"but it's not clear what their missions are or why racial diversity is more important than other forms of diversity."
The mission is to maintain the power and status of these elite institutions and their alumni.
Ensuring the loyalty of black (and to a lesser extent Hispanic) America requires a certain number of black faces. They need not be descendants of American slaves, just being black is good enough.
Further, the mythology of America as relates to race is powerful, and being able to lay claim to being anti-racist gives a lot of power over other whites.
Finally, these institutions are afraid having too many Asians. If Asians were 40% of the student body they would inevitably end up running the show. That would be against the interests of non-Asians. Even if the additional slots went to whites instead of blacks that would probably be desirable to Harvard.
Given all this, I don't think much is going to change. Workarounds will be found to keep the numbers basically the same. The political will isn't there to enforce Harvard being 40% Asian. While all of this is technically a violation of civil rights law, everyone understands that in practice civil rights law can be bent for the right interests.
I'm going to pass over whether this is "good for society". Even if affirmative action were bad for society, it might be good for Harvard (and Harvard might perceive it to be good and be wrong). "Society" doesn't make and enforce policy.
As to K-12 education reform, we've spent decades on that to no effect. Do we really think swarming K-12 with DEI bullshit is the solution. Cause that's what "we need to fix K-12 race gaps" is going to end up being.
Personally, I'd rather we just make this race stuff less salient. If blacks are going to close the gap they will have to do it themselves.
What comes after Race-Conscious Admissions? The question is elitist, only relevant in the top tier of private schools and a couple of prestigious State U's. Additionally, the problem for elite schools is not one of achieving social justice or promoting achievement, but creating a student body that "looks" more like a bowl of Mueslix, than a bowl of rice crispies, or choco crispies. Community colleges, aas well as 2nd tier, and 3rd tier state u's already address the achievement gap every day of the week. They have no need to engage in race conscious admissions, because their student communities naturally reflect the greater community. Unlike more elite schools who graduate nearly all incoming freshman at rates of 90 to 98 percent, these lesser institutions are saddled with the more onerous burden of race conscious concerns about who graduates and how quickly.
I believe that the gap between black and white children in K-12 starts before the children even attend preschool. I feel this difference originates in infancy and early childhood. A study in 2018 showed that "Language-based interactions between children 18 to 24 months of age and adults predicted intelligence quotient (IQ), verbal comprehension, and expressive and receptive language skills at 9 to 13 years old." Perhaps black inner city kids who grow up lacking enrichment in their environment are bringing the overall IQ scores of the black population down.
I feel that nurses should pay a visit to all homes after the birth of a baby and identify "at risk" families (black and white). Then services should be offered (parent education, drug/alcohol treatment...) to improve the environment for children in the home. Parents should be taught about the importance of language interaction with their infant, and to encourage creative play/limit screen time.
Thanks for your comment. The study you mentioned references the work of Todd Risley and Betty Hart. I'm a fan of their book, "Meaningful Differences in the Everyday Experience of Young American Children." Some scholars quibble with their conclusions (See link below), but there are no obvious downsides to talking to toddlers and having positive interactions with them.
If race-conscious preferences are really ended it will be a great but difficult opportunity for blacks to go toe to toe with others based on skill and value instead of racist prejudices and victimhood. It will take a lot for blacks to gain equality because the Democratic Party has victimized them for about 58 years now (through welfare, failed schools, lawless cities and affirmative action (ie racism against whites and sexism against males).
History tells us that African-American students were able to find ways to excel even under Jim Crow. Baltimore’s Dunbar HS produced many great leaders including SC Justice Marshall. The difference was discipline and focus.
Disruptive students were punished, not accommodated. Standards were high and uncompromising. Students were expected to learn, given a fertile environment and they rose to the challenge. This light was snuffed out as too “elitist” in the post 1960s era.
Your analysis is sound and confirms the obvious point, namely that urban public education is a failure across the country. Black children are not and have not received anything close to the education they are entitled to in our system for decades. The structure is broken completely. Bold action is necessary. Creativity and innovation are stymied. Those who are responsible (Superintendents, Principals and School Boards) for its operation are hamstrung by the requirements of collective bargaining required by state laws. In any collective bargaining regime everything is negotiable from the use of seniority to the determination of classroom assignments to the number of hours per day devoted to classroom teaching to the length of the school year to the size of classrooms to the number of parent teacher conferences required and on and on. All this in addition to the basic elements of a compensation package. Additionally, school closures during the pandemic were extended and extended and extended in response to the hysteria promulgated by the teachers unions, the NEA and the AFT.
These two teachers unions have a strangle hold over the Democratic Party. They are at the top of the contribution list to the party nationally. Locally, they deliver the votes and money needed to be elected. In some states (e.g. Massachusetts) strikes by teachers are illegal but that did not stop the Haverhill teachers from striking for 4 days recently. In other states (e.g. Illinois) strikes are permitted and they occur with regularity in Chicago. Who loses? Black kids.
No urban mayor, largely Democrats, can afford politically to take the teachers union on and so they do not. Kids pay the price. As a result, creative problem solvers with new and innovative ideas on solving the urban education problem we have allowed to fester either stay silent, leave the system or never enter public education at all. Who loses? Black kids. Innovations such as charter schools and vouchers and eduction savings accounts, all of which give parents a choice, are resisted with ferocity by the unions afraid of the competition such innovations bring. We know that competition in all aspects of our lives enhances our lives immeasurably. Why not the education of Black kids in our cities?
In business, where failure occurs, bankruptcy offers the opportunity to re-organize and restructure without the restrictions of normal practice including labor contracts and collective bargaining, all with the goal of restoring the entity to profitability. Similarly in personal bankruptcy.
