Posted on 11/24/2009 10:26:39 AM PST by LibWhacker
In Henrico County schools last year, African-American students made up 36 percent of the enrollment and 7 percent of the children who received gifted education.
Chesterfield and Hanover counties saw similar patterns the last school year.
Area school officials who provided the numbers acknowledge the disparities and say they've dug in with task forces, targeted programs and studies.
But last week, Gov. Timothy M. Kaine put the issue in the spotlight with an order to analyze disproportionately low representation of minority students in gifted education.
(Excerpt) Read more at 2.timesdispatch.com ...
“But last week, Gov. Timothy M. Kaine put the issue in the spotlight with an order to analyze disproportionately low representation of minority students in gifted education.”
Uh... just a guess here, but possibly low numbers of gifted “minority” students.
And, let’s face it, we’re not talking about Asians here, and nor is Gov. Kaine, come to that.
Of course, the school system has 2 options. Kick out as many gifted whiteys, asians and other non-blacks as needed so that the the number of gifted blacks in the program is equal percent-wise to the number of blacks in the school system or admit enough non-gifted blacks into the program so that the same goal is achieved without kicking anyone out. Of course, the effectiveness of the "Gifted" program is diluted since it will have to be dumbed down to keep up with the large number of ungifted students attending it.
Another dumbing down affirmative action programs. Then when these students enrolled in the program due to "flexible screening" start getting F's the NCAA will be back screaming racism. Then the gifted program will be dumbed down so these students can pass. Then kids with affluent parents who want to achieve will flee the public school system for private school. In the Richmond area, people move to Henrico and Chesterfield counties to escape the Richmond public schools. Even in very nice parts of City of Richmond itself the white kids go to private schools leaving the public schools almost all black. Of course, the real reason is unmentionable: the whole anti-education attitude of African-American youths who think being smart is acting like "whitey".
We ought to start a class action law suit against ALgore and recover the $100+ million he is reputed to have made off this hoax.
I was in AP courses (1969-1972). AP is so watered down today that anyone can enroll in it. They acually have “remedial tutorials” for AP students....LMAO!!
The conclusion will be, of course, a change in the definition of “gifted.”
BS. or for the bilingual Freepers, El Toro Poo-poo
If we were to expand these statistics, they would have us believe that 19.4% of the population is 'gifted'. Really? 19.4% of the Black population are considered 'gifted'? If I said that nearly 1:5 white students were 'gifted' I'd be lamblasted as a racist fraud, and justifiably so.
So, is the author a liar, or a racist? Or, do the definitions of 'gifted' as the term applies to a minority mean 'average' when compared to the general population?
Actually I will: I had a friend who taught 3rd grade in CA. He said that the policy of his district was to get minority students into the gifted programs NO MATTER WHAT.
Since they cannot, by law, give IQ tests in CA schools they had to use other factors. Outcome: The best-dressed black children were abrorbed into the program on the thought that if their parent(singular, always) was making the effort to dress their chillun nicely then that demonstrated parental involvement and thus the odds of success were increased for that student.
It had nothing to do with merit, intellect, or grades, and of course the limited slots meant that for every nicely-dressed black child brought into the program a genuinely smart kid was expelled.
Many so-called 'gifted' kids work extremely hard and their achievements are hardly gifts.
The concept of equality and freedom is so lost on dems. To them, it is race, pander, race, pander, and then some more race. God I am sick of these aholes.
Hey Stephen I got better story
When I was going to school in North Hollywood some La Raza people got tick off because Asian students were getting better grades for AP and SATS score and so they make lots of ruckous call it racist they threated sue the district so what happen
They kick Asians out and brought in Latinos in on some class placement turn out they got lower score than Asians
So they brought back the following year
Sadly, gifted programs in most districts are stacked with kids who aren’t gifted, just usually high achievers who got in because there weren’t enough gifted kids to put in or because of pushy parents who wanted their children to be in the programs.
