Posted on 08/26/2015 5:22:51 AM PDT by HomerBohn
As our nation’s public schools begin yet another year’s exercise in futility, read about the abject failure of the Pinellas County (Florida) School Board that is trapping black students in failure factories “within six square miles in one of Florida’s most affluent counties!” An exhaustive investigation by the TAMPA BAY TIMES reveals that “Ninety-five percent of black students tested at the schools are FAILING reading or math, making the black neighborhoods in southern Pinellas County the most concentrated site of academic failure in all of Florida.” Continuing on, teacher turnover is so critical that “some children cycle through a DOZEN instructors in one year.” Some of the teachers just walked off of their jobs and over half asked for transfers out of these five schools: Melrose, ranked by Florida’s Department of Education as its worst elementary school; Fairmount Park comes in at No. 2; Maximo No. 10; Lakewood at No. 12, and Campbell Park at No. 15.
Black children are FAILING AT OUTRAGEOUS RATES say TIMES staff reporters in their outstanding news story. Their research traced and reviewed “tens of thousands of pages of district documents, millions of computer records and interviewed parents” to compare the Pinellas School Board’s effectiveness with other boards all over the state. “Eight in 10 [students] fail reading, nine in 10 fail math.” For crying out loud, Mike Grego, school superintendent. Get your head out of its very dark place and DO SOMETHING, ANYTHING!
Grego carries advanced degrees in Educational Leadership. Hello. Erratic funding of black schools, ending integration, solid slippage in achievement scores over the past ten years make for a dismal achievement record for these elected officials and their administrative staff! The huge salaries paid to administrators who pile up degrees in education to get themselves out of the classroom is a big problem, IMHO. Why are these people drawing big salaries given their pathetic record? How would they like their own children to suffer in this educational fraud, year after year? Why is the State of Florida allowing any of this district’s supervisors to receive taxpayer funded dollars? Where is the Department of Education’s head in all of this? If Black Lives Matter, shouldn’t the left be yammering that the Education of Blacks does too?
But Pinellas County isn’t America’s only school district from Hell. Years ago, a long-tenured high school science teacher at a Chicago inner city school told me he and his fellow teachers always signed up for 8 a.m. classes. I was complaining because I, as a non-union teacher, kept getting skewed schedules. “Why would you do that?” I asked him. “We don’t care if they don’t show up on time,” he answered. In other words, he liked not having to teach. He said many of his black students just didn’t show up until around 10:30 a.m. and that was just fine with him.
The truant guard was so overwhelmed he wouldn’t get to the laggards for days and that was a good thing for these inner city teachers. But the teachers are not the problem. Can you envision for yourselves just what it’s like to be trapped in these classrooms day after day? You get little to no help from administration. Your students come into class with all kinds of electronic gear and if you say something they don’t like, they put you up on youtube or other social media. You have a literal fear for your own life, your car, your belongings. No matter how much or how little homework you assign, count on many students not doing a thing. They get their federal dollars and educational perks either way so they don’t care. Our students maintain so little knowledge in their “knowledge storeroom” that you have to reinvent their wheels of background data over and over.
Here, in my opinion, are just some of things that must be done:
1.) Get the federal government OUT of our schools. Stop their unfunded mandates, their money payouts for indoctrination of our young people with liberal, progressive mantras, many of which come right out of Communist playbooks for destruction of America. 2.) Stop with the social engineering, the political correctness, the silly academic mind games. 3.) Protect our schools from frivolous lawsuits that drain much needed taxpayer dollars. 4.) Get rid of outrageous administrative bloat, salary pay scales, silly, endless rounds of pointless, “make nice” meetings. Make these people do something for a change; make them go into the classrooms to help out our suffering teachers, at least with student discipline and control. 5.) Get rid of public sector unions for every public employee except police and fire. And NONE, police and fire included, may be permitted to elect their own lobbyists, i.e. elected officials who exchange union donations for union favors in our legislatures or local city and county councils. 6.) Get rid of do nothing wasters of our taxpayer dollars, namely those silly Departments of Education. 7.) Get rid of automatic union dues deductions. For decades, Democrats have maintained a death grip on our schools by exchanging political contributions raised from union dues for the votes of uncaring politicians who happen to be in bed with this toxic system known as American education. 8.) Stop grade inflation. Return the teacher’s imprimatur to student transcripts. Flunk them if they fail your course. Put pressure on the student, not the teacher, to satisfy the federal grade quotas for federal dollars, a dirty little secret no administrator wants you to know about.
