That’s racist!
Same shit, different day:
School Data Finds Pattern of Inequality Along Racial Lines
Racial minorities are more likely than white students to be suspended from school, to have less access to rigorous math and science classes, and to be taught by lower-paid teachers with less experience, according to comprehensive data released Friday by the Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights.
In the first analysis in nearly 15 years of information from all of the country’s 97,000 public schools, the Education Department found a pattern of inequality on a number of fronts, with race as the dividing factor.
Black students are suspended and expelled at three times the rate of white students. A quarter of high schools with the highest percentage of black and Latino students do not offer any Algebra II courses, while a third of those schools do not have any chemistry classes. Black students are more than four times as likely as white students — and Latino students are twice as likely — to attend schools where one out of every five teachers does not meet all state teaching requirements.
“Here we are, 60 years after Brown v. Board of Education, and the data altogether still show a picture of gross inequity in educational opportunity,” said Daniel J. Losen, director of the Center for Civil Rights Remedies at the University of California at Los Angeles’s Civil Rights Project.
In his budget request to Congress, President Obama has proposed a new phase of his administration’s Race to the Top competitive grant program, which would give $300 million in incentives to states and districts that put in place programs intended to close some of the educational gaps identified in the data.
“In all, it is clear that the United States has a great distance to go to meet our goal of providing opportunities for every student to succeed,” Secretary of Education Arne Duncan said in a statement.
One of the striking statistics to emerge from the data, based on information collected during the 2011-12 academic year, was that even as early as preschool, black students face harsher discipline than other students.
While black children make up 18 percent of preschool enrollment, close to half of all preschool children who are suspended more than once are African-American.
“To see that young African-American students — or babies, as I call them — are being suspended from pre-K programs at such horrendous rates is deeply troubling,” said Leticia Smith-Evans, interim director of education practice at the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund.
“It’s incredible to think about or fathom what pre-K students could be doing to get suspended from schools,” she added.
In high school, the study found that while more than 70 percent of white students attend schools that offer a full range of math and science courses — including algebra, biology, calculus, chemistry, geometry and physics — just over half of all black students have access to those courses. Just over two-thirds of Latinos attend schools with the full range of math and science courses, and less than half of American Indian and Native Alaskan students are able to enroll in as many high-level math and science courses as their white peers.
“We want to have a situation in which students of color — and every student — has the opportunity and access that will get them into any kind of STEM career that takes their fancy,” said Claus von Zastrow, director of research for Change the Equation, a nonprofit that advocates improved science, technology, engineering and math education, or STEM, in the United States. “We’re finding that in fact a huge percentage of primarily students of color, but of all students, don’t even have the opportunity to take those courses. Those are gateways that are closed to them.”
The Education Department’s report found that black, Latino, American Indian and Native Alaskan students are three times as likely as white students to attend schools with higher concentrations of first-year teachers. And in nearly a quarter of school districts with at least two high schools, the teacher salary gap between high schools with the highest concentrations of black and Latino students and those with the lowest is more than $5,000 a year.
Timothy Daly, president of the New Teacher Project, a nonprofit that recruits teachers, said that while the data looked at educator experience and credentials, it was also important to look at quality, as measured by test scores, principal observations and student surveys.
“Folks who cannot teach effectively should not be working with low-income or African-American kids, period,” he said, adding that the problem was difficult to resolve because individual districts are allowed to make decisions on how to assign teachers to schools.
Wait, wait! Don’t tell me! The answer is . . . .
RACISM!
Amirite?
I’m not going to dispute the data, I am disputing the conclusions. But it is obvious that right up-front we need more data.
If lots of black kids are getting suspended and expelled from pre-K programs around the country, we really should know why. It goes without saying (but I’m saying it anyway) that racism is bad. But is racism to blame?
I can think of several reasons that would justify suspending or expelling any child from a pre-K program. A child that is repeatedly violent with other students would be an example. So I want to know two things: What were the kids accused of and were they guilty?
If these pre-K’s are like the neighboring K-12’s then the majority of the students are minorities. Blaming the number of suspensions on race is like saying the cops in black neighborhoods single out black drivers for traffic tickets.
Less-experienced teachers are probably going to be lower paid than those with seniority. So why are the newest teachers in the worst schools? Maybe that’s because that is where most of the job openings are.
Why do the worst schools have the highest number of teachers who don’t meet the minimum state requirements? Maybe that is because it is the only way they could find enough teachers.
On the other hand, as to why the worst schools don’t offer advance classes in math and science, maybe there is not enough demand for those classes.
The majority-minority schools in this country are not located in upscale suburban neighborhoods. They are located in our barrios and ghettos. In other words, the worst schools are in the worst neighborhoods.
Nobody wants to live or work in those neighborhoods, including the people that already live and/or work there.
That’s not racism.
The Crawdad Hole 
If you were born in a shit-hole third-world country you have several options.
1. You can stay there and complain about what a shit-hole you live in.
2. You can stay there and wait for someone else to make it less of a shit-hole.
3. You can stay there and try to make it less of a shit-hole.
4. You can pack your shit and get the fuck out of there.
The same thing applies to bad neighborhoods.
