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With NCLB Waiver, Virginia Sorts Kids' Scores By Race
According to a story at Northwest Public Radio, the state of Virginia's board of education has decided to institute different passing scores for standardized tests, based on the racial and cultural background of the students taking the test. Apparently the state has chosen to divide its student population into broad categories of black, white, Hispanic, and Asian — which takes painting with a rather broad brush, to put it mildly. From the article (there's an audio version linked as well): "As part of Virginia's waiver to opt out of mandates set out in the No Child Left Behind law, the state has created a controversial new set of education goals that are higher for white and Asian kids than for blacks, Latinos and students with disabilities. ... Here's what the Virginia state board of education actually did. It looked at students' test scores in reading and math and then proposed new passing rates. In math it set an acceptable passing rate at 82 percent for Asian students, 68 percent for whites, 52 percent for Latinos, 45 percent for blacks and 33 percent for kids with disabilities." (If officially determined group membership determines passing scores, why stop there?) Florida passed a similar measure last month.
14 points behind Asians?!?!? For shame, fellow whities! Have we become so awful at educating our trailer trash that we've dropped so low?!?
I fear that unless we can find a way to tie moonshine and NASCAR to education somehow, we'll continue to remain second-class learners.
My Asian children have become lazy Americans, so I have had them diagnosed with temporary learning disabilities.
Needless to say they are performing much better than their teachers expect of them, and have won countless awards for bravery in the face of their intellectual blight. Some parents even donate food - so now I don't have to pack any more lunches!
When the foot seeks the place of the head, the line is crossed. Know your place. Keep your place. Be a shoe.
Thank you government for pointing us in the complete wrong direction. This is absolutely going to encourage racism.
and hypocrisy (more equal???). Orwell's administrator characters would be proud.
If Florida thinks it is good, that's a good enough reason to take a 2nd look at it.
Eeeyow... when is the last time Florida did anything right?
So is the government saying that Asians are in fact better at math then us pale guys? I'm pretty good at math...
It's not often that I like people talking about whites being discriminated against, but in this case I do feel especially bad for Asian's and Whites given the higher requirement for them. As a student who went through school doing the least amount I could while still being able to graduate, I would have been very upset needing higher/lower test scores just because I had the (mis)fortune of being born into a certain family/race. On the flip side, this is a slap in the face to the idea of anyone becoming whatever they work for. To me, this conjurers ideas that Latino's and blacks either can't go as high, or should expect to get what they want for doing less work than others... both of which are obviously untrue.
Scott Swezey
Passing should be the same for everyone, how long did we have racial profiling laws that made it impossible for equality to exist, now in one move Virginia wants to completely defeat that. If there going to profile kids based of there race do they also seat kids based off there skin color, black kids at the back, Asian's at the front so they can answer the question more easily, whites in the middle to be forgotten and average and Hispanics where ever? Same idea just a different spin, this entire concept is offensive and unethical.
I just did the math. My son is 43.75% white (UK ancestry), 6.25% Mohawk, and 50% Chinese. How would Virginia deal with him? Maybe it's a good thing we live in Canada...
Carpe Cerevisi - Seize the Beer
before (instead) of doing something so foolish:
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0094027/
Sphinx of black quartz, judge my vow.
And as a white parent who knows the realities of today's World, I'll want my kid to be considered "Asian" so that he'll achieve and be better than his peers. Because let's face it, in today's World if you're not the Best of the best of the best of the best, you have very little chance of being more than Middle Class - unless you are in the "in" circle. Let's put it this way, you Middle Class slobs have an up-hill battle to keep your "lifestyle" compared to a Walton, Bush, Gates, Romney, Clinton, etc ....
Staying where your parents were, let alone upward mobility is gone in America.
And blame it on .....
No, not them.
No, not them either.
yes, Technology and Globalization.
raise asians to design the high tech machines
have latinos and blacks build them
have whites manage the project and profit off the products.
Oh, awesome, now they can focus even less on making sure minorities and the disabled achieve a level of succes equitable with the priveleged.
Why on earth did they choose to do this based on race rather than poverty?
Now to get employers on board...
This is one of the most racist things I've seen in a long time.
Can we just kick everyone in favor of this off my planet?
Florida appears to have set the passing rate (and not the passing scores) differently (per TFA); while VA simple set different passing scores.
The end result may well be VA has a very high rate of students scoring at the desired level while masking true achievement while FL provides a more representative picture of true outcomes.
Standardized test issues aside; until we decide to educate our kids and address underlying cause of poor performance - including health / nutrition / access to quality schools we'll always have pockets of excellence and achievement deserts.
What I'd like to see is the results from poor majority white school districts in poverty stricken areas of VA - how will they explain those results?
I'm a consultant - I convert gibberish into cash-flow.
Test scores have little to do with genetic differences between races. It is about culture and upbringing.
To set different standards only encourages the status quo for a group. Be it hyper achievement (Asians), mediocrity (whites), or under achievement (for the rest). Groups be challenged to rise above culture and conditioning.
Silence is a state of mime.
As usual the actual discrimination comes from government.
the state of Virginia's board of education has decided to institute different passing scores for standardized tests, based on the racial and cultural background of the students taking the test.
- so how do they figure if you are a white or a black or an Asian or have a disability?
Is it self reporting? Because if it is, everybody should report themselves as a mix of Native American and shade of slavery black, with a number of disabilities, who is also a gay transsexual transvestite communist ex-female ex-male and then ex-female again. How are they going to check and what can they check for exactly in a legal manner?
With that sort of background you should be able not just to pass any exam without even showing up, but they will have to give you two Asians and a white guy just for you to beat on a daily basis and work for you because you deserve it.
MY OTHER COMMENTS
The headline is misleading. The actual pass/fail line for each student is unchanged. The state is changing what it considers an acceptable aggregate rate of passing for groups of students, choosing race as the criterion for grouping. The stated rationale is that students of different races have different starting points, so it makes sense to seek different final achievement levels. But even if you accept that approach, it seems lazy to use race as a surrogate for academic starting point.
What do you mean they cut the power? How can they cut the power, man? They're animals!
So having read the article near as I can tell schools are 'scored' based upon their students test scores. Schools with predominately asian students do well, schools with predominately black students don't, and whites and hispanics fill the middle.
The school system has decided to change how those scores are calculated based upon the race of the students. So that now all those schools that were lower performing can use the lower standards for the black students to bring up their scores.
In one sense I could almost see schools competing for black enrollment so that their score goes up, but that is about the only positive thing about this law. And not likely to happen.
The reality is that instead of using those metrics to identify schools that are failing their students and local community, so that funding or corrective action can be taken, the system has decided to skew the numbers to bury the problem. I'm pretty sure based upon recent events it's clear that skewing numbers to make things look better leads to a lot of wishful thinking but nothing concrete. To actually address the problems is harder work, and potentially more embarassing to the administrators than it is to blame the kids. Never mind how incredibly ignorant and insulting their approach is.
Again, it's about the administrators, not about the kids.
The rock, the vulture, and the chain
...would be pretty interesting after enacting a policy like that. I have a sinking feeling its yet another example of white culture/identity jumping the shark.
Interesting. There was much (justifiable) criticism leveled 50-60 years ago at the whole "Separate but Equal" approach.
Odd that "Not Separate but Not Equal" wouldn't generate just as much criticism.
Suppose you were an idiot. And suppose you were a member of congress. But then I repeat myself. -- Mark Twain
wouldn't it make more sense to give extra attention to students with a background disadvantage rather than moving the bar? Letting kids pass with a lower score doesn't actually make them more educated.
So white people have the upper hand in the hiring process. This should turn out great.
This is horrible. This means that employers will have a good reason to hire Asians primarily and not hire the other ethnicity that are held to a lower standard.
Why is it a certain segment of the US population thinks it's still the 1800's or the first 3 quarters of the 1900's?
Other than that thought, this news has left me speechless.
The "Civilized World" jumped the shark ca. 1973.
It looks like these rate are for the each groups over the entire state, at least according to my interpretation of the article? In that case, demographic factors already skews grades over entire segments, and this is recognition of that. I bet they eventually divide subgroups further - sex, wealth, geography, distance from school, class sizes, etc.
Not sure if this is right or wrong, but in my view if you want to improve an overall group, you find its strongest & weakest members, figure out why they are that way, apply fixes, and repeat in an engineering feedback loop.
Or Virginia could entirely be racist.. dunno from the article.
They're trying to set a baseline against which they can measure progress, and they're trying to avoid setting the bar too low for students who are already doing well and too high for students who are falling behind. That part seems reasonable.
Using race to group students doesn't.
