quote:

Groups, in case folks aren't aware, are made up of individuals, and if a group standard is set where higher levels of failure are tolerated, then the individuals most in need of help are going to be the easiest to ignore, especially for those lazy, burned out teachers who should have been kicked off the public tit a decade ago.

quote:

ORIGINAL: cordeliasub

I agree with the OP. I think we are basically giving kids a slap in the face when we look at their skin color and say, "Well, you are probably going to struggle, so we won't expect as much." It's insulting.

quote:

ORIGINAL: vincentML

quote:

how can the inclusion of "whites in poverty" as a special category erease the fact that all the other categories are based on the shade of brown? So a school that has a mjority of black poor child is expected to have better standards than one where there are middleclass blacks as the povery standards are higher than the one for "blacks no matter of the income"?

It is common practice in education to measure learning from where the learner is before teaching and where he or she is after teaching. This is known as pretest/post-test. Not every child is at the same starting place. So, if you set a standard that to pass a test all children must score at least 70% correct answers you are in effect penalizing children who came to the lesson knowing less and rewarding those who knew more to start. The less knowledgeable students have a farther distance to travel, much more to absorb and understand than the students who already have some understanding and knowledge of the material. But that is not my main issue with the OP.

What is obscured in the OP is that these enumerated standards are not at all a measure of the achievement of individual students. Oh no. They are a measure of the effectiveness of each school and each faculty. They seek to answer the question: how effective were your teachers in educating the students they had before them? How well did your teachers perform given the hand they were dealt (i.e. the level of students they were teaching)? There is plenty of results-oriented research to justify grouping in these categories.

It is utterly stupid to expect similar teaching results from a faculty with a large number of special needs children as you do from a faculty with a high number of college prep students.

The OP insinuates that racial coddling is at the core of this plan. But if you look at the lead sentence at the head of the table of numbers you will see this:

The percentages needed for third-graders to pass math in their subgroups for 2013 are:

Clearly, the percentages are a test of the effectiveness of the faculty and not a test of the child. Nobody is being coddled. The proper name for this is: REALISM.

The article is clearly refering to school effectiveness: "For example, under No Child Left Behind, 95 percent of all third-graders had to pass math by 2013 for a school to meet education standards. All third-graders, black, white, poor, special needs or otherwise, had to meet the same goal."

My beef with the OP is this is the worst kind of racist rabble rousing. Well, maybe not the worst but it is deplorable nevertheless.

quote:

I understood it's a way to grade schools, and I don't think it's cuddling but just deciding "what's realistic" based on the resoult of precedent fallacious policies, but can you tell me just what's the difference in teaching a white indigent kid and a black indigent kid? Because the statistic says there is, or makes a difference.

quote:

ORIGINAL: BamaD

Has anyone heard of a quaint concept they had when I was a kid?
Hold them back till they can work at grade level.
You can say they will get discouraged and quit and while there is some truth to this how discouraged are they not to be able to read their diploma?
Some schools (that I have seen upper half graduates from) should be sued for malpractice.
And black kids are the ones harmed most by this stuff, there are more excuses made for them.
Tell kids that it is reasonable for them not to do school work and surprise, then won't.

quote:

ORIGINAL: vincentML

quote:

I understood it's a way to grade schools, and I don't think it's cuddling but just deciding "what's realistic" based on the resoult of precedent fallacious policies, but can you tell me just what's the difference in teaching a white indigent kid and a black indigent kid? Because the statistic says there is, or makes a difference.

