Should public schools academic goals for students be based on race?

[Arwon]

My post was assuming the OP was correct. Downtown's post clarified that it was just goals and not tests actually being given extra points, which I didn't see when writing my post.

Ah, gotcha.

 

[Arwon]

Standards should not be lowered for any reason whatsoever (including income). How can we compete with China by lowering our standards?

I think you should note that the standards being set here are above what is currently being achieved.

 

[GoodGame]

At OP,

I'd say standards should be based on demographic data in general, but reducing it all to gender and race is basically wrong. It could be avoided completely to just test at the start of schooling, and then periodically re-test to demonstrate improvement. That could easily be done without regard to race, and probably without regard to demographics. At any rate, I believe it's been shown that a critical point of learning is a good family environment that reinforces and promotes learning when the students aren't in school; I believe that is the key demographic to 'home' in on.

 

[Joecoolyo]

Standards should not be lowered for any reason whatsoever (including income). How can we compete with China by lowering our standards?

The only way we can compete with China is if we take the best schools and students in the country, and report their test scores as the national average.

 

[Arwon]

At OP,

I'd say standards should based on demographic data in general, but reducing it all to gender and race is basically wrong.

Wouldn't that depend on whether those things are major explanatory variables in a particular place? How can such a statement be absolute?

 

[luiz]

Wouldn't that depend on whether those things are major explanatory variables in a particular place? How can such a statement be absolute?

Lets say you control for all socio-economic variables (impossible of course), and you can be sure race is still an important explanatory variable, and not a proxy for other variables, with a high degree of certainty (again, not really possible).

Then what? If that was the case (which I don't believe for a second), there would be no point in "normalizing" scores or doing anything at all for that matter.

 

[Arwon]

Well then when you're setting your targets for reading levels you factor that in and do sub-targets. Which is what's being described here. Where are you people getting all this other stuff from?

 

[Formaldehyde]

Funny I should read this on the same day it was announced the Brazilian government will institute a 30% quota for blacks and mulattos in all civil service admission exams... and if that's not enough, they'll criminally prosecute people who "falsily" claim to be black in order to get easier access to the civil service. I wonder how they'll prove someone is lying - maybe they'll hire some doctor who worked at Auschwitz or something and is a racial expert.

Anyway, the world is going mad. Thanks for creating this racialist AA nonsense, USA, but please try to keep it for yourselves next time you have one of those brilliant ideas. So please don't spread this notion of different academic standards for different "races", because I know the ******** Brazilian government will copy it...

Why am I not surprised that you are trying to turn this into yet another "racialist AA nonsense" thread?

This headline is misleading. The district isn't setting goals for specific students based on their race, only that they want to improve their race-based academic achievement gap. I would hope that every single large district in the country would want this goal.

Eventually, you want 100% of all students to hit the benchmarks, but you have to hit the baby steps along the way.

This.

There is also apparently a matter of getting a waiver from Obama's No Child Left Behind Program, which this would apparently accomplish.

Florida education commissioner continues damage control on race-based academic goals

It is also instructive to note that the decision to include these subgroup goals come from the Obama administration's No Child Left Behind waiver application (attached below). The first permissible waiver request is to get out of meeting federal Adequate Yearly Progress requirements, with the understanding that the state would "develop new ambitious but achievable (annual measurable objectives) in reading/language arts and mathematics in order to provide meaningful goals that are used to guide support and improvement efforts for the State, LEAs, schools, and student subgroups."

Florida's plan, fully vetted by the U.S. Department of Education more than a year ago, states: "The annual achievement results on assessments will continue to be reported for subgroups and all students. Florida’s new AMOs will be reported for all schools, LEAs, and the state."

While the goals may be distasteful to some, they shouldn't come as a surprise.

 

[AlpsStranger]

You people are still afraid of China? LOL

They're doing fine, don't get me wrong, but they're still miles away from the good ol' USA.

They make your socks and the plastic trays that your Ramen is baked in. Good for them, but it doesn't fill me with existential dread.

No, the #1 threat to America is, and will always be, Americans. No country can be safe so long as it's inhabited by Americans. Have you met us before?

 

[GhostWriter16]

"Three times as tough" would be quite hard I think. I assume you only mean difficulty, not workload (Otherwise we'd have 18 hour days...) but still, I think that would be pretty tough. Speaking for myself, I could stand giving a bit more effort to most things, but had all I could take in math.

I'm pretty confident that I don't really need to point out what my stance on different standards for different races is.

 

[JollyRoger]

I'm pretty confident that I don't really need to point out what my stance on different standards for different races is.

Nope, we all know you are a CSA apologist and believe that businesses should be allowed to change their standards of service and willingness to hire based on race..

 

[luiz]

Well then when you're setting your targets for reading levels you factor that in and do sub-targets. Which is what's being described here. Where are you people getting all this other stuff from?