Unless we address the structural impediments to creative and innovative provisions of public education we will continue to fail Black children and we will continue to send them off to compete in colleges and universities they are not prepared for.
You may wish to consult Bill Gates (and Melinda, separately of course) on the cost and results attending their little sojourn into the morass of minority education. But first consider their mission: "We believe all students deserve to graduate high school
with the skills and knowledge that prepare them for college, career,
and life." Deserve? Really? What do I deserve in life? What career do you deserve?
Much as I hate to be that guy, almost none of the principles in these cases have any interest in doing what Clifton rightly says has to be done - the pipeline to prepare students. Public education is already perceived as failing and that was before two years of antics by teachers unions across the country.
If I remember correctly, one of the major drivers behind Ward Connerly's push to end affirmative action in California was its results. The program was great at admitting black students into UC Berkeley or UCLA but, too often, those students were ill-prepared and never graduated. Had they instead been steered toward a university within the Cal-State system, their chances of success would have been far higher.
The argument before the High Court is about the cart, at the expense of the horse. When school systems are "graduating" young people who are barely literate, debating admissions standards in the Ivy League is next-level missing the point.
If the problem as articulated is the need to fill the college pipeline, the implication is that school systems should focus resources on the top half of black kids (ranked by achievement). A lot of the comments here identify problems that result in a minority of black kids deeply underperforming white peers. But those kids are in the bottom half of black kids. The problem for black kids that are college eligible or that could be college eligible is quite different. And you could work on solutions for that problem by moving resources from the bottom half to the top half. But is that really what we want our educational systems to do in a world of limited resources? Put another way, is that originally articulated goal of filling the college pipeline really the thing to chase?
Thanks for your comment. It's fair to question whether efforts to close the academic achievement gap should be focused primarily on the pool of potential college applicants. A majority of adults in America don't have college degrees, so we should be mindful of how resources are allocated. The data suggest that the achievement gap is broad and extends across the distribution. A variety of strategies and resource allocation decisions may be needed to close the gap at various points along the distribution. That's the kind of discussion we need to have and is what I was alluding to in my post.
You need to look at two normal distributions (bell curves) each centered a standard deviation from each other. Look at the areas overlapped to the right of the mean of the rightmost curve. There will be approx. 3 members of the rightmost curve above the mean for every member of the leftmost curve above that same mean. That's as good as the DEI ratio gets FOR THE TOP HALF of the leftmost curve. At higher percentile points on the rightmost curve, the members of the leftmost curve meeting that qualification become vanishingly fewer. See Charles Murray's 1994(!) "The Bell Curve: Intelligence and Class Structure in American Life"
I’m aware of your argument. If it is true, that doesn’t undermine my point. My point, translated into your frame, is that -- to meet the stated goal of filling the college pipeline -- we would need to focus resources on the individuals near the cutoff line, and abandon those far to the left of it. And that raises the question of whether the originally articulated goal is truly worthy.
Where did this "goal" of filling the college pipeline come from? Whether the "pipe" is large, small, or indifferent what matters is the relative mix of racial and ethnic groups in every American "pipeline": educational, vocational, professional, academic, political, business, criminal, etc., etc., etc. Do the contents of any given "pipeline" reflect population percentages? If not, why not? When a given pipeline's metric is meritocratic based on intelligence, or based on physical performance (say marathon running), you can rest assured the pipeline contents will vary significantly from population percentages (and it ain't about Kenyan training regimens...).
I realize this is not what you are asking, but I realized that my reference might not have been clear. I was referring to the goal expressed in the author’s first paragraph:
“The public favors racial diversity, but only if it's achieved in a way that's fair to everybody. In order to achieve that goal, we first have to build a robust pipeline of highly qualified black college applicants.”
My question was ultimately, is this really our goal and should it be -- especially if we must achieve it in part by diverting resources from lower-achieving student.
I appreciate your perspective, but I'm looking at the topic of racial diversity from a societal point of view. A robust pipeline of highly qualified black college applicants is needed if racial diversity is to be achieved within the middle and upper ranks of America's institutions without using race in college admissions decisions or when making hiring and promotion decisions.
The legal profession is a good example. The American Bar Association's "10-Year Lawyer Demographics" summary shows that blacks have accounted for 5% of America's active attorneys every year between 2012 and 2022. Whites accounted for more than 80% of America's active lawyers in 2022, down from 88% in 2012.
A separate ABA report, "Profile of the Legal Profession 2022," shows that blacks accounted for 7.7% of all law school students as of 2021. It also showed significant racial differences in bar passage rates. Their data shows that 61% of blacks who took the bar for the first time passed it in 2021 vs. 85% of whites who took it for the first time. The ultimate bar passage rate for the Class of 2019 was 81% for blacks vs. 94% for whites. This data is presented graphically on pages 44 and 50 of the report.
A similar pattern exists within STEM occupations. Here's an excerpt from an August 2021 analysis of the STEM labor force that was published by the National Science Foundation:
"Hispanic or Latino and Black or African American workers are underrepresented in STEM, with the greater discrepancy being among those with a bachelor’s degree or higher than those without a bachelor’s degree. Hispanic or Latino workers make up 18% of the U.S. workforce but represent 14% of STEM workers. Similarly, Black or African American workers make up 12% of the U.S. working population but represent only 9% of STEM workers. In the STEM workforce with a bachelor’s degree or higher, Hispanic or Latino workers represent 8% of the workforce, and Black or African American workers represent 7%. However, at 19% of the STW, Hispanic or Latino workers are more than their proportion of the working population. Black or African American workers are underrepresented at 10% in the STW."
