Annotated Bibliography 2nd Draft

Thompson, Gail L. Through Ebony Eyes. San Francisco, California. Jossey-Bass A Wiley Imprint. 2004. Print.

            Through Ebony Eyes is an in depth analysis of the many factors that play a role in African Americans and Latino’s education. Gail Thompson explains how the traditional ways of both the government and school system has created an environment that makes it difficult for African Americans to succeed in school. He also discusses the ways that educators and interest groups have attempted to close the gap between students of color and their white counterparts. Thompson includes in input on where he believes schools and the government went wrong in addressing students of color in a country that it designed to address the majority. Through Ebony Eyes is his way to inform educators and anyone who hopes to become an educator on ways to become more effective when teaching the minority here in America.

            Thompson’s argument is broken up into different chapters throughout the book. In each chapter he addresses a different reason for why African Americans struggle academically. It almost seems as if he is attempting to argue his opinion on all of the factors that he has come across in his studies.  The author does a great job of connecting all of different aspects he discusses back to the student, while including how it impacts them academically. In the introduction he claims to discuss the issues that affect minorities academically where in actuality he focuses on African Americans and only include other minorities if they happen to fall into the same boat as African Americans. The book is structured similar to that of a textbook, which shows how the author hopes to truly educate the reader in ways to teach minorities more effectively. He breaks down the different factors into “theories” and backs them up with personal examples as well as hypotheticals.

            From reading the introduction and first chapter I can already tell that this book will be the driving force behind my research because of how well it has been structured. The main thing about this book is that it may connect to other things that I pick up later on in my research. Seeing as the author includes his opinion of a variety of different topics I may be able to find different authors or researchers that may disagree with what he states in this book.

·         “In other words, these students infer that they have to reject their home culture to succeed academically” (pg. 17)- The Acting White Theory

·         “During previous eras black youth were more likely to derive values and identity from family, church, and school…. Today, the influence of these traditional purveyors of Black culture [has] largely diminished. Now media and entertainment are among the major forces transmitting culture to this generation of Black America”. (pg. 20)

·         “This preoccupation with getting rich quickly stems from at least two sources. The first being is the high unemployment rate in urban communities. In many cases, the education system has failed to prepare young blacks for the workforce or for college” (pg.21)  

_______________________________________________________________________________

Hale, Janice E. Learning While Black. Baltimore, Maryland. The Johns Hopkins University Press. 2001 Print.

           Learning While Black is a book about the impact that the community and life outside of school has on African American students that live in an urban environment. Janice Hale explains how politicians and news reporters, who discuss education and its impacts on African Americans, lack experience which makes them less fit for discussing the solution to the problem. She then includes her solutions to the issues that most educators see in African American communities. Hale mentions that if the school is not the center of the program or institution that hopes to reach out to African American students than they will not be able to reach those students who struggle academically. She also talks about the relationship between school and family is essential because students don’t stop learning when they leave school so everyone involved must be on the same page for the student’s sake.

           Throughout the book the author uses personal examples as well as things she has learned throughout her research to strengthen her point. From reading the first chapter the reader can tell that some of the issues she has addressed may seem obvious but when she goes in depth about the importance of each issue, the reader will see an entirely different way at looking at the same issues. That allows the author to include more solutions and explain why educators are the best sources for truly understanding what issues African American students face within an academic environment.

           This reading is not ultra-useful because Janice Hale uses this book to solve the issues that affect African American students. My research is purely to find and analyze the issues that African American students face. However the author explains how her solution will fix the academic struggles that African American students face, which means that she will mention and explain the issues she has come across.

•“The overwhelming majority of African American children come from single-parent households. African Americans work longer hours often for less money than whites earn (Toppo 2000); often they are minimally educated and have substantial constraints on their time.” (pg. 8)

•“Parents whisper among themselves, expressing their frustration with this situation, but is never brought into the dialogue on school reform” (pg. 9)

•“At this writing the state of Michigan spends $35,000 a year to incarcerate one African American male. For maximum-security incarceration, the cost to state is about 65,000 a year, and to the federal state about $75,000. Compare those costs with $8,000 it cost to enroll an African American male child in a two-year Head Start program.” (pg. 38)

____________________________________________________________________________ 

Irvine, Jacqueline Jordan. Black Students and School Failures.New York. Greenwood Press. 1990.

           Black Students and School Failures is a book about the different connection between African American students performance in school, and their personal lives. The Author Jacqueline Irvine connects every aspect of an African American, who grew up in an urban environment to how well they do on a national scale. She also discusses how the mindset of these students change throughout their school experience and all of the driving factors that lead them to a horrible conclusion. This book also includes a lot of stats that relate African Americans to whites in different categories such as: standardize testing, graduation rates, poverty, and teen pregnancy.

           Irvine does a great job of explaining what schools in poor communities lack and how a failed school system creates poorly educated students. She then connects that with the added impression that students get from their environment. This book breaks down the aspects of educating a student both from the academic point as well as the cultural point of view. The level of analysis that the author shows throughout her book prove that she has not only looked at this issue from a numbers stance but a psychological stance as well. It is as if she has stepped in to the shoes of the student, teacher, and researcher.

