Education gap threatens students’ economic future

By LARRY BIVINS
Gannett News Service

WASHINGTON — Howard University sophomore Alondra Jones says the shortcomings of her high school education emerged soon after she enrolled at this storied black college.

Jones, 19, a graduate of Balboa High School in San Francisco, said she is struggling with algebra and computer science and has decided to sign up for remedial courses to learn the math basics she never learned in high school.

"I have to learn what I should have gotten at Balboa," she said.

At the predominantly black and Hispanic school, 40 percent of the teachers lacked full state certification in 2000, according to a lawsuit filed by the American Civil Liberties Union. Just two of nine math teachers were certified.

Jones' experience underscores why teaching matters.
"I don't feel like I've been well prepared," she said. "In my math class, I probably score among the lowest."

The nation's chronic failure to educate poor and minority children threatens to create a permanent underclass, said Lili Brown of New Visions for Public Schools, New York City's largest education reform group.

"In some of our high schools, there are 1,200 kids entering in the freshman year and 120 graduate four years later," she said. "Wherever those children end up, they are not going to have the skills that make them employable in today's economy, and we will all bear those costs."

Experts agree that quality teaching is the single biggest influence on academic achievement. But, as a Gannett News Service investigation found, poor, black and Hispanic children are far more likely than more affluent students and white students to be taught key subjects like English and math by teachers who did not even minor in those fields in college.

The inequities that GNS discovered "drive home how far we have to go before our society is seriously committed to leaving no child behind," said Hugh Price, outgoing president of the National Urban League and author of a recently released book titled "Achievement Matters."

Like Alondra Jones, many minority students enter college unprepared because of a poor public school education. The longer the list of remedial courses they have to take, the less likely they are to graduate, studies show.

Only 18 percent of students who require three remedial courses graduate from college, according to a 1998 study. Federal education data for 1995 showed that 43 percent of the freshmen at minority colleges had to take remedial courses in reading, writing and math, compared with 29 percent of all college freshmen.

A National Collegiate Athletic Association survey found that the college graduation rate for black males dropped to 31 percent in 2000 from 35 percent in 1995. The graduation rate for all black students in 2000 was 37 percent - 22 percentage points below the rate for white students.

Income gaps

Blacks have reached near parity with whites in high school graduation rates, Census Bureau figures show, but only 16 of every 100 black kindergartners graduate from college, compared with 30 of every 100 white kindergartners.
Price and other experts agree that an inferior education eventually translates into lower incomes and higher unemployment rates for poor and minority students.

In 2001, the median income for blacks was $29,470, compared with $33,565 for Hispanics, $46,305 for whites and $53,635 for Asians. The unemployment rate for blacks in 2001 was 8.7 percent, compared with 6.6 percent for Hispanics and 4.2 percent for whites.

The stagnant economy has hit blacks hardest. The jobless rate for blacks jumped to 11 percent in November, up from 9.8 percent the previous month. The rate for Hispanics was 7.8 percent. For whites, it was 5.2 percent.

Failing to educate minority students is risky, experts say, as the United States undergoes a significant demographic shift. By 2040, whites will make up less than 50 percent of the school-age population.

At stake is the "cohesion of our democracy," said Kati Haycock, director of the Education Trust. "You can't build walls high enough to insulate yourself or your children from the effects of a continuing growing gap between haves and have-nots."

The number of high-paying, blue-collar jobs available to people without some college education continues to shrink.
In 1973, more than half of factory workers between the ages of 30 and 59 were high school dropouts, according to a study by Anthony Carnevale, an economist with the Educational Testing Service. By 2000, dropouts held just 19 percent of those jobs.

"Years ago, they educated kids to go down in the factory down the street," said Denise Dixon, a Chicago community activist. Today, "the factory down the street doesn't exist. They have to be able to compete in the real world."
Dixon's three children attend Luke O'Toole Elementary School in a predominantly black neighborhood. Forty percent of the school's teachers lacked appropriate state certification in the 2000-01 school year, according to an analysis by the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now (ACORN).

A similar shortage of certified teachers is at the heart of a class-action lawsuit that the American Civil Liberties Union filed against California education officials in May 2000.
In at least 100 schools in the state, only half the teachers held full, nonemergency state credentials, the complaint contends. At some schools, only 13 percent of teachers were certified.

Jones, who is studying fashion merchandising and communications and is a plaintiff in the lawsuit, now has a better sense of why quality teaching matters. The sobering reality hit, she said, as she began considering colleges.
"I wanted to attend Berkeley," she said, referring to the highly rated University of California campus across the bay from San Francisco. "I'm barely able to keep up here."

(Contributing: GNS reporter Fredreka Schouten)