Free Republic
Browse · Search
News/Activism
Topics · Post Article

Skip to comments.

School Data Finds Pattern of Inequality Along Racial Lines
New York Times ^ | March 21, 2014 | MOTOKO RICH

Posted on 03/21/2014 12:27:45 PM PDT by reaganaut1

Racial minorities are more likely than white students to be suspended from school, to have less access to rigorous math and science classes, and to be taught by lower-paid teachers with less experience, according to comprehensive data released Friday by the Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights.

In the first analysis in nearly 15 years of information from all of the country’s 97,000 public schools, the Education Department found a pattern of inequality on a number of fronts, with race as the dividing factor.

Black students are suspended and expelled at three times the rate of white students. A quarter of high schools with the highest percentage of black and Latino students do not offer any Algebra II courses, while a third of those schools do not have any chemistry classes. Black students are more than four times as likely as white students — and Latino students are twice as likely — to attend schools where one out of every five teachers does not meet all state teaching requirements.

“Here we are, 60 years after Brown v. Board of Education, and the data altogether still show a picture of gross inequity in educational opportunity,” said Daniel J. Losen, director of the Center for Civil Rights Remedies at the University of California at Los Angeles’s Civil Rights Project.

In his budget request to Congress, President Obama has proposed a new phase of his administration’s Race to the Top competitive grant program, which would give $300 million in incentives to states and districts that put in place programs intended to close some of the educational gaps identified in the data.

...

One of the striking statistics to emerge from the data, based on information collected during the 2011-12 academic year, was that even as early as preschool, black students face harsher

(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...


TOPICS: Culture/Society; US: New York
KEYWORDS: bellcurve; blacks; education; newyork; newyorkcity; newyorkslimes; newyorktimes; race; schooldiscipline; schoolsuspensions
Navigation: use the links below to view more comments.
first previous 1-2021-4041-6061-8081-84 next last
To: reaganaut1

The blacks are also more likely to have no father at home, to be classroom discipline problems, to have low IQs.


41 posted on 03/21/2014 1:03:31 PM PDT by truth_seeker (Nissan)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: FredZarguna

“The soft bigotry of low expectations”...


42 posted on 03/21/2014 1:04:04 PM PDT by TurboZamboni (Marx smelled bad and lived with his parents .)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 17 | View Replies]

To: FredZarguna

What is the cause and what is the effect?

Could it be that unwise use of brains dampens down so called “intelligence”?

It strikes me as very unwise to reduce intelligence to a one number quantity. If even psychological sciences were done justice, intelligence might be a ten value vector. And none of it would state what wisdom is.


43 posted on 03/21/2014 1:04:52 PM PDT by HiTech RedNeck (Embrace the Lion of Judah and He will roar for you and teach you to roar too. See my page.)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 39 | View Replies]

To: cuban leaf
I agree with you...ONLY to an extent.

Money ISN'T everything or the ONLY thing.

You could give a hood rat $10 million and they'd still be a hood rat. They'd just be a hood rat with $10 million.

Its about attitude. Dr. Ben Carson didn't come from affluence and yet he succeeded.

When people glorify the gangster lifestyle, you get more gangsters.
When you vilify success, you get less success.

Show me a child with at least one parent active in their life, trying to keep them on the straight and narrow, trying to teach them ethics and I'll show you a child who has a 90% chance of overcoming their lack of income.

Show me a child who comes from affluence, whose parents are degenerates and I'll show you a child who has a 90% chance of self destructing somewhere along the line.

44 posted on 03/21/2014 1:06:33 PM PDT by mountn man (The Pleasure You Get From Life Is Equal To The Attitude You Put Into It)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 28 | View Replies]

To: reaganaut1

It seems like there are penalties for having three thousand years of advancing culture with resultant social -cultural evolution with resulting technological and economic progress. It just isnt fair for people with advanced understanding of what makes an advanced culture and having learned the lessons to do that should advance further than those with only 2-300 years.


45 posted on 03/21/2014 1:06:39 PM PDT by amnestynone
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: PapaBear3625

“As they get older, young black men commit homicide at a rate around five times the non-black rate. So?”

Obviously because their schools lack Algebra II classes.