Finally, yet another source finds that parents are responsible for American students ranking behind sixteen other countries. “In the U.S., kids from homes where there are more than two full bookcases score two and a half grade levels higher than kids from homes with very few books…the problem is that parents–and particularly poorer parents–aren’t empowered to make a difference.”
One of the most important things I did in teaching 26 years full time at a Chicago area college was to require students work through the Little Brown Vocabulary workbook every day to receive grades in my composition courses. All levels of achievers received much benefit from this homework. While their vocabulary workbooks required enormous amounts of my out of classroom time, student vocabulary skills improved their overall success. BTW, this wonderful teaching tool IS NO LONGER IN PRINT! That shows you the current demand for one of the most valuable possessions in determining success in adult life—the ability to properly speak the English language.
Administrators use silly, cotton mouth “educationalese” to keep parents, especially poorer parents, well at bay. When one guy started that claptrap with me after I complained about my neighbor’s daughter walking in on her classmates performing oral sex in the girls’ restroom, I used some of those words of my own to tell him he and his other administrators needed to quit, leave, slip out the back or whatever and let someone else take over!
How often I would see these bloated, over-payed fat cats tear out of school at the end of the day, doing everything in their power to avoid their students, their stricken teachers and concerned parents. This has to stop, NOW. On our first day of school, the Palm Beach County School District had so many bus pickup failures that the local television station ran and ran missed pick-ups! Same old, same old.
As an adjunct at a well-respected area college, I had no desk, no phone, no computer, no office. I was paid $2,750 for one semester, two classes at two different campuses, four days a week, one class of turtles, one class of mainstream. Out of this enormous paycheck, the college deducted my pension, which I’ll never draw in Florida and my health insurance which I didn’t want, need, or plan to use.
Meanwhile, our local newspaper printed the salaries of the college president and his MANY administrators. President Edwin Massey is picking up an obscene HALF OF A MILLION DOLLARS every year from taxpayers, along with bloated administrators and their own six figure theft of our money. Now just multiply the effects of this cruel lunacy all over our state, our country and you can add up on you own why Johnny can’t read, write, add, subtract, get to school on time, treat his teachers with respect, etc. BTW, my pension as an English professor is with the State of Illinois’ pension system, the worst funded in the country. Nice, what? No, I’m not getting anywhere near the dough those Chicago Teachers’ Unionists are pulling in for their retirement. Nowhere near it!
Don’t you realize that the solution is MORE MONEY?
For most of the 20th century raw scores on IQ tests had been rising (the "Flynn effect,") and the increase was continuous and approximately linear from the earliest years of testing to about 1998. Then (according to some) the overall gains stopped, but the gap between the US average scores of blacks and whites began to shrink as the black scores got marginally higher and the white, marginally lower.
All this is controversial, of course, but the longitudinal and multi-generational studies do point to the probability that IQ scores don't demonstrate inherited (genetic) intelligence potential alone, but rather a variety of other factors such as nutrition, early childhood social development, education, and overall health.
Genetic endowment is reflected too, but it's highly unlikely that genetic factors alone could account for the increasing (and decreasing) scores, which presumably were caused by environmental factors.
IQ scores also show gaps between male/female and also East Asian/Euro, both showing lower IQ in white males on an average. Frankly, I skeptical of the whole IQ paradigm. I would be wary of taking a single number ("black IQ average 85") as something that should drive educational policy.
All students would show improvements in educability if defiant and disruptive students (of whatever race) were quickly and firmly removed from the classrooms.
That's one of the reasons we got into homeschooling: we could tailor things to the individual needs of both of our boys, who were (and are) strikingly different from each other.
For boys, in particular, the rule is, "Late is better than early." Don't worry about them falling behind. Once they hit the classroom they catch up to and exceed their peers very rapidly, and they're a lot happier and more grounded. The #1 thing that damages boys in Kindergarten is that they are implicitly expected to act like girls.
My late father always said public education was a racket and that was 35 years ago. Some things never change.
What!? You removed market forces and exchanged the same for govt/union control and expected BETTER?! Must have been a college educated Liberal to think that one up.
Nope. Kill the property taxes and return schools to a pay-to-play service. No biz whom takes over those education duties will put up w/ the crappy teachers and disruptive students.
Ah, but then the serfs may start to get that spark of Freedom again...