          

I can use this book in multiple ways. For one I can use this information to strengthen things that I have learned in other parts of my research. Also my main topic may be altered because I am learning about the issues that cause African Americans to struggle in school; however this book may lead me to focus on a more specific area. The author provides detailed examples of how each issue can cause a snowball effect of failure or misfortune in a student’s life. That will allow me to use the book in multiple ways depending on where I go with my research.  

·         “There is a strong relationship between black student achievement, teen parenthood, and poverty. Poor black students usually score lower on standardize measure of achievement and are overrepresented in the ranks of dropouts and pregnant girls.” (pg. xiv)

·         “The hidden curriculum is the unstated but influential knowledge, attitude, norms, rules, rituals, values, and beliefs that are transmitted to students through structure policies, processes, formal content, and social relationships of school”. (pg. 5)

          

·         “One factor related to the nonachievement of black students is the disproportionate use of severe disciplinary practices, which leads to black students exclusion from classes, their perception of mistreatment, and feelings of alienated and rejection, which result ultimately in their misbehaving more and/or leaving school”. (pg. 16)

____________________________________________________________________________ 

Almond, Monica R. "The Black Charter School Effect: Black Students In American Charter Schools." Journal Of Negro Education 81.4 (2012): 354-365. Education Research Complete. Web. 31 Mar. 2013.

           This source focuses on the Black-White achievement gap and the different factors that affect both blacks and whites academically. The reading explains how over the last decade or so the gap between blacks and white has been linked to poorly trained teachers, low curriculum standards, and a lack of appreciation for Black culture. There are more factors mentioned in the reading al based around the ways that the school fails to adjust to the requirements of black students. The article also discusses how many people are unsure on how to go about some of these issues related to black student’s struggle in school and how this issue causes a rift between people who are looking to address this issue.

           This article does a great job in giving a background on the Black-White achievement gap. By going into detail about the history of this issue and where the country stands on it now allows the reader to get a full understanding of what researchers have learned about blacks in school. However the pages that are used to discuss the change in black students in charter schools are a waste because they do not connect back to how this is affecting black students academically or the difference between black students in charter schools and traditional schools. In fact it takes a while for the article to even come back to the question of “Why African Americans perform lower than whites academically”.

           I can use this source in order to connect the factors about the black-white achievement gap to other things I have learned in my reading. This source also explains the way that schools in poor communities fail to educate black students and mentions the reasons for why these schools are ineffective.   

•“Roxbury Preparatory Charter School in Boston, Massachusetts boast achievement scores that are higher than their peers in Boston Public Schools, and higher than the average of their peers in the state of Massachusetts overall. With a student population that is 61% African American, Roxbury Prep's mission is unapologetically college-driven (Merseth, 2009).” (pg. 7)

•“All ñve schools examined in the Merseth (2009) study were identified as having high expectations for their students. Researchers found that the students were expected to perform at high levels, manage their behavior, and be full participants in the classroom.” (pg. 7)

•“But is racial segregation problematic for Black students? Today, a majority of Black students already attend defacto segregated schools, as a result of White-flight and other policy related issues.” (pg. 9)

___________________________________________________________________________________

Caton, Marcia Theresa. "Black Male Perspectives On Their Educational Experiences In High School." Urban Education 47.6 (2012): 1055-1085. ERIC. Web. 31 Mar. 2013.

           This source discuss the perception of black males in high school and some of the punishments that are based around that perception. Marcia Caton states that black males are the majority of students that are expelled or suspended from school. She also believes that public schools in black communities are a micro version of the penal system because of how their ways of punishment are used to isolate the misbehaved from the rest of the academic community. The author argues that the school’s disciplinary standards make it more likely for a black male to be prosecuted rather than given an “in-house” punishment.  The black male perception in high school is also linked back to their mindset and explains how they are more likely to conform to the negative opinion they have been labeled with because that is the type of culture they have been exposed to.

           This article is well structured and does a great job in introducing how the black male perception in high school is derived from the vast majority of black males that receive disciplinary punishment. Also it ties that notion back to the idea that black students who go to urban public schools are more likely to conform to the way others view them because of the way that those public schools are disciplining their students. The author structures her argument well, however she doesn’t seem to have a strong argument because of her lack of evidence and poor job of connecting her thesis to those pieces of information.

           I am planning on using this information as an appetizer so it can open my eyes to how the perception of black students could have an effect on their performance in school. In my research I hope to use this to explain the social aspect of why blacks struggle in school; however that depends on where I decide to go in my paper. All of this information makes it difficult to narrow my research towards one aspect of blacks struggling in school.

•          “A study of 19 middle schools in the Midwest, found that Black males were sent to the principal office more than their counterparts for more subjective reasons such as “disrespect” and “perceived threat” (Wallace, Goodkind, Wallace, & Bachman, 2008).” (pg.  4)

•          “Black males have been marginalized from mainstream society because of historical, economic, and political forces and therefore do not benefit from the resources of this country” (pg. 24)

•          “However, the ways in which schools balance discipline with a nurturing and caring environment are reflected in the ways that schools treat their students. Urban school administrators should invest more in providing teachers with professional development on classroom management.” (pg. 25)

Annotated Bibliography Workshop

1.  What advice did you receive from each member of your group? Explain.

Well my group didn't have time to get to my paper so I didn't get any feedback. But Danielle did comment on my blog with ways to improve my paper. I agree with her point on focusing my summaries to be more of a summary and less of an analysis.

