How are gifted students and their schools measured? According to NYT article it is by race

With the New York Times only allowing ten free online views of their articles per month, I am very selective when clicking on a news article to read. I usually stick to the opinion pages and the education sections. A headline caught my eye “Young, Gifted and Neglected” on September 18^th. It met an important standard to use up one of my viewings; it is about education in the U.S.  It was written by Chester E. Finn Jr. whose bio indicates he has been studying the US educational system for many years, written many books, and is a senior fellow at an institute.

The article is about how “gifted” school aged children are being neglected in our educational system. If you don’t want to use up one of your ten free NYT looks, allow me to provide a synopsis. Mr. Finn makes an opening argument that “Every motivated, high-potential young American deserves a similar opportunity” for a “…rigorous private…” education. Unfortunately, according to Mr. Finn “…the system is failing to create enough opportunities for…these high-potential…” kids. Our public educational system not only neglects our “high-ability students” it also “…imperils the country’s future supply of scientists, inventors and entrepreneurs.”

He states that there are three forms of education’s systemic failures:

1.       We are weak at identifying gifted and talented children early;

2.       At the primary and middle-school levels, we don’t have enough gifted-education classrooms; and

3.       There are too few honor and advanced placement classes sometime populated by kids who are bright but not truly prepared to succeed in them.

Mr. Finn’s main focus for the rest of the article is on the third issue of advanced placement classes and the type of kids attending them. He indicates that there are more than 20,000 public high schools and his team found just 165 “exam schools.” Exam schools or advanced placement schools are those developed for high-ability and highly motivated students. He lists a few examples of these type schools and who are most likely to be enrolled.

He and his team built a list of these U.S exam schools, visited a few, and found that they mostly resemble Advanced Placement classes. They have stellar college placements, expose students to independent studies, have challenging internships and conduct individual research projects.

Now…all seemed well to this point in his article until he says that “Critics call them (e.g. exam schools) elitist, but we found the opposite.” First I had to make sure I understood the definition of the word “elitist” so I looked it up. It means, exclusive, selective, and restricted. So, what he is saying is that the 165 exam schools are not exclusive, selective and restricted. How does he know these are not, in fact, elitist schools? He provides the demographic data of the students who attend them.

According to Mr. Finn, the reason these schools are not elitist is because “African-American youngsters are ‘overrepresented’ in them and Asian-Americans staggeringly so (21 percent versus 5 percent in high schools overall). Latinos are underrepresented, but so are whites.”

According to Mr. Finn and his team, these can’t be elitist schools that serve high-ability and highly motivated students because African-Americans are the majority and whites are the minority.

I kept waiting to read what else made these advance placements, exam schools less than elitist. Did they produce poor results? No, he says they are great schools with “stellar” college placements. Are they not good for our U.S. student population? No, he states that “many more students could benefit from schools like these…”

He strongly argues for more rigorous private schools for gifted students. He also strongly states that public schools should stop raising the floor of education (e.g. helping the non-gifted) and raising the ceiling of education (e.g., helping gifted students).

That argument is perfectly fine. I agree that schools can do both. The main problem is Mr. Finn’s measure of what a “gifted” student looks like. According to him, gifted is measured by race. It seems if an exam school has a high percent of other than white students, it is “opposite” of elitist. And it seems that Mr. Finn’s article, Young, Gifted and Neglected, was not only a bad use of one of my ten NYT viewing for the month, it is a bad argument to use for improving education for all children.

The article can be read by clinking link below: (disclaimer, click at risk of wasting a click)

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/09/19/opinion/gifted-students-deserve-more-opportunities.html?pagewanted=all&_moc.semityn.www

Can Native American College Drop Out Be Decreased?

Native American (NA) students have the highest dropout rate of any high school or college student population.  I can attest to this as a researcher, as a former high school dropout, and as a Native American. Education saved my life.  Now I am working to provide meaningful support to other NAs. I first tried to address the high dropout rate once I completed a doctoral program and began working for the University at Buffalo. I developed a NA research center that was involved in many activities that supported NAs and other students. I set up a scholarship and mentorship mechanism, developed the beginning processes of a study abroad course, and established a NA specific living and learning program.  Currently, I am working on a social belonging intervention at Washington University in St Louis’s Brown School of Social Work. When I am asked to describe programs that provide the best support for NA students and might help them remain in college, I describe living and learning programs, social belonging activities, and providing some level of self-regulated learning curriculums.

