The New Racial School Follies
As if to demonstrate that the administration’s actions are totally disconnected from the president’s public rhetoric, almost simultaneously with the NAACP speech, the new head of the Office of Civil Rights (OCR) — the civil rights enforcement arm of the U.S. Department of Education — announced that she would be considering whether to bring race discrimination lawsuits against school districts where minority students were underrepresented in advanced courses such as AP courses. This is an explicit racial quota — merely by suggesting the possibility of such an action, she ensures that school districts will scramble to make sure that students are selected for advanced courses on the basis of skin color.
Now, in an almost parodic counterpoint to that OCR announcement, Berkeley High School is looking at cutting out science labs altogether because they’re a threat to black and Hispanic students. The school’s governance council thinks that science labs benefit white and Asian students to the detriment of blacks and Hispanics, whom the council apparently views as not capable of learning science. The council wants the funding for science labs redirected so it can “free up more resources to help struggling students.”
“When broken down in racial terms,” says the local superintendent, “African American and Latino students are not scoring as well as their peers.” Well, I guess that’s that, then! If some student groups are scoring poorly in science, obviously the only possible way to deal with that problem is to shut down the science labs! Then they won’t score poorly in science anymore!
“The majority of students of color don’t really go” because the labs take place outside normal school hours, says one student by way of defending the decision. Well then, obviously the most equitable and fair solution is to close the labs — then everybody won’t go!
Believe it or not, the superintendent says exactly that: “To require students to come to school before or after school, as part of your required courses during school, just doesn’t seem very equitable to many of us.”
Obviously these people have some pretty thick ideological blinders on. But as long as we’re spelunking down in this hellhole, let’s not neglect to mention the more materialistic aspect of this problem. It’s hard not to imagine that this isn’t, on some level, driven by a power struggle between two sets of teachers — the science teachers and the teachers who run programs aimed at “struggling students” — for jobs and prestige. Hence the council’s focus on “freeing up resources.”
Sure enough, the science teachers are forming an organized resistance. “Our students who are struggling need that extra instructional time, especially if we’re going to prepare students for the jobs of the future,” says one. “Why would you teach the same amount of material in less time and think that that was going to help anybody?” asks a parent.
I know which of those groups I’m cheering for.
But the best comment comes from Berkeley junior Kacey Holt. He has a message for those students who “are not scoring as well as their peers” in science and “don’t really go” to the science labs: “I think they need to talk with their teachers and get more tutoring, afterschool programs, and basically show up for class,” says Kacey.
Kacey Holt for Berkley Unified superintendent! Campaign slogan: “Basically, Show Up for Class.”
“President Obama in particular has been working hard not only to distance himself from this particularly odious form of racism, but to directly and explicitly condemn it.”
HA! How can someone condemn what most assuredly got them where they are?
Yeah. It’s hard to ‘fudge’ bad grades in science eh?
Delia,
Clarence Thomas did.
Let’s apply the same logic to high school sports: Whites and Asians don’t do as well in basketball as the black students so we should cut the basketball program. It’s not fair to force kids to show up for practice before and after school AND play their games outside of school hours. That money would be better spent for on daily PE classes to help the “not so athletically gifted students” catch up.
I like to see how far that proposal would go at Berkeley High.
You presume too much if you think the Affirmative Action Kid the LYING Mohammedan BOGUS POTUS himself is going to do anything to stop the RACISM of affirmative action after all he is the most outstanding recipient of this vile RACIST practice. Bluff bluster to appease the RINO’s and definitely no action is all you will get from the Community Organiser. While we are at it just WHY are Hispanics and Blacks useless at science is it because to study science you need intelligence, discipline and concentration and an intellectual capacity. Just wondering!!!!!!!!
I am so sick of black this and black that, quotas for blacks, affirmative action for blacks, diversity in the name of blacks, protected status, minorities encouraged to apply, etc, etc, blah, blah, blah. Geez you would think black Americans were a race of idiots who need pampering from patriarchical white progressives. That they cannot stand up for themselves. That they are incapable of learning.
