208. Unstack the Odds--More Views on Learning

Unstack the Odds: Help All Kids Access College—and Graduate!

by

Joe Rottenborn
Executive Director, Mahoning Valley College Access Program (MVCAP)

4. More Views on Learning

University of Chicago researcher Benjamin Bloom, who edited the classic work Taxonomy of Educational Objectives: The Classification of Educational Goals—Handbook I: Cognitive Domain (New York: David McKay Company, Inc., 1956) and was later recognized as an authority on mastery learning, succinctly expressed this view:
“It is the history of the individual learner which in large part determines his present learning, and it is this accumulated history (past and present) which will have major consequences for his future learning.” (Benjamin S. Bloom, Human Characteristics and School Learning, New York: McGraw-Hill Book Company, 1976, p. 202.)

Bloom elaborated on his view of learning this way: “The central thesis of this book is that variations in learning and the level of learning of students are determined by the students’ learning history and the quality of instruction they receive. Appropriate modifications related to the history of the learners and the quality of instruction can sharply reduce the variation of students and greatly increase their level of learning and their effectiveness in learning in terms of time and effort expended.” (Ibid., p. 16.)

The importance of the home and a family on the achievement of children was famously observed by another in the pantheon of researchers on education, Johns Hopkins sociologist James S. Coleman, who stated:
“Taking all these results together, one implication stands out above all. That schools bring little influence to bear on a child’s achievement that is independent of his background and general social context; and that this very lack of an independent effect means that the inequalities imposed on children by their home, neighborhood, and peer environment are carried along to become the inequalities with which they confront adult life at the end of school [emphasis added.] For equality of educational opportunity through the schools must imply a strong effect of schools that is independent of the child’s immediate social environment, and that strong independent effect is not present in American schools.” (James S. Coleman, “Equality of Educational Opportunity,” in Equality and Achievement in Education, ed. Marta Tienda and David B. Grusky, Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1990, p. 119 in Peter Sacks, Tearing Down the Gates: Confronting the Class Divide in American Education, Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 2007, p. 15.)

Richard Rothstein, former national education columnist for The New York Times and visiting lecturer at Teachers College, Columbia University, commented on Coleman’s findings: “Nonetheless, scholarly efforts over four decades have consistently confirmed Coleman’s core finding; no analyst has been to attribute less than two-thirds of the variation in achievement among schools to the family characteristics of their students. (Richard Rothstein, Class and Schools: Using Social, Economic, and Educational Reform to Close the Black-White Achievement Gap, New York: Teachers College Economic Policy Institute, 2004, p. 14.)

Furthermore, Rothstein compiled a list of “the many ways in which social class differences prepare children differently to learn.” As he summarized: “These differences appear not only in how families can support children from current income, but also in how families support children from other economic resources like savings for college, home equity, or access to stable rental housing; in their varied childrearing philosophies, conversational styles, literacy practices, role modeling, and parental social networks; in children’s health that impacts learning, with differences in vision, hearing, dental care, lead poisoning, asthma, immunizations, birth weight and maternal smoking and alcohol use; in the ethnically and racially patterned cultural expectations about the payoff to education; and in the athletic and other enriching experiences that children enjoy in the afterschool hours, and in the summer.”

Rothstein concluded that “each of these contributes only a tiny bit to the learning gap between lower-class and middle-class children, but combined, the effects could be huge, and it is hard to see how even the greatest schools could overcome them.” (Ibid., p. 61.)

Finally, Donna Y. Ford, Professor of Education and Human Development at Vanderbilt University, summarized issues faced by Black youth in her book’s chapter entitled “Social Factors as Correlates of Underachievement” in this way: “Several social factors place Black students at risk for educational disadvantage on a consistent basis—poverty, residing in a single-parent family, mother’s low level of education, racial minority status, and English as a second language.” (Donna Y. Ford, Reversing Underachievement Among Gifted Black Students: Promising Practices and Programs, New York: Teachers College Press, 1996, p. 70.)

