If my child doesn't know math, I don't have time for football
If my child doesn’t know math, I don’t have time for football
Only about 8.2% of high school students that took the Math I End-of-Course exam in Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools are ready for a career or college. This is based on math scores for students in grades 9 through 12, who took the exam at the end of the 2021-2022 school year.
The school system wants to raise its college and career ready percentage to 25% by the year 2024, but these numbers make it difficult for them to be on track.
This is not just Charlotte, you could just about take your finger and point to almost any state in the United States and find that there are children in school systems where they are not performing well—to the standards of what a 21st century economy needs.
This is true of white children, of Black children, of Latino children, etc…but it is especially true of our Black children who are underrepresented in positions of power in our country (even when you account for economic factors) and who all to often are not prepared for life after they get out of high school.
When I think about this, I think about Fanny Jackson-Coppin—who was born into slavery and whose aunt worked for $6 a month to buy Fanny for $125, when Fanny was just 12 years old.
She went about learning the hard way…in whatever way she could, she went to college at Oberlin College and was a successful student, when all odds were against her. She would go on to teach and to become a principal of a school in Philadelphia. She was such an example of leadership in her community that many people looked to for guidance and the school in which she worked (and led) for 37 years became Cheney University of Pennsylvania (the oldest Black college in the country) and another college, Coppin State University, is named after her.
She didn’t have access to as many resources as we have in the 21st century. She didn’t have a society that supported her, but she did have important people in her corner (adults who were looking out for her) and she had a WILL to learn.
I am not saying that there are not real barriers in this society—I know that there are real barriers everywhere where children are undereducated, but what are we, as adults, going to do about it?
I am not talking about situations where there is no access to resources or online educational opportunities. But, what about the areas where we do have access to the Internet in our homes and our children are well taken care of, but are still undereducated?
How many families this weekend spent hours watching football, when the parents knew that their child was not performing well, or on grade level, in reading or math and nothing was done about it this weekend to address it?
If you have time to watch football with your kid, you have time to study and make sure they are on grade level.
References:
Smith, Danita. Fanny Jackson-Coppin. April 2, 2019. BLACK and Education. Red and Black Ink, LLC. https://searchblackandeducation.com/stories/2019/4/2/fanny-jackson-coppin
Morrison, Shamarria. CMS: Only 8.2% of high schoolers are ready for a job or college based on math scores. September, 28, 2022. WCNC Charlotte. NBC. Accessed October 3, 2022. https://www.wcnc.com/article/news/education/cms-high-school-math-scores-data-education-local/275-45fb3f92-c391-414b-b29a-cde432b56062