46 posted on 03/21/2014 1:07:52 PM PDT by Brooklyn Attitude (Things are only going to get worse.)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 4 | View Replies]

To: MrB
And the followup conclusions include that if they just had more money from the taxpayers, this could all be leveled out.
47 posted on 03/21/2014 1:08:44 PM PDT by NEMDF
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 9 | View Replies]

To: reaganaut1

Government school is child abuse!


48 posted on 03/21/2014 1:09:28 PM PDT by Navy Patriot (Join the Democrats, it's not Fascism when WE do it, and the Constitution and law mean what WE say.)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: reaganaut1

“black students face harsher discipline than other students.”
________________________

How do we know if it’s harsher unless data was able to compare documented reasons why students were suspended in order to determine if the students are being given similar discipline for comparable behavior? This comparison includes socials skills sufficient for the offending student to indicate contrition and the intention to comply in the future when confronted, skills which fatherless children might not have learned.

________________________

“To see that young African-American students — or babies, as I call them — are being suspended from pre-K programs at such horrendous rates is deeply troubling,” said Leticia Smith-Evans, interim director of education practice at the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund.

“It’s incredible to think about or fathom what pre-K students could be doing to get suspended from schools,” she added.”
_______________________

Why didn’t she do more than “think about” or “fathom” the reasons for which such young children were being suspended before she implied unfair treatment? We know statistically there are more single parent households (for now, the rates are changing with other races increasing) among African Americans and this could well drive behavioral difficulties as very young children transition to school environments. It’s a disservice to those whom they claim to care about to “not know” the reasons and just opine on what needs to change.

MOre schools which have majority African American students in the population are lacking the more rigorous class loads compared with white schools. How many of those majority black schools are administered by black leadership and staffed by black teachers? Are black educators and adminsitrators preventing black students from succeeding due to inherent racial bias?

Are those schools more likely to be staffed by less qualified teachers? Yes. But the people crying racism are likely to be the same people who hired the less qualified teachers. Schools of Education and the public school systems are frequently pressured to increase the quota of black teachers regardless of qualifications in order to “look like the population” and avoid the accusation that they were bigoted in hiring decisions. But if more underqualified teachers are hired to make quotas, it’s then bigotry?

In some cases, schools in which math and English skills are lagging among the student body (regardless of race), they strategically choose to focus on these elements of literacy instead of courses in Science or ALgebra. I observed a science class in an all white school (5th grade) in a privileged city during which time the white teacher repurposed the science class to teach literacy and counting skills instead. When I politely asked about her strategy (avoided saying “Why aren’t you teaching science?) she snapped “these kids are 1-2 years behind in basic reading comprehension because of Whole Language. They aren’t ready for science content!”

Looking at the data, black students in many urban poor areas perform two grade levels behind their peers (other races) so forcing them into Algebra or Chemistry classes is counter productive and likely to discourage them. Think about that - two grade levels behind. Attempts at school reform are aimed at bringing their performance up to that of their peers - is it any wonder they are not taking the same coursework? That’s not denying them access, that is offering coursework appropriate to their needs. So tailoring courses to meet remedial student needs is now “institutional racism?” How this kind of propaganda must breed the deepest resentment in parents and communities! Then students are not hired at the same rates upon graduation and the community can then point to these fake “disparities” in “access to education” and say a) if they had the same classes they could compete with their peers and b) the disparity in hiring is corporate institutional racism. That last one comes into play again when parents lobby to force school districts to graduate failing students to avoid disparity in graduation rates which are framed as more...institutional racism.

Try to set standards to identify students who aren’t keeping up and be charged with racism. Failing to admit underqualified students into competitive colleges, racism. Fail to promote underperforming employees, racism. Increased layoff or firings of underperforming black employees, racism. Not voting for an unqualified candidate to take political office, racism. Criticizing under performing or otherwise incompetent politicians, racism.

The Racism Card: Don’t Leave Home WIthout It.

And in the meantime, they seem to be doing NOTHING to help those kids they claim to care about.