2. What was the most helpful advice you recieved?

The most helpful advice I recieved was to make sure that my summary paragraphs are summaries not analysis'.

3. What was the least helpful advice?

Well i only got one comment so I can't really say what was not helpful.

4. What are you plan's for revision?
RE-read, and Re-read

Self Assessment Reflection

What were your goals for yourself in writing this paper?  To what extent did you reach your goals?

My goal in the annotated bibliography was to create a document that explained the usefulness of my sources and give me a starting point with each source. However I feel as if the annotated bibliographies that are about the books I am using may not cover the entire book seeing as I haven't read the entire thing.

How did you use your time in developing this paper?  Did you use class opportunities to improve your writing?  Explain.  How did your use of time fit your goals?

I didn't use a lot of class time to work on this paper because I still was trying to figure out how to focus my inquiry question into a smaller category. When I started my work I was in the library and pulled out a few books and 4 hours later I had gotten a strong idea on what each of the books were about and I believe that I was able to write about the sources and how I planned on using them.

How did you see your writing changing?  Did you take advantage of the responses from your peers?  Explain how you worked with your peers?

I don't see a change in my writing just yet I feel as if after I have gotten further down the process of actually putting together all of what I have learned into one cohesive purpose. 

Who else contributed to your paper’s success?  Explain their role?

My mother has played a big role in my paper's success because I am constantly talking to her about every interesting piece of information relating to my inquiry question, she gives her feedback and gives me ways to not only continue my research but one day use this to solve an issue that is very personal to me.

What have you learned about yourself as a writer? What did you learn from others?

Throughout the course of this class I have learned that my writing is rarely done with much detail and that it may take a few proof readings to catch all of my grammatical errors. Also I have learned that my concepts are great and I can explain them very well however I must learned to do so with out  being to wordy. I feel as if I write similar to the way I talk and I use a lot of words because I think that I can make a stronger argument with extra words. So the key for me is to learn about other great debaters and see how they structure their arguments, that will not only better me as a speaker but help me become a meticulous writer.

What was the hardest part of writing this paper?  Explain.  

The hardest part of this paper was following the steps and including certain things in certain paragraphs. I used Megan's example and read her annotated bibliography over and over because I wanted to make sure I understand what she would be looking for in each paragraph. The struggle for me in this paper was that I didn't know the difference between a summary and an analysis.

What was the easiest part? Explain.  

The easiest part of this paper was writing how I plan on using the source in my paper. While reading my sources I would constantly refer back to how this could help me in my research.

Where did you take risks?  Explain.

I dont feel as if I have taken any risk, yet.

What parts of your paper are you proudest of?  Why?

My favorite part of my paper would be my analysis of each sources, because to me that is the most important part and I could refer back to that if I am unclear on how I want to use that authors opinion.

What parts of your paper still need improvement?  Why?  How did you attempt to make these improvements before you turned the paper in?

I feel as if before the workshop session my paper needed a good proofreading, but outside of that I dont really know what parts of my paper I could improve. A simple way I addressed that issue was to re-read my paper and think of ways to make my points clearer.

Explain your writing process from brainstorming to now.

I dont feel as if I did much brainstorming however after reading some of my sources I now want to find information on more specific topics such as parental involvement, and school activities in African American communities.

Annotated Bibliography 1st draft

Thompson, Gail L. Through Ebony Eyes. San Francisco, California. Jossey-Bass A Wiley Imprint. 2004. Print.

            Through Ebony Eyes is an in depth analysis of the many factors that play a role in African Americans and Latino’s education. Gail Thompson explains how the traditional ways of both the government and school system has created an environment that makes it difficult for African Americans/Latinos to succeed in school. He also discusses the ways that educators and interest groups have attempted to close the gap between students of color and their white counterparts. Thompson includes in input on where he believes schools and the government went wrong in addressing students of color in a country that it designed to address the majority. Thompson’s argument seems very broad because he doesn’t focus on one issue that affects the academics of people of color in America. It almost seems as if he is attempting to argue his opinion on all of the factors that he has come across in his studies. Through Ebony Eyes is his way to inform educators and anyone who hopes to become an educator on ways to become more effective when teaching the minority here in America.

            Thompson’s argument is broken up into different chapters throughout the book. In each chapter he addresses a different reason for why African Americans struggle academically. The author does a great job of connecting all of different aspects he discusses back to the student, while including how it impacts them academically. In the introduction he claims to discuss the issues that affect minorities academically where in actuality he focuses on African Americans and only include other minorities if they happen to fall into the same boat as African Americans. The book is structured similar to that of a textbook, which shows how the author hopes to truly educate the reader in ways to teach minorities more effectively. He breaks down the different factors into “theories” and backs them up with personal examples as well as hypotheticals.

            From reading the introduction and first chapter I can already tell that this book will be the driving force behind my research because of how well it has been structured. The man thing about this book is that it may connect to other things that I pick up later on in my research. Seeing as the author includes his opinion of a variety of different topics I may be able to find different authors or researchers that may disagree with what he states in this book.

