In MCPS, Black Immigrant Students Shine Academically

Montgomery County Public Schools Superintendent Joshua Starr is interested in understanding “performance variability,” and he talks about it constantly.

Here he is just last week talking to high school journalists about it.

I’m not 100 percent sure what Starr means by performance variability, but here is a wild guess: I think, for example, he wants to know why affluent MCPS graduating seniors score 1800+ SAT points versus poor MCPS graduating seniors who barely score 1200. Great idea! But figuring out variability requires doing a better job of describing student populations and I’m not convinced that MCPS does this very well.

We know, for example, that there is inner-group variability amongst black or African-American MCPS students. Black girls read better than black boys, and from time to time, MCPS publishes reading scores that back this up. I cannot, however, remember MCPS ever publishing scores for students receiving federal free and reduced meals (FARMS) versus  results for non-FARMS black students. MCPS uses FARMS as a proxy for being poor. If you participate in the program you are poor. Nonetheless, it is unclear to me if poor black students perform lower than their affluent black peers or if poor black girls and affluent black girls out-read their counterparts, poor black boys and affluent black boys. I would guess that they would, but who really knows?

Going back to mid- to late 1990’s, I have noticed that black immigrant MCPS students outperform non-black immigrant students. At the end of this blog post are the MCPS published names of 2011 black college scholarship awardees. More than half of the awardees are what scholar John Ogbu labels as "voluntary minorities"—descendants of black people who arrived via immigration (there are some names on the list that I could not confirm “country” of origin and those are reflected with a question mark). According to Ogbu—who died in 2003 and was a voluntary minority from Nigeria, you are a voluntary minority even you were born in the America. The other black students on the list are "involuntary minorities"—descendants of black people who arrived via slavery. So, President Barack Obama is a voluntary minority and First Lady Michele Obama is an involuntary minority

You can read a paper on this issue here.

For me, showing performance variability across these two groups of black students might be extremely enlightening. Regardless of the academic challenge, my guess is black immigrant students will outperform their non-immigrant black peers. And according to Ogbu, as well as a few other scholars, they will do so because black immigrant students are just way more optimistic about America—including its schools—than are black non-immigrant students. That optimism stems directly from the fact black immigrant students are missing any of the negative “slavery” and “Jim Crow” baggage that still weighs on black descendants of American slavery. Let’s face it—many black non-immigrant students, and their parents, still distrust white-controlled institutions in America, including schools.

So, I would love to see MCPS dive into this issue. What’s the point? Well, frankly it would help us better understand, for example, the true nature of the black-white achievement gap. I actually believe this gap is much worse than we think or know from existing MCPS published reports—those reports treat all black kids as a monolithic racial group (they aren’t). But I believe MCPS cannot say it is closing this gap if it doesn’t understand the true nature of the gap. Or as Dr. Starr keeps pointing out—we need to better understand performance variability. Again, great idea! Now get busy Dr. Starr and show some serious data.

(Two notes: 1). Some country labels were determined by friends who are black immigrants or voluntary minorities. A coworker from Sierra Leone, for example, reviewed the list and picked out the names common to her native homeland. Others were determined via Web searches. 2). This blogger is not “hating” on Africa or African immigrants. As a Peace Corps volunteer, I lived in Africa. I love the continent and its people, and have returned to the continent multiple times over the years, most recently in 2009.)

Name

Country

Scholarship Award

Agyapong, Priscilla

Ghana

NAACP

Aroyewun, Olawale

Nigeria

NAACP

Calhoun, Peter

U.S.

NAACP

Cooper, Raynell

U.S.

NAACP

Fornah, Mariatu

Sierra Leone

NAACP

Phillips, Heather

U.S.

NAACP

Hadiza Asinobi, Mishelle

Nigeria

NAACP

Maiah, Dolly

?

NAACP

Agard, Erik

Caribbean

National Merit

Clanton, Brian

U.S.

National Merit

Duvra, Daniela

Caribbean

National Merit

Mayer-Marks, Saleiha

U.S.

National Merit

McMillian, Sarah

U.S.

National Merit

Neita, Cy

Caribbean

National Merit

Reinke, Miles

U.S.

National Merit

Sesay, Hajaisha

Sierra Leone

National Merit

Tucker, Aaron

U.S.

National Merit

Wyborski, Selena

?

National Merit

Williams, Kira

U.S.

National Merit

Beidleman, Michael

British

National Merit

Etheart, Zachary

Caribbean

National Merit

Horimbere, Raissa

Guinea-Bissau

National Merit

Marcus, Chelsea

U.S.

National Merit

Welch, Haydn

U.S.

National Merit

Williamson, Rachel

U.S.

National Merit

Keita, Aminata

Sierra Leone

National Merit

Nyandjo, Maeva

Cameroon

National Merit

Quartey, Qaren

Ghana

National Merit

Mukunda, Amar

Morocco

National Merit