“W” had it right. There is a pathology in the racists notion of low expectations regading blacks. And white progressives use that to their advantage. And blacks either on purpose or because they actaully are incapable of being productive fall for the trap. And despite the protestations from Michael Dyson, Cornell West, and LaMont Hill (O’Reilly star), blacks are continually proving themselves to be inferior.
So let me get this straight: OCR is going to sue school districts because not enough blacks are in AP courses. And blacks are not in AP courses because AP course are harder and require more studying and work than regular courses. So the answer for blacks according to the head of OCR is to force schools to PUT blacks in AP courses where either the course will be dumbed down or the black students will flunk. What about the white students in this equation? Do they just not take AP courses, maybe the school will do a Berkeley HS and drop it, or do they not benefit from the course and lose college credit–JUST SO BLACKS CAN BENEFIT…
When is someone going to say ENOUGH is ENOUGH. We are about equal opportunity not equal outcomes.
wasn’t Edison and Einstein bad students? kids need our help because , i heard their brains only finish developing by the age of 21? teaching the easy students is, well easy, its the project kids that come back after a bunch of years and say thanks, that”s confirmation that you are living a life worthwhile.
1. Delia …ditto
firstly Obama doesn’t care about anyone but himself.
as a community organizer and his work with Bill Ayers and the the gross misconduct of the Annenberg project was exactly what you (Greg) say he is distancing himself from. NOT
the USA needs to step away from the victim hood as a career option in life (not just in the education system) ..because that is all that this racial issue is. V-I-C-T-I-M H-O-O-D
The purpose of “public education” is to produce compliant subjects for the state. A truly educated public is the greatest danger our political masters face. Not only do they not need Washington to run their lives, they know the fallacy of Washington borrowing a dollar in their name to send sixty five cents back to buy something they don’t want or need.
Racial excuses will thrive, just like all the other excuses.
It’s what the Khmer Rouge thought: Let’s prevent social and achievement inequality by shooting all the smart people. (“Social justice” in action.)
“HA! How can someone condemn what most assuredly got them where they are?”
Barack Obama obviously took advantage of the affirmative action policies established by the Ivy League schools over forty years ago. The man is simply not well educated. He is not going to eradicate polices which have so amply rewarded him for his own mediocre accomplishments. Straightening out the crisis in American education is doomed as long as we continue supporting public education—and the Griggs vs. Duke Power U.S. Supreme Court decision remains the law of the land. There are too many second raters mooching off the present system. Private education is the only real answer. Do I expect this to become reality anytime in the near future? Hell no! Thus, these kids are royally screwed.
Is someone in the US still teaching science?
Amazing!
Next they’ll think of bringing back mathematics.
Sadly, what #1 said.
School vouchers have been damaged goods because, instead of opening up real threat of competition for the union-strangled public schools (thru the middle class keeping some of their taxes), they have been perverted into just another welfare program for the non-taxpayers, which defangs the scope of their competitive benefit, and rightly reduces their support from that middle class.
Besides, we know how Obama lies about ‘competition’ in healthcare: putting an infinitely-subsidized public option supposedly increases it, but actual market oriented reforms somehow do not : killing cartelization by state lines, moving from job- to individual insurance, transparency in pricing, allowing more options in catastrophic-only plans and shifting the tax breaks to encourage individual out of pocket purchasing deisions, tort reform, breaking AMA chokehold on competition from nurse-practitioners etc.
“…he has endorsed most of the things that the excusemakers hate — most notably charter schools, the need for “competition” in education, and merit pay for teachers.”
I consider myself pretty well informed but I missed the fact(?) that he endorsed charter schools. I wonder if they know that in D.C.?
Good post Delia.
Mr. Foster not only ignores that neither Barack nor Michelle are qualified to possess their academic degrees but both also seem to have little or no real knowledge of economics or Western history. For that matter other than black supremacism, Marxism and Afro centric nonsense they seem to be not only unqualified but uneducated on just about everything as well.
They are the poster children for racial preferences.
