When I began reporting on education in the San Jose area, nearly 50 years ago, I was surprised to hear how administrators and teachers talked about parents, particularly Mexican immigrant parents. They were angry at them, and not very good at hiding it. "These parents" didn't get their kids to school every day, they complained. They let their teenagers drop out to take low-wage jobs. They didn't read to them or make them do homework or come to teacher conferences.
Black students were a small minority, and didn't get much attention. Vietnamese refugees were flooding in. The only complaint about their parents was that they put too much pressure on their kids to get straight A's.
I once was invited to speak to a night class at San Jose State for administrators who were working on doctorates. They were interested in media coverage of education, and asked what percentage of students the public thought were uneducable, hopeless, just not going to make it. I said, "Ten percent?" They laughed, derisively. I asked them what percentage they thought they couldn't help. They wouldn't answer, but it was higher than 10 percent.
San Jose Unified's slogan was "All children can learn." But I don't think they believed that.
Socioeconomic status (SES) -- primarily family poverty and parents' education -- explains between 34 and 64 percent of the Black-White achievement gap (depending on subject and grade level) and between 51 and 77 percent of the Hispanic-White achievement gap, concludes a new Fordham analysis by Eric Hengyu Hu and Paul L. Morgan.
Hispanic students tend to narrow achievement gaps as they move through elementary school, perhaps because they improve their English fluency. Black students tend to fall farther behind.
Half of White and Asian students are growing up in families in the top 30 percent in income, while 19 percent of Whites and 24 percent of Asians are in the lowest 30 percent. By contrast, more than half of Black and Hispanic students come from families in the bottom 30 percent, only 17 percent in the top 30 percent.
Family structure is related to poverty: 93 percent of Asian students and 86 percent of White students live in two-parent households, compared 48 percent of Black students. However, Hispanic families, though nearly as poor as Blacks, are much more likely (79 percent) to have two parents.
The report recommends supporting educational opportunities for parents, high-quality early childhood education in low-income communities, child tax credits for low-income families. In addition, schools should adopt "curricula that reflect diverse cultures and programs that specifically support underrepresented students."
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