NA students dropping out of college throughout the United States are well-documented. Although retention rates differ for all student populations, related to demographics, the gap is greatest specifically among NA students. There are data showing that 75 percent to 93 percent of NA students drop out of college before completing. The number of NA high school drop outs is about the same. It is a sad fact that if NA students do get a high school diploma and enroll in college, they have the highest rate of dropping out from college compared to any other student demographic. Although NA students are academically capable, a number of reasons contribute to this population having the highest educational dropout rate in the U.S.

Instead of more speculation and research, colleges and universities should begin to implement specific strategies that have shown promise in retaining the NA student. There are three I would like to recommend that have some support in research studies and could significantly disrupt the continued problem of college dropout for NAs.

1.      Living & Learning Communities

The idea of connecting and integrating student learning with student living began to take shape under philosopher, university administrator and free speech advocate Alexander Meiklejohn. The theory behind living and learning communities is that students will persist and excel in college if they are given the opportunity to integrate their social and academic lives. According to those who have studied these programs, when students join together around commonly shared academic and/or social interests, their college experience is much more likely to be positive and they are more likely to remain in college. After researching different models of the living and learning programs over many years, it has been determined that regardless of the model’s design, intensity or any other characteristic, living and learning communities significantly impacts student’s college experiences, increases their grade point average (GPA), and increases their retention.  

            Several studies have addressed the issue of family, community, and cultural connectedness and the effect on academic achievement for NA students. Living & learning communities lend themselves to interconnected, supportive environments. NA students should find ways to hold onto their own cultural identities in academic life. Maintaining cultural identity increases students’ self-awareness and the chances that they will remain in and complete college.

2.      Social Belonging Intervention

Social belonging is defined as a perception of having positive relationships with other people within one's community and this sense of social belonging is essential during young adulthood and times when transitioning into a new and unfamiliar community, such as a college campus. Socially stigmatized groups like NA students might be more uncertain about their social belonging in mainstream institutions like college campus than non-minority groups.

In a randomized controlled trial, 49 African American and 43 non-minority first year students in the treatment group received a social belonging message framed in a way that conveyed that college adversity was shared by all students and was short-lived. The researchers were surprised by the magnitude of improvement over the three year period of the study. The social belonging intervention improved GPA, health status, retention, and also reduced doctor visits during students’ time in college.

Native American students, who are the minority within the minority, are most uncertain about their sense of belonging on college campuses. An intervention that specifically targets social belonging will impact them more significantly than non-minorities. When NA students understand that all students feel out of place and question their academic abilities, their own feelings become normalized. This simple, brief, social belonging message, when provided to minority college students, resulted in higher GPA and retention rates, which could greatly impact NAs on college campuses.

3.      Incorporating NA Learning Styles – Self-regulated Learning

In the late 1980s a larger university implemented a unique critical thinking course for undergraduate students. The course primarily focused on cognitive psychology and philosophy issues connected with the theory of Self-regulated Learning (SRL). A review of the data revealed a significant difference in retention and graduation rates, on average, between all students and NA students who took the SRL course and those who did not.

Success Metric	All Students	NA Students
		SRL	No SRL
Retention to Second Year	86.6	90.9	75.0
Retention to Third Year	76.6	81.8	62.5
Retention to Fourth Year	69.6	88.9	42.9
Graduation in 4 Years	42.1	33.3	0.0
Graduation in 5 Years	59.4	71.4	16.7
Graduation in 6 Years	65.2	83.3	20.0
Undergraduate QPA	2.82	2.93	2.06

 

Native American students who participated in the SRL course, compared to the university’s general population, had higher retention rates as they progressed, higher graduation rates, and a higher overall GPA. The difference between NA students who participated and those not are just as impressive. Native American students who completed the SRL course had higher retention rates, graduation rates, and overall higher GPA scores, compared to NA students who did not participate in the SRL course.

