Education - May 2008
Johnny Smith is five years old. He reluctantly leaves the grasp of his mother's arms and steps through the doorway into his first day of kindergarten. The teacher greets him with a smile, knowing that the rest of his life is still ahead of him. His possibilities for success seem endless. However, the sad truth for little Johnny is that his future prospects for academic achievement depend on a factor Johnny cannot control: his skin color. Even in the year 2008, 54 years after Brown v. Board, American schools continue to provide an embarrassingly inadequate education to the black youth of this country. While white soccer moms from California's suburbs write letters to the Arnold complaining about the education their child is receiving, the average American black student continues to graduate high school performing at a level a little worse than the average white student performs in the eighth grade. While the situation may seem hopeless, certain standout public schools and charter schools are
blazing a new path in education policy that is showing significant promise. These schools all have one thing in common. They address the racial gap in education as a cultural problem that our educational system can confront face to face.
Many Americans believe that the issue of racial inequality in education was solved in 1954 when the Supreme Court ruled Brown v. Board that found segregated classrooms unconstitutional. For a long time, it seemed that the issue was dying and that this was true. Following Brown and the death of Jim Crow overall, the racial gap in education appeared to be slowly closing, with black students performing better each year, slowly catching up to their white peers. However, in 1989, this came to an end, and the progress that had been occurring to close the gap suddenly stagnated. The gap even slightly widening from 1989 to the present.
While racial equality in the classroom has left the hearts and minds of most Americans, inequality continues to persist in the statistics. According to Richard Rothstein's Class and Schools, 72 percent of black students graduate high school compared to 82 percent of white students, Only 44 percent of black students go on to college, but 58 percent of white students do, Just 17 percent of black students finish a bachelor's degree, less than half of the 35 percent of white students who do. This is not to mention that even those black students that do manage to finish high school or college come out with significantly less knowledge on average than white student. In No Excuses, Abigail and Stephan Thernstrom found that only one in ten black adults can read at the level of an average white adult and the average black student graduating high school, “perform[s] a little worse than white eight-graders in both reading and U.S. history, and a lot worse in math and geography.” That means that, of the lucky 72 percent of blacks that graduate high school, half of them are at a level of knowledge that is even less than an average white eighth grader. For the 28 percent of blacks that are not graduating high school, we can only imagine the appallingly low levels of knowledge these students must have when entering the working world.
In order to understand how Americans can bridge this gap in educational achievement, we must first understand where the gap comes from. The most obvious origin of the gap is of course socioeconomic. Blacks are poorer on average than whites, and poorer people do worse in school on average.
Thankfully, the socioeconomic disparity between blacks and whites only tells part of the story. As the Thernstroms found in America in Black and White, “Blacks from families earning over $70,000 a year have lower average SAT scores than whites from families taking in less than $10,000; blacks with a parent who graduated from college on average score lower than whites whose parents never finished high school.” In Class and Schools, Richard Rothstein shows that even when socioeconomic differences are controlled for in the statistics, massive inequalities still remain between blacks and whites. Socioeconomic differences only account for about a third of the racial gap in education, leaving the other two thirds of the gap to be explained by other factors. If socioeconomic inequality accounted for the entire gap in education, then massive wealth redistributions schemes would be needed to rectify the gap, but because “other factors” are responsible for the
majorty of it, the gap can be directly addressed within the educational system.
Social scientists have proposed a variety of explanations for the remaining two thirds of the racial gap in education, ranging from extremely racist genetic inferiority arguments to claims of subconscious racism emanating from teacher expectations. In general, arguments that hinge on genetics should be rejected as patently dangerous as well as poorly substantiated by the evidence. Although there may be some truth to arguments that claim that the system is somehow keeping blacks down, evidence to prove this is also hard to come by.
While genetic theorists blame blacks entirely for their poor performance and those that believe in subconscious racism absolve blacks entirely from responsibility, an explanation that takes the middle ground appears to be the most plausible: culture. Over the centuries in the United States, dominant black culture has developed characteristics that tend to undervalue academic success because blacks have historically not been rewarded for educational success in the same way whites have. Today, the rewards have equalized, blacks with similar educational achievement to whites go on to receive similar salaries and other benefits, but the cultural characteristics of dominant Black culture have not.
Researchers who attempt to discover the cause of the racial gap in education find time and time again that various aspects of culture are to blame. Culture tended to influence students' success on two different levels: 1) the culture of their individual family, and 2) the culture of the community of students at school. In 1997, the College Board conducted a study to determine why Asian students performed better on average in school than blacks. The study found that “cultural attributes of home, community, and school” were primarily responsible for the difference in achievement between blacks and Asians. Asian parents were “more likely… to train their children to believe success is based on effort rather than hard work, and thus they instilled in their children the values of hard work, diligence, thoroughness, and self-discipline,” while blacks were more likely to have “counterproductive culturally-shaped skills, habits and styles [that] were a key source of [their] poor academic performance.”