STW = Skilled Technical Workforce
Use this link if you want to access the section of the report where I got this excerpt:
These numbers speak for themselves and help explain why some of America's biggest companies have asked the Supreme Court not to ban the use of race in college admissions decisions. Here's an article from Bloomberg:
"Nearly 70 major US companies, including Alphabet Inc.’s Google, General Electric Co., and JetBlue Airways Corp. warned in a brief to the court that without affirmative action they’ll lose access to “a pipeline of highly qualified future workers and business leaders” — and will struggle to meet diversity hiring goals they’ve set."
I appreciate the thoroughness of your response. I’m left with one non-rhetorical question. If you were the head of an all black school district, but had to choose one of the following two options, which would it be: (a) spending the same amount on each student or (b) spending relatively more on college-bound or college-possible students at the cost of spending less on clearly non-college-bound students. No fighting the hypothetical! It’s designed to confirm what I think you are saying, and that I disagree with. But once you answer, feel free to attack it.
Gotcha. It was a silly goal that presupposes its end. The problem isn't the lack of "highly qualified black college applicants" in a "robust pipeline" due to failure to "build" one. The problem is that highly qualified black college applicants do not exist in anywhere near numbers representative of the group's percentage of the larger population. Furthermore, the missing "applicants" cannot simply be manufactured at will unless you are willing to change the definition of "highly qualified" (as we do currently).
There are some hidden economic issues underlying this topic that are not well understood by most people paying for colleges. Private universities invariably enjoy non-profit status. Thus, there is no pressure from profit seeking owners. Boards of Trustees can choose to pursue a “mission” over profit. Having said that, the size of the endowment is a major influencer in decision making. It is a given that the endowment must never get smaller. It is helpful that the gains on the endowment and charitable contributions are not taxed. But, it is also important to the integrity of the endowments that the cost of running the college does not exceed the revenues.
If one has a mission to accept lots of lower income students while keeping the endowment from shrinking, one must charge more to the “middle and higher” income students than to the others. As long as the low cost loans keep coming to those not receiving income based scholarships, the scheme can keep going. Part of the scheme has been relying on foreign students who invariably pay full freight. Once the cost of attending gets too high for the “tuition payers”, there will be a reckoning. The most vulnerable schools will be those whose brand name and reputation are least valuable.
I predict there will be a significant number of lower reputation schools will be folding in the next decade or so.
DISTAR Reading K-2 is a proven solution if well implemented to ensure major gains by disadvantaged youngsters of any ethnicity. It could still be done. (I'm not recommending programs for the higher grades, but the K-2 program is very good.) Project Follow Through showed that very well. Mandatory after-school programs in reading and writing, one to two hours a day, would pick up a lot of failing youngsters, too. Finally, adding summer school would make a difference. Black kids tend to fall behind in summer.
There are now quite a few model systems that work to identify and develop talented black youngsters. These are successful charter schools. They can be imitated and disseminated and would help all youngsters.
It actually is not that complicated. Will it happen? Almost certainly not. But the solutions are there.
According to this view, if there is a problem, then no solution exists. You should be a burned-out school administrator waiting to retire and barking at anyone with a new idea. You already have the attitude, all you need is a paycheck as fat as your head.
Suggest YOU get a real education on "education." I've been involved in the field for over 30 years. Go to the educationrealist blog to read deeply and long of the travails of an actual teacher of lower-IQ students. But be warned up front: "ed" possesses nearly double the average black American IQ and, as his blog declares, "No Dewey-eyed dreamers here."
On "rescuing" brainy minority kids, be careful what you wish for. "Identifying" then actively separating such kids from their parent/s(!) and sociocultural environment to turn them into darker versions of high-performing white/East Asian kids is fraught. It's been tried before with other racial/ethnic groups and the results have been disastrous. See Canada and its attempts regarding acculturating and educating indigenous children as an example.
Yeah, yeah. So have I. I don't care about your alleged IQ, which I see no evidence of here. My point was about what works. I also don't have any interest in your blog. I am however interested in effective reading instruction and math. Too bad you so very clearly are not.
The most important thing that any President could do once in office would be to unceremoniously eliminate the DOE and work to establish a constitutional amendment to prevent its ever being reconstituted.
Your citing specific cases, such as Dunbar High, proves my point. Show me a program that establishes hundreds of Dunbar Highs in different parts of the country and I will grant that you may be on to something.
Thank You M. Roscoe. I’ll leave off the exclamation points, tho well-deserved. There was a bug in the system, or I would-a “liked” all the comments. I agreed with all-a them, most of them completely.
I’m not as well-read on this subject as I would prefer, but it’s been of great interest to me. As others have pointed out, there are deep problems in our education systems. From K to graduate-level. Just a few of the problems, many of them already in these comments (in no particular order):
==
Genetics - moot point, nothing can be done
Family structures - multi-problems, generations to fix; should work on
Cultures - until education is *highly* valued, not much possible, right?
Colleges/Universities - many problems but over-production of degrees is big one (the “degreed barista” problem)
Business - most jobs could be done with two-year degrees
Pay scales - nerds, computer and otherwise, get paid more, especially compared to non-college-educated
Teacher’s Unions - hope this goes without saying
Indoctrination - currently the raison d’etre of schools at all levels
Low quality of Education Colleges - mostly indoctrination/diploma mills
Low quality of Teachers – as a result of above
Low quality of Teachers – lowest GRE scores of all graduate occupations
Low quality of too many students to begin with
Definition of success – more money = more successful (nothing can be done)
&c., &c....
