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This study by the Department of Education found that adjusting for school demographics, at grade four students at private schools did no better on reading, and slightly worse on math, than students in public schools. At grade eight there was a slight advantage on reading, and no difference on math.
I'll look around and see what else I can find. The articles I read were a few years back, and may not be easily available online.
This study by the Department of Education found that adjusting for school demographics, at grade four students at private schools did no better on reading, and slightly worse on math, than students in public schools. At grade eight there was a slight advantage on reading, and no difference on math.
I'll look around and see what else I can find. The articles I read were a few years back, and may not be easily available online.
I'll add to this when I get the chance. There was a study done by stanford a while ago that found that charter schools were no better as well. Overall it all fits into the realm of literature that suggests that private school or certain schools in general might outwardly seem better, but it all comes down to SES and parental involvement.
What I don't agree with you with is your notion about intelligence and race. I think IQ tests can be useful in some instances of tracking cognitive development, but outside of that they're fairly useless since they measure fluid and spatial reasoning while leaving other things such as interpersonal and emotional reasoning out. They also tend to be very culturally biased and favor kids who have acquired a lot of background knowledge. Actual outcomes is going to be determined by the childs SES since they have the connections and resources to be more successful.
I'm actually not an advocate of the Bell Curve or anything. I mean, it's hypothetically possible that there is natural human variation in intelligence to some degree between populations. And the preponderance of evidence does seem to suggest a real IQ gap, along with a strong correlation in general between IQ and academic/job performance.
But within the U.S. context I think advocating for a genetic basis for differences in intelligence is poison in terms of policy. As an example, even the most die-hard proponents of "human biodiversity" - people like Charles Murray - admit that at least 20% of the black population is of equal or greater intelligence to the average white. But if we lived in a society where it was considered common knowledge that this was true, even this 20% would be discriminated against rampantly, due to human nature regarding stereotyping and personality.
Regardless, there are enough unknowns out there, like reducing lead exposure in the black community, along with the effects of stereotype threat, that I don't think we can make any assertions yet. The strongest evidence I've seen that it's not some inherent racial difference is that there appears to be no relationship between light skin and IQ in blacks.
The bottom line though is the facts on the ground - that gaps in test scores based upon race are greater than gaps based on income - shouldn't be ignored because we're concerned about the potential ramifications. I make no conclusions about why black students perform worse overall except that in the broadest sense they are not "contagious" - thus I'm not scared having my daughter go to a predominantly black day care, even though she now talks in AAVE to some degree.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Octa
When it comes to race, know that most latinos and african-americans are living in poverty compared to poor whites or asians. When you break it down by poverty and race, any child will achieve less compared to a child in an upper income bracket. Upper income blacks do a lot better than those in a lower SES and same with other groups. Rural appalachia or the boonies out in Alabama are a good example of this.
I'm not so sure it's all about economics. From what I have read, when home-schooled Amish have been given standardized tests, they've done pretty well, despite coming from comparably deprived environments. Second-generation black immigrants to the U.S. tend to do pretty well in school, but their children tend to do as poorly as African Americans. There are particular cultural factors playing a role - often youth culture more than the effects of the parents themselves.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Octa
With that being however, I'm a pre-service teacher and I don't believe SES should always be used as a scapegoat to try and improve schools like the ones found in inner cities. Jonathan Kozol in his book Savage inequalities looks at inner city schools and compares them to more well off ones and found that inner city schools were significantly underfunded due to things like property taxes bringing in more revenue in richer neighborhoods. I described my experiences in the previous topic about working in an inner city school and the difference between the inner city and well funded suburban schools were like night and day. Even the rich inner city school in the neighborhood with a million dollar homes(with the gerrymandered district) were vastly superior to the ones found in poor neighborhoods. That's only just describing the environment. I could understand why middle class people wouldn't want to move into a city even if they really wanted to live in one.
IIRC, studies have shown that only funding dollars which come directly from property taxation actually improve results in school districts, not funds from other sources (such as state funding to lower-income districts). This suggests either that the funding dollars from property taxes is basically a way of measuring overall district wealth. Or alternately it could be that because city districts often need higher budgets for wages, and to pay for security and the like, they need higher levels of funding. But there are many states I'm aware of where on a per-capita basis, more is spent in the poorest districts than many middle class ones.
I find it funny you responded to an anecdotal news story from someplace I've never been with an anecdotal story about your own childhood school district.