The Achievement gaps that are well documented in public schools based on race, between boys and girls, parents with lower incomes, and parents with lower levels of education are not found among homeschoolers. It appears from all the existing research that homeschooling equalizes every student upwards. Homeschoolers are actually achieving every day what the public schools claim are their goals—to narrow achievement gaps based on race, gender, income, and parental education and to educate each child to a high level.
“The majority of students of color don’t really go” because the labs take place outside normal school hours, says one student by way of defending the decision. Well then, obviously the most equitable and fair solution is to close the labs — then everybody won’t go!
Here is the problem. Core courses outside the core day? What if you have to take care of your little brother after school? What if you play sports? What if you have no transportation?
Someone set up this schedule without considering circumstances often beyond the control of kids.
If the labs are important…put them in the regular school day!
While classroom performance cannot be tied directly to the amount of educational dollars spent, I think how those dollars are spent is deplorable. The educational bureaucracy is too bloated and sucks up too many resources that should be spent on classroom time. Thus, this battle for resources is a farce. In California, a prime example of waste, 50% of all educational dollars spent go to administrative costs – meaning it goes to feed the bureaucracy and never reaches the classroom. So, when the folks in Berkeley say they need to “free up more resources for struggling students” parents need to demand that they reallocate resources by putting some overpaid and underperforming bureaucrats back in the classroom where they might be of some use.
Here’s another suggestion: If some of the kids in Berkeley do not want to go to school, well, let them drop out. Presto, these underachievers are no longer on the school rolls and, therefore, no longer effect “minority disparities”. There is more than one way to hide a problem.
Yes, we should shut down educational opportunities for those who strive to excel because we can’t force those who don’t care to improve.
Yes, liveabroad, for someone to do well isn’t fair to those who can’t or (more likely) won’t. Competence is elitist, racist, capitalistisc and otherwise icky for left/liberal types (it beats working, expending effort and actually getting people to achieve).
As a young woman, I taught science rather successfully to high school black kids at Jamaica High School in Queens, NYC. Here are my thoughts on the new Secretary of Education, Arne Duncan, who has never had classroom experience, but loves black kids. Don’t miss part two on Howard Gardner, who believes that there are different kids of intelligence. http://clarespark.com/2009/10/05/arne-duncans-statism-part-one/, http://clarespark.com/2009/10/05/arne-duncans-statism-part-two/
Does anyone know of a single likely GOP Presidential candidate who has the guts to roll back this crap — and say so in the campaign? (I’m saying No on Romney and Huckabee right off.)
Everywhere else in the world outside the U.S.A. people understand that some kids need more time to learn than other kids. If I am not as bright as somebody else, then I need to study harder and need to spend more time studying. So, for instance, many Chinese and Japanese kids go to after-school tutoring schools to spend more time studying those subjects they are having difficulty with.
Outside the U.S., parents and children would be delighted to have an after-school lab where they could spend time learning what they find difficult to absorb. In fact, where I live, some minority-group parents spend $400 per child per month to hire teachers-in-training to tutor their children after school who are having trouble learning. These teachers-in-training use this money to pay their university tuition.
The problem with black kids is that they live in a culture that apparently does not apply the work ethic to the learning of school subjects. When an Asian (Chinese, Filipino, Korean, Japanese, East Indian) child has difficulty with some subject in school, the parents make the child spend more time on schoolwork. Nobody in the culture excuses the child’s poor performance by saying he/she lacks general intelligence or lacks some specific form of intelligence. The child is told to work harder. And for the vast, vast majority of human beings, working harder and longer will result in better performance–whether the performance is physical (playing golf) or mental (solving math word problems).
Applying the work ethic to the learning of school subjects is a LEARNED skill. When I taught in China, the government showed the population via video that it was important for every family to provide a quiet, sheltered corner where a child could study and do homework. Given the poverty of China, what was shown was a corner of the living room or bedroom that had a blanket or sheet hanging from the ceiling that sheltered the corner and made it a private space, good for studying.