==
Possible solutions derived from other people (including commenters):
More money, in a few *select* instances
*Less* money in other instances
Eliminate Dept Of Education (for most part, due to totality of failures observed)
Eliminate Federal guarantees of student loans completely
Give businesses input to 2 (or 3?) -year schools’ curriculum, in return for financing
Vouchers/non-union Charter Schools/School Choice
Diversity in Colleges/Universities of *political views* (unfortunately, may be no way to accomplish due to privacy concerns; still there are DEI requirements currently)
Accredit Education Colleges/Universities at Federal level, or any other way than done now (dissolve current Accreditation institutions)
*Exciting advertisements* on value of education, particularly in select economic groups
Revamp welfare system (politically impossible)
Mandatory Service: One year (or preferably two) of service in Military/Peace Corps/Vista
==
Just IMO. A few thoughts collected along the way. Granted, most-a these “possible solutions” are fantasies at this time. Again. TYTY for article, M. Clifton. And TY to commenters.
Also, one final point. This may seem heartless, unless one thinks about it a bit before reacting.
To me anyway, the main thing that should be done a the Fed level is issue education block grants to the states, for them to disperse to cities/communities. And here's the thing: If a school or program isn't getting better measurable results (or worse yet, getting poorer one) that thing should be SHUT DOWN. Yeah, people will lose jobs. But, currently, programs that are failing are getting *more* money, on the failed theory that failed approaches can just succeed if they have more resources. This will tend to reward systems that are already wasting resources.
To me anyway, it would be more desirable to increase any "extra" resources available to programs that are getting the best measurable results. So they can get bigger and take in more students. And, preferably, try to determine what they're doing to get those better results and spread the techniques.
To me anyway, I don't think it's gonna be *possible* to invent some new way to educate that will scale. These things need to be tried at a lower level, and then see which ones, in practice, *do* scale. To me anyway, they're to be *discovered* rather than invented. Just for one reason, because it will likely involve more than one or two success stories.
Unfortunately (or fortunately, depending how one looks at it), this is an on-going process. What works now, may not work in five or ten years. What works in one demographic, won't work when that demographic changes it's character, right?
I think a $14k average spend with $25k/kid for targeted communities takes care of the scale. I also don't see any better alternatives so why wouldn't we try the experimentation that would be part of a mass voucher program? I suspect we would see more provision of social services and structured participation that mimics an extended family for the underclass (Raj Chetty has done interesting work on what structures are effective). Most public schools won't change, nor do they need to. In a functioning community a public school is a source of pride and symbol of the community. But when the community is dysfunctional we need new ideas. Thanks for your work, the effort is appreciated.
There is very little appetite in modern America to solve the skills gap between black children and everyone else because black misery and underperformance is so profitable to so many people even tangentially associated with the educational establishment.
My wife, who is African, not African-American, is currently teaching first grade at a neighborhood public school here in Detroit. She will have 20-25 students on any given day.
Three or four of them are what we used to call "bad" kids: no discipline, no respect, no interest in learning. They are sent to school by the parents not to learn but to be bay-sat. The school administration accepts, and coddles these children because every set of buttocks that is filling a chair on "count day" is worth $10k + to the district. It is difficult to be suspended, and impossible to be expelled, no matter how egregious the behavior .
Those few bad kids get most of the teacher's attention, by default. The rest of the students try to get by with the scraps that are left once the disruptive knuckleheads have been dealt with.
For the limited time that is devoted to actual instruction, the public schools here are forced to use textbooks that seem to have as their main objective the desire to confuse the students and discourage learning, I am no genius, but I should be able to decipher first grade material, and I can't. The books are written by "experts" whose careers depend on the endless updating of their material, with copious amounts of interventions from early learning "specialists":, "achievement coaches" and so on. No one, absolutely no one cares about the implications of subjecting generations of children to this BS. They only care about checking boxes and advancing careers. The bulk of the credentialed professionals here in Detroit have long ago forgotten that the purpose of teaching used to be to provide children with the fundamental tools to go out into the world and be able to make their lives in it.
Then you have the parents...most of whom simply do not care one tiny little bit about their child's progress, or lack thereof. There are, clearly, exceptions, but they are, just as clearly, exceptions. And while having two parents who care and who are there might be preferable, that isn't necessary. My wife never knew her father, and grew up in a poverty that is simply unimaginable to anyone in America today, and yet she is now in Detroit, teaching English (her third language) to American children. The difference is that in Africa, schooling is a sought-after privilege, teachers are respected, bad behavior is not tolerated, and black African children are not schooled to believe that they are incapable of excellence because of their "victim" status.
School choice will help, as will the ending of all racial preference programs, but the biggest change will necessarily have to come from the parents themselves, who will have to discover the will to demand excellence from their children, teachers, and themselves, and not accept the permanent underclass status that is intrinsic to a culture of low expectations.
"but it's not clear what their missions are or why racial diversity is more important than other forms of diversity."
The mission is to maintain the power and status of these elite institutions and their alumni.
Ensuring the loyalty of black (and to a lesser extent Hispanic) America requires a certain number of black faces. They need not be descendants of American slaves, just being black is good enough.
Further, the mythology of America as relates to race is powerful, and being able to lay claim to being anti-racist gives a lot of power over other whites.
Finally, these institutions are afraid having too many Asians. If Asians were 40% of the student body they would inevitably end up running the show. That would be against the interests of non-Asians. Even if the additional slots went to whites instead of blacks that would probably be desirable to Harvard.
Given all this, I don't think much is going to change. Workarounds will be found to keep the numbers basically the same. The political will isn't there to enforce Harvard being 40% Asian. While all of this is technically a violation of civil rights law, everyone understands that in practice civil rights law can be bent for the right interests.