AFAIK, this study has shown the strongest relationship between education of adopted children and their parents. Even in this case, it only found that adopted children gained about a quarter year of education for each year their adoptive mother had, meaning roughly speaking four years of college is good enough, on average, to get one year of college out of your adopted child. This is a far weaker effect than has been shown for biological children.
Here's a post on how a child's income relates to their parents. Note that biological children see their average income climb in rough proportion to their parents. Adopted kids (in this case, international adoptees from Korea), not so much. Also note that a biological mother raises her child's chances of completing college by 26%, but for adoptees, only 7%.
Frankly, I don't get this adoption topic at all. What does adoption have to do with urban planning?
Quote:
Originally Posted by HeavenWood
Add in the fact that urban schools often all-out lack the sufficient resources/course offerings/amenities catering to the best and brightest. Having educated parents doesn't make much of a difference when a school doesn't offer advanced math, much less things like music programs... Or chalk...
So while I agree test schools are far and away from the end-all, be-all, it's fallacious to suggest things like comprehensive extracurricular activities, AP/IB classes, technological resources, etc. etc. don't matter. Put another way, "lower test scores" don't really matter in the case of an Allderdice. At a Carrick, it's symptomatic of a much bigger problem.
In general, per-pupil expenditures are higher in urban districts than suburban districts. Here is the per-pupil spending for districts in PA.
Moderator cut: link removed, linking to competitor sites is not allowed
I
Regardless, there are enough unknowns out there, like reducing lead exposure in the black community, along with the effects of stereotype threat, that I don't think we can make any assertions yet. The strongest evidence I've seen that it's not some inherent racial difference is that there appears to be no relationship between light skin and IQ in blacks.
From what I've noticed, it does seem there's less of a cultural value on education for many black for various reasons. And while appearing studious or nerdy is stigmatized in all social groups, I think it's stigmatized more amongst black kids almost as "acting white".
But not all urban minorities are black. In many cities, there are more hispanics than black children in the public schools. The asian population in cities is increasingly high, too.
Do you mind posting that study about funding? The implications in regards to urban planning can be pretty significant.
@Nei:
You're right. I think there are two learned behaviors that can make kids in struggling inner city schools not succeed:
1) The stigma against being studious as you pointed out
2) Believing that innate aspects about them are the reason for their academic performance
The implications of the first one are obvious since it helps contribute to things like dropping out, joining gangs, getting into crime,etc... The second is something that is pretty common among all groups, especially in western countries, but the implications with urban youth is that begin to believe that they're destined to stay in the cycle their conceptual foundation was never strong to begin with because they didn't get a lot of it at home compared to children in higher SES. That's why I believe things like Head Start, afterschool and summer programs are essential to revitalizing schools and the neighborhoods they're located in because keep kids active and give them some academic support and background knowledge building that they probably aren't getting at home.
I'm actually not an advocate of the Bell Curve or anything. I mean, it's hypothetically possible that there is natural human variation in intelligence to some degree between populations. And the preponderance of evidence does seem to suggest a real IQ gap, along with a strong correlation in general between IQ and academic/job performance.
But within the U.S. context I think advocating for a genetic basis for differences in intelligence is poison in terms of policy. As an example, even the most die-hard proponents of "human biodiversity" - people like Charles Murray - admit that at least 20% of the black population is of equal or greater intelligence to the average white. But if we lived in a society where it was considered common knowledge that this was true, even this 20% would be discriminated against rampantly, due to human nature regarding stereotyping and personality.
Regardless, there are enough unknowns out there, like reducing lead exposure in the black community, along with the effects of stereotype threat, that I don't think we can make any assertions yet. The strongest evidence I've seen that it's not some inherent racial difference is that there appears to be no relationship between light skin and IQ in blacks.
The bottom line though is the facts on the ground - that gaps in test scores based upon race are greater than gaps based on income - shouldn't be ignored because we're concerned about the potential ramifications. I make no conclusions about why black students perform worse overall except that in the broadest sense they are not "contagious" - thus I'm not scared having my daughter go to a predominantly black day care, even though she now talks in AAVE to some degree.
I'm not so sure it's all about economics. From what I have read, when home-schooled Amish have been given standardized tests, they've done pretty well, despite coming from comparably deprived environments. Second-generation black immigrants to the U.S. tend to do pretty well in school, but their children tend to do as poorly as African Americans. There are particular cultural factors playing a role - often youth culture more than the effects of the parents themselves.