What are passing scores for users of Windows/Mac/Linux/BSD? What about programmers of C/Python/Java/PHP/Basic?
tomorrow who's gonna fuss
First, how does categorizing scores by race not violate the equal protection clause of the 14th Amendment? Second, isn't it amazing how Virginia's Board of Education can oversimplify the complex issues surrounding why there might be a difference in scores between the races, stuff like unemployment, the fact that even when they have jobs, many minorities earn less in the same positions held by their white counterparts and are promoted less often, economic segregation, etc and just focus on lowering standards... so that no doubt in years to come they can criticize these same kids for not meeting the higher standards. Classic!
Let's just ignore the whole discrimination problem here and ask simply:
Doesn't this remove a lot of the incentive for the lower threshold students to catch up? Wouldn't it demoralize the students with the higher threshold?
This is simply rigging the statistics to hide the problem. It will create many more problems than the one it attempts to cover up.
For the last 70 years, we've been operating on the "blank slate" principle that all people are equal in ability.
This legislation seems to reverse course, and argue for paternalism, or the idea that certain favored races should help the others at their own expense (nasty catch: in exchange for those races playing by the favored races' rules).
It's an interesting turn of events, but I think it's going to backfire. It's condescending, even if it "means well," because it essentially tells certain races that they're not good enough, but just because we, the races perceived to be in control, are generous, we'll help them be almost as equal as we are.
What if Tiger Woods went to school in Virginia? Is his passing rate 68% or 45%?
And when he plays golf, is the hole a par-3 or par-5?
Proverbs 21:19
Evolution not to be taught, rape victims can control pregnancy by mind control, different standards for different races..... America doesn't need external enemies... they have enough idiots in the country who are doing a better job at destroying it!
I think the students would be better served if a relative ranking within their own "class" is tabulated. A student can belong to more than one class. One by race, another by level of income, and another by level of parents' education etc. Again instead of messing around with pass/fail for the students, this correlation should be used to judge teachers. All teachers do not get uniform quality input. Then it is wrong to judge them by the raw educational achievements of their students. These correlations can be used to identify the good teachers and the bad teachers.
sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
Encourage racism? It is racism.
When I was a kid, I used to think that racism didn't happen. It was so illogical and obviously wrong. Even books that portrayed racism that "just was" in my countries past seemed to be set with an alien mentality. But then as I grew older I was exposed works like "American History X" (the son's descent into racism had flawed but plausible logic behind it) and it slowly dawned on me that there are experiences in life that encourage racism that are far more detrimental than simply being racist. Because they propagate it and it survives past the last generation on and on and anew again.
For example, let's say you were (and this is purely hypothetical by the way) beaten and mugged by Hispanics which led you to distrust any person even remotely resembling your attackers. It's wrong for you to scream at your housemaid that was paid to clean your house by your cleaning company. And it's wrong for you to call them up and hurl racial slurs at them for putting your life and property in danger. However, the really problematic aspect of that is when you sit down with your progeny when they're little and explain to them why people with a certain color to their skin are not to be trusted. This is something that encourages racism instead of just being racist.
But then racism was always OK as long as it's anti-white.
Well, I didn't really read this as anti-white. I saw this as actually racist towards all races since they are binning these young minds based on external appearances. Instead of trying to buck a trend, they have embraced it. To shed this discussion of your "it's anti-white" bias, allow me to relay what I see as being the real fallout from this action: an obsessive Asian student scores 100 on this test but an African American child scores 65 and is seen as being more successful than the Asian student. This allows students to progress on the path of education and causes resentment from the Asian child directed at the African American child. "They got it easy" will probably be the sentiment but could spawn a deep seated hatred or other negative stereotypes of their classmates. No need to bring Caucasian students in to that picture or claim it's just "anti-white."
Could you explain and give examples of racism that is okay because it's "anti-white"?
My work here is dung.
C'mon. Watch a few minutes of BET or spend an hour at the *bad* Walmart on the other side of town. Does it really surprise anyone that the bulk of the "brothers" barely outscore retards?
And this is an example.
From one of the links in the article as it existed a few minutes ago:
Countries legislating limitations on the admission of Jewish students: ... Germany: On 25 April 1933 ....
So by including this link in the article and thereby invoking Godwin's Law and its corollaries by reference, does this mean the discussion ended before it began?
Isn't this just affirmative action? AFAIK passing standardized test just tells the state to give your school funds, how much money you get is dependent on your pass rate. So isn't this basically just boosting the pass rate in schools with higher numbers of minorities thus giving those schools more funds?
I thought that they did this since the dawn of standardized tests. I remember filling out the race section on it, and seeing the scores published at a later date categorized by race.
They screwed it up.
They shouldn't be classifying the kids into "racial" categories first and then setting grade requirements; that's silly.
They should assign the kids to racial categories based on their test scores instead.
Staying where your parents were, let alone upward mobility is gone in America.
In what America was that ever true? For most, setting aside luck, regardless of what you do, the class you were born in is the class you die in. You might move a little upwards within your class, but it was rare to find someone in middle class breaking out into the upper class. They would never have allowed it. Even those of us with better incomes are 'nouveau' and are never truly accepted.
The real issue here isn't yet being discussed in the postings until now: That is different groups really are doing differently (Wow - They really are different!) and how do we deal with that. If you set graduation or other goals based upon an arbitrary number. (Pick it yourself if you don't like these) and then set it in stone so to speak, then you will gate out the lower performers from graduation etc. Obvious consequences apply. The State of Virginia is terrified of the consequences where Blacks for example largely fall out of the system. So they set their progress goals low. They know the Chinese kids are high performing so they set their goals high. Is this fair? Obviously not. Is it practical. Probably! Does it have problems, YES! Does it have consequences, YES!
Now here is the problem. If you allow people for any reason to pass below the arbitrary standard numbers, then you devalue the standard and the diploma. You hurt everyone including your high performers. If you slap in a hard standard, you will definitely seive out the lower performing groups.
Of course the US Consitution has a simple answer: It requires "Equal Protection Under Law." It means you peg your standard and let the chips fall where they may. That of course rubs the social thinkers the wrong way. They argue quite validly that the tests are imperfect. Of course they never argue to improve the tests, they just don't want tests at all. Illogical as it may seem they destroy all value to a diploma in the argument that everyone should have curved access grading.
"...In math it set an acceptable passing rate at 82 percent for Asian students, 68 percent for whites, 52 percent for Latinos, 45 percent for blacks and 33 percent for kids with disabilities."
So now we have a "justified" means of passing the buck when a kid fails. Didn't really pass? We didn't expect you to, now it is someone else's problem. This absolutely ensures that kids who really fail will receive no tutoring, no help.
When you set these markers as goals for improvement, expect the results to be less than stellar, teaching to the test only worse. You will now have "marked" improvement in schools where only 50% of the black population passes a standard math test, because, hey only 45% passed before.
Congrats all around.
I have to get a higher grade to pass than those black kids?
I knew they were getting a free ride! Sumbich... Why... i'm going to have to treat them like shit the rest of my life to make it fair!
And it will be valid.... I thought we were trying to get rid of racisim? Not give valid reasons why it does and should exist.
Hey virginia... YOU'RE NOT HELPING!
I'm not an educator and only worked in a high school a couple years, so I'm no expert. But IMO the problem with the system is these mediocre standards. And, kids who aren't cutting the mustard aren't held back, they're just pushed along to the next grade where they can slow up everyone else. We've got kids graduating high school who can barely read because no one ever wanted to hold them back until they "got it." That in turn slows down education at higher levels.
I don't know about your experiences, but I found that I wasn't at all prepared for the rigor of college studies coming from a high school where I could basically show up and get As and Bs.
I swear to God...I swear to God! That is NOT how you treat your human!
How does business deal with this? Do they now get to have a new minimum wage standard: $8.20 /hr for Asians, $6.80 /hr for whites, $5.20 /hr for Latinos, $4.50 /hr for blacks and $3.30 /hr for kids with disabilities?
HexaByte - he's a square and a half!
It seems strange that anyone on /. is offended by this. Shouldn't all of the ardent evolutionists welcome this kind of scoring?? Charles Darwin certainly would agree with it, and we know that nobody should dare to even question his work...
I'm guessing these School Board Members will not be retaining those positions for very long.
Seriously. Could they engage in behavior more insane?
Awk! Pieces of eight. Pieces of eight. Pieces of seven... ERROR: General Protection Fault. [Paroty Error.]
It's one thing to be racist. It's another thing to have good reason to do so. This sort of thing gives large populations an actualy reason to be racist. Between "you didn't work as hard to get here", and "me and every one of my peers", you might as well segrogate the schools, since you've totally segrogates the students.
And what of group projects? Or don't you have those in your country? Why would a white member treat a latino member with any respect in such a group? Moreover, why would the asian guy expect the disabled student to even try? At basically a third of the value, it becomes meaningless: a chasm between them.
There was never anything wrong with a disabled person being a few grades behind. That made sense. It makes sense because those that happen to succeed, get to be proud of doing so. That's true at all levels.
It should never have been "no student left behind". It should have been "no students dragged forward".