207. Unstack the Odds--Early Childhood Learning

Unstack the Odds: Help All Kids Access College—and Graduate!
by
Joe Rottenborn

Executive Director, Mahoning Valley College Access Program (MVCAP)

3. Research on learning in early childhood

“Ferguson also noted that the gap develops rapidly as young minority students approach kindergarten. Though there is ‘not much of a gap’ around the first birthday, a divergence in test scores is already apparent by age three, he said.”-- Ronald F. Ferguson, director of Harvard’s Achievement Gap Initiative, quoted in Rediet T. Abebe, “Panel Discusses Educatin Gap,” The Harvard Crimson, February 24, 2011.) http://www.thecrimson.com/article/2011/2/24/gap-achievement-ferguson-students/#

Some indicate the odds begin stacking in a child’s first years. An discussion of this phenomenon was done by then editor Paul Tough in a seminal—and provocative—article entitled “What It Takes To Make a Student: Can teaching poor children to act more like middle-class children help close the education gap?” in The New York Times Magazine of November 26, 2006. In that masterful synthesis of research, condensed into but a few pages, the native Canadian cited a number of studies—and seemed to connect their dots. First, was research on language acquisition published by University of Kansas child psychologists Betty Hart and Todd R. Risley in 1995 on 42 Kansas City families with newborns. For three years, these two researchers “. . .visited each family once a month, recording absolutely everything that occurred between the child and the parent or parents.” (Paul Tough, “What It Takes To Make a Student: Can teaching poor children to act more like middle-class children help close the education gap?” The New York Times Magazine, November 26, 2006, p. 47.)

According to Tough, the researchers learned “. . .first, that vocabulary growth differed sharply by class and that the gap between the classes opened early. By age 3, children whose parents were professionals had vocabularies of about 1,100 words, and children whose parents were on welfare had vocabularies of about 525 words. The children’s I.Q.’s correlated closely to their vocabularies. The average I.Q. among the professional children was 117, and the welfare children had an average I.Q. of 79.” (Ibid.)

As for the reason for those differences, the writer cited Hart and Risley’s finding as follows: “By comparing the vocabulary scores with their observations of each child’s home life, they were able to conclude that the size of each child’s vocabulary correlated most closely to one simple factor: the number of words the parents spoke to the child [emphasis added.] That varied greatly across the homes they visited, and again, it varied by class. In the professional homes, parents directed an average of 487 ‘utterances’—anything from a one-word command to a full soliloquy—to their children each hour. In welfare homes, the children heard 178 utterances per hour. (Ibid., pp. 47-48.)

Not only did the number of “utterances” vary in homes by class, according to Tough, so, too, did “the kinds of words and statements that children heard varied by class.” As he put it:
“The most basic difference was in the number of ‘discouragements’ a child heard—prohibitions and words of disapproval—compared with the number of encouragements, or words of praise and approval [emphasis added.] By age 3, the average child of a professional heard about 500,000 encouragements and 80,000 discouragements. For the welfare children, the situation was reversed: they heard, on average, about 75,000 encouragements and 200,000 discouragements. Hart and Risley found that as the number of words a child heard increased, the complexity of that language increased as well.” (Ibid., p. 48.)

As for the payoff, Tough indicated the following:
“Hart and Risley showed that language exposure in early childhood correlated strongly with I.Q. and academic success later on in a child’s life [emphasis added.] Hearing fewer words, and a lot of prohibitions and discouragements, had a negative effect on I.Q.; hearing lots of words, and more affirmations and complex sentences, had a positive effect on I.Q. The professional parents were giving their children an advantage with every word they spoke, and the advantage just kept building up.” (Ibid.)

Other research summarized by the reporter was from a team led by Columbia professor Jeanne Brooks-Gunn, who “. . .has overseen hundreds of interviews of parents and collected thousands of hours of videotape of parents and children, and she and her research team have graded each one on a variety of scales.” According to Tough, they concluded the following: “Children from more well-off homes tend to experience parental attitudes that are more sensitive, more encouraging, less intrusive and less detached—all of which, they found, serves to increase I.Q. and school readiness [emphasis added.] They analyzed the data to see if there was something else going on in middle-class homes that could account for the advantage but found that while wealth does matter, child-rearing style matters more.” (Ibid.)