I'm going to pass over whether this is "good for society". Even if affirmative action were bad for society, it might be good for Harvard (and Harvard might perceive it to be good and be wrong). "Society" doesn't make and enforce policy.
As to K-12 education reform, we've spent decades on that to no effect. Do we really think swarming K-12 with DEI bullshit is the solution. Cause that's what "we need to fix K-12 race gaps" is going to end up being.
Personally, I'd rather we just make this race stuff less salient. If blacks are going to close the gap they will have to do it themselves.
What comes after Race-Conscious Admissions? The question is elitist, only relevant in the top tier of private schools and a couple of prestigious State U's. Additionally, the problem for elite schools is not one of achieving social justice or promoting achievement, but creating a student body that "looks" more like a bowl of Mueslix, than a bowl of rice crispies, or choco crispies. Community colleges, aas well as 2nd tier, and 3rd tier state u's already address the achievement gap every day of the week. They have no need to engage in race conscious admissions, because their student communities naturally reflect the greater community. Unlike more elite schools who graduate nearly all incoming freshman at rates of 90 to 98 percent, these lesser institutions are saddled with the more onerous burden of race conscious concerns about who graduates and how quickly.
I believe that the gap between black and white children in K-12 starts before the children even attend preschool. I feel this difference originates in infancy and early childhood. A study in 2018 showed that "Language-based interactions between children 18 to 24 months of age and adults predicted intelligence quotient (IQ), verbal comprehension, and expressive and receptive language skills at 9 to 13 years old." Perhaps black inner city kids who grow up lacking enrichment in their environment are bringing the overall IQ scores of the black population down.
I feel that nurses should pay a visit to all homes after the birth of a baby and identify "at risk" families (black and white). Then services should be offered (parent education, drug/alcohol treatment...) to improve the environment for children in the home. Parents should be taught about the importance of language interaction with their infant, and to encourage creative play/limit screen time.
https://pediatrics.aappublications.org/content/142/4/e20174276
Thanks for your comment. The study you mentioned references the work of Todd Risley and Betty Hart. I'm a fan of their book, "Meaningful Differences in the Everyday Experience of Young American Children." Some scholars quibble with their conclusions (See link below), but there are no obvious downsides to talking to toddlers and having positive interactions with them.
https://www.npr.org/sections/ed/2018/06/01/615188051/lets-stop-talking-about-the-30-million-word-gap
I think exposure to trauma also has an impact on child development and black children may have higher exposure than whites.
TY.. I learned some about this here about the science of childhood development: https://developingchild.harvard.edu/
Race conscious admission is code for giving points to people who don't make the grade. It's rewarding mediocrity and that is dangerous.
If race-conscious preferences are really ended it will be a great but difficult opportunity for blacks to go toe to toe with others based on skill and value instead of racist prejudices and victimhood. It will take a lot for blacks to gain equality because the Democratic Party has victimized them for about 58 years now (through welfare, failed schools, lawless cities and affirmative action (ie racism against whites and sexism against males).
History tells us that African-American students were able to find ways to excel even under Jim Crow. Baltimore’s Dunbar HS produced many great leaders including SC Justice Marshall. The difference was discipline and focus.
Disruptive students were punished, not accommodated. Standards were high and uncompromising. Students were expected to learn, given a fertile environment and they rose to the challenge. This light was snuffed out as too “elitist” in the post 1960s era.
Great article, Sir. I appreciate the data.
My pleasure. Thanks for the kind words.
Your analysis is sound and confirms the obvious point, namely that urban public education is a failure across the country. Black children are not and have not received anything close to the education they are entitled to in our system for decades. The structure is broken completely. Bold action is necessary. Creativity and innovation are stymied. Those who are responsible (Superintendents, Principals and School Boards) for its operation are hamstrung by the requirements of collective bargaining required by state laws. In any collective bargaining regime everything is negotiable from the use of seniority to the determination of classroom assignments to the number of hours per day devoted to classroom teaching to the length of the school year to the size of classrooms to the number of parent teacher conferences required and on and on. All this in addition to the basic elements of a compensation package. Additionally, school closures during the pandemic were extended and extended and extended in response to the hysteria promulgated by the teachers unions, the NEA and the AFT.
These two teachers unions have a strangle hold over the Democratic Party. They are at the top of the contribution list to the party nationally. Locally, they deliver the votes and money needed to be elected. In some states (e.g. Massachusetts) strikes by teachers are illegal but that did not stop the Haverhill teachers from striking for 4 days recently. In other states (e.g. Illinois) strikes are permitted and they occur with regularity in Chicago. Who loses? Black kids.
No urban mayor, largely Democrats, can afford politically to take the teachers union on and so they do not. Kids pay the price. As a result, creative problem solvers with new and innovative ideas on solving the urban education problem we have allowed to fester either stay silent, leave the system or never enter public education at all. Who loses? Black kids. Innovations such as charter schools and vouchers and eduction savings accounts, all of which give parents a choice, are resisted with ferocity by the unions afraid of the competition such innovations bring. We know that competition in all aspects of our lives enhances our lives immeasurably. Why not the education of Black kids in our cities?
In business, where failure occurs, bankruptcy offers the opportunity to re-organize and restructure without the restrictions of normal practice including labor contracts and collective bargaining, all with the goal of restoring the entity to profitability. Similarly in personal bankruptcy.
Unless we address the structural impediments to creative and innovative provisions of public education we will continue to fail Black children and we will continue to send them off to compete in colleges and universities they are not prepared for.