Instead of spending hundreds of millions of dollars on what appear to be quite useless education programs, the U.S. government on each level (city, state, national) should be providing short TV ads that SHOW parents the following points: (1) to learn anything, you have to study. (2) you have to provide specific conditions in your home so that your children can study–table or desk in a quiet corner; TV off for certain times of the day so room is quiet; place to put schoolbooks; have paper and pencil available in study area; tell children to study; tell children when to study; tell children how long to study; ask to see schoolwork daily; look at homework completed daily; praise children for working; make sure children get 9 to 10 hours of sleep per night; feed children in the morning.
This is for C @ 3:13am
You need to get your facts straight. Clarence Thomas was completely academically qualified and known to be a hard worker, the only ‘affirmatve action’ he was a recipient of was monetary, not racial.
This entire article is a lie.
When will these pathetic racists give up their campaign against children.
First, there is misdirection.
All education for all, takes precedence over special projects.
The threat is introduced because supposedly the recipients are white and therefore being deprived of something.
Why would any decent loyal patriotic American pander to Racism?
Take a moment to reflect on the premise of racial exclusivity, to which the no doubt well meaning author alludes. Think of all the Whites who are also not participating in the special program. The funds to prop up a little used program are withheld from them as well.
In fact all funds which target the so called high achiever, exclude the majority of Whites, who are I must needs repeatedly remind my Republican friends, American citizens.
This noted and decent scholar then goes on to create an illusion that anyone not involved in the special program is a bad student.
Everyone.
Every good Black student, every good White student, every good Hispanic, (probably Mexican-American) student not participating in the extra-curricular program is disparaged in a transparent rhetorical trick of equivocation.
These are the Clowns, (and I mean that in a respectful way) and the rhetoric that we need to purge from the Republican Party.
I do not doubt Greg Forster’s sincerity and heart-felt conviction in this most pathetic race-baiting piece of tripe.
Let us simply settle on the position that segregation will not work and attempting to pretend to have a desire to return to it, will only ill serve the Republican Party.
There are enough genuine things to concern ourselves with like the balancing of care for the poor, (who will always be with us) and a climate conducive to business and productivity, as well as the never ending duty to defend the nation for enemies both domestic and foreign.
Please do not think I do not respect anyone’s right to be racist. I only put the needs of all our nations citizens first.
It’s called dumbing down education. I work at a low performing high school, where we have adopted the 8 week semester class instead of the traditional 16 week semester. And why you ask, so that students who flunk, can retake that class again, immediately. The administration tries to say that advanced students can take college courses earlier, but I believe that is just smoke and mirrors. I’ve been a physical education teacher at this school for 22 years, I’ve seen education techniques change from educating students and getting the disruptive students out of the regular classroom to making excuses for the low performing students (disruptive) who do not care about their education and keeping them in the classroom. My fellow teachers who teach science, math and english cut their curriculum in half because of this system. I would say this is a clear case of dumbing down education. I also like #3, take on the situation, very funny!
Good article. Students are not statistics or racial categories. Let us treat students as individuals with varying strengths and abilities. Let us help each student succeed to the fullness of their potential.
The PC approach does every student a disservice,
and defeats the purpose of public education, which is
to produce new workers, from plumbers to physicists.
Society can no longer afford this sabotage of future
productivity, particularly for the Talented and Gifted
students who are most important to a Hi-Tech, 21st
century economy, and who are most often discriminated
_against_ by PC policies designed to produce equality
of outcome.
Uh. Don [24],
“As if to demonstrate that the administration’s actions are totally disconnected from the president’s public rhetoric, almost simultaneously with the NAACP speech, the new head of the Office of Civil Rights (OCR) — the civil rights enforcement arm of the U.S. Department of Education — announced that she would be considering whether to bring race discrimination lawsuits against school districts where minority students were underrepresented in advanced courses such as AP courses. This is an explicit racial quota — merely by suggesting the possibility of such an action, she ensures that school districts will scramble to make sure that students are selected for advanced courses on the basis of skin color.”
HELLO?
Don,
Not only you are a racist, you are also an ignorant racist. It was the Berkley school that specifically said that it would be cutting science labs because the kids who went their were of wrong skin color. When you support this racist actions – this proves you are a racist.