·         “In other words, these students infer that they have to reject their home culture to succeed academically” (pg. 17)- The Acting White Theory

·         “During previous eras black youth were more likely to derive values and identity from family, church, and school…. Today, the influence of these traditional purveyors of Black culture [has] largely diminished. Now media and entertainment are among the major forces transmitting culture to this generation of Black America”. (pg. 20)

“This preoccupation with getting rich quickly stems from at least two sources. The first being is the high unemployment rate in urban communities. In many cases, the education system has failed to prepare young blacks for the workforce or for college” (pg.21)
_________________________________________________________________________________

Hale, Janice E. Learning While Black. Baltimore, Maryland. The Johns Hopkins University Press. 2001 Print.

            Learning While Black is a book about the impact that the community and life outside of school has on African American students that live in an urban environment. Janice Hale explains how politicians and news reporters, who discuss education and its impacts on African Americans, lack experience which makes them less fit for discussing the solution to the problem. She then includes her solutions to the issues that most educators see in African American communities. Hale mentions that if the school is not the center of the program or institution that hopes to reach out to African American students than they will not be able to reach those students who struggle academically. She also talks about the relationship between school and family is essential because students don’t stop learning when they leave school so everyone involved must be on the same page for the student’s sake.

            Throughout the book the author uses personal examples as well as things she has learned throughout her research to strengthen her point. From reading the first chapter the reader can tell that some of the issues she has addressed may seem obvious but when she goes in depth about the importance of each issue, the reader will see an entirely different way at looking at the same issues. That allows the author to include more solutions and explain why educators are the best sources for truly understanding what issues African American students face within an academic environment.

            This reading is not ultra-useful because Janice Hale uses this book to solve the issues that affect African American students. My research is purely to find and analyze the issues that African American students face. However the author explains how her solution will fix the academic struggles that African American students face, which means that she will mention and explain the issues she has come across.

·        “The overwhelming majority of African American children come from single-parent households. African Americans work longer hours often for less money than whites earn (Toppo 2000); often they are minimally educated and have substantial constraints on their time.” (pg. 8)

·        “Parents whisper among themselves, expressing their frustration with this situation, but is never brought into the dialogue on school reform” (pg. 9)

·        “At this writing the state of Michigan spends $35,000 a year to incarcerate one African American male. For maximum-security incarceration, the cost to state is about 65,000 a year, and to the federal state about $75,000. Compare those costs with $8,000 it cost to enroll an African American male child in a two-year Head Start program.” (pg. 38)

_____________________________________________________________________________

 Irvine, Jacqueline Jordan. Black Students and School Failures.New York. Greenwood Press. 1990.

            Black Students and School Failures is a book about the different connection between African American students performance in school, and their personal lives. The Author Jacqueline Irvine connects every aspect of an African American, who grew up in an urban environment to how well they do on a national scale. She also discusses how the mindset of these students change throughout their school experience and all of the driving factors that lead them to a horrible conclusion. This book also includes a lot of stats that relate African Americans to whites in different categories such as: standardize testing, graduation rates, poverty, and teen pregnancy.

            Irvine does a great job of explaining what schools in poor communities lack and how a failed school system creates poorly educated students. She then connects that with the added impression that students get from their environment. This book breaks down the aspects of educating a student both from the academic point as well as the cultural point of view. The level of analysis that the author shows throughout her book prove that she has not only looked at this issue from a numbers stance but a psychological stance as well. It is as if she has stepped in to the shoes of the student, teacher, and researcher.

            I can use this book in multiple ways. For one I can use this information to strengthen things that I have learned in other parts of my research. Also my main topic may be altered because I am learning about the issues that cause African Americans to struggle in school; however this book may lead me to focus on a more specific area. The author provides detailed examples of how each issue can cause a snowball effect of failure or misfortune in a student’s life. That will allow me to use the book in multiple ways depending on where I go with my research.   

·         “There is a strong relationship between black student achievement, teen parenthood, and poverty. Poor black students usually score lower on standardize measure of achievement and are overrepresented in the ranks of dropouts and pregnant girls.” (pg. xiv)

·         “The hidden curriculum is the unstated but influential knowledge, attitude, norms, rules, rituals, values, and beliefs that are transmitted to students through structure policies, processes, formal content, and social relationships of school”. (pg. 5)

·         “One factor related to the nonachievement of black students is the disproportionate use of severe disciplinary practices, which leads to black students exclusion from classes, their perception of mistreatment, and feelings of alienated and rejection, which result ultimately in their misbehaving more and/or leaving school”. (pg. 16)

Active Reading Post (2)

Stereotype Threat

             To this day the stigma of being African-American is still relevant, as it has proved to have an effect on the educational outcomes of these individuals.  Traditionally blacks have known to score lower on standardized tests than their white counterparts. It was argued by Dr. Claude Steele and Dr. Joshua Aronson that blacks are assisted in their underperformance by a stereotype threat (Steele & Aronson). Most people know of stereotypes, for example: Asian-Americans excel in mathematics, women do poorly in math, and for African-Americans they have consistently tested poorly. Steele and Aronson have argued that these negative stereotypes can be extremely harmful and assert that stereotype threats can seriously alter academic achievement and motivation for these students.