Tough continued his survey of research on early childhood learning by citing the work of Martha Farah, from the University of Pennsylvania, who “. . . has built on Brooks-Gunn’s work, using the tools of neuroscience to calculate exactly which skills poorer children lack and which parental behaviors affect the development of those skills. She has found, for instance, that the ‘parental nurturance’ that middle-class parents, on average, are more likely to provide stimulates the brain’s medial temporal lobe, which in turn aids the development of memory skills [emphasis added.]” (Ibid.)

The writer also described the anthropological research of Annette Lareau, which looked at the culture of early childhood. As he summarized:
“Over the course of several years, Lareau and her research assistants observed a variety of families from different class backgrounds, basically moving into in to each home for three weeks of intensive scrutiny. Lareau found that the middle-class families she studied followed a simlar strategy, which she labeled concerted cultivation. The parents in these families engaged their children in conversation as equals, treating them like apprentice adults and encouraging them to ask questions, challenge assumptions and negotiate rules. They planned and scheduled countless activities to enhance their children’s development—piano lessons, soccer games, trips to the museum [emphasis added.]” (Ibid., p. 49.)

Tough described Lareau’s findings as follows: “The working-class and poor families Lareau studied did things differently. In fact, they raised their children the way most parents, even middle-class parents, did a generation or two ago. They allowed their children much more freedom to fill in their afternoons and weekends as they chose. . . but much less freedom to talk back, question authority or haggle over rules and consequences. Children were instructed to defer to adults and treat them with respect. This strategy Lareau named accomplishment of natural growth.” (Ibid.)

The reporter related Lareau’s research to the cultural attitudes and behavior children develop. As he states it: “In public life, the qualities that middle-class children develop are consistently valued over the ones that poor and working-class children develop. Middle-class children become used to adults taking their concerns seriously, and so they grow up with a sense of entitlement, which gives them a confidence, in the classroom and elsewhere, that less-wealthy children lack. The cultural differences translate into a distinct advantage for middle-class children in school, on standardized achievement tests and, later in life, in the workplace.” (Ibid.)

As for the assets some children will possess compared to others, Tough characterizes them in this way: “But the real advantage that middle-class children gain come from more elusive processes: the language that their parents use, the attitudes toward life that they convey. However you measure child-rearing, middle-class parents tend to do it differently than poor parents—and the path they follow in turn tends to give their children an array of advantages [emphasis added.] As Lareau points out, kids from poor families might be nicer, they might be happier, they might be more polite—but in countless ways, the manner in which they are raised puts them at a disadvantage in the measures that count in contemporary American society.” (Ibid.)

Paul Tough commented on the achievement gap simply—and starkly: “There had, in fact, been evidence for a long time that poor children fell behind rich and middle-class children early, and stayed behind.” (Ibid., p. 47.)

Writing more recently about a study of 750 pairs of identical and fraternal twins tested on mental ability at 10 months and 2 years of age done by researchers at the University of Texas at Austin and the University of Virginia, columnist Jonah Lehrer underscored the importance of early learning as follows: “When it came to the mental ability of 10-month-olds, the home environment was the key variable, across every socioeconomic class. But results for the 2-year-olds were dramatically different. In children from poorer households, the choices still mattered. In fact, the researchers estimated that the home environment accounted for approximately 80% of the individual variance in mental ability among poor 2-year-olds. The effect of genetics was negligible [emphasis added.] (Jonah Lehrer, “Why Rich Parents Don’t Matter,” The Wall Street Journal, January 22-23, 2011, p. C12.)

206. Unstack the Odds--Families & Access, Part 2

Unstack the Odds: Help All Kids Access College—and Graduate!

by

Joe Rottenborn
Executive Director, Mahoning Valley College Access Program (MVCAP)

2. How may a child’s family background correlate with their access to college?

Observers on whether a child’s family background affects access are not confined to those typically viewed as being on the left of the political spectrum. In his online posting of August 29, 2010, “For black children, daunting divides in achievement and family life,” conservative Washington Post op-ed columnist George Will highlighted the importance of families on many facets of children’s lives.

Citing the Educational Testing Service (ETS) report The Black-White Achievement Gap: When Progress Stopped, by Paul E. Barton and Richard J. Coley, Will states: “Only 35 percent of black children live with two parents, which partly explains why, while only 24 percent of white eighth-graders watch four or more hours of television on an average day, 59 percent of their black peers do.”

