At a recent award ceremony for the Phillips Brooks House Association at Harvard yard, awardee and keynote speaker Education Secretary Arne Duncan spoke directly to the point of racial inequality in US education.
“If you can ride on the front of the bus, but you cannot read, you are not truly free,” he said.
With a focus on the 40% lower graduation rates for ethnic students, Duncan spoke disdainfully of students being promoted without passing the academic tests for each grade. Overcrowding and the need to maintain pass-fail levels often allow for students that have not obtained the necessary passing grades in their major subjects to be moved forward to the next grade.
Duncan noted that the government is well aware of the issues facing ethnic students and are “making an unprecedented federal commitment to these areas.”
The inequalities experienced by ethnic students are extensive.
• More than 60 percent of black students attend schools where more than 50 percent of the school population is identified as living in poverty, compared to 18 percent of white students.
• A high-poverty, majority-minority high school is five times more likely to have weak promoting power (promoting 50 percent or fewer freshmen to senior status within four years) than a majority white school.
• In high schools where at least 75 percent of the students are low-income, there are three times as many uncertified or out-of-field teachers teaching both English and science than in schools with wealthier populations.
These statistics make the process of education reform for ALL that much more difficult to obtain. In order to truly see results for our nation’s education standards, we need to turn the focus to these struggling students and build the system from the ground up.
Posted By: Paul Adams
Wednesday, October 27th 2010 at 12:13PM
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