Atlanta Daily World

Professor Claims Blacks, Latinos Raised In Single Parent Households Can’t Compete With Whites

Leaders in Education, Business Join NAACP to Launch New Education Report

On Thursday the NAACP released "Finding Our Way Back to First: Reclaiming World Leadership by Educating All America's Children", the organization's new education report that the organizations says identifies the best practices for educating America's children.

It is the first time in nearly a decade that the NAACP has put forth a comprehensive education agenda.

"If America is going to lead the world in this century the way we did the last, we must lead the world again in education," stated NAACP President and CEO Benjamin Todd Jealous. "'Finding our Way Back To First' is the road map for our activists, the communities they serve, and the nation as a whole. Our proposition is simple: if every public school does what the best schools do, every child will be able to get a great education. The NAACP has pushed America towards greatness before, and with this plan as our guide our army of advocates will do it again."

The report highlights four areas for proactive education reform to ensure that, upon graduation, all American students are college ready and/or career ready. These areas of reform are: effective teaching; prekindergarten preparation; targeted spending; and expanded time for learning.

"By every measure our children of color are behind. We get to where we are by working hard, but we have to give our children more time and we have to level the playing field," stated Secretary of Education Arne Duncan, who offered remarks at the press conference launching the report. "We have one common enemy, and our common enemy is academic failure."

"The strategic, targeted investments outlined in the NAACP report will generate positive education outcomes for all of our nation's students, particularly the less fortunate among us," stated Dick Riley, former U.S. Secretary of Education and former South Carolina Governor.

"We cannot talk about advancement in America without talking about our young people and education," said Alma J. Powell, Chair, America's Promise Alliance. "The simple truth is that preparing young people for success and 'finding our way back to first' is about much more than what happens inside the classroom, it takes the interest and investment from all of us. When we meet the needs of the whole child we are one step closer to preserving the promise of America."

The NAACP's report also draws a connection between our ability to successfully educate students of all socio-economic statuses and our strength in the global economic marketplace.

The NAACP will share the report with activists at its over 1200 units across the country to use as a resource for education advocacy in their communities. The report will also be shared with other leading advocacy groups like Gamaliel, a non-partisan, faith-based organization that empowers ordinary people to effectively participate in the political, environmental, social and economic decisions affecting their lives.

Real improvements to our education systems start with parents and community activists demanding more than the status quo for delivering quality education," stated Ana Garcia-Ashley, Executive Director of the Gamaliel. "As activists, it is our responsibility to lift up these reforms and be the catalysts for change in our communities."

"To fulfill its promise of greatness, this nation must adopt reforms that result in success for the vast majority of the country's young people, rather than a fortunate few," stated NAACP Education Director Beth Glenn. "The NAACP and its hundreds of thousands of members will continue to advocate for proactive education reform until our nation finds its way back to first.

Georgia Students Scoring Higher on State Writing Test

The Georgia Department of Education has announced high school students are performing slightly better on a statewide writing exam.
In 2012, 93 percent of high school students passed the Georgia State Writing Test compared with 91 percent in 2011.

Officials say 88 percent of high school students passed the exam when it was first administered in 2007.

Education officials say the achievement gap between white, black, Hispanic and special education students has also narrowed.

The two-hour persuasive writing exam is administered three times a year.

Students begin taking the exam in their junior year, and must pass the test by the end of their senior year to receive their diploma.

Black Women Less Likely to Receive Industry-Standard Breast Cancer Treatment

It's long been known within the medical community that African-American women die more often from breast cancer than white women. IN fact, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention says black women are 40 percent more likely to die of breast cancer than white women are. But a new medical study shows they may not be getting the most up-to-date treatments or have access to to the latest technology.

The study, from the University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center, found that African American women with early stage, invasive breast were 12 percent less likely than Caucasian women with the same diagnosis to receive axillary sentinel lymph node (SLN) biopsy, a minimally invasive technique, years after the procedure had become the standard of surgical practice.

The study, presented at the 2012 CTRC-AACR San Antonio Breast Cancer Symposium, also found that those African American women who underwent the older, more invasive procedure, axillary lymph node (ALN) dissection, had higher rates of lymphedema.

Breast cancer is the second leading cause of cancer deaths among American women, but the CDC's Ileana Arias told the AP recently that black women have "unacceptably high" death rates. She says they have the "highest death rates from breast cancer among all racial and ethnic groups."

SLN biopsy became accepted as standard of care for the staging of breast cancer in 2002 and the preferred practice by 2007 when the National Comprehensive Cancer Network and other national organizations endorsed the minimally-invasive procedure. The older technique, ALN dissection, is associated with a number of complications, including lymphedema. Black estimates that approximately 75 percent of newly diagnosed breast cancer patients are eligible for SLN biopsy.

"With this research, we wanted to determine if new surgical innovations were being incorporated fairly amongst different patient populations," says Dalliah Mashon Black, M.D., assistant professor in MD Anderson's Department of Surgical Oncology. "This study looks at trends over time, comparing appropriate patients who all would have been candidates for the SLN biopsy to see how the new procedure was implemented in African Americans and Caucasians."

Black is also the study's first author.

The researchers found that 62 percent of African American patients underwent the SLN biopsy, compared to 74 percent of the Caucasian patients.