You may wish to consult Bill Gates (and Melinda, separately of course) on the cost and results attending their little sojourn into the morass of minority education. But first consider their mission: "We believe all students deserve to graduate high school
with the skills and knowledge that prepare them for college, career,
and life." Deserve? Really? What do I deserve in life? What career do you deserve?
Much as I hate to be that guy, almost none of the principles in these cases have any interest in doing what Clifton rightly says has to be done - the pipeline to prepare students. Public education is already perceived as failing and that was before two years of antics by teachers unions across the country.
If I remember correctly, one of the major drivers behind Ward Connerly's push to end affirmative action in California was its results. The program was great at admitting black students into UC Berkeley or UCLA but, too often, those students were ill-prepared and never graduated. Had they instead been steered toward a university within the Cal-State system, their chances of success would have been far higher.
The argument before the High Court is about the cart, at the expense of the horse. When school systems are "graduating" young people who are barely literate, debating admissions standards in the Ivy League is next-level missing the point.
If the problem as articulated is the need to fill the college pipeline, the implication is that school systems should focus resources on the top half of black kids (ranked by achievement). A lot of the comments here identify problems that result in a minority of black kids deeply underperforming white peers. But those kids are in the bottom half of black kids. The problem for black kids that are college eligible or that could be college eligible is quite different. And you could work on solutions for that problem by moving resources from the bottom half to the top half. But is that really what we want our educational systems to do in a world of limited resources? Put another way, is that originally articulated goal of filling the college pipeline really the thing to chase?
Thanks for your comment. It's fair to question whether efforts to close the academic achievement gap should be focused primarily on the pool of potential college applicants. A majority of adults in America don't have college degrees, so we should be mindful of how resources are allocated. The data suggest that the achievement gap is broad and extends across the distribution. A variety of strategies and resource allocation decisions may be needed to close the gap at various points along the distribution. That's the kind of discussion we need to have and is what I was alluding to in my post.
You need to look at two normal distributions (bell curves) each centered a standard deviation from each other. Look at the areas overlapped to the right of the mean of the rightmost curve. There will be approx. 3 members of the rightmost curve above the mean for every member of the leftmost curve above that same mean. That's as good as the DEI ratio gets FOR THE TOP HALF of the leftmost curve. At higher percentile points on the rightmost curve, the members of the leftmost curve meeting that qualification become vanishingly fewer. See Charles Murray's 1994(!) "The Bell Curve: Intelligence and Class Structure in American Life"
I’m aware of your argument. If it is true, that doesn’t undermine my point. My point, translated into your frame, is that -- to meet the stated goal of filling the college pipeline -- we would need to focus resources on the individuals near the cutoff line, and abandon those far to the left of it. And that raises the question of whether the originally articulated goal is truly worthy.
Where did this "goal" of filling the college pipeline come from? Whether the "pipe" is large, small, or indifferent what matters is the relative mix of racial and ethnic groups in every American "pipeline": educational, vocational, professional, academic, political, business, criminal, etc., etc., etc. Do the contents of any given "pipeline" reflect population percentages? If not, why not? When a given pipeline's metric is meritocratic based on intelligence, or based on physical performance (say marathon running), you can rest assured the pipeline contents will vary significantly from population percentages (and it ain't about Kenyan training regimens...).
I realize this is not what you are asking, but I realized that my reference might not have been clear. I was referring to the goal expressed in the author’s first paragraph:
“The public favors racial diversity, but only if it's achieved in a way that's fair to everybody. In order to achieve that goal, we first have to build a robust pipeline of highly qualified black college applicants.”
My question was ultimately, is this really our goal and should it be -- especially if we must achieve it in part by diverting resources from lower-achieving student.
I appreciate your perspective, but I'm looking at the topic of racial diversity from a societal point of view. A robust pipeline of highly qualified black college applicants is needed if racial diversity is to be achieved within the middle and upper ranks of America's institutions without using race in college admissions decisions or when making hiring and promotion decisions.
The legal profession is a good example. The American Bar Association's "10-Year Lawyer Demographics" summary shows that blacks have accounted for 5% of America's active attorneys every year between 2012 and 2022. Whites accounted for more than 80% of America's active lawyers in 2022, down from 88% in 2012.
A separate ABA report, "Profile of the Legal Profession 2022," shows that blacks accounted for 7.7% of all law school students as of 2021. It also showed significant racial differences in bar passage rates. Their data shows that 61% of blacks who took the bar for the first time passed it in 2021 vs. 85% of whites who took it for the first time. The ultimate bar passage rate for the Class of 2019 was 81% for blacks vs. 94% for whites. This data is presented graphically on pages 44 and 50 of the report.
Use this link to access either document:
https://www.americanbar.org/news/reporter_resources/profile-of-profession/
A similar pattern exists within STEM occupations. Here's an excerpt from an August 2021 analysis of the STEM labor force that was published by the National Science Foundation:
"Hispanic or Latino and Black or African American workers are underrepresented in STEM, with the greater discrepancy being among those with a bachelor’s degree or higher than those without a bachelor’s degree. Hispanic or Latino workers make up 18% of the U.S. workforce but represent 14% of STEM workers. Similarly, Black or African American workers make up 12% of the U.S. working population but represent only 9% of STEM workers. In the STEM workforce with a bachelor’s degree or higher, Hispanic or Latino workers represent 8% of the workforce, and Black or African American workers represent 7%. However, at 19% of the STW, Hispanic or Latino workers are more than their proportion of the working population. Black or African American workers are underrepresented at 10% in the STW."