While your family is mixed, it looks like the majority are not that way. Check out the marker maps:
http://www.gnxp.com/blog/2008/08/genetic-map-of-europe-again.php
Well hopefully they still get 0 if they don't do any work.
http://www.calgaryherald.com/news/alberta/Edmonton+teacher+fired+over+zero+stance+grading/7244811/story.html
Is it anti-white, or anti- (perceived) wealthy ruling class?
That's what this really means, since the #1 correlation on student "ability" is what kind of home the child goes to at the end of the day.
Is it to an upper middle class family where a stay-at-home parent can pick up the kids after school and help them with their homework? Or does it have two exhausted parents working a combined 100 hours a week to scrape by in a shitty apartment in a bad neighborhood?
And even for those upper middle class students, it's not uncommon to have an "off" year. Or several. Straight-A student goes through a depression in middle school, or has a parent that moves with their job? To remedial math for you, sonny.
"'Rest assured, all of us hold all students to the same academic standards, but when it comes to measuring progress, we have to consider that students start at different points,' Wright said."
All kinds of horrible, weaselly reasoning by this particular education board (surely they are a product of their own education system). But to focus just on the quote above: Is the goal of an educational system to (a) measure progress, or (b) achieve subject-mastery? The latter is something useful, while the former is mostly just wankery. If (b) is the goal, and retaking the subject by same or different means is indicated, then so be it. The opposite approach is what produces rooms full of hopeless, mathematical basket cases in college remediation classes.
We know where leadership by an anti-intellectual "strongman" who scapegoats minorities and likes boisterous rallies goes
The less racist way would be to test children's IQ's and use the number to set a goal for achievement. It makes no sense to have the same goals for all kids no matter what their innate intelligence is. IQ is easily testable, and it is difficult to increase your IQ by more than a standard deviation through "study" or environment. Doing it based on self-identified "skin color" is a shortcut that will lead to underachievement by smart kids that are in a "dumbed down" category. Education is the most expensive budget item in every state, and yet we don't use technology to assess kids and create personalized lessons that are tailored to a kids ability. IQ is already tested for in schools, so it would not be difficult to integrate the number into the scores used to gauge educational progress.
Yes and no, I'd guess. Affirmative action gives weight to admissions and prevents discrimination after the test, where this changes the test result interpretations themselves. It's like a subtler form of affirmative action.
If there is a statistically significant difference between the school marks of any kind of group, all other things being equal, it will show up in the extreme tails of the distribution, not the centre. On average, there will be a few more super-geniuses and a few less utter dolts in one group. You deal with that by allocating a few more dollars for gifted classes and a few less for remedial classes.
You certainly don't add an arbitrary number to everyone's scores in the other group!
--dave
davecb@spamcop.net
Why not? Win on exams, and you can make fun of a really silly idea!
As if "race" were something you can reliably define anyway. Screw that. Self-declare whatever you want. Humans are homogeneous enough that it doesn't really matter, and there is no scientifically reliable classification of humans by "race" anyway. The only "race" that really exists anymore in the scientific realm is the socially-constructed one, and that one is a pretty darn nebulous one that doesn't align well with the genetic story at all. We're the ones picking the things that we think matter to our racial identity. Genetics tells us our human choices are pretty poor correlations to the real biological relationships between humans. Therefore, as a fairly arbitrary social construct, I should be whatever race I identify as.
Black? White? In honesty we're all fricking grey in the middle and grade imperceptibly between the different peoples of the world. As a social force, race certainly exists, but it isn't any different from any other misleading stereotype, and it isn't helpful to maintain the illusion that it matters as much as some people think it does. Therefore, if you plonked a form in front of me with a list of options for "race", and forced me to choose, I'd probably write in "other", because I think the usual categories are a farce in terms of their definitions. I know my heritage, I know where my family comes from back several historical generations, but I refuse to conform with such a stupid and arbitrary classification as "race". To make matters worse, I have red hair, so with that one attribute I'm automatically some kind of genetic freak that deserves its own "ginger" race category, right? Or should base it on skin colour as if that was some kind of reliable determinant, when I know that it isn't? Language? Religious background? The flukes of the historical geographic location of my family hundreds of years ago? What, exactly?
Alternatively, maybe I'll just claim African heritage, like all of humanity? That's about the only race that has any legitimacy to it: the one that applies to all of us. All extant humans are ultimately African in origin.
On a more serious note, I can't believe educators are willing to stoop so low as to racially shift the goal posts to make sure "no child gets left behind". I can't believe the education system is reinforcing stereotypes by making students and parents pick them, and then basing their educational outcomes on it. The reality is still there: you are failing huge numbers of students. Hiding the failure with numerical tricks won't make it go away. Blaming the problem on "race" doesn't solve a fricking thing. Face the problem and figure out new ways to do better. Nobody said education was easy.
Wouldn't it be more accurate to classify the kids based on socioeconomic things? Poor whites and poor blacks and poor hispanics might have a lot more in common with each other than, for example a rich hispanic and a poor hispanic.
They've adjusted by what they see as the likely scores for each group, so that they can claim they're reaching their targets, without their statistics showing the actual percentage of students who don't pass, thus embarrassing the educational system.
The entire education industry has completely different standards for different races for a long time.
It is only fair to keep doing it, or decide the entire idea is bad. It was decided a long time ago that in IQ tests women are equal to men , the tests are designed from the ground up to make this be the case, it is really only fair to then say that other races are also equal (regardless of what the reason that they score differently in the first place).
Troll is not a replacement for I disagree.
I know someone who is half African and half Chinese. How would their passing score be calculated?
Bob.
technology theoretically allows the kind of workforce amplification that would allow for a near utopia society. We could all have been working 20 hour work weeks and earn more than enough for an upper middle class lifestyle if it were not for the leaching plutocratic class.
Why stop at race?
If we're giving points for overcoming hardship, give more to poor kids, divorced kids, kids with alcoholic parents, kids where more than one parent likes disco, dubstep or rap/rock, maybe even do it by zipcode for kids who are exposed to more crime or more familial strife.
We already know that kids who are exposed to abuse have lower IQs (whether that's cause or correlation, or reverse cause, I don't know).
How about we give them some points?
I don't get tested, or I pass by default?
Yet another reason to hate living in the US, really?
Guess we are going back to pre-civil war status now?
Please! Someone get me outta here!
The libs were just mad the state set the passing minimum for blacks so high. _
http://i.cubeupload.com/T6cyLu.png
I'm glad I'm not an Alpha. They have to work so hard.
They can just form a voting bloc that can reap the benefits from the achievers. And REALLY sock it to Overachievers - it all balances out.
For most, setting aside luck, regardless of what you do, the class you were born in is the class you die in.
I can't bear to think about how horrible your world must be to live in. The outcome of ones life is by-and-large a result of the choices one makes. If you want to double your chance of success you have to double your rate of failure. To quote someone who might know about things like this.... "Whether you think you can or you can't, you're right." --Henry Ford
load "$",8,1
Throughout history, poverty is the normal condition of man. Advances which permit this norm to be exceeded â" here and there, now and then â" are the work of an extremely small minority, frequently despised, often condemned, and almost always opposed by all right-thinking people. Whenever this tiny minority is kept from creating, or (as sometimes happens) is driven out of a society, the people then slip back into abject poverty.
This is known as "bad luck."
- Robert A. Heinlein
where your parents Aristocrats, Well of slave dealing ,smuggling signers of the Act of Independence?
Yes. Chances are your family is and still is a American Royalty
No. Sorry old chap you cant join our country club, it's not the money but the breeding you know!
TFA gives the impression that individual students will be treated differently according to race, which would indeed be racism if it were true.
What they are actually talking about is the target that schools shools have to meet before NCLB "corrective actions" (such as replacing the staff and hring a private company to run the school) are implemented. Holding all schools to the same standards would lead to forced privatization of most schools is poor neigbourhods, which is probably what the Bush adminstration intended, but something that most states want to avoid.
The next thing you know they will put the kids in separate schools by what race they are.
If I am a white or asian child and my teacher is black, should I not get a reduced passing score level in that my teacher, due, evidently, to their race, is intrinsically less able and therefore I am laboring under an unfair disadvantage?
Fair is fair.....
1. Biologically speaking, there is no such thing as race.
2. Disagreements do not have to lead to war. (and your growth argument is stupid).
3. Speak for yourself.
4. I am not in IT and I make a very good salary, thank you very much.
5. Diversity makes us stronger.
6. You are the only one "denying reality."
This will pave the way for employers to pay as little as half as much for employing blacks, latinos and even white people, since they are clearly not capable of being expected to do any better. This will be great for business and a sorely needed stimulus for the economy! Imagine how much money businesses will save now, and you know that will be directly passed on to the consumer with lower prices for everybody!
-- Senior Software Engineer, Attorney appearance services, locallawyerapp.com.
