Greg Toppo, USA Today, Aug. 6, 2009
{snip}
The “Obama Effect,” documented last winter, showed that Obama’s rise during the 2008 presidential election helped improve African Americans’ performance on skills tests, which helped narrow a black-white achievement gap.
In the new findings, African-American parents of children in K-12 schools say they’re much more likely to volunteer in a classroom this fall, in effect narrowing a volunteering gap.
The survey, being released today by GreatSchools, a San Francisco non-profit that promotes parental involvement, finds a jump of 37 percentage points in the portion of African-American parents who say they’ll volunteer in their child’s school—60% vs. 23% a year ago.
{snip}
“Clearly, this data is showing that the parent in chief, President Obama, is having an impact on parents’ thinking, especially African-American parents’ thinking,” GreatSchools CEO Bill Jackson says. He notes that in several speeches, Obama has urged parents to turn off the TV, read to their children and attend parent-teacher conferences.
{snip}
In January, Vanderbilt University management professor Ray Friedman and a team of researchers found that in a series of online tests, the performance gap between blacks and whites shrank dramatically during two key moments spotlighting Obama in the 2008 campaign.
The findings, dubbed the Obama Effect, offered “compelling evidence of the power that real-world, in-group role models like Obama can have on members of their racial or ethnic community,” Friedman said.
Original article
(Posted on August 7, 2009)
Comments
There’s also been a mysterious and unexplained drop in the violent crime rate in the first half of 2009:
http://tinyurl.com/nqovhw
Within three or four years it’ll quietly be reported that these findings were wrong.
Barack Obama won the election in November. Was there an increase in volunteering by black parents in public schools after November? This is only a survey, all it proves is that more black parents claim they will volunteer. That doesn’t actually mean they will volunteer.
And even if they did, what good will come of it? These parents that will volunteer are the parents of their children when they’re out of school. If their presence in their own homes doesn’t turn them into geniuses, when why are we to think that their joint presence in a school will work any better?
The findings, dubbed the Obama Effect, offered “compelling evidence of the power that real-world, in-group role models like Obama can have on members of their racial or ethnic community,” Friedman said.
And in three years time?
I predict this is just a temporary demographic blip:
It’s not an achievement gap. It’s an ability gap and it can’t be closed without rigging the results upward for blacks and/or downward for whites.
The “Obama effect” was documented last January by “…a series of online tests”. Baloney. My wife, much more computer adept that I am, does my computer business for me, while I clean up the yard. An online test has no more credibility that a MySpace account.
BTW, I’m really George W. Bush, putting down my real thoughts. Sorry for the war and the immigration thing, but my masters made me do it.
I’ll be impressed when the black-white SAT gap shows any sign of shrinking.
“The survey … finds a jump of 37 percentage points in the portion of African-American parents who say they’ll volunteer in their child’s school—60% vs. 23% a year ago.”
They SAY they’ll volunteer. Don’t bet, however, on them following through and DOING it. Been there, heard it, but never saw it.
Besides, what can a group of people whose average high school grads read at the 8th grade level really offer? We don’t even want to mention their overall math ‘achievement’.
“The “Obama Effect,” documented last winter, showed that Obama’s rise during the 2008 presidential election helped improve African Americans’ performance on skills tests, which helped narrow a black-white achievement gap.”
These fools never give up trying to fool everybody.
Again, why don’t they ever report the Black/Hispanic, Asian, Middle Eastern, Arab, Indian achievement gap?
RandyB,
“In the new findings, African-American parents of children in K-12 schools say they’re much more likely to volunteer in a classroom this fall, “
My parents could not have done such a thing, even if they wanted to…they were at work.
“The Obama Effect” - haven’t heard that one yet,I’m from Australia.
Obama effect? Absurd. Most blacks in high school read several years behind whites? why? low IQ and no reading of challenging books or magazines with adult vocabulary and complex syntax.
The “gap” has narrowed but relatively: i.e., while black reading after massive tutoring at ridiculous cost in public schools led to narrowing before Obama’s election and during, the white achievement is now rising, so the gap remains.
