Florida blacks eye boycott over graduation exam

Washington Times ^ | May 17, 2003 | Steve Miller

[Cincinatus' Wife]

"These kids have done what they are supposed to do," he said. "They have gotten the credits they need. They have done community service work. This test is damaging kids psychologically, because there is too much weight to it."

Florida Gov. Jeb Bush yesterday said black leaders' threat to initiate a boycott against the state's major industries will not undermine his support for a requirement that all high school students pass a test to graduate.

[Cincinatus' Wife]

*** "These kids have done what they are supposed to do," he said. "They have gotten the credits they need. They have done community service work. This test is damaging kids psychologically, because there is too much weight to it."***

______________________________________________________________________________

Public education doesn't deliver. Grades do not reflect knowledge learned. Bumper stickers are slick advertising, not reality. Community service does not teach the basics. Testing is being done to salvage the notion that a high school diploma represents some level of achievement.

A cry in the black education wilderness

[Cincinatus' Wife]

"There is more to education than writing an answer," she said. "You have students that can do so many other things, and all should be used to determine if they should be promoted."

Then why in the world are we agonizing over education at all? Why are we putting billions of our taxed dollars into public education?

[lorrainer]

"There is more to education than writing an answer..."

I understood it to be mainly multiple choice, along with the 40% passing grade and multiple take-over opportunities.

[Cincinatus' Wife]

Exactly. And the product reflect the process.

[Rome2000]

We would not look at the boycott to last that long," she said. "We hope the people would put enough pressure on Governor Bush to change the test

LOL!

Talk about delusional.

Leftist teacher union garbage like Wilson caused the problem in the first place.

Some people equate being elected to a series of minor offices with omnipotence.

Wilson and her cronies are about to get slapped in the face with the reality of the publics demand that schools actually give diplomas to people who can read and write.

The students get 5 chances to score a passing grade of 40%, and they still can't pass!

The teachers union is exposed for the corrupt scam it is.

Jeb isn't going to lose one vote over this issue, start the boycott in support of stupidity now!

[Post Toasties]

It's hard to see how anyone who can read can't pass a gimme test like that with that many retries allowed, unless they refuse to apply themselves.

[Jeff Chandler]

The reactions of the parents explain the grades of the students.

[Jeff Chandler]

>>Many students who are in jeopardy of not graduating have already been accepted to colleges ...which shows they have already succeeded on some academic level. <<

Or it might show something else. Could these be N.Y. Times reporters in the making?

[Post Toasties]

I have a suggestion for these parents: Instead of wasting all their energy over a meaningless boycott, they should use it to come up along side their punks' heads until they get serious about cracking books for these tests. I guarantee the result will be more satisfactory.

[Jeff Chandler]

>>Many students who are in jeopardy of not graduating have ...received athletic scholarships...which shows they have already succeeded on some academic level. <<

Now that's funny!

[Cincinatus' Wife]

The teachers union is exposed for the corrupt scam it is. Jeb isn't going to lose one vote over this issue, start the boycott in support of stupidity now!

Bump!

[lorrainer]

Jeb isn't going to lose one vote over this issue, start the boycott in support of stupidity now!

You're right, because he prolly never got any votes from them to begin with. Here in Wisconsin, the teachers' union bought and paid for our new governor, fair and square </sarcasm>.

[nopardons]

Gee, they passed gym, why can't they graduate ? </sarcasm >

[Cincinatus' Wife]

The reactions of the parents explain the grades of the students.

It reads more like the reaction from schools and the NAACP.
A lot of the parents are talking with their feet.

The new face of home schooling - More and more, African-American families redefine 'homeroom'*** It used to be predominantly Southern whites who taught their kids at home rather than sending them to integrated schools. But today, what's happening in this well-groomed, mostly black subdivision points to a new reality: Thousands of African-American parents are home-schooling their kids in a growing backlash against America's public-education system - schools that many parents deem too dangerous, too judgmental, or just bad fits. And they're confronting Pythagoras and Shakespeare in venues far beyond the living room: De facto districts are springing up from suburban churches to YMCAs.***

[FreeManWhoCan]

I live in Miami. These are just a bunch of spoiled punks who were messing around all year and didnt bother to take the test, even though they had 7 CHANCES THROUGHOUT THE YEAR to take the test and retake it. Reading and Math scores are higher since Jeb took over. We Floridains are lucky. We have 2 Bushes watching over us.

[Cincinatus' Wife]

Or it might show something else. Could these be N.Y. Times reporters in the making?

Journalist's sins not an issue of race***It is upon this slim reed that Cohen and others have perched claims that diversity has hurt The New York Times. The charge is otherwise unsupported.

Which is not surprising in the least. Race is its own planet. The pull it exerts warps perspective and distorts truth. So that a celebrity accused of killing his wife becomes tabloid fodder but a black celebrity accused of killing his white wife becomes the fulcrum of a national debate on race. Not domestic violence, mind you, but race.

Similarly, some people would have us believe the Jayson Blair story is less about the need to reexamine newsroom safeguards than about the color of one man's skin. Less about the decline in workplace ethics than about newsrooms forced to hired unqualified blacks.

And if you don't think the weight of that is felt by every black woman and man in the newsroom, you're kidding yourself. Just Wednesday, the managing editor of The Times, who is black, had to defend himself against charges he had mentored Blair. Mentored.

I've frequently said that to be a black professional is to be always on probation, every day expected to prove that you belong. People always ask me what I mean. This is what I mean. This, exactly.

In recent years, white writers Dennis Love of The Sacramento Bee, David Cragin and Eric Drudis of The San Jose Mercury News, Stephen Glass of The New Republic and Mike Barnicle of The Boston Globe have all been charged with plagiarism or fabrication. Yet to my knowledge, neither Cohen, nor Sullivan nor anybody else wrote stories linking them to journalism's history of discrimination. Nobody asked whether that history has forced editors to hire unqualified white men.

Maybe they'll write that essay next time it happens.

No, I won't hold my breath.***

[Jeff Chandler]

>>In recent years, white writers Dennis Love of The Sacramento Bee, David Cragin and Eric Drudis of The San Jose Mercury News, Stephen Glass of The New Republic and Mike Barnicle of The Boston Globe have all been charged with plagiarism or fabrication. <<


Did those writers have histories of terribly poor work spanning years after which they were promoted?

The worst aspect of racial quotas and set-asides is that they taint the qualified and unqualified alike.

[Cincinatus' Wife]

And that's where his argument falls flat.

[LibertarianInExile]

Two reactions:

1) Why the HELL did the Florida House try to let dummies who can't get through the FCAT into community colleges? The high schools who didn't teach them should be paying for the remediation courses to get them to graduate--that money shouldn't be coming out of the community college budgets for students that deserve to be there learning higher concepts than high school level crap.

2) I PRAY the NAACP and Florida's other liberal black groups organize a boycott. As long as they start with ending the Black College Weekend in Daytona and the Heritage Bowl in Tampa while the FCAT is in place, I'll be happy. Knowing those events won't be screwing up traffic and producing a skyrocketing crime rate in those areas will be a dream come true. Hell, Daytona might start a ballot initiative to get FCAT into the Florida Constitution.

[libertylover]

Many students who are in jeopardy of not graduating have already been accepted to colleges and some have received athletic scholarships, Mr. Curry said, which shows they have already succeeded on some academic level.

If they can't pass a test that requires only 40% correct answers, I wonder what kind of scores they make on the SAT? My guess is they have someone else take the SAT for them.

Mr. Curry should be outraged at educators who are committing a form of fraud when they issue passing grades to students who then can't pass the state test.