There are three major constructs of SRL theory that are connected across theoretical opinions: (1) the student’s learning style; (2) the student’s ability to influence and predict their daily academic life; and (3) peer assessment and feedback. Considering the high overall success of NA students participating in the SRL course, certain components within the SRL course seem to connect with this population’s thinking and learning styles.  While there has been a debate whether NA students have their own cultural learning styles, thinking and learning is grounded in one’s culture. Because the goals of SRL are to understand one’s own learning style, coordination between teaching and learning strategies could benefit NA students. One of the main reasons for dropouts among NA students is unsuitable matching of learning styles. SRL courses may reduce the conflicting expectations between NA students and instructors.

Concluding Thought

 

There is still ambiguity about how to address the low retention rates of NA students in U.S. universities. While it is important to continue studying the issues, it is past time to disrupt this on-going tragedy with some scientifically-supported interventions. Living and learning communities, social belonging interventions, and more self-regulated learning opportunities can begin to deflect the process of dropping out of colleges and university programs. To allow the injustices that result from NA student college dropout to continue within our own institutions of learning is unacceptable.

Studying Native American Gaming

Senior research scientist Grace Barnes, PhD, principal investigator on the grant "Ecological and Sociocultural Influences on Native Americans Gambling and Alcohol Use," says the study will examine the effects of gambling availability and socio-demographic factors on the frequency of gambling and co-occurring alcohol abuse among Native Americans in the U.S."

This is an important complement to the ongoing national study of gambling in the U.S. currently being conducted at RIA," says Barnes.

The research team working with Dr. Barnes includes Dr. John Welte and Dr. Marie Tidwell co-investigators in the ongoing U.S. gambling study, as well as two experts in Native American research: David Patterson-Silver Wolf (Adelv unegv Waya), PhD, of Washington University in St. Louis, and Paul Spicer, PhD, of the University of Oklahoma.

Barnes' grant is funded in the amount of $416,063 by the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism (NIAAA).

Read the entire post at:
http://www.buffalo.edu/news/13593

Moving On and Not Looking Back

I have always benefited from having very wise and honorable people in my life.  One piece of advice that has come from many folks is, when you have an opportunity to start fresh, don’t look back. This is the advice we give everyone who exists our sweat lodge. While I won’t go into all the aspects of participating in an Inipi (e.g., sweat lodge), when the ceremony is over and you crawl out, you are not supposed to look back into the lodge. Once it is over, you are reborn and become a brand new person. You can move forward without worrying about the old you. The Inipi, in part, is about cleansing off and removing the “old” person, allowing you now to work on the “new you.” So, focusing on what is in front of you is always best.

My family and I have the opportunity to start something new. I have accepted a faculty position with another University.  Within the next few weeks we will be moving. We will be moving on and not looking back – metaphorically. We have many friends in Buffalo and we plan to remain close to them. Again, not looking back represents our new beginning in our new home. Anything in Buffalo that does not represent moving forward, will remain in Buffalo. Just like when we left Kentucky, although we still have connections there, we started fresh in Buffalo. Buffalo deserved our new selves without any Kentucky baggage. My new university now deserves the same. We will go there fresh, brand spankin new!

I am very proud of everything that has been accomplished during my time in Buffalo. There is a strong group of folks in Buffalo who are working to improve the lives of Native Americans and their communities. I am grateful we were able to join forces. Anyone who has ever tried to change the status quo surely knows that the status quo does not like anything but the status quo!  I hope the work in Buffalo continues.

This blog will also start new. While it will remain focused on Native American issues, I will continue to use this site in a good way. It will remain committed to respectful viewpoints, along with challenging the status quo.

New adventures await. There are great opportunities and people there and I plan to bring my best. My eyes are straight forward, focused and wide open. All is well!

Peace, DAP

Native American Commitment to Wellness & Respect

Although the old Native American Center for Wellness Research's Blog has come to its end -- a NEW blog comes alive -- Native American Commitment to Wellness & Respect.

