Can anyone help explaining?

First, thank you for helping me notice a typo in my post #11. Regarding CST US History scores, the test is taken at the 11 grade level (not 9th)! My point is that it allows for a straightforward comparison between the districts for those who seek to understand the dearth of OUSD Merit Scholars compared to elsewhere. Test score fees and who pays them is not the cause of this disparity. There’s more to it.

Secondly, I, and others who post here, have seen too often the District’s disdain for, or fear of, academic tracks. It is a statewide phenomenon to a certain extent, but my experience is here in Oakland. Sorry if this feels like bashing. Don’t take it personally. Rather, this posture by the district is truly bashing public education by alienating those who will shape the future of our nation (the best and the brightest) from participating in public education. The casualty is the strength of our democracy. National Merit Scholarships aren’t the most important issue, but OUSD’s representation there is an indicator of its lack of emphasis on scholarship at the highest level.

Once again: Lets try to understand the Oakland representation among the National Merit semifinalists by comparing Berkeley and Oakland. Pick the CST US History test: Berkeley HS has 29% scoring advanced on the CST test for US History in 11th grade (all, or almost all BUSD high schoolers go to Berkeley HS). Meanwhile, OUSD has 9% scoring advanced on the same test. However, The Oakland HS population is 3 times larger, so the absolute number of kids scoring “advanced” is about the same in each district: about 170. That is the cohort where you will find the merit scholars. So you might expect similar results, but I think what works against OUSD students is the district’s disdain for, or fear of, academic tracks. Its in those programs where such things will be pursued.

So gee, I wonder when these OUSD students are most likely to take the PSAT? And I doubt that they would want to miss class and sit for it again in junior year, just on the chance that they might qualify as a National Merit Scholar unless they scored astronomically high as a sophomore. Sure, OUSD loses potential bragging rights by having its students take the PSAT as sophomores, but it gains by having more students thinking about college earlier in high school.

And for the person bashing OUSD scores vs. Berkeley High’s scores for U.S. History in the 9th grade: As far as I know, in OUSD U.S. History is taught as an 11th grade subject, so any 9th grade students taking that class were anomalies. This is not to say Oakland’s scores couldn’t be better. Also, I have heard numerous stories of bored kids sick of standardized tests that don’t affect their grades are filling in bubbles at random. Who knows how much of that goes on and skews STAR scores.

And when I go to funerals of the aged black professional class I look around and see – Egpytians…

So when you work with Mexican Indians – and Dark Skinned poor Blacks in the OUSD schools – and tell them that you have a list of Univ of CA entrance requirements you want them to take and college apps to consider and budgets to work out – it’s more than a notion. Even if Oprah paid for everything, and even if they could do the work, exactly who are they going to BE WITH on this road?

This will work better if we have a set of schools starting in grade school where those with ability and ambition can be sent. Those who don’t want to be bothered won’t be, because having somebody in your line of view who is working to pull ahead, just might make someone want to kick them.

But:

You cannot make people be something they are not. I have tried and occasionally I still do. Mexican culture has little use for “College”, least of all for the females. Hispanic family values, you know. I know many hispanic judges and lawyers and their families. As a rule they are not “orthodox”. Making that choice to move upmarket costs them – a price they were willing to pay. Ghetto teenagers are not, unless their families are pushing it.

Blacks have the same problem. You may have read about the “acting white’ syndrome and people being beaten and shunned for having an career plan deemed too ambitious. My extended family and all of their associates and friends in CA solved that problem by moving to white neighborhoods and enrolling their kids in white schools as soon after their migration to CA as they legally could in the mid 20th Century. They went to all black schools through professional school & got drafted. The price my parent’s generation paid for doing this was cultural disruption – kids marrying whites and moving to Denver, Seattle, etc. with the mixed grandchildren growing up in a different world. Well, they wanted everybody to go to professional/grad school and they got that wish. Other families didn’t want the cultural upheaval and kept it real. To each his own.

It’s just not that easy to say that people should just go to college and be a professional. It’s not just the tuition that costs. I know a black lawyer who wasn’t able to go in his (mother/siblings) families houses after he started practice. When you are from lower class and you “go to college” you leave a lot of people behind and you can’t go back. Let’s just say your tastes change.

OUSD creates an environment where conformity and keeping it real is more likely to happen. Charters such as American Indian (with no Indians!) don’t.

Segregating the secondary school students by ability/career plan/class/IQ/whatever avoids this also. OUSD needs to move in that direction but they don’t care enough about the students to do so. Changing class represents discomfort. Urban schools are about pacification and comfort above all else. That’s why American Indian sounds so “unfomfortable” and liberals attack it because they are perceived as not being nice to the “chillun”.

So the poor bright students will get snuffed out by the dulls as much as the school. COnformity is comfortable.

This syndrome doesn’t occur the same way with the non-Mexican immigrants since their societies don’t have the same dominant mass of low class. The Nigerians and Ethiopians who got themselves here tend to be strivers and higher IQs of that culture. You see it in their average performance in school.

Mixed students are another wild card because they can take from the higher class of the mix (higher class as in grandparent occupation).

The Hispanics are held back by their own culture which includes that which is hardwired. Perhaps the elites who decided to flood the USA with them count on that in replacing blacks with hispanics as the new dominant lower class – safely below the IQ average of the dominant class, and safely above the average IQ of the previous lowest class.

We have created a birth-caste system in this country with more downward mobility and less upward. This was not supposed to happen and strong public school systems were our guarantee it wouldn’t happen.

Brave New World.

I dont know if the list is upsetting to others, but as a Latina, I am saddedned that my people are stiil stuck in a one way road to nowhere afer generations.

If schools, like the often hated Oaklnd charter school and their leaders are preparing Latinos and other disenfranchised kids for college, then we should not argue the method, and acknowledge the work.

Moving on, the conversation on this thread has been about the low number of semi-finalists in OUSD. I didn’t know anything about the NM program until yesterday, so did a little reading. First one must to be in the top 3.3%, or 50,000 of the 1.5 million PSAT test takers in the country to advance to qualify for National Merit Program Recognition. The top third (16,000) of those 50,000 test takers become semifinalists. The other 34,000 are recognized and will receive Letters of Commendation. So take the test, and if you score high, get recognized.

No other criteria appear to come into play until the Finalist stage.

Good luck to your son. Sounds like he’s got a decent chance of being recognized as a young scholar.

I agree with Ex Oakland Staff about the pervasiveness and influence of these College Board programs, which have become the heart of the college admissions process and carry huge weight in how students are judged and in determining their very future. I should actually be a fan, since my own older child is a slack-the-homework-but-ace-the-test kind of student, so the College Board scores benefited him, but overall I think that amount of influence is a problem.

So I don’t see alot of evildoing here. It looks like a fairly healthy meritocracy to me. As for the significance of being a semifinalist, its good news to those students, because about half of them will receive scholarships. And if they don’t, they are still recognized for their achievements. The only criticism I found in a few minutes of searching is that it relies exclusively on the PSAT.

From the NM website, http://www.nationalmerit.org/about.php

“NMSC’s goals have remained constant since its inception:

to identify and honor academically talented U.S. high school students;
to stimulate increased support for their education; and
to provide efficient and effective scholarship program management for organizations that wish to sponsor college undergraduate scholarships.”

and from wikipedia,

“Of the 1.4 million entrants, about 50,000 qualify for recognition. Two-thirds of those qualified receive Letters of Commendation; the remainder become Semifinalists, about 94% of whom go on to become Finalists. Over half of the Finalists are selected to receive scholarships underwritten by corporations and business organizations, colleges and universities, and by NMSC with its own funds.”