[CSPS] suggestion from Mark Weichold

[Cecelia Hawkins]

Cecelia:

As a follow up to your suggestion below, I'd like to suggest that it would
also be appropriate to consider the poor job that the state does in ensuring
that our African American and Hispanic high school grads are prepared for
college.  I've pasted a couple of URLs below so that you can see for
yourself how poor the record is in terms of getting African American and
Hispanic students into the recommended and distinguished high school
curricula and also how poorly those same groups do on the SAT/ACT.

I have suggested and continue to suggest that measures that pertain to the
college going rate of a high school's graduates be added to the measures
that determine Exemplary, Recognized, etc.

If you're interested in the SAT/ACT data, it is available on the TEA website
at the following URL:

http://www.tea.state.tx.us/research/pdfs/sat-act_2002.pdf

The following URL provides the TEA data for the seniors graduating in 2003
and shows African American students vastly under-represented in the
distinguished track and over-represented in the minimum track, whereas the
white students are over-represented in the distinguished track and
under-represented in the minimum track (Hispanics fare better than the
African American students, but do not appear in percentages proportional to
their numbers):

http://www.tea.state.tx.us/cgi/sas/broker?_service=marykay&_program=adhoc.ad
dispatch.sas&major=st&minor=g&endyear=03&format=W&linespg=60&charsln=120&sel
summ=ss&key=TYPE+HERE

As was pointed by others, SAT/ACT performance can be related to family
income, to some extent.  However, I cannot believe that family income
similarly dictates the curricula that high school students take nor can I
believe that students of a given race/ethnicity are any more or less able to
be successful at a particular high school curriculum.  Food for thought.

If there are any other issues that we discussed this morning for which you'd
like additional information, please don't hesitate to get in touch.

Mark

-----Original Message-----
From: csps-bounces at PHILEBUS.tamu.edu [mailto:csps-bounces at PHILEBUS.tamu.edu]
On Behalf Of Cecelia Hawkins
Sent: Thursday, January 13, 2005 9:31 PM
To: csps at PHILEBUS.tamu.edu
Subject: [CSPS] another topic for Watson discussion

A suggestion has been made to me that the community must take ownership and
do a
better job of addressing issues that affect the academic success and
personal development of all of our children.  Of particular concern are the
African American students who are performing lower than the State level on
TAKS.  The question arises:  what strategies can we devise to tackle this
problem aggressively and effectively?

I concur with this concern.

Cecelia