William Sampson confirmed the College Board's finding in his study of black student achievement in Evanston, Illinois. Sampson found that the distinguishing characteristic between poor black children that performed well in school and poor black children that performed poorly was their family culture. Students that performed well did not have a family culture that was consistent with dominant Black culture. As Sampson put it, the high-achieving poor black students had parents that “do the same kind of things that have been documented in white middle class parents.”
While some black students are able to succeed by having a positive family environment, others find themselves held back by negative incentives in the culture of their student community. John Ogbu's study of Shaker Heights, Ohio and Pedro Noguera's study of Berkeley, California both found that black students reported a culture of apathy towards academics and peer pressure against working hard as a major reason for poor black performance.
If culture is to blame for the racial gap in achievement, the best way to close the gap is to use our school system to immerse black students in a culture that will drive them towards academic success. Few educational reforms have had much success at closing the racial gap in education and the reason behind this is clear: these reforms fail to focus on culture. However, a few schools around the country have actually managed to create educational programs that focus directly on culture-based reform and, not surprisingly, these schools have had more success at closing the racial gap in education than any school has ever had before.
The South Bronx KIPP Academy in New York has 250 students who are all black and Hispanic. In a neighborhood with some of the worst poverty in New York, it draws from the local population using a random lottery. The Academy operates in the same building as a traditional public school, where students from the exact same population get terrible results on standardized tests. However, the Academy uses culture-based education, making a big difference for its students. In 2000, 66 percent of its students scored above grade level in math on the New York State standardized tests, and 55 percent scored above grade level in reading. In District 7, where the KIPP Academy is located and where it draws its students from, only nine percent of students were above grade level in math and 16 percent in reading. Success stories like this are numerous for the handful of schools that concentrate on culture. These schools include the North Star Academy, the KIPP Academies, and the Amistad Academy, just to name a few. Not only do these stories show that closing the racial gap in education is possible, but they confirm that culture is in fact the primary cause of the racial achievement gap.
How do schools manage to build an educational program that focuses on developing a positive culture? Much of what is necessary is simply a shift in mind-set by educators. Teachers must switch from viewing their job as simply teaching material to viewing their job as bestowing students with the values, habits, behaviors, and skills necessary to succeed in academics and in their careers. Most of the reform is a mental switch for educators, but schools that seek to replicate the results of these culture-based schools also need to implement significant policy changes to support their psychological change in mission. These schools use a variety of methods to reinforce these characteristics and create a positive community culture. Some use student chant sessions, complex systems of punishment and reward, and methods of holding individual students accountable to the student community. Others provide teachers as role models, keep students aware of the
challenges and rewards in their future, and do not tolerate even the slightest slip-ups in student behavior.
The success of these culture-based reforms in standout schools illuminates a path of hope for a future of racial equality in education. The challenges ahead in developing political support, funding, and a logistical framework for standardizing such reforms are numerous, but nevertheless, we must persevere. It is only through dedication to meaningful educational reform that we can one day fulfill the promise of the American dream and allow Johnny Smith to live in a country where his prospects are not determined by his skin color.
HEALTH
Fuel your workout:
exercisers who eat before they work out have more energy and stand to burn more fat
Daryn Eller
VERY MORNING, NOON AND NIGHT, in gyms across America, you can hear the sound of a low but persistent rumble. Listen carefully and, in between the whir of the treadmill and the clank of weight plates, your ears will pick it up: the clamor of empty stomachs crying out for food.
Some people just don't have time to eat in reasonable proximity to their workout, but others deliberately go without food. "One client told me she believed she'd burn more fat by exercising on an empty stomach," reports Anne-Marie Nocton, RD, a sports nutritionist in Knoxville, Tenn. "Her reasoning was that if no food was available for fuel, her body would tap into its fat reserves."
Well, yes ... but there's a whole lot more to the story than that. As it turns out, if your goal is to maximize your workout and get (or maintain) a lean body, eating, not starving, is your best strategy. Here's what you need to know to prevent the empty stomach blues.
HOW FOOD FUELS YOU
Although your body burns some stored fat when you exercise, its main fuel is carbohydrate that's been stored in the muscles and liver in the form of glycogen. When your glycogen stores are depleted, your body will indeed tap more of its fat reserves, just as Nocton's client anticipated--but at what price? Without readily available fuel, you're not likely to feel too energetic. "And you won't burn more of anything if you can't muster the enthusiasm to master your toughest sets," says Nocton. "On the other hand, if you eat before exercise, whether it's a large meal several hours in advance or a small snack only minutes ahead of time, you'll have the extra oomph you need for an energetic and effective workout."
