Achieving High Educational Standards for All Conference Summary (2002) / Chapter Skim
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2 Education and the Changing Nation
2 Education and the Changing Nation
Pages 13-28
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From page 13... ...
Demographic and educational trend data were presented at the millennium conference by Marta Tienda, in collaboration with Kim Lloyd and Anna Zajacova. In addition, Edmund Gordon, Gary Orfield, Ronald Ferguson, Patricia Gandara, Samuel Stringfield, Scott Miller, Samuel Lucas, and Antoine Garibaldi presented or referred to Census Bureau and Department of Education data.
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From page 14... ...
students in 2000 were from groups that had significantly lower than average levels of degree attainment and of academic achievement. As discussed below, Asians/Pacific Islanders are the only racial/ethnic minority group whose academic attainment and achievement are not substantially below national averages (Lloyd et al., in this volume: Figure 13~.
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From page 15... ...
Census information on the educational attainment of foreign-born adults reflects schooling that may have occurred in the country from which they emigrated or in the United States. However, consistent with the occupational differences mentioned above, the Census Bureau's 1998 Current Population Survey found that 83 percent of foreign-born Asian adults age 25 and over had at least a high school diploma, and 44 percent had a bachelor's degree.
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From page 16... ...
By 1999, the earnings advantage of male college graduates relative to male high school completers and noncompleters increased to 68 percent and 147 percent, respectively (Council of Economic Advisers, 2000:135-136~. High-wage manufacturing jobs and other types of well-paying employment that had been available to workers with little education in previous decades are becoming increasingly scarce.
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From page 17... ...
As illustrated in Figure 2-3, 43 percent of high school seniors scored below "basic" on the 1996 science test of the National Assessment of Education Progress (NAEP) ,23 percent scored below basic on the 1998 reading test, and 31 percent were below basic on the 1996 NAEP mathematics test (see also Lloyd et al., in this volume: Figure 13~.
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From page 18... ...
The TIMSSR was the first international study specifically designed to longitudinally track changes in achievement (U.S. Department of Education, 2000c)
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From page 19... ...
The long-term trend assessments of the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) provide a good indicator of academic achievement patterns in various subjects for different segments of the population.
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From page 20... ...
However, the constancy of scores for all NAEP examiners masks notable improvements that occurred in the scores of black and Hispanic students from the 1970s through the late 1980s (see Lloyd et al., in this volume:Figure 14~. The fact that there has been little change in national NAEP scores despite the rising scores of blacks, Hispanics, and, to a lesser extent, whites, is explained by the demographic decline of traditionally higher-scoring white examiners and the growing percentage of minorities in the nationally representative NAEP samples.
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From page 21... ...
with the dramatic reduction in poverty that occurred prior to the mid1970s (Figure 2-6) shows that the profound economic and social changes of the mid-20th century correlate with increased degree attainment for all segments of the population.
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From page 22... ...
In 1994, the average score of white students whose parents did not complete high school on the NAEP reading exam was 274, while the average score of black students whose parents were college educated was 272. The poor academic achievement levels of black and Hispanic students who are not economically disadvantaged was dis
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From page 23... ...
350— 320— 290— 260— 230— 200 White Black Hispanic 1 1 Less than High Some High School School College College Graduate FIGURE 2-8 NAEP reading scale scores of 17-year-olds by race/ethnicity and parental education, 1994. SOURCE: National Task Force on Minority High Achievement (1999:9~.
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From page 24... ...
, conference speakers Edmund Gordon and Scott Miller (Miller, 1995: 142-200) have both argued that racial/ethnic differences in academic achievement may be better understood in relation to the availability of education-related resources than in terms of simplistic measures of socioeconomic status.
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From page 25... ...
To better understand the challenges that lie ahead, it is helpful to examine the most recent data on racial/ethnic differences in: · average scores in grades 4, 8, and 12, · the percentage of examiners scoring below "basic" in grade 12, and · the percentage of 12th grade examiners demonstrating advanced skills. The fact that the average scores of black 17-year-olds on the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP)
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From page 26... ...
Major differences by race/ethnicity exist in the percentage of students scoring below basic and scoring at the proficient level or above 350 300 250 200 150 White Biack Hispanic Age 9 Age 13 Age 17 FIGURE 2-9 NAEP reading scale scores, by race/ethnicity, 1999. SOURCE: National Center for Education Statistics, NAEP 1999 Long-Term Trend Assessment.
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From page 27... ...
Gordon noted, however, that shortly before DuBois left the United States to live in Ghana in 1958, he had come to believe that the advanced intellectual skills that he had thought were important only to the education of the talented tenth would become necessary for all students by the end of the 20th century. Gordon sees the contemporary focus on closing the gaps and achieving high educational standards for all to be the current formulation of the view earlier adopted by DuBois.
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From page 28... ...
Gordon challenged the audience to consider whether factors internal to schools, such as the quality of curriculum and instruction, or factors external to the educational system, especially those related to the roles of race and class in America, were more responsible for causing the educational disparities that exist. Partially answering his own question, Gordon suggested that understanding school-based learning in the context of wider social influences is a more realistic approach to answering this question than to dichotomize determinants of learning as either internal or external to the school.
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