While this blog will remained focused on Native American issues, health, healing, wellness, learning, and overall respect for all living things, it will have a new title and a rebirth. The reasoning behind the fresh start will arrive soon. Peace, DAP

Native American Center for Wellness Research Blog comes to an end

This blog began with the goal of posting things relating to Native American health and wellness for 1 year. After two years and about 47 posts this site has reached its end. I wish everyone health and wellness and continued success. Peace, DAP

Native Students Use Wolf-Fire Scholarship to Improve Community

Please check out link below about Native UB students using scholarship funds to better their communities. Peace, DAP

http://www.buffalo.edu/news/13303

Native American Center for Wellness Research, Message from the Director

It has been a very good year for the Native American Center for Wellness Research and I am happy to report that our efforts continue on as strong as ever. The center is involved with funded research, awarding scholarships, and starting a Native American Living & Learning Community, named after a UB building, honoring Chief Red Jacket.

Funded Research

For instance, as part of a fellowship grant from University of Washington’s Indigenous Wellness Research Institute (IWRI), Native American Community Services and I are working on a Native American specific intervention for safer sex practices. Although there are many interventions and programs around the country to help folks become more aware of and have safer sex, there are no such interventions specifically for Native Americans. We are working with UB’s Department of Media Study’s SUNY Distinguished Professor Sarah Elder in order to create a film-based intervention.

Also, as part of our effort to recruit and retain Native American students, a grant was funded to test a brief intervention. Native American students have been the leaders in SUNY college dropout since the 1980’s, the year SUNY began collecting data. UB’s record of retaining Native Americans over those years mirrors SUNY’s overall data. For the past 30+ years, Native Americans attending SUNY universities have dropped out of these institutions at a rate higher than any other student category. A brief intervention that has shown to significantly increase college retention for minority populations will be replicated at UB. The overall purpose of the study is to test a proven intervention with a new student population -- Native Americans. The study’s innovation is that while the intervention has proven successful with other minorities such as African American students, it has not been tested with Native Americans. This study has relevance and significance if the outcomes demonstrate a turnaround in the three decade phenomenon of Native Americans dropping out of UB and throughout the SUNY system.

Wolf-Fire Scholarship

Five UB Native American Students will be awarded Wolf-Fire Scholarships in order to help both their scholarly works and their own communities. This is the second cohort of UB students to receive Wolf-Fire Scholarships, each receiving $500. The awardees will be recognized January 24^th at UB’s Red Jacket Building.

The awardees are:

Jessica Brant is from the Mohawk Nation and a senior at UB’s American Studies program. Jessica is also the current President of UB’s Native American’s People Alliance (NAPA). Jessica is committed to ensuring UB Native American students have a community of their own on campus and other supports systems. She plans to use Wolf-Fire funds to purchase some advertising materials for NAPA in order to better recruit students. She will also use some funds to support her on-going educational needs.

Monty Hill is a student in the Linguistic department and a member of the Beaver clan of the Tuscarora tribe, one of the six tribes of the Haudenosaunee. With Wolf-Fire funds, Monty intends to digitize Tuscarora language data present in Rudes dictionary, and, in order to better serve his community, begin development of an online multimedia language resource. He intends to have digitized the entirety of the English to Tuscarora part of the lexicon and have it available online. Eventually, the seed of this project will expand into something beyond the lexicon i.e. uniting texts, audio.

Aaron VanEvery is a proud member of the Cayuga Nation and Wolf clan of the Six Nations reserve at Grand River in Ontario, Canada and PhD student in the American Studies Department. Aaron has dedicated his scholarly efforts to helping Native students become more aware of their cultural heritages. He intends to be a positive role model for students and hopes to mentor students while pursuing their educational degrees. Aaron hopes to develop an educational structure that focuses on Native American cultural and language courses. Aaron will use Wolf-Fire funds to support his course work.

Joe Candillo is a tribally enrolled member of the Pascua Yaqui Indian Tribe of Arizona and currently a PhD candidate in the American Studies Program. Joe will use Wolf-Fire funds to visit the Catawba Indian community in Rock Hill South Carolina to conduct ethnographic research on their traditional bow and arrow making tradition in hopes that the information that I gather will help to preserve this tradition for future generations of Catawba Indians.

