Tag Archives: education

Another Thought on Racism in Education

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Florida’s Department of Education has set race-based goals for its K-12 students (the Florida’s DoE Strategic Plan can be found here and here.  For reading, these goals are

  • Asian students: 90% reading at or above grade level
  • White students: 88% reading at or above grade level of white students,
  • Hispanic students: 81% reading at or above grade level
  • Black students: 74% reading at or above grade level
  • American Indian students: 82% at or above grade level

The math goals are

  • Asian students: 92% at or above grade level
  • White students: 86% at or above grade level
  • Hispanic students: 80% at or above grade level
  • Black students: 74% at or above grade level
  • American Indian students: 81% at or above grade level

These are not trivial differences.  Education Sector’s Director of Strategic Communications, Kristen Amundson, notes

I understand that this is recognition that students are beginning at different places—and that’s honest—but I think it is, at best, ill-advised to set different learning standards for students based on the color of their skin.

She’s being generous.  This is a blatantly racist program, and it harkens back to Woodrow Wilson’s paternalistic racism.  Some races, the Florida DoE seems to be suggesting, are just inherently inferior to others, and so they should not be held to the same standards.

Adding failure to injury, while this…policy…correctly recognizes that some groups of children start from different—lower—bases than others, it does absolutely nothing to correct those differences—which are educational, not innate capability.  Recognizing that these kids start out at different levels of preparation for school, and that much of these differences correlate with race (they also correlate with a host of socioeconomic factors—family income, family stability, and so on; these factors subsume race into them, so there’s a bit of double-counting here), makes for a useful start point.  But the Florida DoE is telling these kids that nothing will be done to help them finish school on a more-or-less equal footing with their peers.  “There’s no point in teaching you to do better.  You just can’t catch up.”

Yet the Florida School Board Association Executive Director, Dr Wayne Blanton, said this—and he was serious:

The message could have been portrayed a little clearer, but as far as racism, I see nothing in wanting to raise test scores that would be racist.  You’re trying to raise all test scores, not just in one particular group.

No, doctor, the message was portrayed quite clearly.  As clearly as your own disingenuousness.  No one is suggesting Florida is trying to raise test scores only in “one particular group.”  That’s just a cynical red herring.  What Florida is doing is providing drinking fountains, or bathrooms, to all groups—but some will be better maintained than others.

Racism in Student Selection

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Bill Powers, President of the University of Texas at Austin, put an op-ed into The Wall Street Journal in which he attempts to defend a particular version of “affirmative” action for admission to that university.  The case on which he commented is Fisher v. University of Texas at Austin, which is before the Supreme Court this term.  In this case, a young woman was denied admission in favor of a less qualified black student because, she argues, she’s white.

The subtitle for Powers’ piece is this:

My university once kept blacks out.  Now at Texas we ensure that their grandchildren can enter.

But what he omitted to say there is that UTA once kept blacks out for purely racial reasons.  Now UTA “ensures that their grandchildren can enter” also on racial grounds.

Before I expand on that, though, a couple of smaller points.  Powers wrote,

UT finds itself back in court superficially for the same reason—considering race in admissions—but with just the opposite motivation.

No motive can justify racism.  Woodrow Wilson’s racism was for lofty motives—poor, inferior blacks needed the protections of segregation.  Nor do the basest of motives justify it, as the Jim Crow laws demonstrated.  Racism is…racist.

Powers also wrote

[T]he fiction that will be dispelled by Fisher is that minority students are being admitted at the expense of more-qualified white students.  There are no unqualified students admitted to UT[.]

This is nothing but a non sequitur.  Admitting less qualified students at the expense of more qualified students in no way implies that unqualified students are being admitted.  Nor is this the argument Ms Fisher is making: she’s averring that race played the role, not qualifications.

But from his flawed logic, as illustrated by these minor nits, flows the larger problem.  Powers made his case thusly:

[D]iversity isn’t only acceptable but desirable in all aspects of life, especially education.  In my 38 years in the classroom, I often have seen how a diverse classroom enriches discussion, provides valuable insights and offers a deeper learning experience.