Will also observes that “Black children also are disproportionately handicapped by this class-based disparity: By age 4, the average child in a professional family hears about 20 million more words than the average child in a working-class family and about 35 million more than the average child in a welfare family — a child often alone with a mother who is a high-school dropout.”

The columnist again cites the ETS report on overcoming the achievement gap: “It is very hard to imagine progress resuming in reducing the education attainment and achievement gap without turning these family trends around — i.e., increasing marriage rates, and getting fathers back into the business of nurturing children.”

He ends his column by pointing out the observation of ETS researchers Barton and Coley in their work America’s Smallest School: The Family. Will indicates they “. . . estimated that about 90 percent of the difference in schools’ proficiencies can be explained by five factors: the number of days students are absent from school, the number of hours students spend watching television, the number of pages read for homework, the quantity and quality of reading material in the students’ homes — and, much the most important, the presence of two parents in the home.”

Is George Will correct that a student’s chances in life--today, in the United States of American--are all but determined by the family into which he or she was born? (George Will, “For black children, daunting divides in achievement and family life,” August 29, 2010.) http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/08/27/AR2010082703805.html?nav=rss_opinion/columns

205. Unstack the Odds--Families & Access, Part 1

Unstack the Odds: Help All Kids Access College—and Graduate!
by
Joe Rottenborn

Executive Director, Mahoning Valley College Access Program (MVCAP)

2. How may a child’s family background correlate with their access to college?

“Families matter when it comes to the academic success of children, and
the social class background of children matters. That much is given.”--Peter Sacks, Tearing Down the Gates: Confronting the Class Divide in American Education (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 2007, p. 14.)

What accounts for this unequal access to higher education and graduation? Many observers begin by examining children’s experiences in the family—indeed, the family is often viewed as the child’s “first school.” A recent study that examinined the correlation between families and access stated the following:

“Using longitudinal data, we analyze disparities in family background and potentially influential investments parents make (or are constrained from making) early and late in the high school experience, and then how the patterns uncovered shape the likelihood of college attendance. Findings confirm expectations. Specifically, racial inequalities in class background shape disparities in cultural, monetary, and parental interactional investments, with strong consequences for high school attainment/achievement. Background inequalities, and their implications for early and later family investments and achievement/attainment, explain the entire black-white gap in the likelihood of college attendance.” (Camille Z. Charles, Vincent J. Roscigno, and Kimberly C. Torres, “Racial inequality and college attendance: The mediating role of parental investments,” in Social Science Research 36, 2007, p. 329.)

That same study also commented on the importance of financial and educational status of families for students; it concluded:

“This literature suggests that household socioeconomic status (SES)—usually measured as parental income and/or education—is critically important for achievement (Alexander et al., 1987; Lareau, 1989; Mehan, 1992; Parcel and Meneghan, 1994.) Lareau (1989) suggests that this effect is partially a function of less disposable income and time for working class parents to intervene in their children’s schooling. Middle- and upper-class parents, in contrast, can invest in household educational resources, can hire tutors, are more likely to utilize ‘proper’ English in the household, and have time to meet with teachers.” (Ibid., p. 331.)

Further, these authors emphasize the importance of “cultural capital”—according to French sociologist Pierre Bourdieu, those “cultural habits and . . . dispositions inherited from” the family—which can help children to succeed. (from Elliot B. Weininger and Annette Lareau, “Cultural Capital,” p. 1) http://www.brockport.edu/sociology/faculty/Cultural_Capital.pdf

Of this process, Charles, Roscigno, and Torres say the following: “Higher SES parents likewise can more easily transmit cultural capital to their children: ‘high brow’ European cultural attributes, typically held in high regard in the classroom and, therefore, conducive to educational success (Bourdieu, 1977; DiMaggio, 1982; Lamont and Lareau, 1988; Roscigno and Ainsworth Darnell, 1999.)” (Charles, et. al., p. 331.)

