Monday, October 15, 2012

The Hard Bigotry of Great Expectations

Well... we might need to keep lowering those standards.
First the Chicago Teachers Union went on strike for more than a week because they didn't want their evaluations (salary) tied to student performance, especially when only 8 percent of the more than 400,000 students in Chicago Public Schools are white; then came news that schools in Washington D.C. had set new achievement targets by race and income.

Now comes word the entire state of Florida has set new goals for students in math and reading based upon... race [Florida Passes Plan For Racially-Based Academic Goals, CBS Tampa, October 12, 2012]:

The Florida State Board of Education passed a plan that sets goals for students in math and reading based upon their race.
On Tuesday, the board passed a revised strategic plan that says that by 2018, it wants 90 percent of Asian students, 88 percent of white students, 81 percent of Hispanics and 74 percent of black students to be reading at or above grade level.
For math, the goals are 92 percent of Asian kids to be proficient, whites at 86 percent, Hispanics at 80 percent and blacks at 74 percent. It also measures by other groupings, such as poverty and disabilities, reported the Palm Beach Post.
The plan has infuriated many community activists in Palm Beach County and across the state.
“To expect less from one demographic and more from another is just a little off-base,” Juan Lopez, magnet coordinator at John F. Kennedy Middle School in Riviera Beach, told the Palm Beach Post.
JFK Middle has a black student population of about 88 percent.

“Our kids, although they come from different socioeconomic backgrounds, they still have the ability to learn,” Lopez said. “To dumb down the expectations for one group, that seems a little unfair.”
Others in the community agreed with Lopez’s assessment. But the Florida Department of Education said the goals recognize that not every group is starting from the same point and are meant to be ambitious but realistic.
As an example, the percentage of white students scoring at or above grade level (as measured by whether they scored a 3 or higher on the reading FCAT) was 69 percent in 2011-2012, according to the state. For black students, it was 38 percent, and for Hispanics, it was 53 percent.
In addition, State Board of Education Chairwoman Kathleen Shanahan said that setting goals for different subgroups was needed to comply with terms of a waiver that Florida and 32 other states have from some provisions of the federal No Child Left Behind Act. These waivers were used to make the states independent from some federal regulations.
“We have set a very high goal for all students to reach in Florida,” Shanahan said.
But Palm Beach County School Board vice-chairwoman Debra Robinson isn’t buying the rationale.
“I’m somewhere between complete and utter disgust and anger and disappointment with humanity,” Robinson told the Post. She said she has been receiving complaints from upset black and Hispanic parents since the state board took its action this week.
Robinson called the state board’s actions essentially “proclaiming racism” and said she wants Palm Beach County to continue to educate every child with the same expectations, regardless of race.

The Southern Education Foundation published "A New Diverse Majority: Students of Color in the South's Public Schools," which showed that 54 percent of Florida's K-12 population is non-white.
24 percent of the Florida public school K-12 population is Hispanic.

Maybe if we only counted 3/5 of white kids scores on the FCAT, then we could say that that was the bar black and Hispanic kids had to attain... perhaps that is the way to finally end the racial gap in achievement!

Well... about that No Child Left Behind Act. Can we count only 3/5ths of white kids scores?
According to The Schott Foundation for Public Education, which has tracked graduation rates of black males from public schools since 2004, 52 percent of black males who entered ninth grade in the 2006-07 school year graduated in four years.  Compared with 78 percent of white males and 58 percent of Latino males. So if you applied the 3/5 rule (allowing only 60 percent of those whites who graduate to... graduate) here, you'd have the outcome so many desire: by a few percentage points, black and Hispanics would graduate at rates higher than whites.