That's Europe (not the first time I've been asked that. Not even the 10th time). So what am I? Hispanic or white? My mother and father are spanish too, and so on until we can account for/find out
I find your system of clasifying people by races so utterly wrong...
No, but their children will be. New money is not the same as Old money. Maybe old money is intimidated by new money because it was earned rather than inherited. I dunno. But new money needs to bake for a generation or two to be accepted.
try to live up to your expectations. Seriously, are they doing this because they think the kids are stupid, or because the adults running their programs ARE stupid?
That's all :(
A week after the NBA's adoption of handicapped scoring based on racial backgrounds and disabilities, Jeremy Lin brought home an impressive performance, scoring 228 points in a single game. However, this wasn't enough to best the Lakers' newest recruit, a kid with no arms, whose managed to kick a single penalty free throw into the basket for a weighted point value of 685.
"If there going to..."
If you were Asian, you wouldn't have made that grammatical error.
I'm sorry, but your opinion seems to be wrong.
I mean, that's what libertarians keep telling us: that individuals can discriminate all they want. If an individual wants to discriminate and only hire certain people, that's his freedom, right? Any regulation on how he hires people or how much he pays them or how he treats them are immoral and wrong.
And libertarians keep telling us that governments shouldn't do what individuals can't do (i.e individuals can't imprison people, yet government imprisons people all the time). Well, that works the other way too: if individuals can do something, there's no reason a government can't do the same.
Thus, since individuals can discriminate, governments can also discriminate!
Note that this isn't a federal government, but a state government. This is exactly how the Founding Fathers would want it - anything not numerated in the Constitution is left up to the states. Now aren't you glad VA is reverting back to the US roots, to make the Founding Fathers proud, and to move the US a little closer back to how it was in the 19th century?
While in general I agree that America has much less social mobility than it pretends to, Bill Clinton came from a middle-class background (at best) and did go on to become president and a multimillionaire based of his talent and ability.
But really, what's the essential difference between this and Affirmative Action (hiring quotas by skin color)?
Or lowering entrance standards to schools or jobs because of ethnicity or gender?
Didn't Holder's Justice Dept just order the Dayton Police to lower their entry standards because they didn't have enough minority applicants pass the test?
Interesting too, that the summary describes it as "...education goals that are higher for white and Asian kids than for blacks, Latinos and students with disabilities...". How is it "higher for white and Asian"? Isn't it higher for Asians, lower for everyone else? Is it 'easier' on whites for them to think their standards are in the "higher" category (or does the author expect so)?
Or is it easier to cast a racist agenda when you suggest that white are somehow being labeled as 'better' thereby?
-Styopa
Not really. 35%, on average, achieve the same income quintile as they were born into. Given that if it were determined purely by random chance, we'd still get a 20% repetition between generations, it's pretty clear that the "class you were born in is the class you die in" is...kind of an over generalization.
Support more choices in goverment-Vote 3rd party.
The soft bigotry of low expectations.
What. The actual. Fuck.
Even those of us with better incomes are 'nouveau' and are never truly accepted.
Yeah, it's just 'better'. Parley that into owning a couple multinational banks and get a seat on the Fed. Board and you'll start seeing some respect.
My God, it's Full of Source!
OUTSIDE_IP=$(dig +short my.ip @outsideip.net)
What I find interesting is that everyone just goes along with Obama granting waivers to the requirements of this law, even though there is no legal basis for such waivers. The law has no provision written into it (or into any other law that I have heard of) providing an option for states to opt out of the mandates set out in the law. Apparently laws are now optional if the President decides that they should be.
The truth is that all men having power ought to be mistrusted. James Madison
Lowering the score to get an acceptable pass rate doesn't suddenly create ability and understanding, it just lets you continue putting out an inferior product. The woman defending this had the right question, if not the right answer: why aren't Blacks starting out at 82%? If you want them to be educated in fact and not by declaration, that's what you have to fix. As for the question, "does [going back to Jim Crow-like attitudes regarding Blacks' abilities] make us Uncle Toms?", no, it makes you neo-Segregationists.
I was thinking more or less the same thing, there have been studies showing a difference in abilities in some subjects by members of different races. However none of them have been on the scale proposed here.
B.S.
The guy who said the election was rigged won the presidency with the second-most votes.
You have got to be fucking kidding me! seriously!!! is this true? Even in North Korea this shit would be illegal
I know this is racially and not religiously broken down, but there *is* the stereotype of Jews doing well in math. (We need to in order to become accountants.) So do white Jewish kids have higher acceptable passing rates than white Christian kids?
My sci-fi novel, Ghost Thief, is now available from Amazon.com.
[sarcasm]Right, I mean, it isn't like a mixed-race child from a broken family could ever become anything significant in this fucked-up country we live in! Oh, wait a minute...[/sarcasm]
I can't tell which depresses me more, the delusional state you live in, or that enough people live in your delusional state to have voted you insightful. America has long been, and still is, a country where anyone has a chance to make something of themselves. Yes, it isn't a big chance, but that's because not everyone gets to be Bill Gates/Warren Buffet wealthy. Yes, some groups of people have it harder than others, but it isn't impossible for any group. Hell, even a poor man in America has it massively better than damn near everywhere else on the planet. That is why we have such a problem with illegal immigrants sneaking in to the country - they know it is true.
Remember, you can't look dignified when your having fun! Don't take life too seriously, you'll never get out of it alive
the mixed breeds? Half asian. half white would be maybe 75 points? 1/3 black, 1/3 white, 1/3 hispanic...uh
I read the actual article, and I have the impression that the "82% pass rate" for Asian kids, for example, doesn't mean that Asian kids need to solve 82% of the problems in a test to pass, but that a school or school teacher needs to have a pass rate of 82% among Asian kids in order to pass as a good school or a good school teacher.
It's obvious that some kids are brighter than others. If school A decides to only accept exceptionally bright children, and school B decides to do the best they can for children who are not very bright, to give them the best possible chance, then you would expect school A to have a higher pass rate than school B. If you want to figure out which school does a better job, you need to take into account what kids they are teaching.
"Well, your resume is a little thin. If you were Asian, I wouldn't be able to hire you. Lucky for you that you're one-third Caucasian! Get's you in right under the line."
You are totally blocking my view of the wall. - Dogbert
Being white, I'm outraged at not having the toughest standards to meet.
This is a disgusting statement in a nation where two out of the last three presidents came out of poor or lower-middle class homes... broken homes, even. The most impoverished people in our nation are not the ones with the least wealth, but those who blame others and make excuses for their lack of effort.
Gamingmuseum.com: Give your 3D accelerator a rest.
This doesn't set different standards for passing for different races. It sets different goals for the percentage of each race which pass the test. It's not racist and it makes perfect sense since the state is looking for YoY improvement in each group. So if 50% of a particular group passes this year and the goal is for 60% next year, while some other group is at 80% this year and the goal is for 85% to pass next year, then it makes perfect sense. What doesn't make sense is to lump the entire student body into a single group and then ask teachers for improvements, since the natural inclination would be to focus on the kids who are closest to passing rather than to try to pull kids from across the social spectrum over the line. Obviously, the end goal is to have 95% or more of all kids passing grade-appropriate tests, but that's not a process that happens immediately and it makes absolute sense to determine the steps along the way based on the socio-economic status of the kids being tested. Race is really just a proxy for socio-economic status. Sure, it isn't a perfect one, by any means, but it's a whole lot easier to determine. The reality is that within a given racial group, the kids who are already passing are probably the ones with the most stable home lives, generally speaking, so you could as easily just break the students down by performance percentile and specify that you want an x-percentile improvement in any given group.
Have none of these people read "Harrison Bergeron"? Embarrassing.
Gamingmuseum.com: Give your 3D accelerator a rest.
There are plenty of Asian dish washers and restaurant workers, and have kids that are engineers and doctors. Does that count as upward mobility?
Wish I had mod points to adjust the Insightful rating.
I'm a white guy from Canada, and in early 2001 I was down in Boston working for IBM for a few months. One of my co-workers was a nice guy who was just finishing up his MBA. Oh, and he happens to be black. About four of us were walking around downtown, and we stopped near a convenience store and my black buddy went inside to buy a drink. And then I was shocked to see a white cop, who had been standing across the intersection from us, make a beeline for the entrance and follow my friend in there to watch him.
Maybe its my sheltered upbringing, but I had never seen this kind of racism in action before, and I was shocked. Here was a white cop following a well-dressed guy into a convenience store to watch him just because he was black. Its like the cop thought he was going in there to hold up the store, or something.
Up here in Canada, we do have some racism. Particularly in the western provinces (especially BC), there are lots of racist attitudes towards the native peoples. In eastern/central Canada (especially Ontario), there is racism towards people of oriental descent. There's probably some racism towards blacks too, but I think much less than there is in the U.S.-- I had certainly never seen it before.
