Suggested Answers to Second Short Quiz

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Our focus is Separate BUT UNEQUAL Public Schools and "The Obama Education Plan: An Education Week Guide by Education Week" (available from your local library or from Amazon.com for $14.95 (used $7.83) + shipping) and actions/decisions being taken by Education Secretary Arne Duncan.

We anticipate re-directing our six-degrees-of-separation e-mail campaign of last January from President Obama to Secretary Duncan who has an unheard-of $5 billion in the proposed budget over which he has 100% discretion and so far the Administration has been ignoring the only factor that can transform single-digit inner-city high-school graduation rates to 65%-70%!!! The budget will be approved in the next few weeks and a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to do something significant vis-à-vis educating inner-city kids effectively will be lost!!!
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johnkarls
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Joined: Fri Jun 29, 2007 8:43 pm

Suggested Answers to Second Short Quiz

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Question 1

Do you personally consider it more important to do something about the prevailing inner-city SINGLE-DIGIT H.S. graduation rates, or merely to continue to do something about insuring a few token African Americans attend college each year (most courtesy of the only “affirmative action” program that the Supreme Court does NOT dare to attack – athletic scholarships)?

Answer 1

Hopefully you are a democrat!!!

Question 2

Does the country’s education establishment, from all of the wonderful studies summarized in our suggested reading (and many if not most are truly wonderful – I’m not being sarcastic), recognize the problem?

Answer 2

No!!!

Question 3

Does the country’s education establishment even propose to measure the problem?

Answer 3

No!!!

Our suggested reading “The Obama Education Plan: An Education Week Guide” states (p. 116) – “The National Governors Association … three years ago … pushed states to voluntarily agree to use common measures of dropping out. For years, states had routinely reported graduation rates of 90% or higher. We know that the real average for most states is closer to 70%.”

Without mentioning, of course, that we KNOW from the first 180 “I Have A Dream”® Programs in 51 American cities that the true H.S. graduation rate for inner-city children is SINGLE DIGITS – a fact easily masked by state-wide statistics.

“The Obama Education Plan” also mentioned (p. 116) that the U.S. Department of Education will begin requiring states to calculate graduation rates BY THE SAME WAY by the 2012-13 school year -- without requiring use of THE HONEST METHOD!!!

The HONEST METHOD should be required for all statistics whether state-wide, district-wide or attendance district. The HONEST METHOD compares the number of children graduating from high school to a census of the population in the area served to ascertain the number of individuals present who are the same age as the graduating class – AFTER ADDING BACK IN ALL THOSE WHO ARE INCARCERATED OR OTHERWISE REMOVED FROM THE POPULATION (e.g., by death after dropping out at an early age).

Question 4

For what age level are designed most, if not all, of the special programs described in our suggested reading?

Answer 4

Middle/High School and Pre-School.

Question 5

What do the effectiveness studies of pre-school program studies show? (Hint – you will probably have to surf the internet to find an accurate answer for this question!)

Answer 5

Over the decades, there have been a lot of studies of Pre-K programs, primarily Head Start.

The reason why you would have to surf the Internet to ascertain the results of such studies is that the Education Establishment does not like to admit the results.

Almost invariably, the studies show a significant difference in the performance IN KINDERGARTEN of students who participated in Head Start and those who didn’t.

However, by third- or fourth-grade, the studies show that there is no longer a discernable difference!!!

But why should these results be surprising??? If your parents died when you were in kindergarten and you were suddenly tossed out on the street, having to steal just in order to eat, why should anyone dream that you would keep pace with your peers academically???

Wouldn’t it make more sense for nobody to expect an inner-city child, 90% of whom have never had more than a single-parent who is a druggie, to keep pace unless the Pre-K program such is Head Start is followed up with surrogate parents – that is a tutor and a mentor that will stay with the child through high school graduation???

Question 6

What is the effectiveness of middle-school and high-school intervention programs? Does the judgment of “effectiveness” of such programs depend on whether the objective is to do something about the prevailing inner-city SINGLE-DIGIT H.S. graduation rates, or merely to continue to do something about insuring a few token African Americans attend college each year?

Answer 6

The Middle/High School programs are aimed at the objective of keeping a few token inner-city children in school and sending them on to college.

But do nothing about the inner-city SINGLE DIGIT H.S. graduation rates.

BECAUSE THEY ARE NOT DESIGNED TO DO ANYTHING ABOUT THEM. (Please see Question and Answer No. 8 below for why the inner-city single-digit H.S. graduation rate is already “cast in stone” by third grade.)

Question 7

Why are there virtually no intervention programs described in our suggested reading that are aimed at inner-city children from age 5-8?

Answer 7

God only knows!!!

