President Elect Obama take notice
The words below are taken from an article (Racial Imbalance Persists…) in today's NYTimes:
…parents and students attributed the racial disparities to a lack of private tutoring, subpar middle schools that do not expose students to test material, transportation concerns, cultural differences and a simple lack of motivation on the part of some students.
The 1.1 million-student New York City school system is about 40 percent
Hispanic, 32 percent black, 14 percent Asian, and 14 percent white. At the three most prestigious high schools the mix is different. At Stuyvesant
67% of 3,247 students are Asian. At Brooklyn Technical 8% of
4,669 students are Hispanic. At the Bronx High School of
Science 4% of 2,809 students are Black.
Would that the parents and students were correct, and that the disparities could be attributed to poor preparation, transportation problems, cultural differences, and lack of motivation. For then our seemingly endless reforms, additional preparation, better bus services, cultural enrichment programs, and a supply of adult mentors, would do much to lessen the disparities. But this doesn't happen.
The educational establishment, including teachers, administrators, and politicians is afraid to mention, let alone admit, that there may be different talents, different interests, and, yes, different intelligences among the students, real differences that most of all account for the disparities. Nor do the parents and students, for obvious reasons, want to acknowledge this.
This situation more than anything else accounts for the existing tragedy of our inner city public schools, when large numbers, as many as one half the entering high school class, fail to graduate, and when large numbers, again maybe half of those who do graduate and go on to higher education do not complete two year community, let alone four year liberal arts colleges.
We've known for a long time what is the only effective solution to the ugly seemingly racial (but not, or course) achievement disparity that has confronted since high school attendance reached a maximum in the 1970s. And that is to provide in our schools other career paths corresponding to the no less admirable and important talents, interests, and intelligences that all kids, probably most of them, possess.
As it is now those who don't score well on the entry examinations to Stuyvesant,
Brooklyn Technical, and the Bronx High School of
Science, those who don't have those particular math and language skills that these tests demand, have few places to go.