And

[W]e employ an entirely holistic review in which race is one of many factors along with leadership, extracurricular activities, awards, work experience, family-income level and community service.

With this argument, he’s demonstrated the bankruptcy of his race-based (however diffuse) admission policy.  That breadth of diversity for which he seeks—leadership, extracurricular activities, awards, work experience, family-income level, and community service—already is wide.  Moreover, those last two, family income and community service (which carry within them the diversity of communities in which his applicants live, that income is earned, and that service is performed), are alone richly diverse, and they contain ethnicity and race within them.  With that broad diversity built into his selection paradigm, there’s no need to consider race separately.  Doing so is just separate but equal papered over.

What diversity actually would accomplish, were it not for Powers’ double counting of race in  it, would be to give all disadvantaged applicants equal opportunities for access, rather than giving superior access to those belonging to Powers’ favored race.  Giving preference to race—regardless of the strength of that preference—is to give preference to race.  There’s no amount of lipstick that can be smeared on this bigotry by those who should know better that can disguise that.

The Penn State Fiasco

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I had some words about this earlier.  Now the sports authorities have weighed in.

The NCAA has penalized Penn State with the following primary sanctions:

  • fined Penn State $60 million
  • erased all of Head Coach Joe Paterno’s wins from 1998-2011
  • banned Penn State from the postseason for four years
  • permitted current and incoming football players to transfer to and immediately compete at another school (this permission runs for the entire college careers of current players.  Normally, players can transfer at any time, but they must sit out a year at their new school, with that year counting toward their 4-year eligibility)
  • capped football scholarships at 20 below the normal limit for four years (this is a roughly 25% reduction in scholarships)
  • placed the Penn State football program on probation for five years

The Big 10 has added (while reserving the possibility of adding further penalties) a ban on sharing in post season (bowl) revenues for four years, with an expected cost to Penn State of $13 billion.

On the whole, I agree with these.  A ban on football altogether for a year—the so-called death penalty—would have punished the player-students, who had nothing to do with their coaches’, Athletic Department, or University leadership failures.

However, I would have preferred additional sanctions: 100% termination of the remaining football coaching staff who were on the payroll last November; 100% termination of all Athletic Director staff associated in any way with the Penn State football function (including athletics, financial support functions, player recruitment (beyond the football coaching staff’s involvement), alumni relations as these apply to Penn State football, and so on); and termination of the Penn State University President, Vice President, and Chief of Operations, and their operational (as opposed to administrative) staffs—just clean house altogether.

Whether or not these people had anything directly to do with Sandusky’s behavior, their oversight was wholly inadequate: Sandusky could not have gone on as long as he did, nor could the cover-up of Sandusky’s behavior have gone on as long as it did, without a significant fraction of these staffs functionally condoning the behavior and cover-up through their own inaction.  Just generally require a wholesale house-cleaning.

National Security and Education

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We don’t have enough concerns for our future.  Now a couple of items point out yet another.

The Council for Foreign Relations commissioned a report by an Independent Task Force which was co-chaired by chaired by Joel I. Klein, former head of New York City public schools, and Condoleezza Rice, former US National Security Advisor and Secretary of State.  The report laid out in so many words the failure of our K-12 education system, and the costs to our nation’s ability to survive if we don’t correct these failures.

A member of the task force, ex-Secretary of Education, Margaret Spellings, has one summary:

We don’t have nearly enough people who are capable in the STEM fields: science, technology, engineering and math.  When we think about the modern world of defense, the fact that we don’t have people who are capable to do this work is scary.

And

We don’t have people who know and understand foreign languages and other cultures….

The report itself summarized those concerns and put them in the context of five key aspects to the US’ competitiveness, and by extension, our survival as an independent nation:

Educational failure puts the United States’ future economic prosperity, global position, and physical safety at risk

These, according to the report, consist of economic growth and competitiveness, US physical safety, Intellectual property, US global awareness. and US unity and cohesion.

Moreover, funding isn’t the issue, actual performance is:

[While] the United States invests more in K-12 public education than many other developed countries, its students are ill prepared to compete with their global peers.