IMHO, the main problem is black culture, which is thoroughly anti-intellectual, and which denegates academic achievement,or to use terms that used to be fashionable admires “right-brained” abilities and disdains “left-brained” abilities. Jews, of course, are the opposite. So lots of black athletes and few Jewish ones. Now I have fit musical talents into this scheme. Do you think it washes if I compare a musician like Louis Armstrong with one like George Gershwin?
If asians were counted as minorities the numbers would work out better.
I think we all know what’s going to happen.
1. Make the entrance tests/criteria easier to increase the numbers of a certain group.
2. When that fails eliminate the test since it was racist anyway.
3. Set a quota requiring a minimum number of the desired group.
4. When the desired group flunks out disproportionately, make the subject matter easier.
Why don’t they just take the remedial course and rename it “advanced”. That would solve all their problems.
“They kick Asians out and brought in Latinos in on some class placement turn out they got lower score than Asians
So they brought back the following year”
Seven, I have learned a few things over the years....
1) study habits trump natural intelligence 2 to 1
2)It appears that certain Asians have an aptitude for mathematics.....they also have a strong work ethic.
Like I stated previously, AP ain’t what it used to be.
In 1976, I moved to 5747 Laurel Canyon Bl. North Hollywood. (luxury apartment)
I understand this is now a ghetto. Sad to hear.
Great hearing from you!
Be well!
Look at the family structure.
There, I'll accept a 10% residual on the millions saved.
Part of the problem is how the “gifted” program is used.
For example, a “gifted” program can be used to entice good students into poorer-performing schools. In that case, students already IN the school might be passed over for students outside the school, simply because the good students already IN the school are already pulling up the school’s numbers. Since the poorer-performing schools are invariably minority-majority, that would discriminate against minorities.
On the flip side, a lot of parents might use specialty schools to get their children out of problem-schools they are assigned to. Since white families are more likely to try to move their children out of “problem schools”, this would mean the applicant base for specialty programs would be skewed away from minority students.
In our county, to go to a specialty school you need transportation to feeder-bus routes. Children of parents who have flexibility, or children who have a parent NOT working, would be more likely to be able to take part in these “gifted” programs, which might skew things away from minorities where they might be single-parent households, or where the job schedules just don’t allow for transportation to common bus collection points.
There is also the issue that white parents might feel more motivated to support their children in being “gifted”, while minorities may not see the advantage or the point.
All these factors could reduce minority participation, BEFORE you get to where you would evaluate the participants.
BTW, I’m certain that part of the reason for “gifted” programs is that liberal whites who tend to control the process want a way to get their kids out of minority classrooms. I’ve seen them make speeches at hearings, struggling not to make the obvious statement that they just don’t want their kids going to the minority school where gangs and drugs are interfering with education.
I know a kid took AP test he told me that known they dumb it down for everybody
Really sad
I think the pattern remains. Armstrong was a fine performer. Gershwin was a composer. Different skill sets. Performance is a more right brained effort, composing is more left brained.
My personal, anecdotal experience is that I do better as a performer playing the trumpet than attempting to compose music. As a software engineer, I'm capable of composing thousands of lines of code in my head. It takes hours...sometimes days to get my fingertips to commit that code to actual files. I enjoy considerable ease in conceptualizing 3D structures and spinning them any way I desire in my head. That makes a variety of analytic tasks much easier. Eventually, that analog exercise on the right side of the brain needs to be expressed in a left brained manner to convert to a paycheck.
Stupid, lazy and undisciplined. Uninterested in learning or behaving, although that pose probably actually is a defense mechanism to hide the fact that the vast majority are INCAPABLE of learning or behaving. It looks “cooler”, I suppose, to act like you don’t care.
There’s your “analysis”, Governor: short and sweet and TRUE—send me my check.
How about lack of support for academic effort and achievement within the Black community as the cause of the low numbers of ‘gifted’ Black students?
I’m going to go against the grain on this one - there is something to gain here, and the cost is likely to be small, depending.
My kids are all in GATE (Gifted and Talented Education), the local term for it. The district designates kids as GATE depending, in the case of the vast majority, on test scores in the California State tests. SOME kids can get in with various minority privelege options if their tests don’t quite meet the standard, but parents have to request it. Very few do. From what I have seen you will not get a rush of black kids into something like GATE. Parents and kids will have to be pressed into it, and its going to be a fight on that front.
