Florida Board of Education approves race-based academic goals

[Dad_of_3]

Race-based academic goals approved by Florida Board of Education - Yahoo! News

"... The plan calls for different levels of academic achievement with 90% of Asian students, 88% of Caucasians, 81% of Hispanics and 74% of African-Americans to be at or above grade reading level by the year 2018. Math standards have been set at 92% of Asian students, 86% of Caucasians, 80% of Hispanics and 74% of African-Americans to be at or above their math grade level..."

[fishymom]

Too embarrassed to comment.....

[poetgrl]

Is this from the onion? Please tell me it is from the onion.

[fishymom]

I really wish it was!

[tropicalslushies]

I could understand different standards for different socio-economic backgrounds, but this is just racist. Do they just assume that all black students are dumber or poorer or whatever than all Asian students? This is really wrong.

[CuriousJane]

Race-based academic goals are a fundamental piece of NCLB, which has been around for years. In order to make "Safe Harbor", one of the two ways that a school can make Adequate Yearly Progress, they need to show growth in each subgroup. If a school started out with a significant achievement gap, as almost every school in American with enough diversity to measure such a gap does, then Safe Harbor allows them to demonstrate progress by closing the gap.

Are those numbers depressingly sad? Yes. Even more sad, they seem to arrived at by taking the number of students currently failing, and cutting them in half. So, for example, they're proposing reducing the rate of failing African American students from 56 to 28%.

However, realistically, the achievement gap is a huge problem, and it's not going to disappear overnight. It's going to take years and years of hard work on the part of schools, and other organizations that serve youth and families. Setting ambitious but attainable targets for incrementally chipping away at it is key.

For example, our school has set a goal that students who are behind grade level in reading will move 2 years in reading levels in one year. This means that almost all of the 3rd graders, and most of the 4th graders who are behind will achieve AYP. But the sad reality is that we get many new sixth graders who read on second grade levels. For them, moving to a fourth grade level before seventh would be an amazing thing, accelerating their growth sixfold over what they achieved in their prior school. But it also means that if they stay on that path, they likely won't achieve "proficient" until the 10th grade test.

[4thfloor]

Asians ahead of Caucasians in >>>reading<<<? Something weird here.

(Also, Hispanics ahead of African-Americans in reading -- aren't many Hispanics also not native speakers?)

[ucbalumnus]

Originally Posted by 4thfloor

Asians ahead of Caucasians in >>>reading<<<? Something weird here.

If the population of Asian people happens to be predominantly the first US-born (i.e. English speaking, reading, and writing) generation children of immigrants who came here on student or skilled worker visas and therefore disproportionately have advanced degrees, should it really be that surprising to find high levels of educational achievement in that population?

It likely takes a few generations for the descendents of an immigrant group filtered by immigration selection (e.g. for graduate students and skilled workers) to assimilate into the educational achievement mediocrity typical in the US.

[GMTplus7]

I'm still crawling on my hands and knees, looking for my jaw that dropped on the floor...

[Galaxyfigment]

This will just give the employers more ammunition to not hire people in the lower expectation categories as it insinuates they are not capable of learning. Sad Sad Sad

[4thfloor]

ucbalum: some first-generation Asian immigrants are well-educated, but many are not. The Chinatown bus driver, the vegetable stall vendor, the food delivery man on bicycles, the restaurant waiter, the construction worker, etc. Don't see why their children should speak better English than the native-born.

[romanigypsyeyes]

So what about us mixed race kids? Do I average white and hispanic goals? Or is this like the one drop rule?

[ucbalumnus]

Originally Posted by 4thfloor

some first-generation Asian immigrants are well-educated, but many are not. The Chinatown bus driver, the vegetable stall vendor, the food delivery man on bicycles, the restaurant waiter, the construction worker, etc. Don't see why their children should speak better English than the native-born.

Their US-born children likely speak about as good English as US-born children of other bus drivers, vegetable stall vendors, food deliverers, waiters, and construction workers.

[UpperValley]

Their US-born children likely speak about as good English as US-born children of other bus drivers, vegetable stall vendors, food deliverers, waiters, and construction workers.

But the accent (or lack thereof) on speaking is just one possible shortcoming. A child that grows in an intellectually inclined family is much more likely to get a lot of resources that help their future academic records, from parents that get involved with their grades/school progress to trips to museums, meaningful summer camps and small little things that stimulate young minds (even if by the child observing their parents talk about something one notch or two more complex at dinner table than the last Jerry Springer show).

So if you take any group of children whose parents are overwhelmingly more educated than the average person, they will be likely to have a better learning environment at home, at that advantage makes up to some language disadvantage.

Moreover, in all likelihood crackheads, highly dysfunctional individuals, alienated and lazy adults are unlikely to be high skilled, thus unlikely to arrive in that condition in US as immigrants.

I bet US born children of high skilled immigrants perform better than the average American kid in school by mere selection bias effect. Even the US-born children of high-skilled Caucasian, Middle-Eastern, African, Latin American ("Hispanic") immigrants.

[dietz199]

Purveyors of higher education take race into consideration when it comes to admissions - hence the term URM. This seems like an extension and slight tweak of that system.