The failures, the report says, include these:

  • More than 25 percent of students fail to graduate from high school in four years; for African-American and Hispanic students, this number is approaching 40 percent.
  • In civics, only a quarter of U.S. students are proficient or better on the National Assessment of Educational Progress.
  • Although the United States is a nation of immigrants, roughly eight in ten Americans speak only English and a decreasing number of schools are teaching foreign languages.
  • A recent report by ACT, the not-for-profit testing organization, found that only 22 percent of U.S. high school students met “college ready” standards in all of their core subjects; these figures are even lower for African-American and Hispanic students.
  • The College Board reported that even among college-bound seniors, only 43 percent met college-ready standards, meaning that more college students need to take remedial courses.

For a nation of immigrants, and a nation whose demography requires a large and steady influx of immigrants, these are especially damaging.  How can we expect to remain the nation we have been, retain the cultural imperatives that made us so great, if we can no longer recognize who we are, or teach these to our newcomers—whether newborn or new immigrants?  How can we expect to remain the nation we have been, retain the cultural imperatives that made us so great, if we can no longer recognize where we came from, or identify where we want, as a nation, to go?

Klein added, and this is especially a propos that lack of a civics education, as well as our economic and defense technology competitiveness,

A massively undereducated country is not going to be competitive. It’s not going to be cohesive.

The Task Force offered three high-level policy recommendations:

  • Implement educational expectations and assessments in subjects vital to protecting national security.  Science, technology, and foreign languages are essential—as are creative problem-solving skills and civic awareness.
  • Make structural changes to provide students with good choices.  States and districts should stop locking disadvantaged students into failing schools without any options….  Enhanced choice and competition, in an environment of equitable resource allocation, will fuel the innovation necessary to transform results.
  • Launch a “national security readiness audit” to hold schools and policymakers accountable for results and to raise public awareness.  At the heart of this recommendation is the creation of more meaningful assessments and simulations of student learning and, then, a coordinated, national effort to create targets and repercussions….

The full report, U.S. Education Reform and National Security, is here:

As always, the devil is in the details.  These standards, this accountability, must be strict, rigorous, and followed with prompt reassignment or termination of those teachers or administrators who do not deliver.  The STEM courses not only should be taught at all grades, they should be supplemented at all grades with courses in American history, American civics, and the history of civilization.

And the standards and accountability must be applied to the students, also.  Those who do not perform must be held back until they do measure up.  And that, in addition to enabling our nation’s continued success, is the true path to Johnny’s self-esteem.

Federal Subsidies

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The Department of Education, in its First Year Progress press release concerning the Federal Race to the Top subsidy program, asserts

The 12 state-specific reports provide summaries of accomplishments made and setbacks experienced by states in pursuing reforms around Race to the Top’s four assurance areas—raising academic standards, building robust data systems to improve instruction, supporting great teachers and school leaders….

That’s a lot of bureaucracy, without a lot of actual performance.  To be sure, the rest of the claim from the DoE excerpt above includes “…and turning around persistently low-performing schools.”  Let’s look at DoE’s own individual reports to see how accurate that claim is, along with their introductory claim that

[t]hese twelve states have acted with courage and commitment in taking on ambitious education reform. Their year one work has helped lay the foundation for long-term, statewide improvements centered on doing what’s best for students.

DoE’s assessments of the first year belie those rosy words.  The Wall Street Journal reports that three of those 12 states have been explicitly called out for failure to perform in accordance with the promises they made in order to get this Federal subsidy.

U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan warned New York state…to deliver its promise to overhaul teacher evaluations and develop a comprehensive student data-tracking system or risk losing hundreds of millions of dollars in federal grants.

and

…Hawaii…is now required to get federal approval before spending any of the $75 million it won.

and

Florida has also been criticized.

Florida was criticized for being seriously behind its promised time and budget schedule for getting on with its promised actions.  In fact, Florida has simply issued a string of excuses so weak that even Duncan couldn’t look past them.

I don’t expect perfection out of a government program, or any other human endeavor.  But I do expect far better performance from a government program, funded as it necessarily is, with our money—in this case, with $700 million of our money.  However, as Joy Pullman notes in The Weekly Standard, “the federal government isn’t good at a great many things—particularly education.”

Or at getting efficient results through subsidies generally.