Truth About Black Academic Underachievement

A noted Black columnist, Walter Williams, has observed that the criticisms of Department of Education Secretary, Betsy DéVos, could be dismissed as simply political posturing if we did not have an educational system that is mostly mediocre and is in advanced decay for most Black students.

Achievement Levels a Disgrace
According to The Nation's Report Card, only 37 percent of 12th-graders were proficient in reading in 2015, and just 25 percent were proficient in math. For Black students, achievement levels were a disgrace.

Nationally, 17 percent of Black students scored proficient in reading, and 7 percent scored proficient in math. In some cities, such as Detroit, Black academic proficiency is worse; among eighth-graders, only 4 percent were proficient in math, and only 7 percent were proficient in reading.

The nation's high-school graduation rate rose again in the 2014-15 school year, reaching a record high as more than 83 percent of students earned a diploma on time.

Educators see this as some kind of achievement and congratulate themselves. The tragedy is that high-school graduation has little relevance to achievement.

Graduation Rates are Irrevelant

In 2014-15, graduation rates at District of Columbia Public Schools, just as they did nationally, climbed to an all-time high. At H.D. Woodson High School, 76 percent of students graduated on time; however, just 1 percent met math standards on national standardized tests linked to the Common Core academic standards. Just 4 percent met the reading standards.

The low Black academic achievement is not restricted to high-school graduates of D.C. schools. The average Black high-school graduate has the academic achievement level of a white 7^th or 8^th grader.

As such, it stands as unambiguous evidence that high schools confer diplomas attesting that students can read, write and compute at a 12th-grade level when in fact they cannot.

That means they have received fraudulent high-school diplomas. There are many factors that affect education that educators cannot control. But they have total control over the issuance of a diploma.

Wasteful Education Spending
Educators often complain that there's not enough money. Census Bureau data show that as early as 2009-10, Washington, D.C. spent $29,409 per pupil. Starker proof that there's little relationship between spending and academic proficiency is in the case of Detroit's public schools.

In 2009-10, the nation's elementary and secondary public school systems spent an average of $10,615 per pupil. According to the Census Bureau, Detroit schools spent $12,801 per pupil. The Mackinac Center for Public Policy claims that Detroit actually spent $15,570 per pupil that year.

There's not much payoff for education dollars. The National Institute for Literacy found that 47 percent of the city's adults are "functionally illiterate." 

The Nation's Report Card reports that Detroit students score the lowest among the nation's big-city schools, and Washington is not far behind.

If the grand wizard of the Ku Klux Klan was the Secretary of Education and wanted to sabotage Black academic achievement, he couldn't find a better method for doing so than keeping our public school system as it is.

The Need for School Choice
Many Black politicians and educators would never have their own children attend the rotten, dangerous schools that are so much a part of our big cities.

Many Black parents, captured by these schools, would like to get their children out. But that's not in the interest of the education establishment, which wants a monopoly on education. Black politicians and academics are the establishment's facilitators. That explains their hostility to Betsy DeVos. She would like to give more parents a choice.

Job Outlook for 2016 and Beyond
Now, here is the job outlook for 2016 and beyond. Black students must be properly educated to compete for these jobs  There are 6 tech jobs that will grow like crazy in 2017 and beyond according to CareerCast. They also looked at how fast each type of job is growing, and projected how likely that job is to keep growing.

No. 6, Network and computer systems administrator: The IT professionals who manage computers and computer networks earned an average of $77,810 in 2016. It's true the trend toward cloud computing – renting the computers you need and accessing them over the internet – means companies are buying less computers than they used to. 

But demand for this skill will not vanish. Job openings are expected to grow by 8% through 2024.

No. 5, Data Scientist: Data Scientists earned on average $128,240 in 2016. And thanks to the boom in all things data and big data, demand for this skill isn't going away anytime soon. Jobs for data scientists are expected to rise 16% through 2024.

No. 4, Software Engineer: Software engineers earned $100,690 on average in 2016. This is a skill in demand everywhere, from high-tech companies to everyday organizations needing custom software to serve their own customers and employees. Growth for software engineers is expected to rise 17% through 2024.

No. 3, Information Security Analyst: Information Security Analysts earned $90,120 on average in 2016. As our computers, devices and data store more and more of our  important, sensitive information, there's rising demand for people who know how to keep all that stuff secure. Jobs for this skill are expected to rise 18% through 2024.

No. 2, Computer Systems Analyst: Computer systems analysts earned $85,800 on average in 2016. As long as people use computers and write software for them, someone will need to troubleshoot problems when things go wrong, aka the systems analyst. Growth for this job is expected to climb 21% through 2024.

No. 1, Web developer: Web developers earned on average $64,970 in 2016. While that's not the highest paying IT job in the industry, this job has one major thing going for it: demand. Jobs for web developers are expected to grow by 27% through 2024.

Critical STEM Education
In a 2015 Pew Research Center report, only 29% of Americans rated their country’s K-12 education in science, technology, engineering and mathematics (known as STEM) as above average or the best in the world.

Scientists were even more critical: A companion survey of members of the American Association for the Advancement of Science found that just 16% called U.S. K-12 STEM education the best or above average; 46%, in contrast, said K-12 STEM in the U.S. was below average.

These are the type of careers Black children should be preparing for. Black parents, in particular, need to be concerned about how this racist educational system have been shortchanging and ill-preparing their children for the future. Malcolm X once said that, “Education is the passport to the future.” This passport for Black children has been stamped, “Denied.”