STW = Skilled Technical Workforce
Use this link if you want to access the section of the report where I got this excerpt:
https://ncses.nsf.gov/pubs/nsb20212/participation-of-demographic-groups-in-stem
These numbers speak for themselves and help explain why some of America's biggest companies have asked the Supreme Court not to ban the use of race in college admissions decisions. Here's an article from Bloomberg:
https://news.bloomberglaw.com/us-law-week/affirmative-action-end-will-crush-the-diversity-talent-pipeline
Here's an excerpt:
"Nearly 70 major US companies, including Alphabet Inc.’s Google, General Electric Co., and JetBlue Airways Corp. warned in a brief to the court that without affirmative action they’ll lose access to “a pipeline of highly qualified future workers and business leaders” — and will struggle to meet diversity hiring goals they’ve set."
Thanks again for your feedback!
I appreciate the thoroughness of your response. I’m left with one non-rhetorical question. If you were the head of an all black school district, but had to choose one of the following two options, which would it be: (a) spending the same amount on each student or (b) spending relatively more on college-bound or college-possible students at the cost of spending less on clearly non-college-bound students. No fighting the hypothetical! It’s designed to confirm what I think you are saying, and that I disagree with. But once you answer, feel free to attack it.
Gotcha. It was a silly goal that presupposes its end. The problem isn't the lack of "highly qualified black college applicants" in a "robust pipeline" due to failure to "build" one. The problem is that highly qualified black college applicants do not exist in anywhere near numbers representative of the group's percentage of the larger population. Furthermore, the missing "applicants" cannot simply be manufactured at will unless you are willing to change the definition of "highly qualified" (as we do currently).
There are some hidden economic issues underlying this topic that are not well understood by most people paying for colleges. Private universities invariably enjoy non-profit status. Thus, there is no pressure from profit seeking owners. Boards of Trustees can choose to pursue a “mission” over profit. Having said that, the size of the endowment is a major influencer in decision making. It is a given that the endowment must never get smaller. It is helpful that the gains on the endowment and charitable contributions are not taxed. But, it is also important to the integrity of the endowments that the cost of running the college does not exceed the revenues.
If one has a mission to accept lots of lower income students while keeping the endowment from shrinking, one must charge more to the “middle and higher” income students than to the others. As long as the low cost loans keep coming to those not receiving income based scholarships, the scheme can keep going. Part of the scheme has been relying on foreign students who invariably pay full freight. Once the cost of attending gets too high for the “tuition payers”, there will be a reckoning. The most vulnerable schools will be those whose brand name and reputation are least valuable.
I predict there will be a significant number of lower reputation schools will be folding in the next decade or so.
DISTAR Reading K-2 is a proven solution if well implemented to ensure major gains by disadvantaged youngsters of any ethnicity. It could still be done. (I'm not recommending programs for the higher grades, but the K-2 program is very good.) Project Follow Through showed that very well. Mandatory after-school programs in reading and writing, one to two hours a day, would pick up a lot of failing youngsters, too. Finally, adding summer school would make a difference. Black kids tend to fall behind in summer.
There are now quite a few model systems that work to identify and develop talented black youngsters. These are successful charter schools. They can be imitated and disseminated and would help all youngsters.
It actually is not that complicated. Will it happen? Almost certainly not. But the solutions are there.
Puppies, unicorns, and fairy dust. If solutions existed, the "Problem" would be solved. Simple. The converse is also true (not so simple).
According to this view, if there is a problem, then no solution exists. You should be a burned-out school administrator waiting to retire and barking at anyone with a new idea. You already have the attitude, all you need is a paycheck as fat as your head.
Suggest YOU get a real education on "education." I've been involved in the field for over 30 years. Go to the educationrealist blog to read deeply and long of the travails of an actual teacher of lower-IQ students. But be warned up front: "ed" possesses nearly double the average black American IQ and, as his blog declares, "No Dewey-eyed dreamers here."
On "rescuing" brainy minority kids, be careful what you wish for. "Identifying" then actively separating such kids from their parent/s(!) and sociocultural environment to turn them into darker versions of high-performing white/East Asian kids is fraught. It's been tried before with other racial/ethnic groups and the results have been disastrous. See Canada and its attempts regarding acculturating and educating indigenous children as an example.
Yeah, yeah. So have I. I don't care about your alleged IQ, which I see no evidence of here. My point was about what works. I also don't have any interest in your blog. I am however interested in effective reading instruction and math. Too bad you so very clearly are not.
Try talking to a stone. Let me know what it has to say. I'll wait...
The most important thing that any President could do once in office would be to unceremoniously eliminate the DOE and work to establish a constitutional amendment to prevent its ever being reconstituted.
Your citing specific cases, such as Dunbar High, proves my point. Show me a program that establishes hundreds of Dunbar Highs in different parts of the country and I will grant that you may be on to something.
Thank You M. Roscoe. I’ll leave off the exclamation points, tho well-deserved. There was a bug in the system, or I would-a “liked” all the comments. I agreed with all-a them, most of them completely.
I’m not as well-read on this subject as I would prefer, but it’s been of great interest to me. As others have pointed out, there are deep problems in our education systems. From K to graduate-level. Just a few of the problems, many of them already in these comments (in no particular order):
==
Genetics - moot point, nothing can be done
Family structures - multi-problems, generations to fix; should work on
Cultures - until education is *highly* valued, not much possible, right?
Colleges/Universities - many problems but over-production of degrees is big one (the “degreed barista” problem)
Business - most jobs could be done with two-year degrees
Pay scales - nerds, computer and otherwise, get paid more, especially compared to non-college-educated
Teacher’s Unions - hope this goes without saying
Indoctrination - currently the raison d’etre of schools at all levels
Low quality of Education Colleges - mostly indoctrination/diploma mills
Low quality of Teachers – as a result of above
Low quality of Teachers – lowest GRE scores of all graduate occupations
Low quality of too many students to begin with
Definition of success – more money = more successful (nothing can be done)
&c., &c....