Hispanics likewise see their reading improving. Understand that the new and improved reading by blacks and hispanics leaves them at pathetic childlike reading levels. They are not going to do well on SAT, nor will they find additiional spots at good four year schools unless affirmative action totally shreds admission standards beyond what affirmative action already has done to devalue a college experience.
As for volunteering, ask a high school teacher of blacks if he or she can reach the typical black student’s mom or grandmom(no father) by phone. The names are always different, and the phones are usually disconnected, with the latest cell phone number(they don’t have land lines) unavailable. These will volunteer. And volunteer to assist with what? They dont know arithmetic nor do they write nor read. You would be better going on a subway or public bus and asking random white or even some Asian people to volunteer.
These kids should not be in academic/college destination schools unless they test equal to whites. Blacks and Hispanics, with a few exceptions, will never learn what whites, Jews and many Asians can learn. Stop the waste of money for Title I, special ed, and No Child Left Behind.
Now Obama wants to spend 5billion MORE to waste on this eternal gap.
Well, when it is touted as a booming economy (recession over! happy times are here again!) WHEN UNEMPLOYMENT SUPPOSEDLY GOES DOWN A HAIR , then I guess it could be described as a paroxysm of black volunteerism when a few blacks FINALLY volunteer to man the hot-dog stand at a high-school football game.
I never fail to be absolutely astonished at the press’ synchophantism.
If that is true, then why is it whenever we are at our childs school, most of the parents there expressing any interest at all in helping in any way, are white? Most of the PTA parents are white, too.
How many teachers actually would want Black parents “helping” in their schools?
Maybe this is what has happened: The judge says to La Shonda, “We know you aren’t going to get a job, so volunteer at your kid’s school, or go to jail. Your choice”.
I’ll believe it when I see it. So far the school year is about the same, we and other White parents are buying extra supplies to take up the slack for the Black parent who is usually overdressed, over made-up and over-accessorized. They always seem to have money for nails, rims or weird hair coloring jobs, but never a few bucks for hand sanitizer and colored pencils. For that you get to hear a hard luck story. Then you see them at the grocery using their food stamp card and getting into a thugged out SUV. They think a Black(-ish) president is going to motivate anyone after decades of gaming the system? I bet the opposite happens. I bet they devolve even further as they become marginalized by the wave of illegal Latins. While it’s not hard to train our children to be better than the lazy, dependent squanderers of the whole Civil Rights movement, we must take the initiative to be even better. Our children will thank us for not letting them get side tracked by the gutter.
Grobbbbbbbbbbb
Currently the Atlanta tv stations are all engaged in a back-to-school blitz, ‘Pack a Backpack’. Shoppers at many local stores and grocery stores are being begged to buy and donate backpacks and other school supplies for all the ‘underprivileged’ and ‘needy’ children who can’t afford them. In other words, as usual, whites are asked to supply blacks’ required items in addition to their own. In all the glorious charitable ‘events’, you see a room full of black children, overweight black women (the mamas & grandmamas; there are never adult males in the picture) joyously celebrating their freebies. There is never a white family to be found on the receiving end.
First of all, I attended 12 years of public school never owning a backpack. I was actually able to carry 4-5 books plus notebooks every day in my own two arms without losing anything or straining myself! Second, why isn’t it possible to use a backpack more than one year? Why can’t they use last year’s? Third, and most importantly, I am absolutely sick to DEATH of being bombarded all day every day with someone begging me to donate and GIVE. From the time you wake up in the morning until you go to sleep, someone or some organization is holding their hand out, begging for something. I’m up to here with it.
“compelling evidence of the power that real-world, in-group role models like Obama.”
I want to know when WHITE kids are going to get a positive role model in Washington. And don’t tell me there are plenty of “whites” in D.C.; how many of those “whites” are proud of being white? How many consider their whiteness an important aspect of their personality? How many openly encourage “white achievement”? How many are truly Euro-centric? How many have written autobiographies where every paragraph contains the term “European-American”? How many make it a point to side with a white person when he is in conflict with somebody of another race? White kids have no positive role models. If such a role model is so important, why is it that whites do not deserve one?
