prize. The single highest honor an urban school system can win. When they won it two very particular things were spotted out. They were able to effectively close the gap both in the education of minority -and- low-income students.

While these students were still worse off than the average student they were able to utilize better zoning of school districts and better use of classroom space and 'levels' within the same grade to improve education. However, relevant to this discussion... it shows the achievement gap can be closed... it isn't DNA. It is realizing some children haven't all had the same influences in their life and working at overcoming that.

[aries4118]

Originally Posted by RainyRainyDay

C'mon, people, doesn't everyone know that the biggest predictor of school success is household income? The best scoring schools are in areas of uniformly middle-class-and-above population.

Poor peoples' children don't have a problem with their DNA (despite the loathsome prejudices of some folks on this forum). They just don't get the stimulation, example and encouragement that set children up for school success. "On average, poor children enter school with far fewer vocabulary, literacy, math, and social skills than their middle-class peers. They start off a step behind and never catch up; the gap in academic proficiency follows them to the end of their schooling." A Head Start for Poor Children

I'm not saying that we should just give up and accept the proficiency gap. Just that it's really hard to address, and putting more money into schools doesn't necessarily fix it.

Great post.

[tigers84]

Originally Posted by aries4118

Great post.

Originally Posted by RainyRainyDay

C'mon, people, doesn't everyone know that the biggest predictor of school success is household income? The best scoring schools are in areas of uniformly middle-class-and-above population.

Poor peoples' children don't have a problem with their DNA (despite the loathsome prejudices of some folks on this forum). They just don't get the stimulation, example and encouragement that set children up for school success. "On average, poor children enter school with far fewer vocabulary, literacy, math, and social skills than their middle-class peers. They start off a step behind and never catch up; the gap in academic proficiency follows them to the end of their schooling." A Head Start for Poor Children

I'm not saying that we should just give up and accept the proficiency gap. Just that it's really hard to address, and putting more money into schools doesn't necessarily fix it.

Correlation is often confused with causation. More income is not the answer.

The culture of the underclass/poor/uneducated is debilitating. Terrible grammar, lack of discipline, zero respect for education/learning and weak social skills make it impossible for the majority of such children to escape the harmful entrapments of their upbringing.

The culture has to change. Otherwise the cycle will continue indefinitely. Check out Somalia. You could dump billions and billions of "Aid" there and nothing would change unless and until the people decide they want to do so.

[residinghere2007]

I also agree with RainyDay but feel that the biggest factor is more than likely the fact that many of those who perform well on the SAT have taken SAT prep courses. The courses basically teach you how to master the test and many parents enroll their children in more than one course. Regular schooling IMO doesn't really prepare kids for standardized test no matter the district unless they are specifically teaching skills to master the test.

I grew up poor, I'm black, and both my parents were high school dropouts but I scored higher than 1700 on the SAT. My high school counselor got me a voucher for a great SAT prep class. I was the only poor person or black person in the class and the test was even in the suburbs to boot. Hardly any of my friends had heard of SAT prep and many of them didn't think that it would do any good to take the classes, that schooling was key, but IMO even if you just have a basic understanding of language/vocab and an intermediate level knowledge of mathematics, you can still score in the 1600 range on the SAT with test prep. Same with any standardized test.

[arjay57]

Originally Posted by cwkimbro

Actually I'd say Rainyday so far is the most correct.

However, I disagree in one small, but major way. It is also what the others need to understand the most.

The biggest predictor of academic performance has more to do with the academic achievement performance of their parents, family, and peers. It is often confused with money/class, since well the highly educated make more money.

I think you're getting much closer to it, cw. I grew up in a very modest neighborhood, where incomes were middle class at best, and most families fell below that.

Academic attainment among parents was not high either. My family was fairly typical -- no one before me had ever been to college.

However, the prevailing culture in our neighborhood strongly supported education and almost everyone in our high school graduated and a high percentage went on to complete college. That was the way forward and we knew that's what parents, teachers and our peers expected of us. Although it took me quite a while to actually finish college (and a lot of bouncing around to community colleges, periods when I had to stay out and work, etc.), you still knew that getting that degree was important.


So I would say that even more than parental income or even more than parental educational level, the key is creating a culture where education is valued. It doesn't matter if your folks are poor or don't have a lot of schooling, they can still bring you up to appreciate learning and to aim higher.

From my personal experience, I would say those attitudes came not only from home but your whole community, the people you see around you and from the messages you get from the media. For example, in the 50s the big fear was that we were falling behind China and Russia (then the USSR) and they'd show you films of those kids busting their butts to learn science and math. That would sure fire you up. Likewise, you could simply look at the nicer parts of town or at people in the movies or on TV and it was obvious those people were educated. How would you ever get to be a doctor or scientist or pilot if you flunked out of school?

Also in our day the teachers and especially the principals were held in high regard. It didn't seriously enter anybody's mind to challenge their authority. While I don't approve of corporal punishment that still existed in those days and you did not want to get sent to the principal.

This last point may be a minor factor but schools used to place a lot of emphasis on things like learning correct grammar, learning math, and reading the "classics." Not very culturally diverse, I admit, and it didn't always sit well with a bunch of lower class redneck kids like us. Nonetheless, it did give you sort of a central body of knowledge to work from, and where you went from there was up to you.