What Determines Academic Performance?

There's always controversy when IQ is discussed. Some people are uncomfortable with the idea that IQ is measurable, variable and averages differently among different populations. Many of the same folks who are uncomfortable discussing IQ, also don't want to point the fingers at culture and parenting in the academic [non] performance of certain groups relative to others. It's amusing (in the not funny way) when I see the following:

Public policy research tank, MDRC, finds that as students age, the effect of any change in education (an “intervention”) shrinks dramatically. The average Intervention for a first grader can bring a failing student in the 27th percentile into the middle of the pack. 10 years later, the average intervention has half the effect. By senior year, it’s expected that students won’t budge more than 6-percentile points.

About the age when a child’s voice stops cracking, education itself has a relatively mild effect on academic success. IQ, good parenting, and personal motivation are by far the most important factors.

Indeed, a recent National Science Foundation report of an online experiment at San Jose State University revealed that student effort was a key variable.

So when we see reports of low test score performance being blamed on "poor schools" and "bad teachers", lets look at the above and realize that the number 1,2 and 3 determinants of scholastic performance has nothing to do with teachers or the kind of school a child attends or WHO that child is sitting next to. *ahem*

Eventually we, African descended folks are going to have to admit that our kids are not all up in Brooklyn Tech or Stuyvesant High has more to do with what we as adults and parents are doing rather than any other force "out there". We will have to stop giving white folks super agency over us and our decisions. Stop giving the Educational system super agency over our children's lives and come face to face with what others have known for a long time:

Sneakers are not important. Clothes are not important. Contrary to Target back to school advertising, dancing and being popular in school is NOT important. Facebook is not important. Twitter is not important. Homework and more homework and a clear expectation of academic excellence is important. Period.