No Child Left Behind?! - The Achievement Gap is Still Creating Holes in Education

Check out THIS NY Times article that reveals that the achievement gap between black & white students is still a significant problem. A recent study resulted in the following startling findings:

Only 12 percent of black fourth-grade boys are proficient in reading, compared with 38 percent of white boys

Only 12 percent of black eighth-grade boys are proficient in math, compared with 44 percent of white boys.

Poor white boys do just as well as African-American boys who do not live in poverty

In high school, African-American boys drop out at nearly twice the rate of white boys, and their SAT scores are on average 104 points lower.

Math scores in 2009 for black boys were not much different than those for black girls in Grades 4 and 8, but black boys lagged behind Hispanics of both sexes, and they fell behind white boys by at least 30 points, a gap sometimes interpreted as three academic grades.

Black & Hispanic Youth Consume the MOST media...Now the real question is - What are they watching?

A recent national survey by the Kaiser Family Foundation found that the amount of time young people spend with entertainment media has risen dramatically, especially among minority youth. Today, 8-18 year-olds devote an average of 7 hours and 38 minutes (7:38) to using entertainment media across a typical day (more than 53 hours a week). And because they spend so much of that time 'media multitasking' (using more than one medium at a time), they actually manage to pack a total of 10 hours and 45 minutes (10:45) worth of media content into those 7½ hours.

Furthermore, substantial differences in media consumption emerge between White youth and Black or Hispanic youth, with the latter two groups consuming nearly 4.5 hours more media daily (13:00 of total media exposure for Hispanics, 12:59 for Blacks, and 8:36 for Whites). The difference between White and minority youth is largest for TV: Black youth spend an average of 2:18 more per day with TV than White youth. The only medium where there are no racial or ethnic differences is print.

Study Finds: Today's Youth Prefer "Fame" over "Profession" & Black Children are More Desperate for it

Jake Halpern is an author, journalist, and radio producer. His book, "Fame Junkies" explores the fascinating and often dark implications of America's obsession with fame. As part of his research for the book, Halpern surveyed 650 teenagers in the Rochester, New York area to analyze how teens think about fame. The results produced some alarming findings that reinforce the need for projects like V.I.P.s.

Take a look at some of Halpern's key findings below:

*Forget being President of Harvard – Make me a Celebrity Personal Assistant…

A question asked: “When you grow up, which of the following jobs would you most like to have?” There were five options to chose from and, among girls, the results were as follows: 9.5% chose “the chief of a major company like General Motors”; 9.8% chose “a Navy Seal”; 13.6% chose “a United States Senator”; 23.7% chose “the president of a great university like Harvard or Yale”; and 43.4% chose “the personal assistant to a very famous singer or movie star.”
It’s worth noting: Research psychologists, like Robert Cialdini at Arizona State University, have long suspected that people with low-self esteem are the ones most likely to “bask in the reflected glory” of others. This appears to be true here. For example, among girls who indicated that they received bad grades in school (i.e., C’s or below), the percentage who opted to become assistants rose to 67%. What’s more, among both boys and girls who got bad grades – and who described themselves as being unpopular at school – the percentage who opted to become assistants rose further to 80%.

*Black Kids Are More Desperate for Fame…

African American kids were especially keen on becoming famous. When asked whether they would rather become famous, smarter, stronger, or more beautiful, 42% of them opted for fame whereas only 21% of whites did so. What’s more, almost 44% of African Americans said that their families would love them more if they became famous, while only 27% of white students said so.
It’s Worth Noting: Of course, there are many ways to explain this data, but one factor to be considered is that African American kids often have especially hard childhoods. According to a 2005 article in the New York Times, two-thirds of black children are born out of wedlock and nearly half of those children who live in single-parent households are poor. All of this seems to suggest that hardship may be driving many African American kids to embrace fame as a remedy to their woes.

*Teens who watch TV and read “glam mags” want and expect fame the most…

According to the study, teenagers who regularly watch certain celebrity-focused TV shows – namely Entertainment Tonight, Access Hollywood, and Insider – are more likely to believe that they themselves will someday become famous. The same trend appears to be true for those teenagers who read celebrity-focused magazines like US Weekly, Star, People, Teen People, YM and J-14. There is also a strong correlation between how many hours of television that teenagers watch in general and how badly they want to become famous. One of the questions on the survey asked: “If you could push a magic button that would change your life in one way, which of the following would you pick?” The options were (a) becoming smarter, (b) becoming much bigger or stronger, (c) becoming famous, (d) becoming more beautiful, and (e) my life doesn’t need any changing. Among those teens who watched one hour of television a day or less, only 15% of the boys and 17% of the girls opted for fame. But among those teens who watched five hours or more a day – and a good number of them did – 29% of the boys and 37% of the girls opted for fame.

*Heavy TV-watchers are especially likely to believe that fame will improve their lives…

Findings from the survey also suggest that teenagers who watch television frequently are more likely to believe that fame will improve their lives. For example, teens who watch five hours or more of television a day are significantly more likely than those who watch just an hour or less to agree with the statement, “Becoming a celebrity [will] make you happier.” Teens who watch five hours of television or more a day are also twice as likely as those who watch an hour or less to believe that their family will love them more if they become a celebrity.

For more on Halpern's study, please click here.

Irony of Connecticut: The Difference Between New Haven & Hartford

When people think of Connecticut Yale University often comes to mind along with some of the most influential people of our time who call this state home. In fact CT, is 4th in the nation for having the most college grads in its population. However, the inner-city tells a very different story. In 2007, Hartford, CT reported that its high schools graduated only 29 percent of the students who had entered the public schools in the ninth grade. Furthermore, Hartford ranks 10th nationwide in household poverty.



A recent study by Northeastern University showed that Connecticut high school dropouts were 17 times more likely than college graduates to need food stamps. More than a quarter of dropouts under 64 receive rental subsidies. CT's achievement gap remains the largest in the nation. In National Assessment of Educational Progress tests, the gap between Latino and white students in eighth-grade math was the worst in the nation, and black students lagged 4.4 grade levels behind white students. What does this tell us? There's an obvious disconnect between what's going on in New Haven and Hartford. We must do more to empower our youth with education and instill in them that without their hard work & determination life will be a lot tougher for them than it has to be.

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