Encourage minorities to achieve

I get hundreds of unwanted e-mails every day at work, and I usually kill them almost as fast as I receive them.
But one unsolicited e-mail caught my eye just before I hit that delete key.
It read "Acting White" survey.
The e-mail contained information from a Hoover Institution news release that said a Harvard economist had worked on a study involving high-achieving minority students in racially integrated public schools.
The Hoover Institution in Stanford, Calif., says it is committed to looking at hard facts about school reform.
Social stigma
Roland G. Fryer Jr.'s study showed that minority students who strive to get As and Bs are less popular among their ethnic peers and more isolated than similar white students.
"The social stigma among minorities who excel -- labeled 'acting white' -- is a vexing reality within a subset of American schools," Fryer writes. "Whatever its cause, it is most prevalent in racially integrated public schools. It's less of a problem in the private sector and in predominantly black public schools."
Fryer's study goes on to say that for black and Hispanic students who attend private schools, he found no evidence of a trade-off between popularity and achievement. Similarly, in predominantly black schools, there was no evidence that getting good grades adversely affected students' popularity.
Discouraging differences
In integrated public schools, however, the price for those who strive to succeed is high.
"At low GPAs [grade point averages], there is little difference among ethnic groups in the relationship between grades and popularity, but when a student achieves a 2.5 GPA [an even mix of Bs and Cs], clear differences start to emerge," Fryer writes.
"Beyond this level, Hispanic students in particular lose popularity at an alarming rate. As GPAs climb above 3.5, the experience of black and white students diverges: Black students tend to have fewer and fewer friends, while white students find themselves moving to the top of the popularity pyramid," Fryer writes.
For Hispanic students at the highest levels of achievement, it is even more discouraging. A Hispanic student with a 4.0 GPA is the least popular of all Hispanic students, and Hispanic-white differences are the most extreme.
Basis of research
For his research, Fryer used data from the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health (Adhealth). That provided information on the friendship patterns of a nationally representative sample of more than 90,000 students from 175 schools in 80 communities, who entered grades seven through 12 in the 1994 school year.
Students in the Adhealth study were asked to list up to five of their closest male and female friends. Fryer counted how often each student's name appeared on peers' lists. The more frequently a peer was listed by others, the more weight was assigned to showing up on his or her list.
Fryer's study also showed that the most popular white students in private schools had a GPA of roughly 2.0 (a C average).
The study concludes: "These findings may help explain why most studies of academic achievement find little or no benefit from attending a private school for white students, but quite large benefits for African Americans."
Setting high standards
It is sad that blacks and Hispanic students in integrated schools must bear the dilemma of trading academic excellence for popularity among their peers.
Since when did mastering reading, writing, math, geography and science become "a white thing" to do? Seems to me that aspiring to achieve high academic standards is the normal thing to do and is not limited to one race of people.
It is the responsibility of black and Hispanic parents to make sure their children are held to high academic standards.
If your child receives a B on a report card, applaud that effort, but also encourage the child to strive for an A the next grading period. There is no harm in asking our children to be the best.
Parents also must encourage their children to cut loose any friends who think that getting A's is "not cool" and a waste of time.
Our children's futures are too important to let them fall prey to such small-minded thinking.
ebrown@vindy.com
XRead more about the costs of "Acting White" in the new issue of Education Next online at www.educationnext.org.