Through the course of their studies, they have found out those black students who value academic success the most, are also the most susceptible to stereotype threat. This occurs in two ways: first, it adds a pressure that may directly undermine their performance; second, if it persists as a chronic feature of the school performance domain, it may force the affected students to misidentify with that domain.  This could explain a multitude of explanations, such as the discrepancy between SAT scores for whites and blacks, even when the socioeconomic class is not a factor. Also, as we look at the second explanation this also gives us more information to why black students disengage from academics in high school.

Steele and Aronson are not first to test stereotype threat as during the 1960’s Irwin Katz and his colleagues suggested that stereotype threat could also influence performance on a test.  Katz found that blacks were able to score better an IQ subtest if the test was presented as a test of eye-hand coordination. In addition, another key finding showed that blacks score better on an IQ test when they believe the test will be compared to that of other black.

Later these two professors take Katz findings to conduct a set of tests of their own. Their goal was to test the hypothesis that predicts underachievement in test situations for school-identified blacks. In order find a school identified set of students they pooled students from Stanford University, where black and white students were randomly assigned to test different treatments of conditions. In this study the students were given a diagnostic test, and the results were similar to that of Katz in that blacks perform worse than whites. However when the test is presented in another fashion other than a test of academic ability, the performance of blacks improves drastically. In this study the interaction was only marginally significant, but if we look at later studies we see a in increase importance.

In their second study, black students again took a diagnostic test. The results showed that the nature of the test impairs the rate as well as the accuracy of black’s performance. This experiment was similar to the first, except the test time was cut into half and after the test the participants completed a version of the Spielberger State Anxiety Inventory.

The third study looks to examine why framing tests as measures of ability impairs the performance of black participants. Here the students did not even take a test instead they were asked to complete a word fragment task, which has been shown to measure the cognitive activation of constructs either primed or self-generated. The first twelve fragments reflected race-related constructs or an image associated with African-Americans. Fragments consisted of minority, welfare, color, token, inferior, weak, flunk, lazy and black. Later the participants completed a questionnaire that asks for their hobbies and activities they enjoyed the most. Those that were stereotypically related were basketball, being a couch potato, or hip-hop and were found to be avoided the most by African-American students. In addition, students were asked to complete a demographic questionnaire that asked about age, gender, major. There was also a second item that asked about race. It was hypothesized that students in the diagnostic section were more likely to not acknowledge their race.

The results of this study showed that blacks in the diagnostic section were able to complete more of stereotype race-related fragments. The first three studies showed that presenting a difficult test as a representation of diagnostic of ability can undermine the performance and make them feel threatened by racial stereotypes.

The fourth study asked the some participants to record their race on demographic questionnaire before taking the test. They reasoned that doing so might force these participants to think more about racial stereotypes, feel stereotype threatened when they took the test, and as a result perform worse on the test.  The results showed that reporting racial identify depresses performance on a difficult test even when it was not presented as a diagnostic of intellectual ability.

 In the fifth study, black students were placed in race-primed condition, the only difference this time was that black participants were administered by computer. The results showed that race-primed participants answered significantly fewer items correctly than do unprimed participants. This study also confirms that race priming depresses the performance of black participants on a difficult examination, and that it causes reactions that could be response to stereotype threat.

 In conclusion, the first three tests showed that if stereotypes are primed for the test-takers, the students will perform worse on the test. However, the last two tests showed that merely asking a set of black students to record their race is enough to impair their test performance, even when the test is not portrayed as measure of intellectual ability. Which makes one think, is identifying yourself as an African-American enough to for students to perform less well on tests? And if so, what does this say about how blacks perceive their group identity as being black

Key

Yellow: Relates to my topic about African Americans in school

Red: Word of Interest

Purple: Something to think about throought my research

My Thoughts

This reading brought up an entirely new idea that may have a big impact on my research. The author argues that sterotypes actually hinder African Americans from performing well on test and that by asking them what to state their race makes them feel threateneed. I cannot say that I believe what the author argues but it is definetly something to take into consideration and explore. I wonder if the author failed to notice other factors that might also have an impact or play a role in why African Americans perform poorly on tests.

Active Reading Post

Since 1968, the black middle class in America has quadrupled, Henry Louis (Skip) Gates told a packed house at the Edgartown Whaling Church on Thursday evening.
But that was the only positive news in an otherwise bleak survey of the state of black education by a panel of experts convened by Professor Gates and the W.E.B. Du Bois Institute for African and African American Research.
Professor Gates referred to that growth in the middle class only to make a point of contrast: That over the same period of time, the number of black children living at or below the poverty line had remained the same, about 35 per cent.