“There’s also been a mysterious and unexplained drop in the violent crime rate in the first half of 2009:
http://tinyurl.com/nqovhw”
One reason is that, ever since shortly before the election, people have been buying weapons in increasing numbers. First in anticipation of post-Obama-loss riots, and then in anticipation of post-Obama-victory gun control legislation.
People are better heeled, and criminals know it.
This article is just a lot of wishful thinking.
Shawn (la femme): Exactly! And what is the leverage that they use to get you to donate? What is that impels Whites to give to those who are not even their very, very distant kin?
I asked myself this question. Then I answered it, according to my best understanding.
And my awareness of the mechanism involved enabled me to escape the snare of altuism. I no longer feel guilty if I do not give.
The answer that I came up with is Christian teaching, or the residual influence of Christian teaching, which is liberalism.
We, of Christian faith, have been taught to feel guilty if we do not help those WHO SAY they are oppressed, or in need.
I say, Maybe some are REALLY in need, but MOST ARE NOT. Most could do for themselves if they got off their fat buddhas.
But I gave up my needing to feel righteous by helping them. And I truly believe that those who are REALLY in need will get help.
But I do not have the arrogance to think that I am the one who will lift them up, or save them.
Those who do so are really only asking for gratitude, or an acknowledgment of their worth, and they WILL NEVER GET IT FROM THESE PEOPLE!
While working as an educator, I’ve had black female teacher’s aides (7th/8th grade) that can barely speak English - let alone help grade papers. They will pump up thr black students, and ignore the white students. They are a very infantile, tribal group that complains about everything while contributing very little. White people are the furthest from being racist, while blacks and mexicans eat, sleep, and breathe black/brown identity. They are insufferable victims of their own ignorance.
“Obama’s rise during the 2008 presidential election helped improve African Americans’ performance on skills tests,”
How does that work?
Having a mulatto elected president somehow made black students smarter?
One of the first things I learned in statistics class was this: “Correlation does not imply causation.” Obama got elected. Test scores went up. But one cannot assume that the first thing CAUSED the second one.
What sickens me about these local campaigns about donating backpacks for the undeserving is that many of the welfare queens who show up to claim these bonanzas can well afford to get their thugs in training backpacks with their own money. A backpack from a dollar store doesn’t cost much, and will last more than one year. There seems to be a message behind such campaigns which is that if Tyrone only had a backpack like the White kids, he would become capable of learning, too. The sad truth is that he would be better off staying home than making others’ lives miserable at school.
24) “One of the first things I learned in statistics class was this: “Correlation does not imply causation.” Obama got elected. Test scores went up. But one cannot assume that the first thing CAUSED the second one.”
” Obama got elected. Test scores went up. But one cannot assume that the first thing CAUSED the second one.:
Good points; however, one cannot assume the bunch coming out with this nonsense isn’t lying either.
All they do is lie to try to hoodwink people into believing the opposite of reality.
To Randy B and S.L. Cain:
I saw the link you posted, and I am bemused by the fact that “experts” and police are at a loss to explain the drop in crime. You think they want to actually come out and say that Americans buying guns and ammo in record numbers has anything to do with it? Of course not!
I went to a gun show a few weeks ago, and even the rare calibers like 32-20, .38 Super, and .41 Mag were selling. And S&W wants $900 for their new .327 Magnum revolver. It’s as if there was a rush to buy 1986 Audis and 1991 Izuzus, anything available that works.
Any narrowing of the black/white IQ gap is entirely attributable to the dumbing down of the West’s education systems causing the deliberate stunting of white IQ, combined with Marxist Liberal white guilt indoctrination.
White children could well be apprehensive and/or even embarrassed about outperforming their non-white counterparts for fear of being dubbed white supremacists and racists.