Question 8

When Eugene Lang addressed in 1981 the graduating 6th-graders at Harlem P.S. 121 and, on the spur of the moment, was inspired to say he would pay their college tuition if they stayed in school – HE QUICKLY REALIZED HIS MISTAKE!!! For the first 180 sponsors in 51 American cities who replicated what he did during the 1980’s and 1990’s, why did Gene require that they adopt their group of inner-city children (the ENTIRE grade level in an inner-city public school or the ENTIRE grade level in a public-housing project) for tutoring and mentoring through H.S. graduation with a guarantee of college tuition NO LATER THAN THIRD GRADE?

Answer 8

Gene immediately recognized 3 reasons why it was imperative to intervene NO LATER THAN THIRD GRADE –

1. Waiting until 6th grade means the children are 3 more years behind grade level.

2. Waiting until 6th grade means the children have had drilled into their heads for 3 additional years that they are worthless.

3. Waiting until 6th grade means that the children are no longer receptive to the intervention of tutors and mentors, and it is almost impossible to reach them.

*****
There is a 4th reason which is closely allied with No. 3 –

4. Pushers recruit the 3rd graders as runners because the pushers don’t want to be arrested themselves. The 3rd-grade runners will make more than Wall Street lawyers until they are busted. So it is about 3rd grade that a paradigm-shift occurs – it is “cool” to be a runner and have “cash to burn” and it is “cool” to be the girl friend of a runner.

Question 9

Why does the country’s education establishment seem so purposely obtuse when it comes to the only program that has demonstrated an ability to transform inner-city SINGLE-DIGIT H.S. graduation rates to 60% - 70%?

Answer 9

God only knows!!!

Question 10

During the Clinton and Bush Administrations, was the country’s political establishment equally obtuse?

Answer 10

ABSOLUTELY NOT!!!

Hillary Clinton served on Eugene Lang’s “I Have A Dream”® national advisory board for many years before the 1991 Iowa caucuses.

Gene Sperling, President Clinton’s Chief Domestic Affairs Adviser, wrote his Wharton Doctoral thesis on the “I Have A Dream”® program (though he did not remain at Wharton long enough to receive his doctorate).

The first President and Barbara Bush have raised prodigious amounts of money for “I Have A Dream”® programs – both in their home town of Houston and in Boston where the founder and chief benefactor of IHAD-Boston is their nephew Jamie Bush (son of older brother Prescott Bush, Jr. who, like their father Presocott, Sr., was both a Connecticut Governor and U.S. Senator from Connecticut). Indeed, the “1,000 points of light” speech of the first President Bush was his own idea and was motivated by the inspiration of “I Have A Dream”® (though there were not 1,000 IHAD programs yet by that time).

The second President and Laura Bush have also been very support of “I Have A Dream”® programs.

Indeed, during the Clinton Administration, Hillary Clinton and Gene Sperling had no trouble in the mid-1990’s recruiting President Clinton and an overwhelming bi-partisan majority in Congress to enact legislation which, according to the legislative history and all of the hearings, was patterned on the “I Have A Dream”® program and provided $120 million/year of matching funds for IHAD-style programs (though, unfortunately, the legislation specified intervention at the 6th-grade level rather than the 3rd-grade level – because Congress was too blinded by Gene Lang’s original example instead of appreciating what he quickly discovered about the 3-year difference).

Question 11

Why does U.S. Education Secretary Arne Duncan who, after all, was the head of the Chicago public school system for many years, seem so obtuse when it comes to the only program that has demonstrated an ability to transform inner-city SINGLE-DIGIT H.S. graduation rates to 60% - 70%?

Answer 11

God only knows!!!


AND FOR EXTRA CREDIT --

Question A

Why does U.S. Education Secretary Arne Duncan seem to relish offending the N.E.A. and A.F.T. (the two largest teachers’ unions) with proposals such as incentive merit pay – which has only a negligible effect on inner-city SINGLE-DIGIT H.S. graduation rates – while ignoring a NON-CONTROVERSIAL program that has a quantum impact on that objective?

Answer A

God only knows!!!

Question B

Is there anything in our suggested reading (or from anywhere else that you can find such as from searching the internet) that would have more than a negligible effect on inner-city SINGLE-DIGIT H.S. graduation rates?

Answer B

If you can find anything, please bring your documentation to the meeting on May 13th.

Question C

Is there anything that could improve our recommendation to President Obama of last January of FEDERALLY financed AND OPERATED magnet schools whose heart and soul would be the tutoring and mentoring by the suburban students and their families of the inner-city students – before we re-focus our suggestion on Arne Duncan?

Answer C

Please bring your ideas to our May 13th meeting.

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