Henry Louis Gates and panelists discuss Separate But Unequal: Closing the Education Gap — Mark Alan Lovewell

The topic for the night was Separate but Unequal: Closing the Education Gap, but the talk addressed a whole lot more “gaps” than just education, including the developmental gap, the cultural gap, the punishment gap, the political gap, and, above all, the economic gap.
While the focus was on African American attainment, the implications of what was said reached far wider, touching on the achievement gaps affecting other minority groups and impoverished whites and to the future of the nation as a whole.
Unless things improved dramatically, one panelist pointed out late in proceedings, America was looking at a near future where half the population had at best eighth-grade levels of competency.
Professor Gates started things off with a depressing statistic. A recent College Board report had found “one in two men of color, aged 15 to 24 who graduate from high school, is going to end up unemployed, incarcerated, or dead.”
“And that’s among those who graduate,” he said. “What about those who drop out? What are their chances at subsistence, a meaningful, decent life. What happened to our people?”
He recalled that when he was growing up in the 1950s and 1960s, “the blackest thing you could be was an educated man or woman, not an entertainer or an athlete.”
Black people, he said, had valued education “stealing a little knowledge,” he called it since the days of slavery. Teachers once had an “almost godlike” status in the black community, and public schools were “sanctuaries and communal sites of hope and aspiration.”
But now, with the school system falling apart, the educational progress which had lifted people like him had stalled. He called for “the equivalent of a new civil rights movement” to confront the failings of the educational system.

Diane Ravitch. — Mark Alan Lovewell

“Dr. King did not die so a small percentage of us could make it while the larger percentage remained mired in a cycle of poverty,” he said, before turning the discussion over to the panel to first analyze the problem, and then offer some solutions.
The first panelist called upon by the moderator, Chalayne Hunter-Gault, was Angel Harris, an Associate Professor of Sociology and African America Studies at Princeton, who quantified the educational gap.
On average, he said, black and latino students were graduating high school “with the same skill set that whites had in the eighth grade.”
And while from the 1960s to 2000 there was a slight narrowing of the attainment gap, it was so slight that it would take 60 years in reading and 100 in math to achieve equality.
The unrealistic goal of closing those gaps by 2014, set by the No Child Left Behind policy, of President George W. Bush, he said, indicated a “lack of respect for the problem.”
The No Child Left Behind policy, with its emphasis on standardized tests and a regimen of punitive measures for schools which did not measure up, was almost universally condemned by the panelists.
The second panelist, Diane Ravich, Research Professor of Education at New York University and a senior figure in education under both the first President Bush and President Clinton, at one stage called it “the most ridiculous piece of legislation ever passed by Congress.” It used testing as punishment, she said, threatening to humiliate and fire educators who did not meet its “impossible” standards of annual improvement in “invalid” testing.
The initiative had failed even by its own standards; this year 82 percent of schools would fail.
The major reason for poor educational outcomes, in America or anywhere else in the world, was poverty, she said. She offered evidence too.
For all the publicity about American students comparing poorly to those in other developed countries, this was not uniformly true. “In fact, in low-poverty schools in the U.S. the test scores were higher than in [world leaders] Finland, Japan and Korea,” she said. Where the schools had 25 per cent poverty, the test scores were equivalent to those countries. The real reason for America’s lower overall results was that “we lead the world in child poverty.”
That poverty had become more concentrated as black, middle class families left inner cities and as the manufacturing base of cities had declined. On top of that was the “dramatic crisis of incarceration. The black incarceration rate is eight times the white incarceration rate,” she said.
Professor Ravich quoted Harvard sociologist Bruce Weston, saying that American society made a decision in the 1960s. It could have addressed the yawning social gap between the races, but instead chose to build prisons.
James Comer, Professor of Child Psychiatry at the Yale School of Medicine, countered by saying it was more complex than blaming poverty alone. He was a child of poverty, with a mother who had less than 2 years of school, and a father who was a laborer with a sixth grade education.

Michelle Rhee — Mark Alan Lovewell

The difference between him and so any other poor kids, was “the quality of the developmental experience that I received at home that they did not receive,” he said.
He also stated that despite the “exclusion and abuse” of African Americans in the past, there was at least a measure of employment security. But starting in the 1950s, the number of low-skill jobs for the poorly-educated had declined. As a result the number of dysfunctional families had risen. The number of children born into dysfunctional families had risen even faster. The evidence showed that functional families had fewer children, while the most dysfunctional often had five or more.
“In three generations, what you had was an explosion of the dysfunctional families” he said. This meant more children reaching school age who were underdeveloped in the skills they needed to cope.
The fourth panelist, Michelle Rhee, drew on her experience as chancellor of the Washington, D.C. public school system between 2007 and 2010, to talk about the practicalities of dealing with a failing system.
When she took her job in Washington, she said, it was generally known to have the worst-performing schools in the nation. She gave some examples of what she encountered: Having heard “countless stories” of children without text books, she found the system did have them, but they had not been delivered; hundreds of teachers went months at a time without being paid; one teacher had paid for 18 months for health care, then when his wife went to the emergency room he found out the system had not signed him up for it; she decided to buy 6000 computers for all the school classrooms only to learn most school wiring systems could not cope with them.
Among the changes she did make were instituting breakfast programs in addition to lunch programs — and later even supper programs for children who were not being fed at home. She also put nurses in every one of 123 schools, and established access to art, music, PE, librarians and social workers or guidance counselors.
She condemned the influence of politics, recalling a meeting with a group of politicians to discuss closing 23 schools and having one confide that he thought the measure was necessary and inviting her to “close as many as you want to as long as none is in my ward.”