There is no limit here for GATE or Honors classes in middle schools and high schools, because, frankly, there is no extra money provided for them. If anything these kids are way cheaper to educate than the rest. If you have enough Honors kids to separate out into a class then such a class is provided. If the class size isn’t quite enough, then some likely non-GATE kids are offered slots. It seems to work.
What happens to the somewhat above-average kids who get into GATE and Honors, or the “fillers” for Honors classes ? Well, its generally very good for them. Their grades may end up lower than they would in regular classes, where they would be the stars, but they learn a heck of a lot more. They also work in an environment dominated by high performing white and Asian kids. One of the big problems with black people is the anti-intellectual attitudes and the lack of discipline. These kids, being a minority in these classes among quite driven kids, pretty much get these problems driven out of them. “Peer effects” are very powerful.
Whats the downside for the rest ? Low or none as far as I can see. If the “best of the worst” is selected, one is getting the quite well-behaved non-disruptive slice of the black population. Its the behavior for the most part that keeps regular classes in chaos. And it does not bring down the level of the classes if there are only a few of these kids in them (say no more than 10%). There are always duds in every Honors class, who are smart and can do well in a screening exam but are otherwise unmotivated. These kids tend to be better than the duds, they tend to be motivated at least.
The key is numbers and selection. One needs a critical mass of the truly gifted or at least the way above average, and an objective selection of the “best of the worst”.
You’re right, we’re not allowed to talk about correlation between single parent homes and student achievement.
We’re not allowed to talk about parenting, upbringing, or any of that. we’re not allowed to make value judgements. We’re not allowed to say that children do best when raised by their mother and father together. We’re not allowed to make correlations between juvenile delinquency and the numbers of those kids who come from fatherless homes.
And, of course, we can’t talk about a seeming lack of respect or encouragement of academic achievement in too many people in the black community. That would be racist. Yes there are people of all races who don’t give a damn their kids schools, but it seems worse in the black community. But we’re not allowed to talk about any of that, so who knows. We’re not allowed to talk about a “ghetto” culture which abhors education.
It’s interesting to talk about contributing factors to social problems, but it’s frustrating when some obvious issues are not allowed to be discussed. Then the liberals stand around and assume it must be racism if there aren’t “enough” minority kids in certain academic programs.
But nobody says anything if a mostly white school has a mostly black basketball team.
I have read that there is a correlation between mathematical and musical ability.
Politics. I was a teacher in the ‘50s and ‘60s after Sputnik and before the passing of the Federal and Secondary Education Act. For a decade there was a great emphasis on science and math education. I taught math, Many people were flummoxed by the New Math and the New Science but I learned more than the kids did by studying them in National Science Foundation sumer workshops. For the first time, I “got” the concept of sequences and so understood the Calculus in a way I had not learned it before, when theytaught a more geometric approach. I also learned a way to teach geometry from a symbolic logic. Etc.
Well, a lot of that went away and the new matterial was drained out of the textbooks becaus they had a whole new group of kids—the kids—to handle, and most of them could not handle it. Indeed, their teachers were even less prepared to teach it than some of the white middle-age teachers had been. All felt as inadequate as I would feel after the PCs first entered the schools.
There is no American institution as political as the public—the government schools. Administration is no more than a form of appointive politics. So you give the politicians and their clients what they want or you don’t stay employed. We get “dumbing down” because that is the way administrators keep their jobs and publishers sell their books to schools. Just compare a Dolchiani textbook in 1965 with one in 1975/85. Just compare a geoetry textbook in the ‘50s with one in the ‘60s and then one in the ‘70s. Both those in the ‘50s and in the ‘60s had a kind of rigor, although different rigors, because of different “languages.” Those of the ‘late ‘70s lacked rigor. This is what the integration of the black population into the schools did to math and science.
I'm not gifted, so I'm going to need some help with your math...