What about minority microaggressions towards others? I watched a couple of AA young women block an elderly woman in a sari in the grocery store from getting to the products she needed this past week. They did it with absolute malice to make her wait on them to move while they spoke loudly on cell phones. I finally busted it up with my piercing “S’cuse me, s’cuse me, if y’all could just move a teeny bit there while I get my curry sauce, hey, how y’all doing!” as I bumped them with my buggy. Or the “sit and stare” at the stop signs by young minority men to slow down traffic, or my least favorite the drive through window stunt where the car is used to prevent people behind from getting to the window or tube thing at the bank by moving two feet when they are waiting in line to throw the entire thing out of whack. No one is allowed to speak about minority microaggression which seems to be going up as Obama’s popularity hits the skids and passive aggressive antisocial interactions increase. Why are all of the left’s idiocy about injuries they suffer seem to be projections of their own crappy behavior?
Or the waiting at the counter while the minority sales person talks to her/his friends and then serves another minority customer, pretending not to have seen you(me). Then when I say, “I’ve been waiting while you ‘took care’ of that group”, they stare hatefully and turn away. (Multiple times – at places I cannot avoid)
Oh dear. That doesn’t happen much where I live. People get fired over much less. It is the protection of anonymity that produces the worst behavior that I find. People are still nice if there is a probability that you can find out their name and bitch about it.
In Milwaukee there is a residency requirements for teachers. So if you move out of the city for whatever reason – marriage, divorce, crime, etc. you lose your job. For many years, the schools have not been able to find enough certified teachers to teach the young-ums hence the problems of large classes with certified teachers or staff classrooms with non-certified people who live in the city. Naturally the district expects them to go to college and get a degree. Forgot to mention that they are supposedly mentored by certified teachers adding to their responsibilities. There is on-going discussion about doing away with the residency requirement.
Do you think that this may be contributing to low test scores and disruptive behavior? BTW – Bill Gates has been pumping money into the district programs to boost scores.
I would like to see all of these progs who scream ‘racism’ all the time find a country that is completely free of racism where they could live happily. Of course, they would be unhappy since there would be nothing to complain about – oh the insanity.
Back to watching a new series on Netflix called ‘Crossing Lines.’
Once they moved the country would no longer be “completely free of racism”, but that’s not important.
Agree that these are correlations with the more obvious life in a shit hole kind of sucks. But I also have to admit my give a damn done broke. I assume when vile progs called me a racist simply for not voting for the empty suit moron, that their intent was that I wouldn’t give a damn about these issues.
My son’s girlfriend’s first teaching job was just outside of DC…she stayed there for a total of 1 year. Five years post her degree, she no longer wants to teach. She can articulate the reason(s) pretty clearly…the parents (or usually lack of), the curriculum, the system. She taught 1st grade and was assaulted within the first month…yeah, a first grader assaulted her but surprisingly wasn’t suspended…they just changed him to another class. Yeah, that will definitely fix the problem!
My MIL taught 4th grade at a inner city school for >15 years. The “educators” and social justice advocates wouldn’t have lasted a day with her students or their parent/parents.
I can’t even read these pieces anymore. I see the names and headers, and I move on. Same tired whiny schtick.
PJM:
I’m glad that the strong and special snowflake–Dr. Miller-Young–faces misdemeanor charges for theft, battery and vandalism. An opposing view should not lead to hate and violence.
I hate it when “professionals” use their qualifications to get their rocks off. It is the same as climate change experts who have degrees in “philosophy”. An advanced degree does not give you the right to act like a loon.
– or a bully.
There is an increase in bullying behavior in the entire society. I think it comes from the top. It is now viewed as socially acceptable whereas before it was considered trashy and ill bred. Truly smart, wise, or powerful people do not need to resort to it.
^This^ What happened to the anti-bullying movement? Oh, yeah, it was replaced by the anti-bossy one.
I’m fixin’ to go to the store. Does anybody need anything?
.,,,,,some diapers for threewickets?
WTF, I was referring to the Klown’s links above in the post and comments.
My bad. 😦
Owe you a beer.
Um, I think you misread.
The worst thing about the constant blaming of racism for EVERY problem in the black community, is that it completely prevents us from looking for the real causes and the real solutions.
We are abandoning these kids to their fate, because we REFUSE to look beyond the easy, nonsensical “must be whitey doing it” for the reasons why society/family/community is failing them.
You can’t force teachers to work in schools where their physical safety is at risk. Linking a teacher’s pay grade to their student’s test scores won’t get many volunteers to teach in failing schools if they have other choices. You can’t make a school a better place to learn by keeping violent, disruptive kids in class because you’re afraid it will be viewed as racism. You can’t offer Algebra 2 to kids who can’t pass Algebra 1. You don’t put a chemistry lab in a school where all of the lab equipment is fair game for drug users and dealers, and teachers know they’ll take the blame. No one would be responsible willingly. You can give students who live in school districts where learning is difficult because of the school’s climate an out. Give them a voucher they can take to another school, and give the accepting school the right to send them back where they came from if they bring their school’s climate with them.
Ab….so…..lutely!!!!!