The old adage "don't judge a book by its cover" applies to people as well, but in truth we all constantly make judgements about people around us based on nothing but how they look. We cross the street to avoid someone dressed in shabby clothes, assuming them to be a ragpicker or criminal or similar "undesirable". There's a reason businessmen dress up in suits: its the uniform of "respectable professionals". But racism is something we should condemn, not just because its offensive to our morals and "civilised" value systems, but also because in pragmatic terms its a stupid way to judge people! Everyone individual is different, and judging people based on their appearance (or treating them differently based on their appearance) is not only shallow and contemptible, but its also not very effective.
America is known as the land of opportunity for a reason.
Only dopes who were born here and have an overdeveloped sense of entitlement spout this nonsense.
Go ask someone who came here from places where there really is no way to succeed.
'Never truly accepted' by who exactly? Do you define success as being welcomed at the Kennedy dinner table at the compound?
That's a pretty dumb standard.
They should really have different standards for single parent vs. two parent households, and welfare vs. non-welfare households.
But of course they never would do that -- it might cast welfare recipients and single parent households in a bad light.
That wouldn't be "progressive".
You're stuck, dude.
...separate but (un)equal...
That's Horrifying. Some children, because of intellectual disabilities, are, regrettably, not able to regurgitate the correct answers to the test questions. But quite a few individuals with physical disabilities are quite intelligent. I have cerebral palsy, but could probably do quite well on these sorts of tests, even without a decent education. My concern is that, in an effort to boost scores among a particular subgroup of the population, kids like me would be relegated to an educational experience that fails to prepare them for college and grad school.
The problem is the penalty for failure is vastly improportional between classes.
If you come from say...a lower middle class family, what's the penalty if you fail your first business, or fail to find a job after racking up $40k in loans? How many times can you afford to fail before the bank stops giving you money, or your parents can't afford to support you?
What's the worst that could happen if you came from a well-to-do family? Will they be cruel enough to force you out onto the streets while they live in a 7 bedroom house on the hill?
if by class, you mean socio-economic class and not "cultural", I would say moving up the ladder is completely doable if you aren't already middle class. Do your school work in high school, get a need based scholarship to college, and get a solid job making $100k+ doing engineering or accounting or medicine by the time you are 30. None of these fields require access to human "good old boy" networks, they are all generally merit based. If you have the ability and do the work, no one will stop you. Who is this "they" you are referring to? Marry someone similar, and you have a $200k+/year household. You are approaching being in the 1% by the time you have kids, just by applying yourself. To be clear, this requires that YOU HAVE A BRAIN, which is not, as you call it, LUCK.
If you want to enter the world of high finance, or run fortune 500 companies, then I agree that is a harder nut to crack, and you won't be able to do it by 30 unless you have some good breaks (and work even harder). But changing class? Not an issue if you are smart and willing to work. If you are dumb, well, capitalism doesn't smile on you unless you were worn into money. Sucks but that's how it works. Socialism would only help a little - you would be just as poor, but you would at least know all of the smart people aren't better off, which might make your situation more palatable - no keeping up with the Jones' issue under socialism.
My 2 cents - I am in a different class from my parents, and know lots of people in the same boat. A college education isn't a guarantee of success, but working hard _and_ having a college degree is as close as you can get.
Virginia is about as fascist as it gets in the states which make up
the US, and it is chock full of white people who are IN LOVE
with their own ignorance.
So none of this will surprise anyone who knows much about Virginia.
I have read several articles about the "standards" in Florida and Virginia. This article fails to make things clear. The race based standards are supposed to be used to assess the effectiveness of teaching, not to determine whether individual students pass or fail. The requirements for an individual student to pass are the same regardless of race. The goal for No Child Left Behind is to have 100% of the kids achieve at grade level on standardized tests. Now imagine that you teach at an all black school. Without attributing causes it would be very hard for 100% of those students to reach grade level in 5 years or so. If you taught at an all Asian school, getting to 100% in 5 years would be far easier. So let's assume that the black school went up from 40% to 70%, while the Asian school went from 70% to 80%. Did the teachers at the black school do a good job or a bad job. I would call going up 30% pretty good.
The problem with the article is it leaves the impression that students will make passing grades with lower scores based on being members of certain races. This would be discriminatory and hopefully the courts would agree and change that.
Now making the goals for schools (not individual students) based on race has some merit. I think that a better solution would be to base the goal on each school's current performance level. This leaves race out of the analysis and is fairer to schools with different socio-economic backgrounds. A school with students from poor families is likely to have lower performance than a school whose students have professional parents (doctors, lawyers, engineers, ...). This will be true regardless of their racial mix. Now if someone from the affected states would suggest different goals for different schools, perhaps they can eliminate a stupid plan.
Ray Seyfarth, ray.seyfarth@gmail.com, http://rayseyfarth.blogspot.com
I know quite a few people who have jumped multiple classes, including some of whom I went to school with or socialize with. None the less, here are two from my own family. One thing you will notice is that successful people have a long term time orientation, while those with short term time orientations do not do as well.
Father's family lost the farm, joined the military, went to a service academy, became an AVP at a fortune 500. Arguably moved from lower prole to upper middle or lower upper.
Maternal grandfather, worked in steel mills, got an MD, became head of dept at an ivy league medical school. Arguably, moved from lower/mid prole to lower upper.
Both of them studied hard, did not engage in conspicuous consumer consumption, made the right choices, and had some luck too. The first 3 are a result of long term time orientation.
I know quite a few immigrants also who came over here penniless and have built up businesses, putting them in upper middle to lower upper based on net worth, but not necessarily social characteristics. Its the same story, avoid consumer consumption, reinvest into their business or personal investments. Even if you are a "wage slave" its perfectly possible to sock away a considerable amount of money if you don't eat out, don't smoke/drink, buy/lease a new car all the time, buy a smaller house, don't do trendy things, or rent out rooms, find a hobby that pays etc. You can then fund your investments or develop capital for a small business. It is interesting to see among professional peers has actual wealth, and who has a bunch of worthless goods.
Short term time orientation for lower classes, and long term orientation for managerial/professional classes makes sense (with the heriditary upper being a different stroy). If you don't know where your next meal comes from, then you aren't worried about tomorrow, but since few people starve in the USA, when compared to history, short term thinking results in self destructive behaviour. Not wearing condoms, leads to children which take away from the ability to study or run a business. Buying trendy consumer goods, takes away long term capital. Caring about short term social status, effects what trajectory your life gets set on.
With respect to the article, different ethnic groups may have different genetic differences, but its cultural differences which matter the most. Living in a culture of perpetual poverty may trap one into short term thinking. Living in a culture with high expectations, focuses on long term planning. Living in a culture known for being enterpenural, will result in more entrepenuers. You get the rare person, who may have a different set of goals/values than that of the dominant culture in which they grow up, but most people just do what everyone else does. That's why they don't do markedly better than anyone else.
Bring back the old version of slashdot.
She registered herself as a minority, which under Virginia's system would guarantee that her children got special treatment on "standardized" tests. Although, what kind of minority are Cherokee? Would they be filed under disadvantaged, or under superior? Given their genetic similarity and shared ancestry with Asians (probably Mongolians and central Asians, but in S. America more aboriginal Asians from Indonesia and Malaysia) they would be classified as superior, hence their scores would be curved down.
It boggles the mind. Virginia must be run by true idiots, to think they could get away with this.
it's = "it is"; its = possessive. E.g., it's flapping its wings.
Not really. 35%, on average, achieve the same income quintile as they were born into. Given that if it were determined purely by random chance, we'd still get a 20% repetition between generations, it's pretty clear that the "class you were born in is the class you die in" is...kind of an over generalization.
Ah; so you're saying those rich kids blowing all their money and ending life destitute are throwing off the averages?
technology theoretically allows the kind of workforce amplification that would allow for a near utopia society. We could all have been working 20 hour work weeks and earn more than enough for an upper middle class lifestyle if it were not for the leaching plutocratic class.
You forgot something: as a society, we've traded in 20 hour work weeks for improved lifestyles -- someone 50 years ago spent time cleaning the house and doing maintenance on personal items -- now, we live in a disposable society, have things that last longer, are more efficient, and take care of more of the humdrum tasks -- and spend more time listening to music, talking on the phone, watching TV/Movies and playing games. But these things have associated costs, so we also spend that extra time working to pay off the fancier cars and all the entertainment products we consume.
Of course, this totally leaves out healthcare, which is significantly improved, but eats up a significant portion of our paystub as well.
I for one would not trade my 40 hour work week for a 20 hour work week in the conditions my grandparent's endured (of course, I'd be out of work if this was the case, as my job is supported by those improved conditions, and didn't exist 50 years ago).
The world he lives in is the one you and I you live in, where inter-generational class mobility in the United States is low compared to other developed countries. The outcome of your live is by-and-large a result of what opportunities the environment your are born into offers.