...and there are the contortions I spoke of. You admit that a difference of IQ exists then go to great lengths to explain why it doesn’t matter. Education can very marginally increase IQ scores but not to offset a 15 point average and it certainly won’t modify genes. The environmental effect on IQ can be observed by comparing the IQ of American Negros with that of the African Negro. Some of the African nations with the lowest average IQ scores range from the low 70s to the high 50s. Comparing the American Negro to his African counterpart would seem to prove the theory that there can be an environmental effect on IQ but even then the marginal average increase that puts the average American Negro IQ at 85 places him in the Borderline Intellectual Functioning category and the statistical lower half of American Negros in either the moderate or mildly retarded categories. To be honest the gaps you speak of between men and women and between Asians and Caucasians are much smaller than the differences between Negros and other races. Occam’s razor would suggest that a 15 point IQ difference would answer many questions but for some reason most humans find that repugnant so, as you suggested, it’s easier and more palatable to blame the obvious differences on nutrition or global warming. Avoiding the obvious truth has never solved any problem.
Thanks so much for that info. You pretty much echoed the way that I feel. Too bad that more parents ,teachers and legislators don’t think that way.
It's well known that Jews and people in Hong Kong on average score 10 IQ points higher than white gentiles. MRI research finds that this largely correlates with head size (the shape and size of your brain-box), which is obviously an inherited trait.
The research does, however, indicate that genetic endowment is just one factor, other important factors being early childhood nutrition, social/cultural environment, level of emotional well-being and intellectual stimulation from parental/social interaction, and overall health.
If IQ were solely genetic, the scores would not change. But they do change, in population groups studied over time, or genetically similar people operating under different cultural conditions. For instance blacks in the United States score 15 points higher than blacks in sub-Saharan Africa even if their genetic characteristics are the same.
The bottom line is that intellectual performance is multifactorial.
I hate full day. There is no benefit other than the convenience of not having to take care of a child for half a day. I have ten children. Three have attended all day K. They did not learn more. On the contrary, I think they all had brain drain as a result of being surrounded by stupid for longer hours. Hah.
Too bad loving mothers can’t make decisions like full day kindergarten instead of idiot legislators. Unfortunately it was Mitch Daniels who signed it into law here in Indiana. Thanks for the reply.
But according to the measurable IQ testing research, this is not necessarily the case with IQ. On the contrary, raw scores on IQ tests have been rising at an average rate that scales to three IQ points per decade since the early 20th century,which is when IQ tests were first administered.
Note these are increases measured in decades, not in "eons."
Naturally, this does not correlate to every kind and measure of intelligence, just IQ test results. What the significance of this is, is a topic of ongoing debate.
The correlation between IQ and real-life accomplishments is also more complex than one might guess. Within standard deviations, there is stronger correlation between academic /career success and the ability to focus attention, to follow instructions, and to work hard, than to raw IQ score as such.
Nobody denies that there are genetic limits. It is significant, though, that few people of any level of intelligence ever reach their genetic limit. This means there is always a zone of proximal development in which environmental factors have a strong influence.
So I guess the summation of our exchange, and the things upon which we agree, can be; “Wow, there seems to be something about the American Negro that keeps him from integrating into a functional society. I wonder why?” And that puts us back firmly at square one to discuss ad infinitum just what those reasons may be. I am convinced that a much lower than average IQ accounts for the Negro’s lack of success, while you agree that their lower IQ could possibly be a contributing factor but is no more important than many others. Would that be an accurate assessment? Thanks, I’ve enjoyed the interaction.
OK.
I'm far more interested in actual life achievements than IQ numbers. I like to keep in mind what happened in the Harlem Renaissance period, when Harlem was the destination for black immigrants from around the country, attracting both people seeking work from the South, and an educated class who made the area a center of culture, as well as a growing "Negro" middle class.
The remarkable blossoming of Harlem Negro productivity in music, theatre, art, and literature as well as religious and political leadership, rested on a support system of black patrons, black-owned businesses and publications. It was a community with black doctors and pharmacists, black preachers and educators, etc. who themselves contributed to a healthy middle-class milieu in which 90% of the children grew up in homes headed by married parents, and were themselves primed for achievement.
The Harlem Renaissance was a period which showcased the possibilities of a whole people's buried potential.
I'm sure the concurrent eugenics movement, with its prim Sangerites narrowly fixated on questions such as comparative IQ scores, must have been either uninterested in, or perplexed by, this manifestation of Negro creativity. It was an interesting period, both for its its brief brilliance and in the complexities of its decline.
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