Lawrence Bobo. — Mark Alan Lovewell

Ms. Rhee differed somewhat from the other panelists in laying substantial blame at the feet of teachers and school administrators.
In D.C.in 2007, only eight per cent of eighth graders were performing at grade level in mathematics, she said, and yet the performance evaluations of the adults in the school system found 95 per cent were rated as doing an excellent jobs.
“You can’t have a functional system with that kind of disconnect,” she said.
While she acknowledged the societal and cultural issues referred to by the other panelists, Ms. Rhee said a significant part of the problem related to the “utter lack of accountability” in the system.
As to solutions, the panel proposed a variety of measures, starting even before birth and extending well beyond school. Improving prenatal maternal health would help because one-third of low birth weight babies have learning difficulties. Reforming the justice system so it did not lead to the world’s highest imprisonment rates would make black families a whole lot more functional.
Among other generally-agreed measures were: placing greater emphasis on early childhood education; better training of teachers in how to deal with children coming into the system with underdeveloped skills; smaller classes, which had been shown to be of particular benefit for African American children; more emphasis on basic nutrition and health, and; less emphasis on standardized tests, or at least a less punitive response to them. There should also be more research into why successful schools work.
There were also points of disagreement. Ms. Rhee firmly held that too many bad teachers were allowed to continue in the system. Others, notably Ms. Ravich, strongly disagreed.
But ultimately the real problem was not with the teachers, the parents, or the kids. The fifth panelist, who summed up the other four, Lawrence D. Bobo, the W.E.B. Du Bois professor of Social Sciences at Harvard, hammered this home.
It was poverty. The country that had a record of slavery, Jim Crow laws, ghettos and now mass incarceration also subjected its black population to a kind of poverty almost no whites experienced, he said. It was a poverty where many children existed at 50 per cent below the poverty line, in neighborhoods where virtually everyone else also was in poverty, and where almost no men had jobs.
And you can’t fix the schools without fixing that.

Key
Yellow: Issue for why African Americans aren't doing well in school
Blue: Two parts that relate to each other to prove a bigger point
Green: Something I find interesting
Orange: Stats about African Americans in relation to academic success

My Thoughts
This reading listed a few reasons for why African Americans struggle in school. Most of which come from a poor support system both in the community and schools. Most of the teachers in these low or middle class prodominently black schools are either non-qualified or dont take their job serious enough to actually teach their students. Also history plays a big role in this as well. In the 1950's and 60's education was seen as the most important things you could obtain if you were black living in a black community however those same emotions did not carry over to our present day communities. The reading has led me to believe that, because most black communities are filled with mostly people in poverty the community is more concerned with getting money and survival rather than get an education.

Exploratory Essay Response

1. What was the most helpful piece of advice you received? Explain.
 Overall the advice about making my paper stronger with different choosing different words and how to more effectively place my questions. I understand that my paper needs work and I really appreciate knowing where I can improve.I also liked that Megan recommended a few articles I could use because that was my biggest issue.

2. What was the least effective piece of advice you received? Explain.
At one part of my paper I was told to use quotations when stating something directly from the article. I feel as if I did do just that and may need her to explain it a little more so I can understand where I went wrong.

3. What questions do you have about Megan's comments?

• You mentioned that in academic papers I should use formal language. What ways can I ensure that my words are formal and does that only apply to nouns?
• When I consider my third article is it okay that I not go into depth about my third article if it is not as long as my first two article?

4. What are your plans for revision? Be specific.

My first step is to make the grammatical changes such as word choice and finding ways to start sentences in different ways. I also plan on finding a third article and trying to connect it to my thread that I already have.

Conference Response

1. What advice did you receive from Megan?  Be specific.

At the meeting Megan suggested that I focus on Washington D.C, and study one minority as suppose to all of the minorities in America. Then she told me that it would be easier to either look at the neighborhood's impact on student's education or the teaching methods in those schools and how it affects the students success in college and the workforce. Also the group at my conference helped me find ways to measure "success" for students rather it be how many graduate and go to college or the types of careers those students pursue

2. What was the most helpful piece of advice you received? Explain.

The most helpful advice I received was to look into the different things that each neighborhood has to offer and how that may impact the student's life academically. I feel as if by looking into things such as violence, the type of households student's live in, and what opportunities are offered in those areas and then the type of grades students from those areas receive, I could make a connection between the two. I might even find more factors that have a big impact on how students perform academically.  

3. What was the least helpful advice you received? Explain.

The least helpful advice I received was to focus on a specific grade level. I didn't find that helpful because I want to use this project to figure out why students in general don't do well in school and who so many from my hometown drop out, or don't go to college. So I am not looking at a particular grade level rather that a collection of grades for example high school is what I hope to focus on because that is when students drop out. But who knows maybe my research will lead me to believe that students who do not do well in elementary or middle school are more likely to drop out.

4. Was the conference beneficial overall? Explain
YES! This conference has really sparked my thinking wheel and I am fueled with ways to approach my inquiry project. However I feel a little conflicted with where I want to go with my paper because of all of the ideas I have. On one hand I want to explore the community's impact on a student's academics and on the other hand I think that the schools should be tailored towards how the student's are affected by their communities and seek to help their student's on a more personal level. I also feel as if I should look into school curriculum as a state and see if that proves that traditional ways of teaching no longer work.