(Oh, and quoting a fan of Adolph Hiltler and notorious union buster doesn't really help your argument.)
Tom Swiss | the infamous tms | my blog
You cannot wash away blood with blood
Despite the existence of all the "merit" based predictors of income, the most reliable predictor of one's adult income is what their father's income was.
This is Not A Problem...
After all the Supreme Court has decided we ARE the race we claim to be...
Just pick your target score and fill out your applications accordingly
It's been 60 years since institutional racism was (supposedly) outlawed. What made it OK again for a government entity to establish that certain races are inherently inferior to others?
Since I have a decidedly white perspective on this issue, I'd be interested to get a different take on how governments are subscribing to this notion that minorities cannot compete on an even playing field. I'm more interested in understanding why people in these demographics aren't mad as hell at what these policies insinuate.
"Ask not what your country can do for you." --John F. Kennedy
Finally, Affirmative Action based on empirical results and not well wishing. If AA students (African American) need a hand up then why not simply lower the bar in the first place. Just keep lowering the bar until you feel you have the right mix of race and opportunity.
Just to expand a little on your excellent post: before a test, pointing out a student's group (e.g. gender, skin shade) in a negative way makes them perform measurably worse. The general term for this is stereotype threat. Creating a bigoted grade standard not only defines bigotry, it creates schools that manufacture evidence for the bigotry. This is an insidious feedback loop. The military-style training of the No Child Left Behind laws is awful, but this Virginia waiver is not an improvement.
... those groups into separate classrooms, with separate teaching styles and paces. And furthermore, to reduce costs for school boards, you could segregate the schools themselves based off those groups to reduce costs and centralize materials and teaching skillsets...problem solved. Oh...I see what I did there...nevermind.
Anybody in that state has grounds for a racial discrimination suit. Anybody above the bottom group has a case for requiring a higher score than someone else, thus discriminating based upon their skin color. Anybody in the bottom group has a case for insulting them by not treating everyone equally.
The schools are have their standards lowered again.
http://www.doe.virginia.gov/news/news_releases/2012/oct10.pdf
http://www.doe.virginia.gov/federal_programs/esea/state_implementation.shtml
The students still must score 400 to pass, but fewer of them must pass for the school to make the standard.
In the effort to achieve equal results instead of providing equal opportunity, their racism knows no bounds.
The worst part is there are a few blacks on the Virginia BofE, race traitors. Now black kids can go out into the world having known only lower standards. They won't be fit to compete in the larger marketplace. But then I guess it won't matter if the liberal dream of universal race quotas comes true.
Income quintiles are not a good definition of "class" in America. eg: the top 20% are households above $92k, and nobody is going to call them "rich." I'm not even sure I'd call $92k "upper middle class." Thomson & Hickey's divisions seem more reasonable: Poor: 20%; working class 32%, lower middle class, 32%, upper middle class 15%, upper class 1%.
Also, if you're citing the data I think you're citing, it's a cross sectional survey, meaning that the 25-year old child of Warren Buffett, working his first job at $40k, would count at the 3rd quintile offspring of a top-quintile family.
By lowering standards, the state can spend less money on education.
I would "magically" gain a disability. How about test anxiety disorder? That's easy to fake.
Mark the date! Almost everyone seems to agree that the Virginia Board of Education are either idiots or racists. Maybe NPR too since they didn't post the objection until the last paragraph.
if by class, you mean socio-economic class and not "cultural", I would say moving up the ladder is completely doable if you aren't already middle class. Do your school work in high school, get a need based scholarship to college, and get a solid job making $100k+ doing engineering or accounting or medicine by the time you are 30.
A socio-economic class of a person doing engineering or medicine for $100k salary is "worker", same as for a janitor (both derive income exclusively from labor and not from property or control of others' labor).
Contrary to the popular belief, there indeed is no God.
So basically what the Virginia BOE is saying is that if you are "asian" you are smarter than "white" kids who, in turn, are smarter than "hispanic" and "black" kids. Therefore, the white hispanic and black kids need a helping hand to put them on level ground with those asian kids. What a load of shit. This sets race relations back about 50 years in my estimation. The reason that asian kids tend to do better in math and science is not because they are asian it's due to cultural reasons. Asian families tend to put a greater value on education and a generally strong work ethic drives the children to excel at school. Basically they tend to do better because they tend work harder.
This immediately casts all white, hispanic and black kids as second class citizens in the Virginia school system. "Oh....you got one of those Hispanic diplomas...we'll be in touch....".
This is the same kind of mindset that says racism is dead because a black man is president.
"When information is power, privacy is freedom" - Jah-Wren Ryel
Here it is again, the "outlier invalidates the trend" mode of thinking.
"When information is power, privacy is freedom" - Jah-Wren Ryel
...anyone care to guess what group the politicians who 'passed' this mostly fall into? Are they sending the subliminal message that they know they're not the brightest?
This is a disgusting statement in a nation where two out of the last three presidents came out of poor or lower-middle class homes... broken homes, even. The most impoverished people in our nation are not the ones with the least wealth, but those who blame others and make excuses for their lack of effort.
He already accounted for that:
setting aside luck
So you're saying that any lower-middle class person could become president and luck has nothing to do with it? That all of the people who want to be president, but aren't, just didn't put forth enough effort?
The correct approach is to stop trying to flatten the grading scale into only two categories (pass and fail). That's stupid. Give up on that and just report each student's percentage. If Hanako gets an 84 and John gets a 73 and Shu'Dazzi gets a 61, report their scores as 84, 73, and 61. Sorted. Whether that's a good enough score is really up to the college or prospective employer or whoever.
I don't particularly like letter grades either, for much the same reason. Five categories is better than two, but it's still pretty undiscriminating. You end up with students who don't bother to study for the last couple of tests because they realize it can't change their grade. Just report everything as a percentage, and let the students do as well as they can (or as well as they are willing to bother with, which is how you get a score like 61).
Cut that out, or I will ship you to Norilsk in a box.
....if it isn't already. Don't we have laws against such discrimination? Oh wait, they call it "Affirmative Action", wave a wand over it, and the governing rules of logic are magically overridden.
Abilities vary with race, ethnicity, class, gender and family line.
These abilities are genetic, for the most part. A smaller part is regulated by environment.
We are forcing square pegs in round holes by trying to make one educational system for these diverse groups.
We need to consider the obvious:
Diversity (of any type: religious, ethnic, cultural, racial, class) does not work. It is not the fault of the groups involved, but of diversity itself. Diversity gives you a choice between keeping your culture and as a result being alienated, or assimilating and as a result being rootless.
Civilization only functions when it's relatively homogenous and its people are moving toward some goal.
As our civilization winds down toward collapse, one of the major factors in its downfall is diversity.
Futurist Traditionalism
For most, setting aside luck, regardless of what you do, the class you were born in is the class you die in.
I can't bear to think about how horrible your world must be to live in.
No, no, no. You're looking at it all wrong.
Just imagine: No matter how badly you fuck up, daddy's money will always be there to save you from living on the streets.
Yeah the true measures of success are not class or where you're born but rather whether or not you're a lying, cheating, psychopathic prick cocksucker!! GO 'MERICA!!! FUCK YEAH!!
I'm surprised at how some people skipped over the moral implication of such a law and went straight to justifying the legitimacy of such a law. How many parents knowingly lie to their children to have them believe they did well when they really did average? This law just breeds mediocrity into our society.
Your math is wrong. A difference of one sigma between two groups means that the chances that a random person from one group outperforms a random person from the other group go from 50% to about 75%. That's a big difference and doesn't just affect the tails.
What's next? Grape Menthol pencils for black kids?
(http://www.tv.com/shows/drawn-together/foxxy-vs-the-board-of-education-531819/)
In math it set an acceptable passing rate at 82 percent for Asian students, 68 percent for whites, 52 percent for Latinos, 45 percent for blacks and 33 percent for kids with disabilities
Are those percents for the kids or the school? If an asian gets 80 does he fail or if a school doesn't pass 82% of their asian students does it fail?
Here we go again "dumbing down" Black people to get them to accept the lesser in education. What is with this garbage that Black people are not strivers like every other people. That's proof for the case of Black empowerment. These low scoring will have lifetime consequences and will reflect in college choices as well as future employment opportunities.
Wow, you got modded "insightful" despite that last line.
What do you think of the BNP, then? May as well roll with it.
When I go to the doctor, I want the most qualified person available - regardless of ethnicity.
Who should design our nuclear power plants?
Who should contain biological threats?
Who should built our planes?
Feel good PC policies are dangerous risks for our civilization.
Not everybody gets to win the olymipics.
People who claim otherwise are disconnected from reality and unfit for public office.
I think that this scheme is going to do blacks and Latinos a real disservice. If you hold your students to different standards based on race the state is essentially telling all prospective employers that minorities are too dumb to graduate high school on their own merits. WE DO NOT NEED STATE SPONSORED RACISM!