Beynan Ransom is a citizen of the Mohawks of Akwesasne and an engineering student. Beynan became interested in acquiring the technical knowledge needed to solve complex environmental problems. Since learning about the contamination of the St. Lawrence River near Akwesasne, he has dedicated his life to finding ways to help restore the environment. For his master’s thesis he is working with the Onondaga Nation near Syracuse, NY, to help them decide whether the Onondaga Creek dam should be removed. His study will use the latest hydrologic science and computer modeling to show the tradeoffs the Nation has to make should the dam be removed. Beynan will use Wolf-Fire funds to travel to Syracuse NY in order to collect data.

Chief Sagoyewatha Living & Learning Community

The event on January 24^th honoring the Wolf-Fire Scholarship awardees will be part of an overall effort to recruit UB students into its new Chief Sagoyewatha Living & Learning Community. The new program gets its name from UB’s Red Jacket dormitory which honors the great Seneca leader, Chief Red Jacket. Chief Red Jacket was better known by his Native American name, Sagoyewatha (Sa-go-ye-wa-tha), meaning He Keeps Them Awake.

The new Chief  Sagoyewatha Living & Learning Community will officially begin Fall 2012 and is open to any UB student living on campus interested in Native American issues. The January 24th event is an opportunity to learn more about the new Chief Sagoyewatha Living & Learning Community and recognize the awardees of the Wolf-Fire Scholarship. To learn more about these activities or the Native American center for Wellness Research, please contact Dr. David A. Patterson at dap29@buffalo.edu or 716-207-6411.

Please Start Fighting to Ensure Native Americans are Educated, Not Better Casino Workers

There were two stories in the Buffalo News that caught my interest on December 6th. New York has decided to deal with its debt problem partly by seeking more tax dollars from rich folks. New York will also drastically expand the presence of casinos throughout the state in order to pull in more funds. It seems there has been support for these proposals by both republicans and democrats.

Not everyone is happy with New York State’s plans. For instance, Native American Nations who own casinos are upset that the government is planning to expand casinos because the state “promised” they would not allow non-Native casinos to compete with current Native American casino businesses. The government is not keeping its promise with Native Americans – that’s a new one.

Anyway, Governor Cuomo, Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver and Senate Majority Leader Dean Skelos justified expanding casinos because the “…economic slowdown has created the need to generate additional revenues to help fund health care and education spending commitments made earlier this year for 2012.” So basically, the state needs health care and education funds. The state will raise the taxes of rich people and break a promise made to Native Americans in order to improve the health and education opportunities of its people.

Native American leaders have decided to “fight vigorously to protect the promises that were made…” to them. In order to protect their own businesses, the Native American leader said that their casino workers would “…out-compete, out-hustle anyone…” who tries to start a competing casino anywhere in New York State.   

I greatly support the rights that Native Americans have to improve their lives by operating their own businesses. If you have read any of my past posts, you will discover a strong stance supporting Native Americans.

Let get real…the elected officials are going to break their promises made to Native Americans and they are going to allow wide spread gaming in New York State. Although this will take two years and require changing the constitution – they will get it done. They will work to ensure that more money will come into the state and redirected to fund educational services.

Native American leaders should, for the next two years during the time it will take to change the constitution and for the few more years it will take to get casinos going, immediately begin redirecting funds for Native American children to attend college. Stop funding attorneys and start funding children’s education.

Please fight vigorously to ensure Native American children receive college degrees rather than focusing on how casino worker will out-compete or out-hustle other casino workers. For the next few years, please focus on educating Native Americans.

In my humble opinion, Native Americans should out-compete others in the classroom – not hustle to get a casino gamer a drink.

Peace, DAP

When you act with purpose to help the people you love, when harm comes your way, you will be protected

The Gifts Received From Sacrifice

There were three brothers whose father had a certain form of discipline that would many times cross the line into extreme physical abuse. Whenever any of the boys would get into trouble, as any boy would, their father, depending on how sober has was, would dole out various levels of “discipline.” For instance, if the 6’4”, 300lbs father had way too many drinks of brown whiskey, there were no limits to the amount of punishment exhibited. During these times, it seemed the only thing that would stop the physical harm would be the father becoming too tired to carry-on; his wife begging him to stop; or one of the boys pissing his pants from the extreme pain/trauma.