5.  Did Megan answer all your questions?  If not, what questions were left over?  Why didn’t they get answered?
Yes she answered all of my questions I may have more at a latter point in my research.

6. What are your plans for revision?  Be specific.  I should be able to understand exactly how your work will change in exactly which places.

My plans for revision are to re-read my essay and look at ways to clarify my points.

Exploratory Essay

Exploratory Essay

                In my English class we have delved deep into education from the sense that schools across the country do not prepare us for success instead they fill our minds with facts, numbers and general information. During our deep analysis of that matter we have read a few articles that argue that humanities and learning how to interact with others are essential to having success.

                For example in the article “On the Uses of Liberal Education” by Earl Shorris the writer identifies how humanities, which are prominent in rich communities and foreign to the poor social class communities, is a major factor that separates the rich from the poor. For example in the article Shorris states “The absence of politics in their lives was what kept them poor. I don’t mean “political” in the sense of voting in an election but in a way Theuydides used the word the word to mean activity with other people at every level”. This statement shows that in poor communities people are not as united as people who live in rich communities. In life we hear a lot of reasons for why those who work together can prosper much more than those who try and do it alone.  Historically the great people we talk about in the classrooms and are written about in textbooks or articles all had a support system to back them up, to help them become great. Shorris’ statement connects the must of cooperating with others to the prosperity of the entire community. Shorris argued that rich people know the importance of humanities because of their educational background. In the article Shorris states “Rich people learn these humanities in private schools and expensive colleges”. That statement shows a cycle that allow the rich kids to grow up and be rich and cause the poor kids to grow up and be poor. Not all schools teach the humanities that help students become successful and by Shorris’ statement most of the schools that do teach these important humanities are the expensive schools that only the rich can afford to go to. That leaves the poor students to attend schools that won’t prepare them for a successful future.

                Earl Shorris continues his argument by relating the acquisition of power to the rich and how they do it so effectively. Shorris believes that in our country the rich have all of the power because they have all of the money. Shorris sees humanities as a way to understand the everyday obstacles that come with living in this world. Shorris states “The humanities are a foundation for getting along in the world, for thinking , for learning to reflect on the world instead of just reacting to whatever is forced against you”. That statement shows that Shorris believes that humanities help people understand the thought process of others and how to go about handling situations that can greatly impact your life. But I wonder how do the rich get the power and what does money have to do with it? Shorris states that “If you want real power, legitimate power, the kind that comes from the people and belongs to the people, you must understand politics”. I understand that Shorris thinks that politics in the since of people communicating with others is the sole reason for why the rich have power. But I don’t understand how cooperating with others allows the rich elite to have power. I mean in the U.S the rich elite is the smallest of the social classes and they compete amongst themselves when it comes to business and money so where does the cooperation comes into play.  Earl Shorris used this article to show how the simple things we look overlook in our everyday lives like communicating and cooperating with others and connect that to a pressing issue that could plague those who will one day run this country.

                Jean Anyon, another writer who also believed that humanities are very important to the success of all people in our country, showed how education differs between social classes and how that structure prepared students to live in whatever social class their school is tailored to.  In the article titled “Social Class and the Hidden Curriculum” Jean Anyon separated schools based on social class and focused on how each school’s teaching effected the thought process of their students. For example in the article Anyon states “Scholars in political economy and the sociology of knowledge have recently argued that public schools in complex industrial societies like our own make available different types of educational experience and curriculum knowledge to students in different social classes”. That statement shows how our education system is like a factory and the students will be formed into the type of citizens that is common to the citizens in that area. This make sense because in our country there isn’t one school curriculum for the entire country, each state gets to create their own standards for their schools and then you have private schools that can have their own curriculum. Anyon doesn’t argue if allowing schools to differ from each other is a good or bad thing instead Anyon just shows how this effects the kids that will one day impact this country.  Anyon states “In the two working-class schools, work is following the steps of a procedure. The procedure is usually mechanical, involving rote behavior and very little decision making or choice. The teachers rarely explain why the work is being assigned, how it might connect to other assignments, or what the idea is that lies behind the procedure or gives it coherence and perhaps meaning or significance.”  The two working class relates to the students who come from poor families, and in their schools they are required to only record and remember the answer to the questions and are not asked to think about how to get the answers or ways in which the answer could be different. In this article the writer states “The products of work in this class are often highly valued by the children and the teacher”. In class the productivity of the class is determined by the material the teacher produces and what knowledge the students take away from the class. In our country that essentially is what categorizes students and show how successful they are becoming.

                When Jean Anyon talks about schools that are tailored towards the rich elite he shows how the students are able to express their personality through their work and truly find their own way of thinking. For example in the article Anyon states “Children are continually asked to reason through a problem, to produce intellectual products that are both logically sound and of top academic quality”. This statement shows that students discuss their work in search for more than just the answer, students leave schools with more than just information they also take away a personalize way of thinking and understanding of how others thinks which improve social skills and leadership. A common question that I don’t think that these writers are answering is how do you get the student to take an interest in their education? Also should the country allow states to create their own school system or should the government step in and crack down on the schools that are struggling to produce productive students?