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Wed 31 Oct, 2007 05:25 pm
Colleges pledge to close minority, low-income gaps
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The Associated Press
In a coordinated stab at one of higher education's most pressing problems, some of the country's largest university systems pledged Wednesday to cut in half the achievement gaps for minority and low-income students on their campuses over the next eight years.
The announcement comes at a time of deep concern that, from everyday undergraduates to the ranks of elite faculty, America's colleges and universities don't look much like the country as a whole.
That point also was underscored Thursday by a new study tracking the representation of women and minority faculty in elite science departments, which found minorities are making little progress moving up the ranks. Women are faring noticeably better than five years ago, but still trail well behind men.
The 19 public university systems committed to halving by 2015 two key gaps separating low-income and minority students from others ?- the rates of attending college and of graduating.
Nationally, whites aged 25 to 29 are twice as likely as blacks and three times as likely as Hispanics to have a college degree. And by age 24, high-income students are eight times more likely to have a bachelor's degree than low-income ones.
Under NCLB, more than half of black students are dropping out of high school, and Hispanics are dropping out at about 40 percent. If this is truly the case, there isn't much the college system can do to help minorities and/or low income students. The school system needs to correct NCLB before it's too late by eliminating the federal mandates, and letting local school boards handle local problems.
Is family income and student education level a false correlation, since higher income might correlate to two-parent families where the parents have a college education, and their child(ren) is/are raised in an environment where education is IMPORTANT?
Nothing like concerned parents to raise achieving children.
Also, on the east coast, Asians are a minority, and they are in abundance in all the high schools for gifted students. No government programs are needed to get these first generation Asian students to achieve. Or, is this politically incorrect to point out?
Foofie, I'm Asian and there was never any pressure from our mother to achieve or go to college. I know many like our family, and now have family members with the same "achievements" in education and professions. A good example is our sister; her two oldest are physicians, the third son a dentist, and the youngest has a PhD in chemistry. Our two boys both graduated cum laude; our oldest graduated summa cum laude and with honors on his graduate degree. My wife graduated high school, nursing school, and college with honors. My scholastics were wanting, but have worked most of my working career in management positions after my first 3.5 years after college.
It has nothing to do with both parents having a college education; our father died when I was two years old, and our mother didn't even finish high school. She spoke Japanese at home, and worked as a waitress when we were young children.
We didn't pressure our children to do well in school, but I told them when they were young that I expected them to go to college; no more, no less.
cicerone imposter wrote:Foofie, I'm Asian and there was never any pressure from our mother to achieve or go to college. I know many like our family, and now have family members with the same "achievements" in education and professions. A good example is our sister; her two oldest are physicians, the third son a dentist, and the youngest has a PhD in chemistry. Our two boys both graduated cum laude; our oldest graduated summa cum laude and with honors on his graduate degree. My wife graduated high school, nursing school, and college with honors. My scholastics were wanting, but have worked most of my working career in management positions after my first 3.5 years after college.
It has nothing to do with both parents having a college education; our father died when I was two years old, and our mother didn't even finish high school. She spoke Japanese at home, and worked as a waitress when we were young children.
We didn't pressure our children to do well in school, but I told them when they were young that I expected them to go to college; no more, no less.
I think you just pointed out the intellectual superiority of Asians. I'm fine with that. Now that we've deduced the intellectual superiority of Asians, you can extrapolate that to this thread. (Hint: we can't all be intellectually superior Asians. Or, every bell curve has a left side.)
If I'm stereotyping any group, it is Asians, based on your cogent proof that Asians are intellectually superior (since even without family pressure, they achieve/accomplish academically). The left side of the bell curve has all sorts of people, from all sorts of backgrounds; I'm not saying who's in that left side of the bellcurve. Don't come to a false conclusion about what I said.
I'm just saying if we agree that Asians have a propensity for achieving academically in this country, why can't other groups??? I'm not one for letting sociologists give excuses, based on external conditions.
I'm not stereotyping anyone; however, I just don't care for excuses for self-defeating behavior. Perhaps, I'm not really seeing superiority in Asian academic achievement, but superiority in the Asian culture? Yes, let's admit the Asian culture is superior in getting children to achieve academically. How's that?
Quote:I just don't care for excuses for self-defeating behavior.
and you won't have to explain that post then
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