And what they (Educrats) are doing is resulting in crashing and burning for the black students when they don’t make it. One relative was accepted to UC Berkeley and wouldn’t come out of his bedroom after he started. He dropped out in 2 quarters. Another relative was gone in less than a year also (This was 30 years ago). The family send later kids to Morehouse and elsewhere. These college freshmen were Affirmative Action UCB admits but they had the GPAs that were top of the black pool if nothing to brag about compared to the white pool.

I believe the black drop rate then was that 7 out of every 8 black students would quit and be out of UC completely after trying UC Berkeley. I could say that 7 out of 8 of them never should have been there in the first place. They were admitted knowing that they had no reasonable expectation of graduating in order to cover a racial quota. They should have been referred to a college where they would fit into the student body – like Cal State Somewhere Else. A later transfer into UC could be considered.

Every time we pat these kids on the back for doing what they are supposed to, every time we blubber over them for doing C work, every time we spoonfeed them, this is what they are being set up for. I’m afraid this is what OUSD does to the black students. I have no idea what they are doing to the white students – that’s another chapter.

As far as the Standardized tests being biased – they are not. People don’t like the Rorscharch Ink Blots either. Get a clue. The way the tests work is that they compare people who score like the subject did – regardless of why. People with low SAT scores don’t graduate. And the margin of error gets smaller as the scores are more extreme. The fact that someone doesn’t think it’s “fair” to be quizzed on the definition of “regatta” is beside the point. People who can graduate from a real college typically know the definition of “regatta” even if they are black. Because they read a lot. (The Ink blot tests work by comparing the answers given to the answers of people with certain known problems. It was discovered that those who answered the same way in certain cases tended to have the same tendencies. Why your subject chose an answer that statistically matches the disordered group is irrelevant.)

I once posted a blog entry about my interviewing a black 12th grade girl who said she expected to go to UC Davis – her reading level tested at 6th grade level. I was the first one to tell her to her face that she had no chance at all of surviving UC anywhere and if they let her in it was only to fill a quota and she would fail right away. Her best bet to do college work would be to get into a intensive reading & literacy program and start at a Jr College and maybe transfer later. To her credit she didn’t throw a temper tantrum but said no one had ever told her this (and her failing reading/verbal tests went back years). I said she would never see me again but should confront the educrats at her school and elsewhere and tell them what I said and make them explain it all.

Ambition I can work with. People skiing out of bounds and off cliffs I cannot work with.

If I were (still?) in education and got ahold of some of the ambitious kids early enough I could find more in life for them. You can get a lot in this country just being average & disciplined, more if you have SOME smarts also. Untrained and Dumb are going to be in terrible trouble nowadays.

When they get the standardized test scores in the mail, they are told the tests are race biased, this is even said about the math problems because they are word problems. The parents believe what they are told. And they have at least 21 report cards between middle and high school to prove it. Then their child does not get into University and they don’t understand why, and they believe it’s about race. Or maybe the child does get in but then struggles and either makes it or drops out. The dropout rate for black students from UC Berkley is substantially higher than that of white and Asian students.

But the student had good grades, felt good about himself or herself and was accepted, what happened? That is the deceit that many black children in Oakland are facing. I have an example right next door. Great kid, could work up to the standard with a lot more effort, but doesn’t try much harder because she’s on the honor roll. When faced with a chance to take a summer school course offered by UC Berkeley (age and grade appropriate) she is spending 5 hours on homework for every hour she was told she would need to spend to complete assignments.

Do you contend that we as a society have a right to force children (against any wishes of the student or his family) into classes they hate or don’t want?

If the (majority of the) black students, or for that matter any other group – don’t want college prep classes why don’t we simply offer them other campuses and other programs and keep them out of the way of the students that do want college prep. This system is the norm in Europe and the UK and seems to work just fine there. All our problems with classroom disruption seem to involve people who do not want to be there. And I don’t blame them. They should not be there if they have no committment to the educational program.

