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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.
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.
Why on earth did they choose to do this based on race rather than poverty?
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.
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!
>> but in this case I do feel especially bad for Asian's and Whites given the higher requirement for them.
You've got it backwards: Feel bad for the other races, who won't be pushed to excel to the same level and will therefore be stuck in menial low-pay jobs for the rest of their lives.
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
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.
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.
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.
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
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.
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.
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.
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.
No. Using race or socioeconomic factors is just trying to put a different criteria on the variance in IQ that makes educating everyone to the same level impossible. Why VA and FL decided to use race as the criterial, rather than IQ (which they test for in schools) is the big question mark. At some point, the US needs to start spending money intelligently, rather than trying to force algebra on the bottom quartile of the IQ curve. We would have lower drop out rates if we taught to a students ability, rather than a government set bar for the entire country.
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.
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.
[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
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.
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
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).
Here it is again, the "outlier invalidates the trend" mode of thinking.
"When information is power, privacy is freedom" - Jah-Wren Ryel