IIRC, studies have shown that only funding dollars which come directly from property taxation actually improve results in school districts, not funds from other sources (such as state funding to lower-income districts). This suggests either that the funding dollars from property taxes is basically a way of measuring overall district wealth. Or alternately it could be that because city districts often need higher budgets for wages, and to pay for security and the like, they need higher levels of funding. But there are many states I'm aware of where on a per-capita basis, more is spent in the poorest districts than many middle class ones.
It's not as simple as genetics... Im black(in school I'd fall under the category of not acting black enough...), I hate those kind of stereotypes being called an Oreo etc... In my immediate family there is variation in performance.
I have a younger brother and a younger sister, anyways we live in a suburban school district, my mom didn't like the test scores of the public school dropping so she and my father sent my brother to an academy... So basically he gets all A's and is one of the top students,(predominantly white school), he will be in 10th grade next year and already be in two college campus classes for early college credits. Now onto my sister, my parents are always on her but she just has no focus at all, she worries about friends and boys and the kardashians too much. Needless to say she isn't the student my brother is.
I have cousins who have multiple degrees and are successful, and I have two in particular no matter what you told them, went down a tougher path(had kids and dropped out of hs).
It's not like we are all failures or struggling to even get average grades, granted I know I was fortunate to not grow up in a project or anything.
Basically I'm sure every race has it's fair share of smart, normal, or stupid people. It's just in the case of the US, everyone doesn't start on an even slate... But that is life.
It's also worth noting there are smart kids in poor inner city neighborhoods, but there are many awful parents and too many other things going on. I have a 12 year old cousin who went to Detroit public schools, growing up in that situation you just grow up different. He is a feisty 12 year old, but what is he to do? If you show weakness in Detroit you are prey for criminals, it's not like a switch you flip on and off. He switched schools to some suburban private school and got an outstanding student of the quarter award. He also got into some fights... he said some of the kids act really stuck up, and it is going to take some time to get that fighting attitude down a bit.
I'm pretty sure that is a poor city kid thing, they always are on edge and testy. I was walking around southside Chicago and there was a line of young blacks my age, they were all looking at me and some were just acting "tough" towards me.
I would never want to grow up that way, it's not good to be in that mindset so much, the evidence speaks for itself with crimes etc. I will never know what it's like to grow up like that, but not only are you judged by society as a whole, often you are judged by your own kind too.
What gives me peace is thinking we are all humans, yes we have our different shades but don't let that define someone. Too many people let things divide them, ranging from race, religion, political affiliation etc. I mean its fine to believe in things but soo many people argue at the base level of these affiliations... Look at these forums, if you mention you are a democrat or republican that is enough to get the name calling going. Religion speaks for itself, race... being poor may as well be synonymous with black/Hispanic reading the forums.
Thankfully, where I'm at now and having been to Chicago and NYC, it may be luck but I meet open minded people and have open minded friends of different backgrounds.
Sorry for pulling off topic, but I'm sorry echaton, you just come off as pigeon-holing too much.
In general, per-pupil expenditures are higher in urban districts than suburban districts. Here is the per-pupil spending for districts in PA.
Moderator cut: link removed, linking to competitor sites is not allowed
It's not the amount of money so much as what they're spending it on. Many urban school districts may be "cash-rich" on paper, but in fact, they're resource-poor in everyday practice.
It's also worth noting there are smart kids in poor inner city neighborhoods, but there are many awful parents and too many other things going on. I have a 12 year old cousin who went to Detroit public schools, growing up in that situation you just grow up different. He is a feisty 12 year old, but what is he to do? If you show weakness in Detroit you are prey for criminals, it's not like a switch you flip on and off. He switched schools to some suburban private school and got an outstanding student of the quarter award. He also got into some fights... he said some of the kids act really stuck up, and it is going to take some time to get that fighting attitude down a bit.
That sounds like a horrible environment to grow up in, but at least he managed to get to school elsewhere.
And from the aggressive attitude, most suburbanites will stereotype inner city kids as "bad kids" that they don't want in their schools, particularly more typical ones who don't make student of the quarter. Most nothing little about inner city culture to understand where it comes from nor care. As to this solution:
Quote:
Originally Posted by Octa
Allowing lower income students to be bussed into those schools would be a start. The difference between being in an inner city school and well funded suburban school is like night a day. The whole time I was in one, I felt like I was in some correction facility. Meanwhile, the well funded schools feel like a place a parent would actually want to send their child too. I don't really know what you mean by "dragging" a school down. There's nothing inherently wrong with inner city school children. There's a lot of external factors working against them that causes them to do so poorly in the first place.
Those in good schools would be strongly opposed to bussing inner city children into their schools for the above reason.
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