“Linking a teacher’s pay grade to their student’s test scores won’t get many volunteers to teach in failing schools if they have other choices”
********
The last year that my MIL taught 4th grade, the majority of her students were functioning well below grade level, with with one boy unable to count to ten and one girl unable to tie shoes or work a zipper. I guess that there was an incentive to “main stream” all students because the two special ed teachers assigned to her school had no students.
We stopped helping underperforming kids when we decided that we could no longer separate them according to ability. We used to have classes for advanced kids, classes for middling kids, and classes for struggling kids. Problem is (for a lot of varied reasons), the numbers in the advanced classes had too many Asians and whites, and the “struggling” classes had too many blacks.
So, even though teaching in that manner helped the most kids, we sacrificed children on the altar of egalitarianism, and mandated that all skill levels had to be mixed in the classes, so that the skin color ratios looked nice.
The struggling kids, whether black or white, no longer get taught to their level. We are MASSIVELY failing these children. But hey, our diversity ratios per class look all nice and “equal”, and that’s what matters, right?
Blind, mindless egalitarianism is fucking CRUEL. It’s cruelest of all to those with the least ability. Sorry, but people are not equivalent in every way. And we are fucking destroying lives in our efforts to cover up and avoid the fact that differences in abilities exist.
And BTW, I have a daughter who is not retarded, never qualified for special ed, but is “slow”. She would have benefited greatly from the old style system. I managed to get her through by being very involved. If she had not had an involved mother? She’d have been lost.
Take the lowest percentile of kids, and separate them into their own class. Give them extra help, and different requirements, maybe smaller class size. You CANNOT treat people as absolute equals when they are demonstrably not. And if those classes end up being 60% or 80% black? Too fucking bad. Ignore that, and get to work. The point is to HELP these kids, not make the class look all prettily diverse. Teach the kids, not the color.
Do that, and maybe eventually we’ll end up with equality that is REAL, not fake. But we are never going to get there by ignoring reality for the sake of appearances.
It is insanity to “dumb down” everyone so the actual “dumb” individual will somehow feel “equal”. In the first place, they will ‘catch on’ at some point and still be embarrassed. Secondly, though everyone’s rights are equal; their abilities are not so much.and no constitutional amendment or Core Values Education will ever fix that, Except in Racist Progs heads, of course. .
Yes, “dumb” was a bad choice of words. Slow, challenged, backward, underachieving and struggling are all better, Mea culpa.
I was in honors level classes from 5th grade until my senior year in high school when a new principal thought it was a bad idea and put everyone’s name in a hat essentially and assigned classes. I had a good friend who was in level 3 classes, and at that level she was an “A” student. For class standing purposes our courses were weighted, but she got to be on the honor roll every semester even if she was in the middle 3rd of the class. When she was faced with 5 honors level students in each of her classes, she became a “C” student. It made it look like she became a slacker, but the real slackers were the 5 honor students who didn’t need to crack a book to walk off with the “A’s”. Some of us opted to start taking half our courses at the local state college, but some of the top students in the class phoned senior year in.
Everyone is hurt by not having multiple levels of courses to choose from. If we let students self-select, there is no racism. I once sat down with a parent of an 8th grader and explained to him that his son was a “doing just enough to get a B” kind of kid. I recommended he put his kid in honors level courses in high school. I predicted he would still be a “B” student, but he’d have to work harder and learn more to get the “B”. Four years later he graduated from high school with an 86 average- but all his courses were honors. Dad took me out to dinner after graduation. If he had listened to guidance, none of the courses would have been. Stratified course selections are good for everybody. No one needs to be hurt by them if it’s done right.
And I have a (white) kid who got placed into college-track classes where he doesn’t seem to have any business being. (Thanks, attorney dad!) Guess who is going to be home schooling all damn summer to teach him what he should have learned during the school year? I so wish that the US would bring back vo-tech.
I’m white and I’m not aware of this supposed society of whites who are at work trying to keep blacks as a permanent under class. My white relatives were sent here as prisoners of war/indentured servants against their will and the results of their labor went to the ruling class. Sure there is a ruling class here in America (and in all countries) and their always has been and they pretty much crap on everyone else not just blacks. In all countries ruling class members tend to look alike because they only breed with each other so after a few generations they resemble each other. My advice to people of color…the elitists run the government so don’t allow the government to educate your children, decide your insurance, or provide for you in any way. The elitists who run government will just use your trust to force you into the position they see you serving in their view of the world. Your goal should be for government to leave you alone. But give up on the suspicion of people who don’t look like you as they are also oppressed by the elitists and don’t have time to persecute you.
HONK! Poor blacks have more in common with the white trash trailer park kid than they do Toure and his ilk. And our elites work very very hard to make damn sure they don’t wake up to that pertinent fact.
I love the part about breeding to the point they all look alike. LOL. They do. And a huge number of them have plastic surgery! And I think they are getting dumber but even nastier.
Looks like Rhode Island lost another political leader. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/03/22/gordon-fox-resigning_n_5014640.html
Good thing he isn’t a Democrat, or it’d be all over the papers.
It’s funny how his political party is conspicuously missing from the article. 😉
Obama on the wrecking ball:
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