Secondly, having same system for all, system where best students advance is not “segregation” – unless you have a racist belief that blacks inherently cannot compete with whites (do you?).
Lastly, a system which does not promote and nurture good students is a horrible system, a system who by definition is not designed to serve the people. Why do you hate the people, Don? Why the hate and ignorance? Is it something you ate?
I think that all sports that black athletes excel in in school should be stopped as it is not fair to the non black students to try to play sports as well as black kids. Fair is fair and reverse racism is still racism . However whites do not complain enough nor do they use the concept of racism which we should take advantage of just like the blacks do .
#24 Don: Please do not think I do not respect anyone’s right to be racist.
We don’t respect your right to be a racist, no matter how hard you try and conceal it, either. Obama’s speech gets it right. Lower expectations for minorities guarantee lower achievement, which in turn means the individuals involved need Affirmative Action to get anywhere for the rest of their lives. The government cripples the individuals, and then benevolently provides them with handicaps (in the golf sense) to make up for their shortcomings.
And you didn’t explain why the one fellow’s point about the basketball program isn’t valid. If science labs should be stopped because they unfairly impact minority students who can’t show up for class, or who can’t compete with white and Asian students, then shouldn’t basketball, which requires you to show up after class, and which Asians and Latinos are typically shut out of (because they’re too short), shouldn’t that be shut down too?
The problem, of course, is that in much of the Black community (and the rest of the world, for that matter) science isn’t that well-regarded, but athletes are considered gods. Denying someone a science course is no big thing; preventing someone from having a career in the NBA…well, almost everyone will oppose that.
Don: Would you apply the same analysis to school sports programs? Art programs? Music programs? I see nothing wrong with schools offering students with special talent and interest a chance to develop these. I can’t draw or sing, but I profitted from basic art and music classes, and I also profit by being able to enjoy those with more talent who had a chance to use it.
Don, you fail to consider all of the facts in this case. To wit, the labs being held after school are for students to receive additional instruction, after school hours, nothing wrong with providing tutoring for students that wish to improve their performance. The real secret here, is that the funds will be redirected to other electives, the majority of which are based on ethnic division (check out the courses available at that school). You also falsely allude to the author as being a proponent for segregation. The article is about the asinine approach to a perceived imbalance in performance based upon ethnic lines.
The inherent lie to their (school) premise, and this is true for the majority of instances when they argue ‘proportion’, is that minorities are minorities because they do not make up an equal portion of the population, yet they should be represented equally in numbers. If you have 100 people, 10 of which are black, and you take 50 people aside, they will argue that blacks are disproportionately represented because they don’t make up 50% of those individuals chosen. It is a mathematical impossibility and yet they continue to trumpet this false idea to push ridiculous policies that tend to hurt all parties involved.
The author was pointing out this inherent lack of logic on the part of the school, or more accurately, their soft racism. The school’s pretense is that minority students are not performing as well as white students, therefore, the answer is to eliminate the programs where minorities don’t do well rather than work to improve their performance. It also highlights that the OCR is planning its own affirmative action for AP courses. This means that if minority students make up 10% of the student body, they will have to represent 10% of students in the AP courses, regardless of whether enough minority students qualify for those classes to make up 10% of those enrolled. Affirmative action has no place in today’s society, especially not in education.
I must rebut the statement someone made about minorities proving themselves to be inferior in this case. It would be wiser (less dishonest and bigoted) to say that the economic and social issues in California often lead to poor performance in public schools, especially for minorities where gang crime and bad parenting run rampant (in that State). Education tends not to be as much a priority.
1. Racial quotas in AP classes amount to a national abdication of a leadership role in the world community.
2. Surely there are plenty of students “of color” in science AP classes–but they are of Asian colors. I suspect that doesn’t count.
3. The USA has been messed up before and straightened itself out, so I refuse to despair. Nevertheless, my advice to parents of children who can meet traditional college standards is to expose the kids to the global economy and have them learn an Asian language and a Hispanic language (which would do double duty as a European language). The experience will be beneficial in any event; if worst comes to worst, it might be be essential.