I believe that over time – like in the early ’60s – you would have more strivers and brights of all colors making there way into the academic track. What we have done by forcibly mixing the strivers and the dulls usually wrecks the educational program entirely. Allow those who want out to opt out. This makes better progress for the borderline candidates who won’t have the losers around to emulate and join up with.

Our schools shuld default down to a basic program with basic ed, survey courses and legal minimums with a vocational track. Allow high school students to declare a vocational goal(s) at 9th grade while opting out of college track. We can suggest certain candidates push for college track or at least start on the prerequisites. I think more of the black students may have talent they didn’t know but without the discipline issue resolved they are DOA in society.

Why?

Still you have given us an interesting glimpse into OUSD at Skyline. AP is Negro-free. Hmmm, wonder why? What do you propose to do about it – if you had a free hand?

As to the failure rates of blacks who do have the AP classes and test scores… That’s documented. Remember, the SAT overpredicts success in black students. Take a look at McWhorters “Losing The Race”. And UC Berkeley is nearby – we all have plenty of first hand experience with what happens there.

I agree with some of what you have said. The black students of OUSD and similar schools are so coddled, unprepared and unstressed from grades 1-9 that they generally can’t turn everything around in 10-12. If they even wanted to which they typically don’t. Comfort Zone issues, you know.

What to do? I say start running the public schools more like 1963 or the way the private schools do. Use selection to run smaller academic high schools separate from the Vocational and Technical High Schools. Make it possible for the fewer minority students so inclined to go from 1-12 on an meaningful academic track regardless of how poor their family is or where they live. The Nigerian and West Indies (and mixed) kids will move up quickly. And since the system will be open it would be fair. With the current system everybody is hobbled. You said that those first 2 years of high school involve being mixed into classes with non-competitive students. We can fix that.

No affirmative action needed.

The vast majority of OUSD students do NOT benefit from this available track, for deep and complex reasons of which the well-known problems of the district are a big part.

Or were you just saying that an OUSD kid who coasted through high school in remedial classes with a B-average and low SATs and then tried to make it at a top school he somehow landed at might be in over his head? Well, duh.

“I can repeat this though, OUSD, AP classes or not, do not prepare it’s students ESPECIALLY the black students for a competitive higher education. Not even close.”

Are you saying that getting high grades in primarily AP classes at Tech or Skyline is not an indicator of future college success? Do you have numbers or studies to back that up or are you just blowing smoke?

Can you, for example, show me that students with similar GPAs with AP-heavy courseloads have different rates of success beyond high school depending on whether they went to Skyline, Bishop O’Dowd, Berkeley High, Lowell or Bentley?

You’re actually missing the real horror of the situation, which is that Blacks and Latinos, especially boys, are for the most part NOT even in AP or honors classes, NOR are they pulling down these hot GPAs.

At Skyline, which is 40% African-American (down 10% in three years), only six African-American male seniors this year qualified to apply for a scholarship that demanded above a modest 3.0 GPA. Many more African American girls would have qualified, but the opportunity was only for boys.

The fact is, if you sit in on almost any AP class at Skyline (and I suspect Tech and OHigh), you’d think that whites and Asians made up the majority of the school population, instead of a combined 20% of our 2000 students.

Why? Another big complex debate, with lots of people pointing fingers at each other, but the simplest way to put is to say that most of them are both underprepared and undermotivated to take on what is a HUGE leap in reading level, homework, testing and, yes, “nerdiness,” from what was expected of them in their previous decade of schooling.

“Your protests are interesting but they haven’t yet moved me.”

You want to make this some mano-a-mano debate when we both agree that the status quo is clearly NOT WORKING FOR THE VAST MAJORITY OF BLACK AND LATINO STUDENTS.

I guess your method of argument is to draw a line in the sand in every conversation and then make a “You’re Either with Us or Agin’ Us!” proclamation, after which you manipulate the words of the “opponent” to be on other side of the line.

Have fun with that.