From the article:
African-American students made up 36 percent of the enrollment and 7 percent of the children who received gifted education
So, what the article explictly states that 7 out of 36 African American students are 'gifted'
7/36 = 19.444%
Cow poop.
The term “gifted” should be banned unless the terms “moron”, “idiot”, “retard”, or “dumbell” can be used to describe the opposite end of the bell curve.
I think they have already discredited “The Bell Curve” in our society of pseudo-science.
70 IQ is considered “gifted” for minorities. How’s that grab you. My dog could score that high.
Wouldn't that be actually Toro caca
No, it doesn't. It says that 36% of the total enrollment is African-American. It further says that 7% of the enrollment in gifted programs is African-American.
What they are trying to get at is if AA representation in the total population is 36% then, all things being equal, one would expect that their representation in the gifted classes would be around 36%.
But all things aren't equal.
Yeah, especially when it is mandated that everyone must be above average.
“From the article:
African-American students made up 36 percent of the enrollment and 7 percent of the children who received gifted education. So, what the article explictly states that 7 out of 36 African American students are ‘gifted’
7/36 = 19.444%”
Thats not correct. AAs are 38% of the students but receive only 7% of the gifted money. They want AAs to get 38% of the money since that is their proportion of the population.
For example: In a population of 100 students, 38 are black (38%). Of the 100 students, 10 are considered gifted, but only 1 is black. If the amount of money spent on gifted students is $100, only 10% is spent on blacks since that is their percent of the gifted. They see this as unfair since they are 38% of the total population.
Bottom line, they cant do math either.
Hope I’m not nit-picking ... but do you really mean 36% or 38%. I see where the population says 36% in the article, is your 38% a typo?
Back when grades actually meant something, a vast majority of the class worked to earn a ‘C’ or (average). They expected ~65-70% of the students to earn a C. Conversely, the number of ‘D’ students roughly equalied the number of ‘B’ students, and the number of ‘F’ students equalled the number of ‘A’ students.
Honor students (A + B grade) students were in the upper 10% of the population. and ‘A’ students were in the top ~4-5% of the distribution.
Thus, if you were in an honor’s class; you had to be at least a ‘B’ student; then MAYBE you would get in.
That's Hodar's math.
We are “not allowed” to discuss things because we have accepted premises, allowed ourselves to be intimidated, are cowardly and fear peer pressure, reprisals, threats. We want social acceptance over what we know to be the truth. In this way we are no different than the spineless politicians we rail against. It is hard to say things that are not popularly accepted, but by shutting up we lose our chance and even our right to shape our reality and our culture. We are bullied, but partly to blame for it perhaps.
It’s nearly inconceivable to me that gifted black children in districts that have gifted programs are being disproportionately ignored. To the contrary, I believe gifted black children are rarely overlooked in suburban schools such as Chesterfield.
I doubt there is a higher priority among the faculty/administration than identifying gifted minorities and giving them all the school has to offer.
Having sat on many admissions committees I can tell you there is no way a gifted black student is ignored. To the contrary.
Lyndon Johnson's "Great Society" demolished the black family structure in a mere two generations.
I doubt that the KKK could have designed and executed a plan more destructive to blacks than the one liberals came up with.
“Hope I’m not nit-picking ... but do you really mean 36% or 38%. I see where the population says 36% in the article, is your 38% a typo?”
It wasn’t a typo, just poor reading comprehension.
“Honor students (A + B grade) students were in the upper 10% of the population. and ‘A’ students were in the top ~4-5% of the distribution”
Remember when you had to have straight A’s to get into schools like Harvard? Standards are among the first casualties of the diversity movement.
Tim Kaine is packing to leave the Executive Mansion and seems to have misplaced his relevance.
In full disclosure, my son is in the gifted program in Chesterfield. I know it sounds like I’m bragging (and maybe I am), but since he was so far ahead of his classmates, it was that or private school.
And in complete full disclosure: blond hair, blue eyes, and he shares his dad’s pasty white skin.
What if he goes looking , but doesn't like what he finds?
Will we see a dramatic scene of him pounding his fists on front door at the offices at NEA/VEA and shouting "Damn them... Damn them all to HELL!"?
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