On Mar 27, 1:25 am, madcow hotmail.com> wrote:

Since I am on a roll tonight, on this topic, let me quickly train to
explain to YOU who are Hmong and are very proud of everything abotu
Hmong:

Hmong kids, ON AVERAGE, will do comparatively poorly, with respect to,
say, White kids.

We are not talking about the few exceptions. You will see a few of
those, each year, as we've seen them over the years, since shortly
after we arrived here in America in the mid to late 1970's.

The problem with Hmong parents is that they use those FEW EXCEPTIONALS
Hmong valedictorians and 4.0-ners to prove some rule, the rule: that
everyone can learn and learn like that. That's just not the case.
Those few Hmong boys and girls who earn straight A's or close to them,
in normal public schols, they will also likely earn them in expensive
private schools, even though in private schools they would be
surrounded by a whole lot more equally bright young people.... with
the effect that, if those few public school Hmong kids were standing
next to expensive private students, the Hmong kids achievements won't
be as glaring or "exception."

In my line of work --- tutoring private highg school students, for
example --- I talk to kids who are accepted to Harvard, Yale,
Stanford, MIT, etc. as commonly as I talk to kids who go to, or choose
to go to, the less well known, but small and intimate, private liberal
arts college. In fact, just before break, I had a chance to talk to a
young woman (who came into my tutoring room with her friend, whom I've
been working with on statistics) who was accepted to both MIT and
CalTech, extremely exceptional. Her younger brother, a 10th grader,
has been doing multi-variable calculus at the University of Minnesota
for the past a couple years, since the school the high school the
siblings attend has only a first and a second year of calculus....

Anyway, the point is, Hmong parents have too many children and they
ALSO LACK, on avearge, the educational background needed to help these
kids. But they keep pointing to the one or two, our of a family of,
say, 6 to 9 children, who do well as the rule. That's not the rule;
the one or two who do well, from the large family, are the exceptions.

If you want you kids to do well, you need to have LESS of them and you
also need to devote more quality time and resource on them.

It is truly TRUE that by the time the kids are tested for preschool,
Hmong kids, on average, are already a year or two behind the average
White kids from middle to upper middle class backgrounds. Some will
catch, but most won't.

When we look at AGGREGATE statistics --- say of, "Hmong students" ---
we don't talk about individuals; we talk about an AVERAGE reading or
an average writing or an average math score. It does not make sense
for you, as a presenter, for exmaple, to scroll through a list of
students and pick the 3 Hmong kds who score in the 90 percentiles ---
whether form a charter or a traditonal public school --- and say,
"See, they can do it, why not everyone, too?"

It doesnt' work that way.

Having been a classroom teacher, I will never blame OTHER teachers.
Teachers, for the most part, are well educated, caring, and
knowledegable in the subject matter they teach. It's just that there
are too many OTHER PROBLEMS outside of academics, so many potentially
good teachers just never have the chance to practice their crafts of
delivering an academic subject.

1. the average class are too large
2. the kids are, on average, too needy in too many areas
3. Hmong parents are not involved neough; and even when they are
physically there, in the school, they LACK the necessary skills to ask
teachers and administrators tough and relevant questions about
specific subject matters.
4. Hmong parents have, again, too many children and they can not,
BOTH TIMEWISE AND RESOURCE, support them adequately, so those kids
start from a very disadvantageous set of circumstances.
5. many small/charter schools do NOT have the properly-trained
administrators/principals: stemming from that LACKING in
administrative preparedness, could be a set of hiring and decision
making events that keep the local/charter school MIRED in perpetual
mediocrity.

I, for example, think I know the subjects matter I deal with and do a
good job, with the one or two students I see, each hour. But I don't
know any thing about administrative things; have no interest in it.
My interest is pure academics and teaching. I would make a very poor
administrator. I know that.

But MONEY makes a lot of people --- even those who have little or no
teaching experience --- think they could teach or run schools, for
hundreds of children, SIMPLY BECAUSE THEY ARE A PART of the people/
ethnic group they want charter schools to be founded for.....

That makes bad education.

Setting up a charter school, as half a dozen enterprenurieal Hmong
have found out, is actually not thta difficult. Staffing it with very
competent teachers is very difficult.

The rate of new-teacher retention in public schools is pretty bad; the
rate of new-teacher retention in most inner city charter school is
horrendous.

For, unlike in the public school, among public school teachers, there
is very minimal quality professional development opportunties in
small, charter schools. You are NOT an integrated part of the public
school systems, so they don't feel like they need to include you in
their broad, on-going professional training. You are on yoru own, at
your little local/neighborhood charter school.

Whoever think, hastily, they are going to be able to teach Hmong kids
better, more efficiently, with profits to be made, they are fooling
themselves. I am sure those few who get such projects start can set
up committees to pay themselves good incomes with the lumpsums given
out to them by the various governmental agencies; but I doubt very
much these Hmong academies will really out-do the public schools..

In fact, I would be rather surprised and shocked, if they actually
produce statistics showing any particular charter school (in the Twin
Cities) whose Hmong kids out-score those from the larger public
schools. At least two or three of them, with 40 percent or more being
Hmong kids, have been in existence for around 10 years, now, so that's
enough of a time to TRULY GAUGE whether or not charter ideals have
worked.

Again, whether not not the founders of such charter schools will be
able to be honest enough with themselves, with statistics, I can not
say. I am not really that interested in what they say, actually.

But Hmong PARENTS who's kids enable these founders to pay themselves
in the $70,000 to $100,000 range need to be aware of all these
things.

If they are not aware of these things, and I do not believe they are,
then what we are doing here is, as some founders and their defenders
would say, spreading lies and rumors --- twisting statistics out of
shape, to say whatever we want (which they also do, do justify their
schools and programs and pays) --- when they have, when they run,
"perfectly good schools..."

A little pet peeve is, the public money they get comes out of OUR
pockets, too, even though we are not involved in those small, isolated
schools. We just don't have the more precious things involved in
them: our kids.

Ultimately, then, I will suggest that those who have most to lose