An April 2008 Florida Board of Education document [Growth of Minority Student Populations in Florida’s Public Schools] reported:
During the last quarter century, minority student populations have grown substantially in Florida’s public schools. Beginning with the school year 2003-04, enrollment for minority students exceeded the white student enrollment. This continued growth has been accompanied by shifts in the demographic composition of the most densely populated counties in south Florida, along with continuing growth in minority student populations in other urban areas of the state. From 1978 to 2007, the number of minority students in Florida’s public schools grew from 458,817 to 1,437,451, an increase of 213.3 percent. This compares with an increase of 75.6 percent for the overall student population (from 1,510,633 to 2,652,684) and a 15.5 percent increase for the white student population (from 1,051,816 to 1,215,233) during the same period.

Nineteen of Florida’s 67 school districts have minority enrollments of 50 percent or more (see chart below). Only nine districts have experienced a decrease in their minority enrollment since 1978. Additional information for each of the state’s school districts is provided in tables at the end of this document.
The only way to bridge the racial gap in achievement is to resurrect the 3/5 clause that so many people misconstrue as the counting of only 3/5ths of an individual black person... actually it was counting only 3/5ths of states slave population, so that the slave holding states wouldn't have greater population numbers and thus, more representatives and power in the early days of the federal republic.

Only count 3/5ths of a white persons SAT, AP, or ACT score. Boom! Racial gap in achievement closed immediately. LSAT, GMAT, MCAT... the exact same rule applies! Same for Firefighter and police exams.

Call it the white handicap. 

Sigh... how much longer must we pretend that race is a social construct?

29 comments:

Discard said...

"The soft bigotry of low expectations" is a neocon slogan, a handy stick to beat on Democrats, nothing more. Acknowledging the reality of Black and Brown inferiority is not bigotry of any kind. Don't doubt that the edjumakashun industry has been wanting to do this for years. They're sick of Blacks, and just want to declare victory and go home.

Anonymous said...

Blacks will never be competitive with whites, in or out of the classroom, until the very foundation of black culture changes. Until black society adopts Western values and its strong nuclear family model, they will continue to significantly lag behind whites. Obviously, this will happen when water runs uphill. Until then, blacks will continue to procreate randomly and look to society to raise their offspring. And accordingly, they will continue to be the very bottom rung of society, academic and otherwise.

Anonymous said...

How much longer CAN we pretend race is a social construct?

Anonymous said...

Hello white man? Anybody home? CA's public school student body is 70.6% non white. The South as a whole is 50% Is there anyone out there?

Anonymous said...

Just toured a fabulous state of the art school over the weekend. It had 3 green roofs, rooftop recreation space and garden walks. It had a plaza, climbing wall, upscale dining facilities, lovely library, music and art room. Ogden International School is located in the Gold Coast area of Chicago. I noticed that the children's writing and art involved what appeared to be the most important lessons to be taught from a liberal perspective...TOLERANCE & OPEN MINDEDNESS. So tolerance and open mindedness are the future virtues, gifts from the left. Most of the children attending are minority students. I could not help but reflect on where my taxes are going. This is a Chicago Public School. Since it was Open House Chicago Weekend, I then toured an architectural firm over looking Trump Towers. The woman giving the tour stated how her firm donates to social conscious endeavors, and that the firms latest project is to build a community center. She said a "Reverend" gave a talk about the violence that the young in his community are experiencing, and hardly a dry eye was to be had by the architects in the firm.

james wilson said...

The funny thing about the Florida clusterfuck is that even while they are begging for lower standards for blacks in order to keep fed money, the gap between black achievement and the lowered black standard is still greater by multiples than gaps of any other group, and completely beyond the cure of the very government schools that make things as they are.

Jay Santos said...

This absurdity has been going on for 50 years. Five decades, nearly a lifetime. Negroes moaning and complaining. White liberals bending over backwards while whites are assaulted, raped, robbed and murdered (and increasingly tortured before death).

Good God how stupid are the people in this country?

City resident said...

