Posted on 12/23/2003 2:33:49 PM PST by NormsRevenge
Edited on 04/12/2004 6:02:14 PM PDT by Jim Robinson. [history]
SACRAMENTO (AP) - Many California schools that are successful by state standards have been marked as failing under federal rules because subgroups of students - such as minorities or learning disabled - didn't meet federal academic goals, according to a study released Tuesday.
(Excerpt) Read more at sacbee.com ...
Maybe someone is lying to them. My guess would be it's the people telling them that their schools are "robust."
Sure don't seem fair, does it?
This is very interesting, because essentially it is a form of federally-enforced affirmative action. It's not good enough for a school's average student to be proficient at such-and-such level; the school must measure subgroups, including racial subgroups and the average student from those subgroups must *also* attain a certain level. If not, the school is sanctioned.
Question: isn't this what lefties are supposed to want? What's their complaint, exactly?
"When you pair up schools with equal achievement overall, the one that is serving more diverse students is more likely to be sanctioned by Washington," Fuller said.
Only if the school serving more diverse students does a poor job educating those students.
Again, what's the complaint?
"Both systems are valid, but there's a sense here in California that the API system is fairer given the diversity here," Padia said.
It's "fairer" to look only at the average student and not take into account racial subgroups, or try to force schools to increase the scores of racial subgroups as well? Ok, I guess, but that's awfully strange seeing as how *usually* lefties call this color-blind approach unfair (when they are defending affirmative action).
It's difficult not to conclude that lefties' support of affirmative action is a bit soft: they like affirmative action as long as no actual responsibility goes along with it. Giving less-qualified applicants a college spot for no reason other than their skin color, in the name of "affirmative action" is good; but sanctioning a school which educates its black students to a lower level than it educates its non-black students is bad. (Because it holds teachers responsible for holding up their end of the affirmative-action bargain, by actually doing some fruitful work, instead of just promotin' kids & giving them undeserved slots...)
Fuller's study recommends that education officials shift focus from punishing schools that don't make the benchmarks to a plan that rewards schools that are doing well.
This is absolutely equivalent to saying "increase the funding for all schools". Yawn. Even if this were done, then the schools which don't make the benchmarks would consider themselves "punished", and complain about it, because they don't get the "rewards" that the good schools do. In other words, nothing would change, other than a larger all around education budget.
1) It keeps them from shuffling kids around and making a school look better by mixing in some high achievers in order to mask the miserable performance among the ill-served groups that they're supposed to be helping.
2) It actually measures how well the school is doing. It's ok to give that concept lip service, but to actually follow through? Never.
Sort of. The article does indeed contain the typical "minorities have less potential" hidden assumption of the sensitive PC left, to be sure.
"You have a calculator with only add, subtract, divide, and multiply functions. How would you go about determining the square root of 5?"
"I'm not good at math. I took math last year."
"You could study it on your own, you know."
"Why?"
He held forth on politics, geography (he knew less than nothing) and why the Islamists hate us. He got it all wrong, with tremendously shallow, mostly invalid reasoning--and incorrect history.
About to graduate from California's schools---one of the "leaders of the future."
--Boris
You think thats bad? You should have seen some of my college professors. I was a government and politics major, some of my teachers would lecture about business and the need for regulations and about the economy. Before I had become a Gov and Pol major, I had majored in business management, One of my teachers was debating me in class one day, and I asked them point blank if they had ever taken an economics course, the answer was no, ever taken a business class, again, the answer was no.
The killer line, "So everything you know about economics and business comes from the NY Times?" My teacher conceded that she "may not be up to par on some things regarding business, but that the "you can learn alot from the times".
Our district is made up of one central K-12 school, maybe 300 students. We also have 7 village schools with about 30 students in each school. Our community is 200 miles from nx nearest school, so they can bus students. Our small school passed the AYP tests, the only school in the district to do so. So what are they doing? Changing from terra novas and benchmarks to easier tests; again politics.
Here is the biggest difference why some schools pass and other fail miserably. FAMILY. Large majority of our kids have strong families and support at home. Teaching then becomes a pleasure.
Go to a dysfunctional village and you will see the difference. I just wish there was a method to evaluate parenting skills; but the politicals could never do that, lose votes.
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