In his recent online profile of Ronald Ferguson, Director of the Achievement Gap Initiative at Harvard, reporter Michael Winerip observed the following about Ferguson’s findings:

“His research indicates that half the gap can be predicted by economics: even in a typical wealthy suburb, blacks are not as well-to-do; 79 percent are in the bottom 50 percent financially, while 73 percent of whites are in the top 50 percent. The other half of the gap, he has calculated, is that black parents on average are not as academically oriented in raising their children as whites. In a wealthy suburb he surveyed, 40 percent of blacks owned 100 or more books, compared with 80 percent of whites. In first grade, the percentage of black and white parents reading to their children daily was about the same; by fifth grade, 60 percent to 70 percent of whites still read daily to their children, compared with 30 percent to 40 percent of blacks.” (Michael Winerip, "Closing the Achievement Gap Without Widening a Racial One,” The New York Times, February 13, 2011)http://www.nytimes.com/2011/02/14/education/14winerip.html?pagewanted=1&_r=1&hpw

As for the potentially-controversial topic of the effects of home environment, “ . . . Ferguson said that talking about racial differences in parenting is a social taboo and an obstacle that he often faces.” As he put it in a recent interview:
"People don't want to talk about it because they're afraid what is said will be misused," he said. "They're afraid that people will say it's their own fault, that members of low−achieving groups need to fix themselves. They're afraid that people will misuse information in bigoted ways. But if we can't have the conversation about things that we need to do differently, then we can't get around to actually doing them differently," he said. (Amelia Quinn, “Harvard lecturer spearheads movement to improve American education,” The Tufts Daily, March 2, 2011.) http://www.tuftsdaily.com/features/harvard-lecturer-spearheads-movement-to-improve-american-education-1.2502479

Ferguson’s view was then quoted to be as follows: "If we can give . . . the opportunities and help people from less advantaged backgrounds to spend more time in ways that contribute to their academic growth, in a few decades from now, we can get to a place where we're much more equal than we are now," he said. "But to do that, we've got to lay everything out on the table and work it through." (Ibid.)

204. Unstack the Odds--Set at Birth? Part 3

Unstack the Odds: Help All Kids Access College—and Graduate!

by

Joe Rottenborn
Executive Director, Mahoning Valley College Access Program (MVCAP)

1. Are the odds being stacked at birth against some kids going to college and graduating?

According to the 2009 Education Trust report, data on students from low-income families and underrepresented minorities at Access to Success Initiative (A2S) universities included in the various state systems of higher education systems were telling:
“Only 26 percent of the students who earned bachelor’s degrees within six years in A2S systems came from low-income families, compared with 41 percent of 18-24 year-old high school graduates in these states. Only 22 percent of students who earned bachelor’s degrees within six years were underrepresented minorities, compared with 35 percent of 18-24 year-old high school graduates.” (Jennifer Engle and Mary Lynch, Charting a Necessary Path: The Baseline Report of the Access to Success Initiative, The Education Trust, December 2009, p. 7.) http://www.edtrust.org/sites/edtrust.org/files/publications/files/A2S_BaselineReport_0.pdf

Dr. Bridget Terry Long, professor of economics and education at Harvard’s Graduate School of Education, and consultant Erin Riley highlighted the correlates of family income and race with matriculation and graduation. As they summarized the data:
“Unfortunately, the likelihood of attending college varies substantially by family income. Among high school graduates in 2004, only 43 percent of students from families who made less than $30,000 immediately entered a postsecondary institution. In contrast, 75 percent of students from families who made more than $50,000 did so. Even after accounting for differences in academic preparation and achievement, substantial gaps in college access still exist by income level. Low-income high school graduates in the top academic quartile attended college only at the same rate as high-income high school graduates in the bottom quartile of achievement (Advisory Committee on Student Financial Assistance [ACSFA], 2001 in Bridget Terry Long and Erin Riley, “Financial Aid: A Broken Bridge to College Access?” Harvard Educational Review, Vol. 77 No. 1, Spring 2007, pp. 40. http://www.hepg.org/document/19/

Focusing on the difference in graduation rates for students from different income and racial groups, Long and Riley cited these statistics: “For those who matriculate, the likelihood of persisting to a college degree also differs greatly by income. Only 36 percent of low-income students who were college qualified completed a bachelor’s degree within eight years, while 81 percent of high-income students did so (Adelman, 2006). Stark differences also exist by race. Graduation rates at four-year institutions among first-time, full-time, degree-seeking undergraduates were highest for Asian/Pacific Islander students (65%), followed by White, non-Hispanic students (58%), for cohorts entering in the fall of 1998. Black and Hispanic students in this cohort graduated at much lower rates (40% and 46%, respectively)” (Knapp, Kelly-Reid, & Whitmore, 2006 in Ibid.)

