Arkansas Blog

I certainly can't tell you or anyone about it. I could only repeat what I am told by those involved. My wife is involved and could really spew it out. Don't know if I could get her to elaborate here or not but will try. But I will venture an observation that is not intended to be incendiary...just like yours. But it seems everything fails this group you point to except our prison system. Stop and think who makes up the bulk of the prison population in Arkansas and in this nation and the parallel is there.

What does the State spend on each convict in Arkansas prisons each year? $35,000? $40,000? And what does the state spend per pupil per year in Arkansas? $6,000.

Reverse it. Spend $40,000 a year per student and $6,000 a year on each convict and there might be a dramatic change in all of this. Reckon?

Max,
Your assumption is good up to the subset of students with disabilities. If this subset did not exist most of these students would fall into the white category for districts like Cabot and Beebe. If you want to check out a public scam then check into the category of students with disabilities. I know some of the students classified this way and there is nothing wrong with them except they think there are other things in their lives that are more important than sitting in school eight hours a day.
Don't districts get extra funding for these students?

Cato: "But it seems everything fails this group you point to except our prison system."

I think the prison system fails them, too.

huh? cato, there's not enough money in this state to spend 40,000 on each student.
And, the cost of prisoners must be cut.
A politician that does not work to lower the cost of living should be hung.
There are several that worked hard to raise the cost of living and that is not right.

1. Here's one issue: If you're white, the minute you try and help solve the problem, that's the minute you're labled a racist. Or by others, not racist enough. So, it's easier to ignore it.

2. Here's another issue: African Americans in Arkansas have been denied a decent education until very recently. So, they still may have a vast misunderstanding about what it takes to succeed in an educational environment on the part of many parents. It takes more than telling the child to "hit those books." The parent has to work WITH the child. Many African American parents in Arkansas don't *truly* grasp that yet. They don't truly realize the committment many white families make to educating their kids. They may not read to the children, surf the internet with the child, or help answer homework questions. The parent may ask the child if they have homework, but do they do educational projects with their kids? Libraries, museums, educational movies, field trips, rock collecting, boy scouts, using technology, educational summer programs...these are examples of things white families do for thier kids. Not once, but 100's of times. And, the black kids who make it will be shown to have involved parents, who seek out more educational opportunities for their kids. Schools can't do it all.

3.Here's yet another issue: Don't coddle a kid by passing them if they aren't on grade level. If a school were to fail all the kids who are not on grade level--well, refer to number one above.

4. And another: Lots of black kids are suspicious of intellectualism. They freak out worse than some other minorities when it comes to being labeled a nerd. They do not want to be seen as being smart (even though they are just as brilliant as any other racial group) for fear of being labled as smart. It's not cool to be smart, so they fight it tooth and nail. They believe (and this may be cultural) that "hard work" and "individualism" is enough to do well in the world. This isn't true anymmore.

Arkansas African Americans have been denied good jobs until only the last 50 years or so. Up unitl that time, they were forced to work the blue collar crap jobs no one else wanted. "Hard work" then, may be viewed differently by their community. "Hard work" means blue collar jobs, and blue collar means you don't need as much education. "So, why do I need school? Grandpa was a mechanic, Dad was a factory worker, and mom was a receptionist. Why read?" So, in their interpretation, education may not be part of the equation. Only "hard work" is.

5. Another: This one actually applies all over Arkansas: Fundamentalist religion. Any religion that gives one the answer to every problem in life keeps you from thinking. "God will handle it, therefore I don't have to worry about anything." Fundamentalist religion chokes creativity and critical thinking. It keeps people in a box with clear parameters. Go outside it and you'll go to hell. The fundamentalists in Arkansas control public education. And it's the same in the African American community. Religious fundamentalism may very well keep African Americans down more than lift them up. Fundamentalism was used in slave days to keep slaves following their masters, and it may serve the same basic argument now. Although not often thought of as fundamentalists, black churches in Arkansas are quite so.

The Arkansas African American community is a tightly knit one, and many of the educational problems facing both white and black children may be compounded because of it. Since many African Americans still don't feel comfortable mixing with whites, and many whites in Arkansas don't feel comfortable mixing with blacks, these and othe educational problems are probably magnified in the black community.

Now before ANYONE jumps on me, attempts to smash my arguments, call me a racist or imply that I am a racist, please refer to number one above. And you'll know why it'll be decades before this is solved.

Man...it's Saturday and my brain doesn't want to work this hard! Here's what I can tell you about the subsets at Tilles elementary from my 6 year term of personal observation. Append to every subset listed the word poor and you have the makeup of the students at Tilles. We were the richest parents at PTA, which is pretty funny to me, but it's the truth.

There is nothing wrong with poor people, even the Rockefellers were poor at some point a zillion years ago. But I can promise the white kids at Tilles are as poor as the non-whites....everyone is poor. The really heart warming thing I saw during our time there was that it's OK to be poor at Tilles, there is NO one there to look down their noses at you. The teachers act like everyone has a chance to be President if they work hard. And they all work hard.