I’m an attorney and this has convinced me that Congress should amend 42 SC 1983 to forbid disparate impact lawsuits of any sort.
Thank you everyone for your replies, I especially liked the Cat who rhymed Hate with Ate. LOL :: ))
this is an ongoing conversation and even if you took the race aspect out of it there would still be varying opinions on the special type class versus the general inclusive type class.
Specialization is a fact of life. We cannot get anywhere without it.
People benefiting from excluding others to insure the inclusion of their own is also a fact of life.
The author is the source of all these “Facts” that substantiate his argument.
This author framed this article as an advantage to Whites being taken away.
Again, no mention is made of the Whites excluded.
VB Parents of all sizes have a right to expect their children to receive healthy physical education, not to have their children used to develop the self esteem of large children at the expense of small children.
One thing that I think is totally cool is no matter what you say these days, the other side can say you are a Racist.
So tit for tat.
I can’t argue with That.
With all of the hubbub about how unfair it is to white kids to shut down after school labs, I have seen many people talking about why we should address the problem of black kids and Latino kids not going. I beleive that it is our responsibility to educate all kids and when certain kids or certain types of kids are doing poorly, energy needs to go towards firguring out why the disparity exists then working to elimitate those barriers. This often times starts with educating parents.
Here’s another thought, if student from poor circustance do not go to the program becuase they have responsibilities to watch young siblings, perhaps we should spend dollars for elementary programs. Better yet, I agree with many who have stated this, reduce the size of the burecratic machinne and mo e more of those folks into classrooms where they are needed.
@GS, you touched on a particularly telling fact. despite the fact that Asians are a true minority demographically, they are by and large successful, therefore they do not qualify for special consideration by these people in their search for ‘equality’.
This debate will never end until the only officially recognized race is the human race. Until then those with the superficial difference of skin color will have two options: work hard and achieve to the best of their ability, or, take what has been the easier way for some – have themselves declared a disadvantaged minority among white people. They can then take the career path of victimhood.
Chuck, your idea is good in concept but it will only work if people truly are wliing to look beyond difference of skin tone etc and truly judge each person by the content of their character. My experience has been that few people are truly color blind and their prejudices surface at truly inoppotune times, lib, conservatives, black white and every hue in between.
I have long said that if Americans saw all kids as our greatest asset and only hope for the future. If we were willing to commit to each and every child, there would be no achievement gap because we would be outraged that so many of our youth are not making it.
Rob@3:”I must rebut the statement someone made about minorities proving themselves to be inferior in this case. It would be wiser (less dishonest and bigoted) to say that the economic and social issues in California often lead to poor performance in public schools, especially for minorities where gang crime and bad parenting run rampant (in that State). Education tends not to be as much a priority.”
You can make up all the excuses you want for blacks not performing better, but that should not preclude white students from exercising their freedoms and getting the best education they can. Whose fault is it that blacks have bad parenting; whose fault is it that they live in gang infested areas, whose fault is it that they have a 70% illegitimacy rate; whose fault is it that they have a 50% dropout rate??? Blacks because of progressive white tutelage have grown accustomed to being inferior in the classroom; cite the last time a white progressive admonished blacks for being lazy and not taking education seriously??
And whose fault is it that inner cities like LA who like most big urban areas have been controlled by either progressives or blacks for 60 years?? If you are using the excuse of poverty then place the blame where it should be and not on white Americans and their kids.
You fail to realize the left does not care a wit about blacks being dumb, they only care about all students being dumb. That way they can be more easily minipulated.
I abhor what Berkley is doing here but no one is talking about the impact of NCLB on race and advanced programs.
By 2014, all schools MUST have 100% proficiency in all racial groups or there will be financial consequences (providing free tutors, allowing students to go to another school in the district, or free after school programs). Now the states are dumbing down their tests, setting proficiency a grade or two lower than the students tested, in an attempt to make this more achievable. Still, they won’t make 100% because there are those students who don’t care about the test or have skills several grade levels below.