I missed that statistic. Was it in the linked article? Please give me a source. I would hesitate to hazard a blind guess.

quote:

it's in the article and in in the OP

2013 percentage of students with a positive test resoult needed:

students in poverty 82.6%
black students 79%

or it means that schools with a majority of black kids in poverty are expected better resoults than schools where there are mostly middleclass black kids, or it means that theacing a white kid whose family is in economical difficoulties is easier than teaching any black kid, or it means who designed this table is sure that in alabama there are no blacks with any money.

quote:

ORIGINAL: vincentML

quote:

it's in the article and in in the OP

2013 percentage of students with a positive test resoult needed:

students in poverty 82.6%
black students 79%

or it means that schools with a majority of black kids in poverty are expected better resoults than schools where there are mostly middleclass black kids, or it means that theacing a white kid whose family is in economical difficoulties is easier than teaching any black kid, or it means who designed this table is sure that in alabama there are no blacks with any money.

The numbers do not tell us the distribution of black kids or the distribution of schools with high poverty levels. Usually the poverty metric is based upon the Federal lunch money program. It may be that black students are clustered in urban areas where past performance has been a bit worse and so they are burdened with sociological as well as economic issues. It does not mean that these categories are mutually exclusive. It may be the poverty category picks up white kids in rural areas whose schools would otherwise be at a disadvantage if poverty were not included as a category. The numbers tell us nothing about the distribution of the children so I really can only speculate.

quote:

so it's the third option I described. This dosn't change the fact that the numbers even if they can be true as you pointed out are not significant in finding the reasons why some kids have more difficoult in school, as the number it's just an average among ethnical and in some cases social groups, but it's just a racial profiling, where the groups are reported with a mean value that covers relevant datas.

quote:

Money has little to do with it, look at the Kennedys.

quote:

ORIGINAL: vincentML

quote:

ORIGINAL: BamaD

Has anyone heard of a quaint concept they had when I was a kid?
Hold them back till they can work at grade level.
You can say they will get discouraged and quit and while there is some truth to this how discouraged are they not to be able to read their diploma?
Some schools (that I have seen upper half graduates from) should be sued for malpractice.
And black kids are the ones harmed most by this stuff, there are more excuses made for them.
Tell kids that it is reasonable for them not to do school work and surprise, then won't.

You miss the point of the article. This is not about evaluating the individual child. It is about evaluating the efficacy of the teaching staff.

quote:

ORIGINAL: vincentML

quote:

so it's the third option I described. This dosn't change the fact that the numbers even if they can be true as you pointed out are not significant in finding the reasons why some kids have more difficoult in school, as the number it's just an average among ethnical and in some cases social groups, but it's just a racial profiling, where the groups are reported with a mean value that covers relevant datas.

If I had to guess I would say the numbers are derived from past test scores of the schools in the District. Then an expectation was derived on how far each school could improve. If schools in urban black areas showed the worst scores they would be expected to improve but not to the level of other schools. However, they would be expected to show a somewhat similar improvement.

For example suppose a race between two kids on a football field. A race to the furthest goal line. Kid 1 started on the fifty yard line and had only fifty yards to run. Kid 2 started on the ten yard line and had ninety yards to run. It would be reasonable to expect kid 1 to win the race. It would also be reasonable to expect kid 2 to maybe get well over the fifty yard line when kid 1 has crossed the goal line. We have expectations for kid 2 but we have to consider where he started from.

The problem with all your speculation is you do not know where each school started from. You are just focusing on perceived negative racial expectations until you can see the Delta expectations for each school. You can't come to this as arithmetic. It has to be viewed as a calculus.

Rumsfeld said you fight a war with the army you have. In education you teach to the children you have. To do otherwise would be folly for the teacher and frustrating for the students, and non-productive for both.

quote:

Eh... I was following you til I got to here. Based on trends, its widely accepted that some kids have a higher probability of failing academically due to external factors. Its naive to think otherwise. PC, but nah. You obviously havent worked with disadvantaged kids to say something like this. Its almost common sense.

quote:

I taught at a school where there was a tremendous push to do just a few simple things like have group study sessions for parents and kids, have the teachers regularly call home for GOOD things instead of just discipline problems, have dinners with family activity nights. It made a huge difference in parental involvement, in achievement, and in classroom management.