The deck is stacked against all the kids of Tilles, is every year, has been since the school opened, will be for many years to come. Because the turn-over rate is 70% each year, testing will never show the progress that is made by the hard working teachers. But as a parent who spent 6 years in close contact with the school, I can promise the world that the teachers and administration of Tilles School in Fort Smith are the most dedicated and hard working bunch you'll ever find. I don't need no stinkin tests to tell me. I am proud of them and speak out in support every chance I get.

They're making a big difference even if so much of their hard work moves on to other schools in other parts of the city and to other states. Where is the test to measure that? And when will there be tests to show which parents are laying on their dead asses relying on others to do their jobs?

If your kid's school is on the shit list, look in the mirror and ask yourself if you are holding up your end? Some day maybe President Obama will actually fund No Child Left Behind....it's way past time.

Research has shown over the years that most white and black students learn differently. Most black students learn better by visual and applied practices. Our current educaton system is based on written text and exercises, which research has shown white students learn better. The question I have is why school administrators have not adapted to these findings. I guess that is why I am split with the idea of charter schools, since it seems there are some charter schools in the nation that are being innovative to reach black students.

As long as people keep providing excuses for black failure in education they will continue the failure. Enablers don't help people to achieve. Blacks have to take responsibility for their own failure before they stand a chance of turning things around. If they don't we will keep reading these metrics that indicate continued failure.

Strangelove.......you hit the nail on the head.

As one of Dubya's speechwriters said, " The most subtle form of racism is diminished expectations".

My high school alma mater is Pine Bluff High School. When I was graduated in 1961 we had an enrollment of approximately 1000; grades 10-12 and PBHS was one of the academic stars in Arkansas Education. Its enrollment was nearly all white with only a few asian students completing the student body. Today the enrollment is nearly all African-American with only a few whites completing the student body. The latest report referenced above reflects PBHS is an S-6 school and is thus required to be restructured. It has failed to meet the minimum standards of NCLB for SIX years. Robey Junior High School which funnels students to PBHS is an S-5 school; failing to meet standards for FIVE years and is also mandated to be restructured.
Meanwhile , in early May,2008 the following headline appeared in the ArDemGaz:

PB School District worker facing 1,100 counts in theft of $884,712

BY MIKE LINN ARKANSAS DEMOCRAT-GAZETTE

PINE BLUFF - Prosecutors filed more than 1,100 felony charges against a secretary for the Pine Bluff School District on Tuesday and accused her of stealing $884,712 from the district by depositing fraudulent business checks.
Lynda King, 39, is charged with 576 counts of felony forgery, 551 counts of felony theft of property and 25 counts of misdemeanor theft of property.
Authorities said the longtime secretary/data analyst concocted a "brazen" scheme to defraud the district over seven years, from Jan. 10, 2001, to March 30.
She turned herself in to authorities Tuesday afternoon and was being held in lieu of $100,000 cash-only bond in the Jefferson County jail, said Stevan Dalrymple, the prosecuting attorney for the 11th Judicial District-West.
"I'm professionally saddened because this goes against everything that I've tried to teach and model during my tenure as superintendent," Pine Bluff School District Superintendent Frank Anthony said Tuesday evening.
"My heart and sympathy goes out to her family. She disrupted the trust that the administration had placed in her."

To date no further information regarding yet another major debacle in Superintendant Frank Anthony's stewardship of the Pine Bluff School District has been made public. Thus we have a district that is mandated to be restructured and a superintendant who is saddened for the family that a trusted employee can steal nearly a million dollars from his failed system over a period of seven years. I wish I was just making this stuff up!

Sorry, Roym, but theft and embezzelment are not issues segregated by race. I could tell you chapter and verse of a trusted white employee who stole at least $170,000 over a two year period, from white organizations. (My guess is that it was much more, but no one wanted to go any farther back checking the books.)
That said, yes, PBSD officials have much to answer for, from allowing student (and parent) apathy to squandering funds on an aggressive, and at least partially ill-advised, building program.
On the other hand -- I don't know how much this contributes to student failure to learn -- I see so many school aged children shopping with their parents during school hours. Sure, some -- most? -- are being home schooled. But casual eavesdropping sometimes reveals that others are simply skipping school with a parent's blessing. I can only think of two times, back in the same dark ages Roy speaks of, that my parents allowed anything like this, both to attend funerals for close family friends.
Schools can't do it alone. More parents need to realize that.

Here's my take on it.
If they lower the requirements that it takes to graduate then why send kids to schools at all.. damn they will learn as much by not going to school!

Ameria is doomed and you can believe it is the NEA that has finally brought america down to hell. Our schools are turning out dumb smart kids who want all they can get by doing nothing.

So white parents who flee the LRSD are doing so for reasons other than falling standards. Max's figures make it clear that that should be the least of their concerns.

Of course the present LRSD administration and board will not touch such statistics, despite their obvious PR value if they honestly want to keep city schools desegregated. They prefer to parrot the "closing the disparity" mantra rather than to address the true problem: how to bring black student test scores up. It is a problem not unique to Little Rock or Arkansas.