If the father was somewhat sober, the violence would be extreme, but would not reach the same level during the times when he was drunk. So the boys would learn to monitor their father’s “moods” and try to act accordingly. Unfortunately, the father’s moods could be altered by many things, like something as simple as usual life circumstances. The family was poor and as it turns out, the father too experienced similar childhood traumas. The combination of day-to-day life hardships, lack of available resources, and way too much alcohol, the boys were always is grave emotional and physical danger when their father was around.

The oldest boy and the most experienced knew how to avoid some of the violence. He knew how to stay away from the home whenever the father was around. He was a bigger child -- big boned, as it was described. The middle brother was very skinny and unfortunately, suffered from rheumatic fever when he was in grade school. He stayed in his bed for about a year during the illness. As the result of this long sickness there were some lingering effects, both physically and mentally. The condition would be labeled as autistic in today’s terms. But back then, it was known as just being “sickly.” The youngest brother, as it turns out, was just right! Not too big or too skinny or sickly.

Sometimes when the father came home to something being broken in the house, he would line the three boys up and promise that nothing would happen if only the guilty person confessed. Now…this tactic worked the first time, but after the boys saw what happened to the guilty after the confession, there would be few other quick confessions.

One evening the father came home in a semi-sober, bad-day mood. Something in the house had been broken. The boys were taken into the dimly-lite, cob-web infested basement, which was scary enough by itself, and lined up in front of their father. The father said, “I am going to close my eyes. The one who broke the (??) just step forward and touch my hand.  All I want is for one of you boys to confess and everything will be ok.”  The final statement he made before closing his eyes was “If no one touches my hand, you are all going to get it.”

The boys already knew the trick and with the father’s eyes seemingly shut, the boys silently looked into the others’ horrified eyes. What they all three knew was that the youngest of the three was the guilty party. The oldest brother would not dare touch and the other two knew that. The youngest brother, having just experienced a very troubling episode the night prior, was terrified to touch. He knew he could not take another hard beating. Because the guilt would be too much if all three were beaten, the youngest brother began to slowly move toward touching the father’s out-reached hand. Just before contact was made, the middle brother, free of any guilt and probably in his bed at the time of the offense, reach out and slapped the father’s hand.

You will be protected

Before the youngest brother could process what just happened, the father grabbed the sickly middle child by the arm and began beating him. The only sound that broke the silence were the high pitched smacks that came from a very large hand connecting to the body of a small, weak framed boy. There were no screams, no begging and pleading to stop, no crying. The skinny, sickly middle boy did not make one sound, drop one tear or let loose one drop of piss. Although this beating matched past ones – this time – nothing, not a whimper!

Although the boys had gotten used to seeing each other’s bruises during bath times, the youngest brother became shocking aware of the wounds on the middle brother’s body the next day. While the middle brother went on about his day and treated his little brother as he always did, the younger brother was confused and not sure what motivated his older brother to intervene. The brothers never spoke about that night, or any other of the many traumatic events they endured.

We are given many opportunities in our lives to act purposely and sacrifice ourselves for the benefit of others. Please notice in the title that I state, “…when harm comes your way…” I did not say “if” harm comes, because it is a fact of life that harm will come your way.

The middle brother knew the risks of stepping in and accepting the beating intended for his baby brother. He had witnessed many beatings. It seems the time finally came when the middle brother could no longer watch an injustice from the sidelines.  Fortunately – having a purpose – he was totally safeguarded from harm. Yes…he received bruises, whelps, and other physical marks, but he was not harmed. His mind was on the good act he was doing – not on the bad act he was receiving.

Trying to live life on life’s terms is hard enough without trying to protect the ones we love and taking on their pains. However, until you have truly sacrificed your health and wellness for the benefit of others, you have not experienced the giving of a substantial gift – or received one.

Peace, DAP