Where did they pull those numbers out from? Sounds like nonsense a consultant somewhere dreamed up. The high numbers of non-whites in all the public school systems around the country, as shown on the charts, shows what a burden they've become. From the slave owners of old to the employers of the current crop of illegals, one thing is clear: cheap labor isn't cheap.
The public school mentioned by anonymous at 6:53 pm cost about 50-60 million dollars to build even before the first student stepped foot into it. Nice digs, eh? It's also high maintenance so it'll keep costing plenty. The Chicago public school system is only about 8% white so the white community is underserved by the institutions they pay for.

Mr. Rational said...

The reading test is obviously not an IQ test.  69% passing (31st percentile) on an IQ test means about IQ 92.5 for Whites.  This corresponds to 72nd percentile (28%) passing for Blacks and about 60th percentile (40% passing) for Hispanics.  If 38% of Blacks and 53% of Hispanics are passing now, there is either some other factor or the testing is slanted in their favor (such as ambiguous questions).

eah said...

Look at those massive numbers (percentages). And how they are (and have been) steadily increasing. Then look at the average achievement level of 'Students of Color' -- i.e. their potential to contribute to a competitive, first world, high value added economy. And ponder: Who is going to create the wealth that must be taxed in order to pay for the entitlements -- Social Security, Medicare, etc -- coming due for the massive numbers of retiring, overwhelmingly white baby-boomers?

It just isn't going to happen.

This is why QE-Infinity will be necessary.

Politicians are either willfully blind to this reality, or despicably dishonest about it. Either way it's doomsville.

eah said...

the young in his community are experiencing

Yeah, "experiencing". More like perpetrating.

Jack Krak said...

California at 70% & Texas nearly there. A couple dozen others at or pushing 50.

Doesn't everyone remember when we had the national referendum on importing half of Central America?

Me neither.

Pat Boyle said...

How did it come about? In the late eighteenth century at the founding of the nation it was assumed without comment that blacks were intellectually inferior. The whole 3/5s represntation formula was based on what was considered a simple fact of nature.

No one expected those facts to change and during the whole nineteenth century no one thought they had. Frederick Douglas was famous as an an intelligent black man but one thought that he was the rule - rather that he was the exception.

In th early twentieth century in the midst of the The Great Migration, informed opinion continued to be that blacks were significantly less bright than whites.

But then in the second half of the century when I was a kid, I started hearing that science had 'proven' that all the races were equal. Almost overnight anyone who held the former views about racial inequalities was considered ignorant of modern thought.

How did this happen? There were no studies that found the races equal - in fact all the studies showed just the opposite. But that wasn't what was reported on TV or in the papers.

Sometime in the middle of the last century America decided to believe an untruth. Some would claim that because black people are offended to think that they are intellectually inferior it is 'nicer' to pretend it isn't so. But the price of this self-deception has been enormous. The principal cause of the 1007 economic meltdown was this benighted attempt to improve the behavior of Hispanics and blacks by giving them houses. This was done by demolishing credit standards. The uncreditworthy minorities behaved exactly as the previous standards would have predicted - they lost those homes and that loss cascaded from there though the financial industry.

Soon the whole world economy was dragged down by a vain attempt to not offend black sensibilities. trillions of dollars lost and hundreds of thousands of lives.

This comment is on a posting about education. Every politician and every pundit will tell you that we have an education crisis. Our schools have failed we are told. We need to search for superman. But that's errant nonsense. We have a minority education problem. White kids and Asian kids do fine even today in our minority disrupted classrooms. As Steve Sailer has pointed out our white kids do better than Northern European kids in their own countries. Our East Asian kids do better than than kids in China or Japan do. Even our black kids do better than the comparable black kids in Africa. Our schools work just fine. We must already have Superman toiling away in our public schools.

But even Superman can't make all the races perfrom equally. Ben Franklin and Thomas Jefferson would not have been surprised.

Albertosaurus

Anonymous said...

Anyone else think that the expectations set for blacks are still way too high?

HaroldC said...

