[Mpls] Teacher union president at Lucille's Kitchen

[David Brauer]

On Jun 22, 2004, at 3:22 PM, Socialist2001 at cs.com wrote:

> Louise Sundin referred to a "30 million word gap" in an attempt to 
> explain
> the difference in academic performance between black and white 
> students,
> presumably a reflection of differences in exposure to the spoken 
> language during a
> child's first 3 years. One would have to read at a pace of 200 words 
> per minute
> for 15,000 hours to expose a child to that many words.
>
> Why didn't Ms. Sundin just come out and say that black students are 
> generally
> inferior to whites as learners, at least as far as the ability to 
> acquire
> language skills is concerned, due to some defect in African-American 
> culture?
> That was certainly implied.

I think drawing such an implication is unfair. Do you deny such a 
vocabulary gap exists? Did the crowd go nuts or agree?

All Sundin is doing is aggregating a number that over time. 
Quantification, though, is not explanation, and to put words in 
Sundin's mouth seems unsupported by the above evidence.

You hit on a really solid theory for the gap later in your post.

> Here is alternative explanation for average differences between black 
> and
> white children on cognitive ability tests at the point they enter the 
> school
> system: White people, on average, have higher incomes, and people with 
> higher
> incomes generally spend more on preschool programs. In a study of 483
> low-birth-weight children from birth to age five, Greg Duncan at 
> Northwestern University
> and Jean Brooks-Gunn and Pamela Klebanov at Columbia University 
> compared IQ
> test scores of Black and White children from families with similar 
> economic
> situations. White children outscored Black children by an average of 3 
> points: not
> a significant difference

Any reason to believe Sundin disagrees with this?

No matter what the cause, society insists public school teachers bridge 
these gap five years after they first open. That's a tough task even 
for good teachers. When I hear teachers talk about this, it's to 
advocate for earlier childhood education to head off learning gaps 
before they get worse.

I'm guessing - only guessing - this is something Doug Mann and Louise 
Sundin could agree on.

Peace out.

David Brauer
Kingfield
MPS parent