While the racial tension has always played a part in how schools (especially in liberal, college towns) fund various programs, it has gotten worse since NCLB.
Shredding the AP program isn’t the solution. Modifying NCLB is.
@Blotto-41
I made no excuses, simply stated the facts. Underachieving by choice,i.e. not doing the work or showing up isn’t a case of blacks being inferior. To say so is simply racist. They do indeed bear the responsibility for their actions. This is a result of choice and not race.
@Don, the FACTS stated are as presented by the school, the reasons given are that minorities are not in substantial numbers, attending or doing well. Instead of addressing the problem, improving the results, they choose to eliminate proof of the problem. It is just as was presented in the sports analogy. Remove the race factor and look at it this way, suppose you have a few players on your football team that just aren’t performing well (normally they’d be cut but let’s assume they haven’t enough players to spare). So the school’s solution, instead of helping them to improve, like going to the gym, sprinting on the track or doing catching drills, they just decide it’s better to eliminate the team. That way, nobody feels bad about not playing well. Doesn’t make a lot of sense does it?
You have made your position clear, it is the wrong one. There is no mention of Whites not included because that’s what is exactly wrong with what the school is doing. They don’t care about the white students not doing well, only that there are ‘not enough’ minorities doing well. Electives and tutoring should not be judged by such criteria (and frankly neither should standard classes). Perhaps they should cut funding for some of those social justice programs that they offer rather than handicapping our future scientists and physicians by denying them the opportunity to better themselves in the name of fairness.
@Blotto, I forgot to add, I agree that they want our children to be dumb, regardless of race.
@Lisa, that is not a flaw in NCLB (though it does have its flaws)that is the failure of schools to educate and instead lower the bar in order to create perceived improvement.
Les see…..isn’t Berkeley where they tried to get EBONICS accepted as a legitimate language in lieu of students having to learn E-N-G-L-I-S-H? (I spelt it so’s they wouldn’t feel any loss of their immense sense of self-esteem). Besides, shouldn’t they have to learn Spanish first, like everyone else in the Demokratik Peepuls Republik of Kalifornya?
it’s doubtful they can get any dumber, so what’s the difference.
Rob:
You make an excellent point. Why are there football teams?
The vast majority of children do not play football, and of those who want to, only a select few do so.
Who is served by having football teams?
Good point.
I never thought of that.
Wake up America, do we continue down the abysmal path of educational failure, or do we institute a radical paradigm shift in educational pedagogical strategies towards eliminating the horrendous and stagnating academic achievement gap between the haves and have-nots, between the mainstream and non-mainstream k-12, inner-city, minority student populations? The Bridge cross-Cultural Reading Program was scientifically field tested in five different school districts nation-wide by Houghton Mifflin Publishers, the results showed a reading gain of 6.2 reading proficiency for four months of instruction in grades 7-12, within Black inner-city schools..We must begin to utilize proven scientific-methods which work towards raising academic achievement among minority students. Our current system remains dominated by district bureaucrats who demand endless reports from principals, and respectively higher salaries for themselves; the schools of education, which concentrate on teaching future teachers so-called pedagogical theories, instead of content of subject matter; and finally, but not least, teacher unions, which are more concerned over their member’s seniority rights and tenture, than adequately teaching our inner-city, non-mainstream students to read and comprehend grade appropriate materials to enable them to successfully compete in a global economy..
Illiteracy remains the dominant factor or obstacle in eliminating the cumulative deficit, the Black/White academic achievement gap. Our newly elected President, Barack Obama, believes in “change”. We must surge foward, utilizing scientifically proven methodology which works in effectively eliminating this educational plague which has infested our inner-city, k-12 public school system..Yes, when our Black, inner-city youth are reading at a ceiling of a 4.9 grade level at 12th grade, then we truly have a “Plague”existing within our public school system! As the authors of the new book”Between the Rhetoric and Reality”Lauriat Press;Simpkins&Simpkins, state”there are many roads which lead to Rome, and it is not always desirable to take the Royal Road” p-174.