What is the problem here?
**UPDATED! SCROLL TO BOTTOM OF POST**ÂÂ
(gazette.net) “Prince George’s County’s recent economic prosperity could be jeopardized unless African-American males, who make up a sizable portion of the future workforce, make greater strides in academic achievement, business advocates and educators say.
African-American males make up 39 percent of the county’s public school population, or nearly 52,000 students, and they have among the lowest rates of academic achievement.
These advocates say black boys need more focused support from the school system to be effective workers when they graduate from high school or are ready to attend college.
‘‘We are going to start seeing ourselves regressing [economically] if we don’t ensure African-American males are being educated in a way that would make them productive and effective members of the workforce and society in general,†said Orlan Johnson, a member of the Board of Regents for the University of Maryland.
[...]
On the High School Assessments, which are required by state law for graduation, black males passed at lower rates than black females and almost every other racial subgroup.
Of African-American males who took the algebra exam in the 2006 school year, for example, only 37.7 percent passed, almost 10 percent fewer than African American females.
Asian males passed the exam 71 percent of the time, and white males passed it 74.9 percent of the time.
While these rates of passing are low for black males, they have increased over the past four years and showed their largest increase in the 2006 school year.
Johnson said that if poor performance of African American males in school continued, it could mean that county businesses could have to go outside the state to bring in workers to compensate.” (source)
Here you have what is considered the wealthiest county for Black folks in the nation, however our young men are still under performing in public schools while other races appear to be fairing well. While poverty and racism has been the standard reasons given for this trend, I think that we can rule those out here.
I’ll be quiet here for a moment and let some of you respond to this one.
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Here is some additional information on PG county and their school system. More and more I am finding this topic very interesting because I have been wanting to get more information about PG in general.
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As of 2006 the district has an enrollment of almost 134,000 students and is the second largest school district in Maryland (after Montgomery County) and the 18th largest school district in the nation. PGCPS operates 137 elementary schools, 32 middle schools, and 23 high schools with nine special centers and two vocational centers, and serves students in Grades Pre-K through 12th grade employing over 17,000 people. The school system is overseen by the Maryland State Department of Education. The FY2006 budget for PGCPS is almost $1.4 billion United States dollars. This is an increase of over $100 million from the previous year. PGCPS has a per pupil expenditure lower than surrounding school districts in the Washington, DC-area, at $8,612.
The district is headed by a superintendent, currently referred to as the chief executive officer (CEO). Howard A. Burnett, the former chief human resources officer of the school district, was interim replacement CEO through April, 2006. Dr. John E. Deasy took office on May 1, 2006. Dr. Deasy was the former superintendent of the Santa Monica-Malibu Unified School District.
In terms of racial demographics, African-Americans make up the majority of the systems students at 74.35% followed by 13.60% Hispanic, 6.14% non-Hispanic white, 2.85% Asian, and 0.52% Native American. (click here for more information)
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School District Summary - Prince George’s County
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The Achievement Gap: The Role for Families and Communities
Prince Georges’s County Schools
October 5, 2005
Dr. Leroy Tompkins is the Chief Accountability Officer for the Prince George’s County Public Schools.
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With Few Public Options, Competition to Get Into Top High School Programs Is Fierce
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And here is a forum I found where a Black teacher from Georgia is asking about PG and the school system. You should read the responses!!
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This needs to be broken down by neighborhood and income and how many Black students are in private schools.
The neighborhood school concept is just getting back to being used after parents and the local NAACP sued to stop busing of students.
A little reported factoid is the number of Blacks leaving PG county to go to Charles county because of the school system.
Comment by DarkStar | January 25, 2007
There are at least 2 new private “acadamies” in PG County that are Black owned and operated in direct response to the poor school system in PG County. One is expensive starting around $12K/year. The other is expensive but not as expensive.
The county is hostile to charter schools but some parents are trying to get a few opened.
I think the next 5 years for the school system will be telling.
Comment by DarkStar | January 26, 2007
Is the wealthy/upper middle class population in this county dwindling as a result of all of this? It sure sounds that way.
Comment by Duane | January 26, 2007
That is a good question.
Mitchilleville is growing. I call it BougieVillie. The homes are cars are NICE. The people earn good money or at least look like they do.
Toll Brothers, NVR, and other luxury builders are building nice homes in the county. Relative to Montgomery, Anne Arundel, and Northern Virgina, the prices are reasonable. I’ve looked at the area and am unsure of moving there, not because of crime, that’s mostly inside the Beltway in areas that border D.C. except for car theft which is the worst in Maryland. I’m not sure because of traffic issues and schools.
I lived in Montgomery County and I remember the traffic issues. If I lived in PG County, it would be 12 years of private school for “D.S. 2.0″ and given the area, that’s a lot of money. But if I stay in this area, based on what I’ve learned in the past few months, I’ll be spending the money anyway, unless we home school.
But back to the topic, I’d like to see a better breakdown, especially the percentage of Black students in private schools in the area. Which schools are performing poorly, by region (inside vs outside beltway), income, etc.
Why?
Just because the Black people I work with who live in PG County, are sending their kids to private schools or are seriously considering moving to Howard County or Charles County, for better schools.
Additionally, because of the poor schools, it seems like more parents are getting involved to improve the schools.
But that is ancedotal.