But if socio-economic forces were not the explanation (which they are), this would be essentially setting different targets for ever. This would just lead to people assuming that some "races" are less capable.

Also, there is of course far more "intra-racial" variance than "inter-racial" variance. I am willing to bet that some asian groups (wild guess: filipinos) don't do nearly as well as others (other wild guess: koreans). The same is certainly true for latinos(Argentine-Americans are wealthier and more educated than the average American), and even blacks and whites. It doesn't make sense to create sub-targets for groups that are vastly heterogeneous, just because in average asians do better than whites who do better than blacks. This average means nothing.

So what is this sub-targeting accomplishing other than furthering the (apparently very entrenched) notion that different "races" have different capabilities?

 

[GhostWriter16]

Nope, we all know you are a CSA apologist and believe that businesses should be allowed to change their standards of service and willingness to hire based on race..

You forgot the part where I said I would boycott any business that did so

 

[Formaldehyde]

So what is this sub-targeting accomplishing other than furthering the (apparently very entrenched) notion that different "races" have different capabilities?

The only people who seem to believe that are the racists. This is merely an attempt of acknowledging the problem and trying to take steps to eventually resolve it, much like the other measures from the past you seem to find so appalling.

What I find disconcerting is the graph that shows that children of affluent Mexican-American and black parents have far lower test scores that the other groups. Even they don't seem to be immune from the effects of this.

 

[JollyRoger]

You forgot the part where I said I would boycott any business that did so

Why would you boycott? Isn't that holding them to a different standard than non-racists?

 

[GoodGame]

Wouldn't that depend on whether those things are major explanatory variables in a particular place? How can such a statement be absolute?

I'd suggest this:
If we accept that race is a false concept, then it is reasonable to be (nearly) absolute about not basing judgements based on a false concept. I actually didn't imply/intend to imply absoluteness, but non-significance. Are you actually aware of any accepted study that actually demonstrates race is true concept and also that race is a concept that strongly predicts academic performance???
Aren't we just one human race? (Not pointed at you)

I'd say you could use demographics to home in on performance, and as you've further expanded, stick to those with major explanatory power. But it's chicken and egg....you have to collect all demographic data to then rule out minor or non-significant variables in the data. Ultimately in a quality improvement program, you would want to collect the variables, so in the long run I'd advise it. But I also took the contrary view in my first post in the thread, which is the program should just teach and test frequently and look for improvement; that maybe is a blind start, but by now I think educational science has advanced that a "just do it" approach should make progress. In other words, find the good first, then home in a model that finds a relationship between the demographics and the success rate.

The bottom line is that teaching just for an obvious observation (race and gender) is only risking bias. I believe there is no biological observation that race and gender strictly predict performance.
I'm generally aware that those are only significant in the work place where social bias plays a role (and possibly some of those social biases will subtly influence school, but hopefully that can be prevented). I'm vaguely aware that the home environment is crucial to reinforcing success because school only gives a playing field but much less motivation to succeed than the home environment. That comes from watching the Freakonomics documentary that analyzed such things.

 

[Archbob]

What I find disconcerting is the graph that shows that children of affluent Mexican-American and black parents have far lower test scores that the other groups. Even they don't seem to be immune from the effects of this.

Thats because half of it is cultral and no socio-economic.

 

[Arwon]

But if socio-economic forces were not the explanation (which they are), this would be essentially setting different targets for ever. This would just lead to people assuming that some "races" are less capable.

Also, there is of course far more "intra-racial" variance than "inter-racial" variance. I am willing to bet that some asian groups (wild guess: filipinos) don't do nearly as well as others (other wild guess: koreans). The same is certainly true for latinos(Argentine-Americans are wealthier and more educated than the average American), and even blacks and whites. It doesn't make sense to create sub-targets for groups that are vastly heterogeneous, just because in average asians do better than whites who do better than blacks. This average means nothing.

So what is this sub-targeting accomplishing other than furthering the (apparently very entrenched) notion that different "races" have different capabilities?

We're talking about statistical aggregates for the purpose of measuring the effectiveness of an educational program here. Obviously having more data than is currently available would be better, but making use of the data available is better than not doing so.

The proposal here is to set a target of "X percent of group Y able to read at a certain level". The targeting is presumably based on what percentage of group Y can currently read at a certain level.

Therefore, whilst I acknowledge that no data are infinitely granular, the over- or under-performance of certain sub-groups would already be a part of the baseline.

 

[AlpsStranger]

<SNIP> Nevermind, not getting myself in this much trouble.

 

[Yeekim]

This headline is misleading. The district isn't setting goals for specific students based on their race, only that they want to improve their race-based academic achievement gap. I would hope that every single large district in the country would want this goal.

Eventually, you want 100% of all students to hit the benchmarks, but you have to hit the baby steps along the way.

This. Although I do not quite understand why such things are even measured by race.