'...how much longer must we pretend that race is a social construct?'

Some people will never grow up and put make believe behind them unless forced to.

Anonymous said...

Marge Schott money? Anyway, this is the latest scheme that will close the intelligence/IQ gap. There must be at least two schemes per week!

Anonymous said...

Hello white man? Anybody home? CA's public school student body is 70.6% non white. The South as a whole is 50% Is there anyone out there?

California is ruined. We understand.

Anonymous said...

The 3/5ths rule as to representation had nothing to do with the intellectual abilities of blacks. A state's number of seats in the House of Representatives is allotted based upon its population. The southern slave states wanted slaves to count as a full person because they would gain more seats in the House. The North did want them to count at all since it would give more power to the slave states. The 3/5 rule was a compromise between those those two views.

Zenster said...

Discard: "The soft bigotry of low expectations" is a neocon slogan, a handy stick to beat on Democrats, nothing more.

You seriously underrate just how viciously bigoted and hypocritical most Liberals, especially DWLs, are in general. It's not just some "neocon slogan", it's a fact. It's also a root cause and principal driver of BRA.

Liberal refusal to accept the realities of racial genetics lies at the heart of their multi-trillion dollar campaign to uplift those who stubbornly refuse and vigorously oppose their own uplift.

What you deride as a "slogan" is an ideological raison d'etre for much of the globalist, transnational, PCMC (Politically Correct Multi-Culturalism) that currently hamstrings American efforts to regain national sanity.

Zenster said...

City resident: From the slave owners of old to the employers of the current crop of illegals, one thing is clear: cheap labor isn't cheap.

Like the old saying goes:

IF YOU THINK EDUCATION IS EXPENSIVE, TRY IGNORANCE.

The real problem arises when a large portion of pupils actually prefer ignorance and believe that "school isn't cool". That conundrum is almost impossible to resolve. Intelligence is relatively easy to breed out of people, not so with ignorance.

The public school mentioned by anonymous at 6:53 pm cost about 50-60 million dollars to build even before the first student stepped foot into it. Nice digs, eh? It's also high maintenance so it'll keep costing plenty.

That will change dramatically once a sufficient amount of vandalism finally eclipses all efforts at upkeep. Does anybody honestly think all those minority students won't look at that shiny new (read: White), school the same way a dog looks at a freshly mown lawn?

Zenster said...

eah: Politicians are either willfully blind to this reality, or despicably dishonest about it.

Anybody who bets on "blind" is an all-day sucker.

Second only to being reelected are the efforts made by America's politicians to thoroughly insulate themselves from every last consequence of their actions.

As Mark Twain observed:

"There is no distinctly native American criminal class save Congress."

Zenster said...

Albertosaurus: How did this happen? There were no studies that found the races equal - in fact all the studies showed just the opposite. But that wasn't what was reported on TV or in the papers.

By the late 1950s America's entire academic system had been thoroughly infiltrated by Communists. A huge part of Cultural Marxism relies, not upon espionage, but demoralization.

What could possibly demoralize White America more than the staggering burden of White Guilt™? What better way to demoralize Whites than making it socially unacceptable to recognize scientifically proven facts regarding racial intelligence? Socially ostracizing anyone who dared to speak up against such truthfulness was a prime mover in popularizing the now wildly popular Liberal mode of Magical Thinking™.

The rest is all just one long downhill slide.

Mr. Rational said...

Wouldn't it be great if we could give all unemployables (illiterates, criminals and the like) a choice between sterilization and exile?  Pick one and we'll pay for it, but if you want to leave you have to find a country to take you.

The country would wind up a lot safer, smarter and whiter.

Discard said...

