How Our Local "Human Resource Development" Institutions Fail Our Community Competency Development Interests

A recent report entitled "Minorities In Higher Education" that was put forth by the American Council on Education was analyzed by Harvard Professor Stephan Thernstrom.

Prof Thernstrom reads past the notation in the executive summary about the growth in access by minority students.  He touches upon the more compelling issue of performance and retention once the college workload is placed upon them.

It is stunning that this fact-studded 125-page report contains not a single word about the level of academic skills members of various minority groups have at the time they apply to college.

The quote above dares to ask the question that the activism for access has not focused upon enough - "Are the feeder academic institutions who prepare students for a higher education adequately preparing them for the college level demands?"

Prof Thernstrom goes on to say:

Any serious analysis of how various racial groups are moving ahead in the educational system must look at how well prepared they are to advance to the next level. The assumption of the ACE report is that minority groups should have made even more gains in higher education than they did over the past decade, but the authors never ask whether minority students currently leave secondary school with stronger skills than they had a decade ago. The answer is apparent in a quick glance at the evidence provided by the National Assessment of Educational Progress and the College Board. It shows plainly that racial gaps in cognitive skills at the end of high school today have not been narrowing in recent years. Indeed, the black-white gap in mean SAT scores, for example, has increased by 14 points, and the white-Latino gap by 7 points. Similarly, the most recent NAEP Trend study found that the black-white difference in reading scores at age 17 was as wide in 2008 as it had been in 1996, and in math it had shrunk by only an insignificant one point. For Hispanics, the gap in math was identical in both years, and the reading gap narrowed by a very modest 4 points, from 30 to 26.

Prof Thernstrom's analysis echo's what I have been arguing for an extended period of time:  On the subject of "Black Community academic advancement" there has been a greater push outward to either take control over local institutions or force college level institutions to provide access than a legacy of focusing upon ordering the key human resources who will benefit from a more coordinated elementary and secondary process to become more engaged in obtaining improved outcomes:

• The Adult Parents of Students who are the managers of their children's academic career
• The Students themselves
• The Adults in the Eco-System who can provide gap coverage in support of parents
• The Adults on the Teaching Staffs
• The Adults in the School Administration and Political System

Today we are more likely to hear calls for unity among these groups as they gather for a protest on the steps of the school board administration to fight against austerity cuts.  Or - in the case of Chicago - a powerful local reverend calling upon students to travel to a nearby wealthy school system and threaten to register for classes unless the state does something to provide for the local school system.

Initiatives which call upon all of the human resources itemized above to achieve higher performance results based upon the application of an enduring set of corrective actions are fewer.

Those with a civil rights activism spirit are more likely to fight against the standardized tests that the report from American Council Of Education use to index minority performance standing.

I am made to ask - "What is the downside in the effort to organize the community human resources, enlisting more people in the project to fortify the academic preparation and attainment of THEIR OWN CHILDREN?".

If you reject the testing - why is setting up a more aggressive regimen for reading as a means of lifting up the proficiency levels a bad thing?  If "teaching to the test" is a sign of bad public policy - what should we call those policies which fail to prepare students for tests that index their results with other students who matriculated through a more effective system of academic propagation?   The students who have these skills that are being tested will ace the tests, regardless of how many they are presented for their appraisal.  

2011 - A Year Of Institutional Development Focus
If you are tired of me talking about "institutions" in the context of "Community Cultural Consciousness & Competency Development" on this blog thus far, you have not seen anything yet.

In the year 2011 this will be my major theme.
The challenge will be to wrest control of the consciousness which seeks to promote ideological and partisan operatives into the seats of these institutions, replacing them by first replacing the CONSCIOUSNESS about these institutions and their bottom line necessary in obtaining the higher standard of living that our community seeks.

The expansionary track where more political power is said to lead to better outcomes in the future must be turned around. POWER comes from the effective function of local institutions which prepare human resources who will go out into the world en masse and execute what they have learned per this preparation.

This also means that theories that are popular but which has failed to deliver the needed results must be purged. In short EFFICACY must trump POPULARITY. The "unity" must be around the SYSTEM that has been proven to achieve results, not around the entrenched METHODOLOGY which is more in line with the mass ideology.
The system affords a given methodology to run its course, it merely applies TRANSPARENT assessment of the results and the ability to allow these methods to continue or toss them out from continued use because they are expired and ineffective.