Well, if I live in VA I would register my lily white children as black. That way, they get the benefit of the doubt.
The article and the quote supplied make it too easy to misunderestand the policy. The performance for a black student is not measured differently than the performance of a white student.
The "acceptable passing rate" is for the schools in the state, not the students. What it's saying is that, in order for the schools to be considered to be doing an "acceptable" job, they have to have 82% of their white students passing, and only 45% of their black students passing. What constitutes a passing grade is the same for every individual student.
Whether you think this policy is good or not, I think one of the big dangers is that it's very easy to misunderstand.
ALL school administrations are freaking out about NCLB. They are required by the NCLB federal mandates to report on the progress on their schools. All of these are broken down by Ethnicity/Race and the Federal reports require a specific passing rate. IF that passing rate is not met then A Region/District/Campus gets flagged and must come up with "Educational Plans" for the segment of the population. It's not changing the passing rate for each ethnicity/race but the plans they are required to make are specifically focused.
The segments on practically EVERY report for school administrations are the 2010 ethnicity/race categories and what is called special populations(economically disadvantaged, At Risk, Special ED, and so on).
Most states will need a waiver for NCLB since most schools will not meet the 100% passing rate in 2013 required by NCLB. My state has curved their standard test by massive amounts so that they will meet the ludicrous 100% passing rate. Don't be surprised to hear more of this kind of stuff.
One thing I've noticed is that imperial measurements tend to work much better than metric for cooking. I can double or halve a recipe with relative ease with imperial, metric is a pain in the butt.
I don't read AC A human right
It seems that most of the commenters don't actually understand the policy. I don't blame them. It's easy to misunderstand, especially just from the excerpt here in this slashdot article. Even many of the quotes in the article from people opposign the policy are wrong. For example, Amy Wilkins, from Education Trust says, "What Virginia said is, black kids in our state should achieve not at grade level but at the highest level that black kids have achieved in the past," but that is not actually true.
The policy does not allow black students to pass a test with a D and Asian students can only pass a test with a B. What the policy means is that the state has set goals for how many students must pass a certain test.
So for example let's say there are 100 white students and 100 black students. This new policy says that in order for the school to be considered as doing an acceptable job with math, then at least 68 white kids have to pass the math test and 45 black kids have to pass the math test. The grading for every student is the same. There aren't different passing grades for different races. Then the idea would be to improve it incrementally over time, so next year, the goal might be 73 white students have to pass the math test and 50 black kids have to pass the math test.
The policy is meant to address the situation they have today. We might say that the acceptable passage rate is, maybe 70%, and we want to see that across every racial group. But the problem is that maybe (again this is just an example) 65% of white kids are already passing, and only 40% of black kids are passing. To meet the new standard, you need to see a one year of improvement of 5% of the white kids and 30% of the black kids. This means that some schools are not going to get even close to the goal, or for example, maybe one school district will ignore the black kidsor ignore a school that has a higher popluation of kids other than white and Asian, because maybe they can still make the goal by focusing on other kids in other schools where the school won't have to work as hard to improve the numbers. Like maybe a school with predominantly black students only has a passage rate of 50%, and other schools have a passage rate of 65%. Maybe the school district figures, hey we can still make the goal by improving the other schools from 65% to 75% and our overall passage rate for the district will be 70%, and we don't have to do the hard work of trying to improve one of the schools from 50% all the way to 70%.
I think by setting different passage rate goals for different racial groups, they are trying to set goals that they can attain and then try to improve year-over-year incrementally, rather than set a goal that is so far away for some segments that is almost impossible to attain.
Now you could argue that they should not use race, but use some other factors to segment these different achievement goals or that this policy is not a good idea at all even if it used some other factor besides race for segmentation, but it does help to understand the policy first place (again, I'm not trying to insult anyone; I think it is very easy to misinterpret what the policy actually is).
That's because people learn their mental attitudes from their parents much more thoroughly than is ever acknowledged. Guilt as a mental attitude, addictive behavior, perseverance, honesty, irritating personality quirks, all sorts of factors that spell out failure or success can serve as invisible factors in a person's life. These factors seldom show up in measures of "merit", but many of them can directly affect a person's ability to succeed.
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But not on his virtues.
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subj.
17779 eligible voters in a district, 17779 'vote' as one. This is Russia.
Everything exists in a context. Your refusal to recognize that makes it really easy for you to smear things you don't like. You're going to have a lot of bitterness in your life if you don't develop a more realistic attitude.
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All things in human experience have causes, including the outliers. Discovering and identifying the causes makes it easier to increase the number of valuable outliers, and to show that the trend is not a trap. It is your sort of negative thinking that condemns millions of Americans to poverty.
The shame is that the two successes mentioned in this thread are a rapist and a Fascist.
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In the United States, you do not "control of others' labor". If you think someone who works as a janitor is in the same "socio-economic class" as "a person doing engineering or medicine for $100k salary" -- well, the sentence is self-contradictory because you're not thinking. Manual labor bears very little relation to mental production.
To the extent that "socio-economic class" is a valid concept in the US, it is determined by the long-term ability to spend money. The source of the money, as long as it is not immoral (e.g. Mafia hit man) is irrelevant. In particular, anyone who has saved money and put it into an interest-bearing account (or invested it) starts to earn money from property, and that includes most people.
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Whatever happened to educating children instead of grading (classifying) them?
I'd like to post something really constructive, but instead i think ill just say one word: Fuckwits.
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It is the year 2081. Because of Amendments 211, 212, and 213 to the Constitution, every American is fully equal, meaning that no one is smarter, better-looking, stronger, or faster than anyone else.
The Handicapper General and a team of agents ensure that the laws of equality are enforced.
The government forces citizens to wear "handicaps" (a mask if they are too handsome or beautiful, earphones with deafening radio signals to make intelligent people unable to concentrate and form thoughts, and heavy weights to slow down those who are too strong or fast).
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harrison_Bergeron
If my kids didn't perform top of their class just because they're white, I'd be pissed. If I had to, I'd make their skin darker and hair black. Point being that grades the school gives is utterly irrelevant. Parents should be parents and do the best they can for their kids even if that means sitting next to them 5 hours a night helping them.
Forget race... it means nothing. You should target an A for your kids no matter what
>They would never have allowed it.
There is no magical "they" that have the power to stop you if you make too much money.
Ford was an anti-semite. It is perfectly acceptable to dislike him on that regard, and I would actually encourage it. That said, he was also right. By the way your economic fate is not set in anything other than your mind and what you're capable of.
load "$",8,1
Daddy's money? You make a lot of assumptions, and all of them are wrong.
load "$",8,1
Staying where your parents were, let alone upward mobility is gone in America.
In what America was that ever true? For most, setting aside luck, regardless of what you do, the class you were born in is the class you die in. You might move a little upwards within your class, but it was rare to find someone in middle class breaking out into the upper class. They would never have allowed it. Even those of us with better incomes are 'nouveau' and are never truly accepted.
Here in the UK they always used to say it takes three generations to make a gentleman: first generation made the money, the next one was brought up with still socially unacceptable parents who talked and dressed funny, third generation was posh as anyone else.
There is always some form of social mobility, or else no one would bother trying to get rich. It's just very limited. Sport analogy: it's a bit like any football team being allowed to enter the FA Cup here. In theory, a minor team can win it, but in practice it happens quite rarely (and never if you're a non-League club, as far as I remember). But it's still better than just having the competition for Premier Leqague clubs only by law.
To have a right to do a thing is not at all the same as to be right in doing it
But one sigma is *huge*!
davecb@spamcop.net
The outcome of ones life is by-and-large a result of the choices one makes.
Not really. There are too many external and internal factors over which you have little or no control. Life is far from pre-destined, but it is equally far from the entirely self-determined result of the exercise of unfettered free will that some people like to think it is. Especially if they're rich and "successful."
To have a right to do a thing is not at all the same as to be right in doing it
While in general I agree that America has much less social mobility than it pretends to, Bill Clinton came from a middle-class background (at best) and did go on to become president and a multimillionaire based of his talent and ability.
I suggest you look up the currently fashionable term "outlier" or the old-fashioned "exception that proves the rule".
To have a right to do a thing is not at all the same as to be right in doing it
America has long been, and still is, a country where anyone has a chance to make something of themselves. Yes, it isn't a big chance
Exactly. The problem is that you can be intelligent, honest, hard-working, god-fearing (or whatever you consider to be good qualities) and still not make it. Just because some people make it doesn't mean that everyone is master of their destiny.
To have a right to do a thing is not at all the same as to be right in doing it
And on a similar theme, there is nothing to stop anyone getting as rich as Bill Gates or Warren Buffet. So if you're not a multi-billionaire, you're just a fucking slacker and little better than a welfare cheat.