As far as Marcus: I don’t believe I ever said he was on track to failure – although that could be an issue – I sure don’t know him personally. I do know the game at schools such as OUSD and that is to hand out grades that have both the students and the parents think that all is well when actually the student is not being groomed to survive in any selective/competitive college. One can say that is a form of heading to failure but I don’t see where I spoke specifically about Marcus – you did.

I can repeat this though, OUSD, AP classes or not, do not prepare it’s students ESPECIALLY the black students for a competitive higher education. Not even close.

The main reason for this is that OUSD wants the students to be “happy” and not “stressed”. As a result the black students with the nice grades wind up in competitive colleges and are then really stressed with an outsized drop rate to match. For example the black drop rate at UC Berkeley. For example the non-selection of tougher majors such as te lab sciences.

To be honest OUSD makes no claim to a intensive education so the Skyline didn’t exactly promise what Bentley is promising. So maybe we do have truth in Education here. Marcus’ parents sent him elsewhere because they have expectations for him beyond what Skyline or OUSD typically results in.

I just feel that a public school district as large as OUSD should have it’s own Bentley, like what SF Unified has with Lowell High.

Your protests are interesting but they haven’t yet moved me. Try again please. Compare Skyline to Lowell. Maybe I’m misinformed, I haven’t much recent news from either school.

Her math grade is a B- and I get the feeling the grade issued is partially grade inflation as nothing below a B- can be given to a student who turns in her homework daily, shows up on time and has involved parents.

The thing that I worry about most is that her parents talk about her getting into UC Berkeley. I am not an admissions officer so I cannot purport to know what would happen if she were to apply, but the grade she is given is not commiserate with the work she is performing either daily in class (I have reviewed her class papers) or as homework (I have assisted with homework). I would say that this 7th grade student is performing at a beginning fourth grade level.

Her parents beam with pride over the Honor Roll status. The focus is on the grades rather than the learning and I can’t help but feel that she is going have a problem with test scores, grades and learning must be consistent in college.

This is the only part I see where he directly deals with the gap:

“The academic arena was more like college, and the social scene was out of this world to me. I didn’t receive all the classes I wanted, and I didn’t catch up for the entire first part of the school year. This was partially due to the complete difference of learning pace and lesson planning in the classes offered between public and private schools, and partially due to my indifference in this whole experience.”

The college comment seems to be relating back to his point about how distant the teachers, which is more in the old “stand and deliver” England-style lecture format most profs still use. His reference to “lesson planning” would seem to support this. Plus he says he was indifferent and culture-shocked, so he fell behind.

Also, if he had stayed at Skyline he would have ended up increasingly pushed to take AP classes. These are quite demanding and fast-paced. (I see a larger problem in that there is little middle-ground between the very rapid AP classes and the “normal” classes held back by the terrible preparation many of the kids have had in K-8.)

Marcus, care to weigh in?

As for the girl with the 3.3 GPA, there are various possibilities. First, grade inflation is a problem everywhere, from Harvard to Castlemont. Private school teachers tell me they are under enormous pressure to give A’s because the kids are striving for entrance to the top schools and percieve a single B as poison. And certainly some kids in “ghetto” schools can earn Bs just by sitting quietly and filling in worksheets with stuff out of their textbook that they don’t actually understand. Some well-meaning teachers, frustrated at the poor skills of students, make tests a very small percentage of the grade and streeeeeetch to give grades based on effort or growth.

But there may be a simpler issue in your example: All of her problems are in math. She may have an undiagnosed learning disability in math (which is just a fancy way of saying her brain, for whatever reason, doesn’t learn or do math well).

More important than her overall GPA then would be: What level of math is she at and what grades does she get there? Best guess? She’s getting Cs in the lowest level of math because she’s a good girl who can’t pass math tests. Her real problem will be passing the CAHSEE, which does keep some hard-working students with decent GPA from walking the stage.

On another note, I was recently working with a neighbor who is on the Honor Roll with a 3.3 GPA. She could not add and subtract fractions, had trouble with long division and had trouble figuring out word problems calculating time. I asked her parents if I could see her STAR test results and she is not even proficient. How can someone be on the Honor Roll, and not be meeting the state standard and test below proficient?