Comment by DarkStar | January 27, 2007
Ed, my sister has taught in Charles and Prince George’s counties. She says parents moving to Charles County with the expectation of accessing a better school system are chasing fool’s gold.
The short explanation for the poor performance of Af-Am students in Prince George’s is the same for that of similarly populated, upwardly-mobile suburban counties all over America; relatively little of the ‘affluence’ — be it material, intellectual, social, or spiritual — is directed towards the school system with the education of Af-Ams in mind. Such an environment describes a condition of poverty as perhaps influenced by racism, factors that too many of us do not want to confront. Unfortunately.
Comment by MIB | January 28, 2007
Ed, my sister has taught in Charles and Prince George’s counties. She says parents moving to Charles County with the expectation of accessing a better school system are chasing fool’s gold.
Yep. That’s ONE of the sad things about it.
TRIM plays a part. I don’t see how new schools can be built and existing schools updated with TRIM in place. But, relying on property taxes won’t mean anything if parents don’t do their part and students don’t do their part.
I just need to know how much is parents/children and how much is the school system.
Bowie High School innovation.
Comment by DarkStar | January 28, 2007
Such an environment describes a condition of poverty as perhaps influenced by racism, factors that too many of us do not want to confront. Unfortunately
A poverty mindset–definitely yes. Influenced by racism??
Don’t forget that this same type of trend can be seen in counties where the population is majority white. Whites that are either heavily involved with their kids and/or have the resources will move their kids to either a private school or use their friends’ address so that they can send their kids to the “better” school. California has plenty of examples of this that I can point to. On the other hand, I have seen Black folks do the same thing. I can’t say I blame them one bit.
This is why I tend to agree with the question Ed posed by asking what percentage of this is the parent’s/child responsibility versus the schools’. Check this out! This is an article that was written back in 1993 about the PG county school system.
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The county is famous for its large black middle-class. Writing in the New York Times Magazine, David J. Dent called it “the closest thing to utopia that black middle-class families could find in America.” But like most of sub-urban America, the county has found itself vulnerable to bourgeois trendiness. The board of education, which oversees a two-thirds black student population, has hit upon a race-specific fad: Afrocentrism.
In 1987 the board voted, innocently enough, to restructure its schools’ curricula and expand the coverage of “race, ethnicity, gender, socio-economics, religion, region, age, and citizen-ship,” according to board member Suzanne M. Plogman. When a nine-foot-tall stack of 32 multicultural course manuals appeared before the board for approval at the start of the 1991-92 school year, some complained that the two-week review period did not allow enough time for their proper consideration. Despite warnings from several parents, the board hustled through a vote endorsing all but two of the manuals.
Problems with much of the approved curriculum soon emerged, and Superintendent Edward M. Felegy suspended five social-studies guides for further review. Good thing, too: Reading them, one discovers that slaves chopped sugar cane in the American Southwest; that Croatians (instead of Croatan Indians) served as the heretofore unknown levelers of the “Lost Colony” in Roanoke, North Carolina; that the English fought the British in the American Revolution; and, according to one illustration, that colonial mothers had access to electric ranges in their kitchens.
Yet these errors - some of which could be reasonably attributed to poor copy editing, though this raises its own troubling questions - only break the surface of a much deeper problem. The tenth-grade world-history manual, for instance, drenches itself in black nationalist historical revisionism. The guide starts by allowing the word “African” to slip in and out of its racial connotation enough times to ensure that ancient Egypt comes across as an exclusively black nation, a theory widely disputed by Egyptologists. The authors then cite the notorious Portland Baseline Essays, George James’s Stolen Legacy, and other questionable reference points to reinforce their claims and state, predictably, that “Egypt was supreme in the leadership of civilization … Egyptian culture survived and flourished under the name and control of the Greeks.”
By relying so heavily on these Afrocentric authorities, the curriculum appears more intent on engaging in racial polemics than on teaching history. Approximately 5 per cent of the world history manual’s 164 pages, for instance, is devoted to making the case for black African migrations to the pre-Columbian Americas, an idea dismissed by most archaeologists and Mesoamerican experts.
All of this aims chiefly at boosting the self-esteem of black students. The increasingly familiar argument runs something like this: The school performance of black students lags behind that of whites because the black students lack a proper sense of self-worth. They live in a society that does not value them, one that constantly reminds them of their diminished status. Educators must teach all students to value themselves in order for them to achieve high marks in school. As school-board member Brenda Hughes told the Bowie Blade-News, the county’s Afrocentric curricula “will enhance [students'] self-esteem, motivate achievement, and help them to be law-abiding citizens.” (source)
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I find this interesting because it addresses the question weather or not if the curriculum has ever been tailored to “Black needs”.
Comment by Duane | January 28, 2007
This is why I tend to agree with the question Ed posed by asking what percentage of this is the parent’s/child responsibility versus the schools’.
Some time ago I heard about a report on Black students and education that “showed”, among other things, that Black kids respond more to the praise of teachers than parents. I found that stunning and still say it is not believable.
But I write that to write, isn’t it amazing that if you consider Blacks in the inner city schools as a group, then the group’s “lack of emphasis” on education is the key? Yet, when some of those same students are moved to a program like KIPP or when the parents jump ship to charter schools or private vouchers, than those groups of Blacks are no longer considered?
If not clear, it’s just the issue of aggregation vs deaggregation.
Comment by DarkStar | January 30, 2007