To have a right to do a thing is not at all the same as to be right in doing it
The idea is quite frankly racist and applies a label as "lesser" to people of minority races.
If people want to bring back our schools the first step is to eliminate the equivalency diploma path. The second step is to make it very easy to fail, quit, drop out or be thrown out of schools forever. This may seem against the grain but in fact we are losing kids by the so-called supportive nonsense. With the equivalency diplomas why should a teen not go surfing and take the equivalency path later? We have teachers and authorities begging and cajoling kids not to drop out and that allows bad behavior and even causes violence in our schools. Worse yet the equivalency diplomas are of very, very low standards. A full high school education should involve quite a bit of math and science. If the diploma won't get you into a top rated college it should not be issued.
At this time teachers, even down in the fifth grade level, have real fear as they know students may attack and even kill them. The behavioral standards are so low, because of trying to prevent dropping out, that the fear is justified. Make it easy to quit and hard to graduate and all of a sudden American genius will become common place. The kids need to know that no second path exists. A life of jails, poverty and manual labor await those that fail.
But these things have associated costs, so we also spend that extra time working to pay off the fancier cars and all the entertainment products we consume.
Except that the improvement in efficiency due to technology means that all that extra cost should have been paid for by using robots, computers etc which don't need to be paid salaries. Instead, it has gone to making the very wealthy even wealthier, rather than being distributed equally throughout society.
To have a right to do a thing is not at all the same as to be right in doing it
No, that isn't a problem at all, because you are taking my statements out of context. To add it back in, everyone can't be Bill Gates/Warren Buffet rich. However, everyone who works hard can make good life for themselves. If you can be satisfied with a roof over your head, food on the table, clothes on your back, a car, and cable TV, then those qualities are all you need. If you want to drive around in a Ferrari wearing Armani and dating a supermodel, then you need to have something more. The expectations people have for applying themselves are simply unrealistic.
Remember, you can't look dignified when your having fun! Don't take life too seriously, you'll never get out of it alive
I think you failing to understand the purpose of an imagination.
This entire topic's title is very misleading. When I first read it I thought "hey wait. there's nothing wrong with that."
merely sorting the scores of a body of students by their race can give you insight into possible causes to the shortcomings of our society and could lead to better education which deals with the differences between other cultures.
But no, I have become sadly disappointed with the actual problem with what the school system is doing. By creating different criteria for students based upon these differences, it artificially sweeps the problem under the rug, so as to comply with the "no child left behind" rule without actually doing anything about the problem the rule was intended to solve.
Sadly, a Libertarian cannot force his views on another, and freedom cannot spread as does the cancer known as religion.
Yes, and differences between groups actually are that big, as you can tell from different passing rates in various tests (see e.g., here). All people are trying to do with these adjustments is to make up for those observed big differences. One can argue about whether that is the right policy, but your arguments about "statistical significance" and "tails" miss the point.
When are we moving to metric time? Good luck with THAT!
I'll bet if you do the regression analysis to predict success you would find the coefficient on "ethnicity" large and statistically significant while the coefficient on "race" was small and statistically insignificant, which is to say that "ethnicity" (culture, nurture and life style) is important and "race" (genes and biology) is not. But then, I am just a mathematician working in medical research and am not a political scientist working in the surreal world.
"There is no god but allah" - well, they got it half right.
So what about the kid who has a white father, black mother and Asian grandfather?
Coder's Stone: The programming language quick ref for iPad
I'd suggest that the differences between the races in school results in the U.S. have little if anything to do with inherent abilities of the races, and tons to do with people's expectations.
I grew up at the northern terminus of the Underground railway. Chatham is half-way between North Buxton and Hope, and is very mixed-race. The number of light-brown people versus dark-pink people in the top academic class at CCI (the collegiate institute) is proportional to their presence in the population as a whole, and has been that way since my father was a little kid. During my lifetime, that became generally true of at least Ontario, and arguably true of Canada as a whole.
In my youth we started doing IQ testing, and found no significant differences in the intelligence of grade 9 students that could be correlated with race. We did see, if I remember correctly, a correlation between IQ and number of years in Canada for immigrants, but we think that was a language-based bias.
There are still race-based differences in outcomes after school, but in the schools, we're driving toward an equilibrium.
--dave
davecb@spamcop.net
Thanks, Captain Straw Man.
Gamingmuseum.com: Give your 3D accelerator a rest.
The one standard deviation in IQ between different "races" is no more mysterious than the one standard deviation in IQ between Anglicans and Pentecostals, or Jews and Baptists. There is no more an "inherent ability of the races" as there is an "inherent ability of religious groups". If you think such a thing exists, you are a racist.
Not significantly according to any data I have seen (c.f. for example JBHE).
negroes are disabilities. They are destruction, disease and decay as well.
Just because US ideologues deny existence of social classes, and redefine the word "clasas" as "income range" or "profession", does not mean that socio-economic classes do not exist in US, or are somehow different.
Manual labor bears very little relation to mental production.
For the purpose of structure of society and economy, they are merely different forms of labor, and they both are involved in production of various goods.
To the extent that "socio-economic class" is a valid concept in the US, it is determined by the long-term ability to spend money. The source of the money, as long as it is not immoral (e.g. Mafia hit man) is irrelevant. In particular, anyone who has saved money and put it into an interest-bearing account (or invested it) starts to earn money from property, and that includes most people.
This is an ideological nonsense, and its purpose is obfuscation of the conflict between socio-economic classes.
Contrary to the popular belief, there indeed is no God.
You need to zero in a little better there. The only thing preventing the 20 hour week is our monetary system. My sig holds the key to understanding this.
Social Credit would solve everything...
20? more like 5
I know tobacco is bad for you, so I smoke weed with crack.
Look back in time to the publication of the book "The Bell Curve".
The publication of the book almost caused riots in the street.
So here we go.... But classification based on bias born in bigotry.
Troubling,,,,, sadly there is no Native American classification. Perhaps
there is an attempt to preserve clusters of "Code talkers" by relegating them
back to the reservation. In this area they do understand statistical curves.
Truth is stranger than fiction, but it is because Fiction is obliged to stick to possibilities; Truth isn't. Mark Twain.
Virginia is in the south, right? That there headline is called "eye-for-an-eye-racism-reply", directed at the people who thought this was a good idea.
disclaimer: im white european.
To begin with, irrespective of social background, I think we can all agree that all humans have more or less the same potential. I think this obvious fact was maybe to obvious to make it into the comments, but still has to be said. Granted, some with tougher backgrounds might have to work harder at it, but our brain capacity is mostly within the same ballpark. Ranking based on race is just beyond idiotic.
Secondly, they don't specify what disabled means. If i've lost both legs, do I not have to score as high. ffs.
Disclaimer 2: im not disabled, and don't have a chip on my shoulder.... unless it involves human dumbasses, from any country.
"Everyone knows that vi vi vi is the number of the beast" -- Richard Stallman
Hmmn, I think we're both saying the same thing in different terms. I provided evidence that there *aren't* differences that could be attributed to race...
davecb@spamcop.net
Niggers and wetbacks are stupid.
Chinks are good at math, but that's about it.
They sell poisonous, toxic good, because they have no sense of morality.
Mod me down if you right, but this is all gospel truth - the government has finally ruled on this important issue of our day.
No, we are not saying the same thing at all. You assume that "race" is an intrinsic property, but that position is inherently racist; you simply try to soften the impact of your racism by assuming that it shouldn't make a difference and then dismiss data that contradicts your belief and assume that we're "driving towards an equilibrium".
Race isn't an intrinsic property, it's just a label we attach to groups of people and their offspring, sometimes only based on parentage, sometimes based on a few superficial traits unrelated to anything else. But intelligence is still a strongly heritable trait. If you were to take an otherwise random group of a thousand highly performing African American school children today, moved them all to an island, and followed them generation after generation, their great grandchildren would still be highly performing. Same if you took a group of highly performing Presbyterians, midgets, or people whose last name started with the letter "Q". Traits often remain correlated in populations even though they are otherwise totally unrelated, and even if they have no biological basis at all.
HUH????
Oh, sorry folks, I accidentally fed the troll.. --dave
davecb@spamcop.net
You've keep making factually wrong statements (I'm paraphrasing): "racial differences are so small they only matter at the tails", "racial differences are due to expectations (racism?)", "schools are driving towards an equilibrium". I gave you links disproving each of those views, yet you keep arguing as if they didn't exist.
I'm saying these differences are real but nothing more than a historical accident and utterly irrelevant. They are neither a consequence of biology nor a consequence of racism, they are nobody's fault, and they are going to be with us for many more generations no matter what we do.
How do you explain the observed differences? What do you think we should do about them?
Okay I think this can be good since currently there are a lot of unused bandwidth especially provided to law enforcement by tax payer money now they will ways to make more money out of this.. imagine police reality show.