Here's the reason: Before carbohydrate is tucked away in your muscles and liver as glycogen, it enters your bloodstream in the form of glucose (also called blood sugar), a readily available source of energy that helps perk you up when you're feeling hungry and fatigued. If the glycogen stored in your muscles and liver is low, your body can rely on glucose for fuel; if you already have a fair amount of stored glycogen, your body will use the glucose as a secondary source of energy and spare the glycogen. "It means that you have two sources of fuel as opposed to one, so you can last a lot longer," says Jackie Berning, RD, a sports nutritionist and assistant professor in the department of biology at the University of Colorado at Colorado Springs.
Something else you should consider is that the muscles and liver can only store so much glycogen. It's important to "top off" your reserves fairly often, even if you haven't been doing much: During a long night's sleep, the body depletes as much as 80 percent of the glycogen stored in the liver. "That's why eating a little something before you exercise in the morning can really help," says Nocton. Moreover, it doesn't take long to deplete stored glycogen during exercise, and it gets used up even faster when the weather is warm. "If you're playing an intense tennis match without having eaten and it's warm outside, it may take only 30 to 40 minutes before you deplete your glycogen," says Berning. Eating before a match will not only help you last a lot longer, it will also help settle the gastric juices that make your stomach growl and ward off the feelings of lightheadness and fatigue that can make it difficult to perform well.
WHAT TO EAT WHEN
Naturally, the fact that you shouldn't exercise on an empty stomach doesn't mean that you should eat a three-course meal 10 minutes before hitting the gym. In general, the closer you get to your workout start time, the fewer calories you should eat. The nutrients that make up those calories should also shift. Because it takes the body four to six hours to digest fat, about three hours to digest protein and about two hours to digest carbohydrates, it's important to winnow down the protein and fat content of your meal or snack as you get closer to exercise. "You're not going to want to eat a plate of french fries two hours before working out, because the blood is going to rush to your stomach to digest that while it's also trying to rush to your exercising muscles," says Berning. "In the end, it doesn't do a very good job of either one."
So, here are a few rules of thumb to follow: If your workout is four hours away, eat a regular meal that combines protein, fat and carbohydrates, then have a small carbohydrate-rich snack closer to your exercise session to tide you over. Three hours before working out, make it a smaller meal and lighten up a bit on the protein and fat. Thirty to 90 minutes before exercise, have a snack of easily digested carbohydrates (see below). If you only have the 15 minutes between, say, leaving your office and hitting the gym to grab something, go for a sports drink or a few Saltines. Also keep in mind that while eating high-fiber foods is important for good health, they're best eaten after or long before exercise, since they can cause bloating and other annoyances that will make you feel uncomfortable when working out.
Finally, be aware that finding what works perfectly for you might take some trial and error. Some people find that certain foods and beverages eaten close to exercise are troublesome, while others find that they can eat a big meal and work out an hour later with no problem at all. So do a little experimenting, but at least (and we hate to sound like your mother) eat something!
HEALTH
Free Clinics Save Thousands in Africa
“Previous clinical studies have shown improved survival but we have now shown this translates into a clearly measurable effect, even in a rural area, and surprisingly early.”
By Ben Hirschler
Providing free AIDS drugs to people in northern Malawi has slashed adult mortality rates, vindicating a recent ramp-up in treatment in poor parts of rural Africa, researchers said on Friday.
Just eight months after a free clinic opened in Karonga Town in June 2005, the death rate in a rural area 80 km (50 miles) away had fallen enough to be detected at the general population level, they wrote in the Lancet medical journal.
“I think people didn’t expect to see an effect that quickly,” investigator Judith Glynn of the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine told Reuters. “Previous clinical studies have shown improved survival but we have now shown this translates into a clearly measurable effect, even in a rural area, and surprisingly early.”
Malawi, with a population of 13 million, is one of the countries hardest hit by HIV/AIDS. The pandemic accounts for 59 percent of deaths among those aged between 15 to 59 years.
Since 2004, however, Malawi has been able to start offering free antiretroviral therapy to some patients, with support from the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria.
Glynn and colleagues found overall mortality in their study population of 32,000 fell by 10 percent in the eight months after the free clinic opened and plunged 35 percent among adults living near the area’s only tarmac road.
Commenting on the results, Mattias Egger and Andrew Boulle of the University of Cape Town said the rapid impact reflected the fact that the sickest people -- those most likely to die -- were the first to receive drugs.
As treatment continued, however, new patients would be less ill and the benefits might not be seen so quickly, they added.
The marked variation in reductions in mortality rates between those near and far away from the main road also highlights potential inequalities in getting treatment to all those who need it.
Malawi has about 800,000 deaths from AIDS every year but the country has been one of the more successful at rolling out free treatment to patients.
Worldwide, some 3 million people in poor countries now receive antiretroviral therapy, thanks to funding from the Global Fund and the U.S. government, helped by falling prices of both branded and generic medicines.