Zenster: I do not underrate the evil of leftists, I know that they are exactly like those who ran the Gulags. But, to my knowledge, the only people who use the phrase "the soft bigotry of low expectations" are neocons. I don't believe that they give a shit about Blacks, or think that they are equal to Whites. The slogan serves only to criticize their cousins, the liberals. If anybody really believed in equality, they'd live in a ghetto and save a bundle on housing. But they don't.
Pretending to believe in equality is a better path to power than actually believing in it. What if Blacks were equal? All racial problems would be solved by now and Black property owners and businessmen would be voting for Romney. But an impossible goal requires an unending war against reality and those who recognize reality.

Anonymous said...

did ya see the Prez of France feels his muslims cant do homework, so he wants to ban it?

Anonymous said...

I get really fucking tired of you morons doing this but HISPANIC is not a race, it is an artificial ethnicity. Anyone of descent from a Spanish-speaking country is Hispanic. This includes Alberto Fujimori, Asian-Hispanic ex-president of Peru, Hugo Chavez, Mestizo-Hispanic president of Venezuela, Kristina Kerchner, White-Hispanic president of Argentina and Evo Morales Amerindian-Hispanic president of Bolivia.

Note that the term Hispanic exists only in the USA and that 90% of Cuban-Americans are white, and before you say something stupid like "well they're probably mixed!" that is physically impossible since 90% of whites who lived in Cuba in 1950 were descended from white colonists and immigrants from Europe who arrived post-1860, and the United States and its anti-miscegenation attitudes arrived in the 1890s to Cuba so interracial marriage would have been completely uncommon in Cuba and most mulatto Cubans were descended from the population of mulattoes that existed before the great migration of Spaniards into Cuba in the latter half of the 19th century.

Peace out idiots, maybe someday you'll stop buying into the hispanic hoax that Lyndon BAIN Johnson sought to create by carving out a chunk of white people and sticking them with a label to create an artificial minority, but since you all seem to think every hispanic is paco the taco vender I doubt that day will ever come to pass.

ATBOTL said...

The demographic outlook for the South doesn't look good.

Discard said...

Anonymous Hispanic: What term do you recommend to describe the Beaners in polite company, if "Hispanic" is off limits? I am well aware that there are Hispanics that are Whiter than I am, but I grew up in Los Angeles and lived there for decades, so don't tell me that all those Spanish-speakers and their Ingles-speaking kin are White.

Zenster said...

Discard: Zenster: I do not underrate the evil of leftists, I know that they are exactly like those who ran the Gulags.

A damned fine point. Leftist social engineers trail Nazis by a nose when it comes to firing up the ovens.

But, to my knowledge, the only people who use the phrase "the soft bigotry of low expectations" are neocons.

How often do you hear the neocons (i.e., Conservatism Inc.), talking about Islam? Answer: You don't. Yet the exact same mechanism of lowering expectations to excuse cretinous behavior is in full play. All the endless blather about "Muslim sensitivities" and what such is just a way of sanitizing the barbarous cruelty of jihadist terrorism. Bush 2.0 and 0bama have mouthed identical platitudes to exonerate Islam of its atrocities.

I don't believe that they give a shit about Blacks, or think that they are equal to Whites. The slogan serves only to criticize their cousins, the liberals.

To the extent that most neocons wouldn't know true Conservatism if it bit them on the neck, you are correct. Like Rush Limbaugh, they are far more interested in complaining and finger-pointing than finding genuinely useful solutions.

If anybody really believed in equality, they'd live in a ghetto and save a bundle on housing. But they don't.

Hey, give Heidi Peterson some credit. She's having a wonderful time living with her culturally vibrant co-tenant, Missionary-Tracey Elaine Blair.

Pretending to believe in equality is a better path to power than actually believing in it.

Thus has evolved the grand tradition of lip-service instead of personal commitment, something taken close to heart by politicians of all stripes.

What if Blacks were equal?

They are, but only to each other. One may as well ask, "What if pigs had wings?" The latter question being more conducive to fruitful speculation.

But an impossible goal requires an unending war against reality and those who recognize reality.

Welcome to the cloud cuckoo land of Magical Thinking™.