49 posted on 03/21/2014 1:09:35 PM PDT by ransomnote
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: MrB
"Unfortunately, with leftists in power, the assumption is that any behavioral differences are due to external or environmental or societal influences and not the responsibility of those actually performing the behavior." Then the leftists should heed their own instincts and start addressing this problem of "disproportionate school discipline and educational opportunities" by examining what I feel is the foundation of this issue--which would be the destruction of the black and other minority community's family structure. A meaningful policy change for the liberals would be to stop promoting welfare benefits for single parents, which has resulted in 70% of black babies being born to single mothers. That's just incredible to me. I'm sure issues like this won't be discussed publicly, however. It's more provocative to imply that the data shows how racist and unfair American society is.
50 posted on 03/21/2014 1:09:41 PM PDT by MNGal
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 9 | View Replies]

To: PGR88

“What the report doesn’t mention is that the majority of black students are attending schools with black teachers and often black administrators.”

Duh, that is the definition of “Disadvantaged”


51 posted on 03/21/2014 1:10:16 PM PDT by dsrtsage (One half of all people have below average IQ. In the US the number is 54%)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 3 | View Replies]

To: reaganaut1

You also have much lower academic attainment among blacks—so is it surprising they have less access to classes they’re not qualified for? That they thus might have less senior and less qualified teachers for their lower-level classes?


52 posted on 03/21/2014 1:10:49 PM PDT by 9YearLurker
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: MNGal

Part of the reason that sheeperal leftists won’t “address” the problems caused by welfare is that they have all their sense of righteousness wrapped up in their belief that they are “helping people” by advocating for welfare.

Ever notice they won’t discuss these policies based on whether they work or not, but only on what they are intended to do?


53 posted on 03/21/2014 1:13:15 PM PDT by MrB (The difference between a Humanist and a Satanist - the latter admits whom he's working for)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 50 | View Replies]

To: reaganaut1
Racial minorities

Racial minorities?

Chinese?

Indian (Asian)?

Japanese?

Thomas Sowell does an excellent analysis, reprinted in his Thomas Sowell Reader, in which he shows that preferences for "minority" groups have not worked as intended, no matter where in the world they have been tried. One very negative side effect is that the size of the backlash from those excluded is far larger than the size of the "disadvantaged" group which was given preferential treatment.

The Thomas Sowell Reader

54 posted on 03/21/2014 1:15:42 PM PDT by BwanaNdege
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: Leaning Right

“Here’s the bottom line. On a percentage basis, blacks are suspended more than whites. That’s because on a percentage basis, blacks misbehave more than whites.”

If the study conducted were to have any value there needs to be a comparison between race, misbehavior and punishment. Is a black kid more likely to be suspended when he beats the heck out of someone than a white kid? Without that information this is just a political document. Also, the report suggests that the school admin are racists. I would love to see them start firing those racist teachers and watch union heads explode.


55 posted on 03/21/2014 1:16:47 PM PDT by Brooklyn Attitude (Things are only going to get worse.)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 18 | View Replies]

To: PapaBear3625

This is why the knockout game is ok!!! We deserve it!!


56 posted on 03/21/2014 1:17:52 PM PDT by albie
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 4 | View Replies]

To: reaganaut1

even by preschool these little kids show the effects of having no fathers and vapid clueless mothers and a chaotic unstructured homelife with no authority figures

teachers who deal with these kids are heroes


57 posted on 03/21/2014 1:19:21 PM PDT by silverleaf (Age takes a toll: Please have exact change)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: reaganaut1

The NYT assumes a reality that doesn’t exist and then when reality disagrees with their assumption they conclude that it’s reality that is wrong not their assumption.


58 posted on 03/21/2014 1:20:48 PM PDT by aquila48 (tota)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: cuban leaf

“Maybe if we bussed kids from poor neighborhoods to schools in rich neighborhoods and vice versa...”

We had busing in Brooklyn when I was growing up. I got out of school late one day (detention), got on the bus that was then full of urban yoots and got stabbed. Lesson learned.


59 posted on 03/21/2014 1:27:21 PM PDT by Brooklyn Attitude (Things are only going to get worse.)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 29 | View Replies]

To: reaganaut1

Your facts are racist.


60 posted on 03/21/2014 1:33:02 PM PDT by Dagnabitt (Amnesty is Treason. Its agents are Traitors.)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]


Navigation: use the links below to view more comments.
first previous 1-2021-4041-6061-8081-84 next last

Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.

Free Republic
Browse · Search
News/Activism
Topics · Post Article

FreeRepublic, LLC, PO BOX 9771, FRESNO, CA 93794
FreeRepublic.com is powered by software copyright 2000-2008 John Robinson