As Kevin Carey stated in a 2005 report for the Education Trust, “While less
than 57 percent of new students at four-year campuses get a degree from their first institution within six years, the graduation rate is below 50 percent for African-American and Latino students. These are the most academically prepared minority students our education system produces, and yet when they go to college, they are not likely to get their degree on time [emphasis added].” (One Step from the Finish Line: Higher College Graduation Rates are Within Our Reach, The Education Trust, January 2005, p. 2.) http://www.edtrust.org/sites/edtrust.org/files/publications/files/one_step_from.pdf

The singer and philanthropist John Legend put this issue starkly in his recent blog post:
“. . . I consider the education 'achievement gap' between those students who are receiving a quality education and those who are not the civil rights issue of our time. It is fundamentally unfair that Americans' educational opportunities are so heavily influenced by the conditions outside of their control.” (John Legend, “Education Reform: The Civil Rights Issue of Our Time,” The Huffington Post, January 18, 2010.) http://www.huffingtonpost.com/john-legend/education-reform-the-civi_b_426490.html

In his now classic book, writer Jonathan Kozol opined that “Poor people do not need to be reminded that the contest is unfair.” He quoted Elizabeth, “. . . a friend of mine who lives in a black neighborhood of Boston as saying ‘My children know very well the system is unfair. . . . They see it as a message: ‘This is to tell you that you don’t much matter.” (Jonathan Kozol, Savage Inequalities: Children in America’s Schools, New York: Crown Publishers, Inc., 1991, pp. 178-179.)

203. Unstack the Odds--Set at Birth? Part 2

Unstack the Odds: Help All Kids Access College—and Graduate!
by
Joe Rottenborn

Executive Director, Mahoning Valley College Access Program (MVCAP)

1. Are the odds being stacked at birth against some kids going to college and graduating?

According to the American Council on Education (ACE), the rates of degree attainment vary widely according to the racial and ethnic category of students. As stated in its Minorities in Higher Education: 2009 Supplement:
“As of 2007, 27.4 percent of young Americans aged 25 to 29 had obtained at least a bachelor’s degree, and an additional 8.1 percent had earned an associate degree. . . . These average rates conceal large disparities among subgroups. Asian Americans aged 25 to 29 are at the top, with 58 percent holding a bachelor’s degree, followed by whites (33 percent), African Americans (17 percent), Hispanics (11 percent) and finally, American Indians (9 percent). These large gaps are unlikely to change without reducing disparities at each transition point in the educational pipeline.” (Mikyung Ryu, Minorities in Higher Education: 2009 Supplement--Twenty-Third Status Report, American Council on Education, September 2009, p. 1.) http://www.acenet.edu/AM/Template.cfm?Section=CAREE&Template=/CM/ContentDisplay.cfm&ContentID=34214

Furthermore, a gender gap is also evident in the matriculation data; simply put, women are more likely to enroll in college than are men. And this gender gap varies by racial and ethnic classification. Per the ACE 2009 Supplement, “As with high school completion, gender gaps widened in college enrollment rates. The proportion of young women enrolled in college
increased from 30 percent to 45 percent between 1988 and 2007, an increase twice as large as for young men (30 percent to 37 percent). Of all racial/ethnic groups, African Americans and Hispanics showed the largest gender gap in college enrollment rates.” (Ibid., p. 2.)