==
Possible solutions derived from other people (including commenters):
More money, in a few *select* instances
*Less* money in other instances
Eliminate Dept Of Education (for most part, due to totality of failures observed)
Eliminate Federal guarantees of student loans completely
Give businesses input to 2 (or 3?) -year schools’ curriculum, in return for financing
Vouchers/non-union Charter Schools/School Choice
Diversity in Colleges/Universities of *political views* (unfortunately, may be no way to accomplish due to privacy concerns; still there are DEI requirements currently)
Accredit Education Colleges/Universities at Federal level, or any other way than done now (dissolve current Accreditation institutions)
Teach the teachers proven scientific methods of knowledge-transfer https://www.edutopia.org/ https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/55835996-uncommon-sense-teaching (note to self: need to study a lot more)
*Exciting advertisements* on value of education, particularly in select economic groups
Revamp welfare system (politically impossible)
Mandatory Service: One year (or preferably two) of service in Military/Peace Corps/Vista
==
Just IMO. A few thoughts collected along the way. Granted, most-a these “possible solutions” are fantasies at this time. Again. TYTY for article, M. Clifton. And TY to commenters.
Thanks for your kind words and thoughtful comments
Always mistakes: Thought of a few other things I'd forgotten, but that's enough to go on.
Having read https://glennloury.substack.com/p/two-views-of-the-black-family-cont that was recommended by one-a the commenters, would necessarily add that Bob Woodson's approach is a good one.
Also, one final point. This may seem heartless, unless one thinks about it a bit before reacting.
To me anyway, the main thing that should be done a the Fed level is issue education block grants to the states, for them to disperse to cities/communities. And here's the thing: If a school or program isn't getting better measurable results (or worse yet, getting poorer one) that thing should be SHUT DOWN. Yeah, people will lose jobs. But, currently, programs that are failing are getting *more* money, on the failed theory that failed approaches can just succeed if they have more resources. This will tend to reward systems that are already wasting resources.
To me anyway, it would be more desirable to increase any "extra" resources available to programs that are getting the best measurable results. So they can get bigger and take in more students. And, preferably, try to determine what they're doing to get those better results and spread the techniques.
To me anyway, I don't think it's gonna be *possible* to invent some new way to educate that will scale. These things need to be tried at a lower level, and then see which ones, in practice, *do* scale. To me anyway, they're to be *discovered* rather than invented. Just for one reason, because it will likely involve more than one or two success stories.
Unfortunately (or fortunately, depending how one looks at it), this is an on-going process. What works now, may not work in five or ten years. What works in one demographic, won't work when that demographic changes it's character, right?
All this IMO, so there's that.
I think a $14k average spend with $25k/kid for targeted communities takes care of the scale. I also don't see any better alternatives so why wouldn't we try the experimentation that would be part of a mass voucher program? I suspect we would see more provision of social services and structured participation that mimics an extended family for the underclass (Raj Chetty has done interesting work on what structures are effective). Most public schools won't change, nor do they need to. In a functioning community a public school is a source of pride and symbol of the community. But when the community is dysfunctional we need new ideas. Thanks for your work, the effort is appreciated.
There is very little appetite in modern America to solve the skills gap between black children and everyone else because black misery and underperformance is so profitable to so many people even tangentially associated with the educational establishment.
My wife, who is African, not African-American, is currently teaching first grade at a neighborhood public school here in Detroit. She will have 20-25 students on any given day.
Three or four of them are what we used to call "bad" kids: no discipline, no respect, no interest in learning. They are sent to school by the parents not to learn but to be bay-sat. The school administration accepts, and coddles these children because every set of buttocks that is filling a chair on "count day" is worth $10k + to the district. It is difficult to be suspended, and impossible to be expelled, no matter how egregious the behavior .
Those few bad kids get most of the teacher's attention, by default. The rest of the students try to get by with the scraps that are left once the disruptive knuckleheads have been dealt with.
For the limited time that is devoted to actual instruction, the public schools here are forced to use textbooks that seem to have as their main objective the desire to confuse the students and discourage learning, I am no genius, but I should be able to decipher first grade material, and I can't. The books are written by "experts" whose careers depend on the endless updating of their material, with copious amounts of interventions from early learning "specialists":, "achievement coaches" and so on. No one, absolutely no one cares about the implications of subjecting generations of children to this BS. They only care about checking boxes and advancing careers. The bulk of the credentialed professionals here in Detroit have long ago forgotten that the purpose of teaching used to be to provide children with the fundamental tools to go out into the world and be able to make their lives in it.
Then you have the parents...most of whom simply do not care one tiny little bit about their child's progress, or lack thereof. There are, clearly, exceptions, but they are, just as clearly, exceptions. And while having two parents who care and who are there might be preferable, that isn't necessary. My wife never knew her father, and grew up in a poverty that is simply unimaginable to anyone in America today, and yet she is now in Detroit, teaching English (her third language) to American children. The difference is that in Africa, schooling is a sought-after privilege, teachers are respected, bad behavior is not tolerated, and black African children are not schooled to believe that they are incapable of excellence because of their "victim" status.
School choice will help, as will the ending of all racial preference programs, but the biggest change will necessarily have to come from the parents themselves, who will have to discover the will to demand excellence from their children, teachers, and themselves, and not accept the permanent underclass status that is intrinsic to a culture of low expectations.
What a concept: Identify and problem and ask, "what is the solution to the problem?" Great piece. Thank you.