An inquiry was done to determine why there were no African American students in the advanced placement math classes and why there were next to none in the honor and more advanced math classes. The inquiry also looked into the large number of these students in the lowest level classes.
Seniors of all races in all classes were studied. The person doing the study found that many African American students came to the school with high marks and standardized scores yet none of them advanced very far in the school. Caucasian and Asian students, sometimes with lower scores moved up.
Many years have passed since the inquiry was done. Nothing has changed. The people in charge should be ashamed of themselves. In fact, I hope they see themselves in this post. And, the teachers in the school should be ashamed because they have done nothing to change the situation.
3 comments:
No wonder some African American parents are going to charters. Who can blame them?
Educators need to have an honest conversation with themselves about race. Do lots of teachers truly care and respect their students-sure. But any child or parent can see a bunch of honors classes with very few African American or Latino students and start to wonder what's going on.
I'm 7:07. I don't want to leave on a negative. This is not a problem that cannot be solved. Some tentative suggestions
- have a committee of teachers, administrators, parents and students look into the issue and offer solutions.
-increase the number of "honors" classes.
-make sure that "honors" doesn't mean the suspect and stress inducing "AP" classes. Remake the classes to have challenging material presented in interesting ways. Perhaps with guest lecturers, field trips, community projects, etc.
-recruit mentors for students from inside the school and maybe the larger community to help students navigate these classes.
I'm sure that there are many much better suggestions. Like I said, this is a problem that can definitely be solved.
The problem can only be solved if the people in charge want it solved. I campaigned for change 10 yeqrs and continued after I retired, pointing out data to support change. Nothing happened. Schools like the status quo.
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