As Kevin Carey, policy director of the nonprofit Education Sector, stated in a recent posting, "All in all, this confirms what we already knew: College works well for the kind of student who has been going to college for a long time: white middle- and upper-class children of college graduates who enroll full-time directly after leaving high school." (“College Grad Rates Stay Exactly the Same,” The Chronicle of Higher Education, December 2, 2010.) http://chronicle.com/blogs/brainstorm/college-grad-rates-stay-exactly-the-same/29394)

By contrast, data on underrepresented U.S. students—including those of low income and minorities—continue to demonstrate their difficulty in going to college and in graduating. Indeed, Martin Haberman quoted Loeb (1999) as stating “If you’re in the top economic quarter of the population, your children have a 76% chance of getting through college and graduating by age 24. . . . If you’re in the bottom quarter, however, the figure is 4%.” (“Urban Education: The State of Urban Schooling at the Start of 21st Century,” 7/12/2010.) http://www.educationnews.org/ed_reports/104105.html).

As for minorities, in the state of California among community college matriculants, Joanne Jacobs posted that “only 26% of black students and 22% of Latino students had completed a degree or certificate or transferred after six years, compared to 37% of whites and 35% of Asian Pacific Islanders.” In her view, “Students fail because they're not prepared for college-level reading, writing and math. Many are juggling jobs and family responsibilities too, of course, but college readiness is the make-or-break issue." (“Unready and Unsuccessful,” The Huffington Post, October 29, 2010.) http://www.huffingtonpost.com/joanne-jacobs/unready-and-unsuccessful_b_775668.html)

Even among matriculants to colleges and universities, a graduation gap exists by race. In a posting on The Hechinger Report, Sarah Butrymowicz pointed out this information:
“But a study released last summer by the Washington D.C.-based Education Trust, which analyzed data from 456 colleges and universities, found a disturbing gap in graduation rates when disaggregated by race. At private institutions, 73.4 percent of white students earned their degrees within six years, while only 54.7 percent of black students and 62.9 percent of Hispanic students made it through the schools they started.” (“Can universities keep the minority students they woo? The Hechinger Report, February 23, 2011.) http://hechingerreport.org/content/can-universities-keep-the-minority-students-they-woo_5239/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+HechingerReport+%28Hechinger+Report%29

202. Unstack the Odds--Set at Birth? Part 1

Unstack the Odds: Help All Kids Access College—and Graduate!

by

Joe Rottenborn
Executive Director, Mahoning Valley College Access Program (MVCAP)

1. Are the odds being stacked at birth against some kids going to college and graduating?

“Who gets a bachelor’s degree from college by age 24 is largely determined at birth.”

--Thomas Mortenson, “Family Income and Higher Education Opportunity, 1970-2002,” Postsecondary Education Opportunity 143 (May 2004): I-13 in Peter Sacks, Tearing Down the Gates: Confronting the Class Divide in American Education (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 2007), p. 4.

On February 24, 2009, President Barack Obama addressed a joint session of Congress. In that speech, the President said the nation must face “. . . the urgent need to expand the promise of education in America.” As President Obama put it: “Right now, three-quarters of the fastest-growing occupations require more than a high school diploma. And yet, just over half of our citizens have that level of education. We have one of the highest high school dropout rates of any industrialized nation. And half of the students who begin college never finish.”

The President continued: “. . . it will be the goal of this administration to ensure that every child has access to a complete and competitive education – from the day they are born to the day they begin a career.” Then, he announced this national goal in unmistakable language: “That is why we will provide the support necessary for you to complete college and meet a new goal: by 2020, America will once again have the highest proportion of college graduates in the world. “ (Remarks of President Barack Obama – As Prepared for Delivery Address to Joint Session of Congress, Tuesday, February 24th, 2009.) http://www.whitehouse.gov/the_press_office/Remarks-of-President-Barack-Obama-Address-to-Joint-Session-of-Congress/

However, despite this presidential address—and the media attention in recent years given to the importance of continuing education beyond graduation from high school--many students are failing to matriculate and graduate from college—in no small part, it seems, because the odds are stacked against them. Simply put, when it comes to college access and success today, many American students are being left out.

As Peter Sacks put it in an interview about his book Tearing Down the Gates: Confronting the Class Divide in American Education, “Instead of a system of equal educational opportunity, we are creating a system of educational haves and have-nots that increasingly is based upon birthright. Yes, a system based upon class origins.”—Scott Jaschik, “Tearing Down the Gates,” Inside Higher Ed, May 9, 2007.-- http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2007/05/09/sacks