Florida, in its wisdom or lack thereof, has adopted different standards for different racial groups.
Quite frankly, this is abhorrent.
Every child is a child, period.
We should look at each one as an individual, not as a racial representative.
This is NCLB thinking squared, cubed, and absurdist.
It is racist, it is insulting. It should stop. Now.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Diane,
I couldn’t believe this when I read it last week. I was speechless and that doesn’t happen often. I wondered what they will do for the bi-racial child…average between your Hispanic mom and white dad, Asian dad and white mom? Who decided on the pecking order….Asians at the top and African Americans at the bottom.
Can you imagine the discussion at the meeting that determined these percentages?
Wasn’t here anybody there who was thinking are you crazy?
This is ripe for Edushyster and Students Last.
When will this reform fiasco reach bottom? If Malia and Sasha attended public school in Florida would they be considered all black, partially white? INSANE!
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You are whatever race your parents put on your paperwork.
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And is there a mixed race option? Are you in Florida? Aren’t the citizens outraged by this?
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I believe I have seen a mixed-race category in our student data system. I don’t know how that factors in to NCLB data. Most of the media outlets are against this.
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Mixed Category really burns me. Mixed- as if it was so easy to identify what that means. Mixed with what? Mixed race children are the super minority and yet they are forced in some systems to identify with one parent not the other or step away from both cultures and become ‘other’ or ‘mixed’. How about children who are adopted into different families from their family of origin? Does it matter that it happens at birth or before age ten?
Children are children and not categories. Caucasian children born into poverty have more hurdles academically to climb perhaps than affluent Latino children. Mixed race asian children are not necessarily raised in the ‘Tiger Mom’ stereotyped asian family nor are they necessarily raised in the family structure that is half african and half caucasin. Even with asian communities there is splintering- sub continental asian or south east asian are not the same. Refugee status is more telling perhaps on educational outcomes than the racial categories.
We categories race but ignore the economic poverty piece entirely. To quote some very insightful teenagers- Face Palm.
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EXACTLY. It’s examples like these that make some of us moms truly wonder about the people who make decisions for public schools!
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Parents who are teachers wonder too. Educators are NOT making these decisions. Policy wonks with little to no experience in the classroom are making them. Take your disgust to them.
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It most certainly wasn’t the teachers and/or the unions like many believe!
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Reblogged this on Transparent Christina.
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From the world’s most conservative republican teacher: I think this is disgusting. What’s next? Will they assign students of color to sit in the back of the bus on the way to school? Is this the 1950s?
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No you get sent to a test prep military charter where you practice lining up, sitting straight, eyes on the teacher at all times and no talking. You are only free on the bus ride…that is the best part of your day.
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I’ve often thought that if we replayed history over and over again, the manner in which our government tracks kids by race would be considered unacceptable at least 70% of the time.
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For at least a decade, ever since the early days of NCLB, educators have been trying to say that schools in high poverty areas shouldn’t be held to the same standards as schools in affluent areas: poverty matters. This is just a backhand way of acknowledging that they were right all along. But, having insisted for so long that poverty doesn’t matter, the rheeformers can’t go back and admit that it does. But they have no problem turning it into a racial issue. Poor kids can learn just as well as rich kids, but them n—–s? Well, now that’s a whole ‘nother ball o’ wax. It just fits the narrative they’ve believed all along.
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Why do we feel this inescapable urge to tie standards to performance metrics?
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I can see both sides of the issue on this. First of all, the standards are not different based on race. The passing score is the same for all students. This policy merely sets different passing RATE goals for each race (as well as disability and ESOL). No Child Left Behind “rewarded” and mostly punished schools for the performance of “subgroups,” and this is merely the state’s acknowledgement that the 100% goal is unreachable for everyone. Like Dienne and others have said, it would have been better to set goals based on socioeconomics, but then that would throw out the reformers’ “poverty doesn’t matter” argument.
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New Jersey is playing the strategy of racially disparate standards. It seems to be BROAD spawn idea. The whole brood of Eli has embraced this idea. Papa Broad talks about the schools of his youth with fond memories but if you we’re black, female or otherwise
” different” this were not so rosey.
This is a giant (broad) step backward.
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These elites who think they are so smart are actually very stupid, but too arrogant to realize it.
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I don’t think they’re stupid. Greedy, cunning and downright evil, yes. And perhaps they’re not the deepest, most intellectual thinkers, but they’re definitely not stupid.
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Here’s a different perspective on this issue:
http://www.naplesnews.com/news/2012/oct/18/brent-batten-race-based-school-plan-no-big-deal/?partner=RSS
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No matter how some try to spin it…..it is embarrassing and revolting. While they are so concerned about not using poverty as an excuse and we must close the achievement gap, they set separate standards. Can you have it both ways?
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How are the standards different when the grading scales are the same for all students? NCLB “racialized” education, and this is merely an extension of that way of thinking.
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Does this mean they’ll be applying different evaluation standards to teachers of different ethnicities?
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I wish there was a like button for responses. Great idea- lets make the teacher profession one giant mess of in fighting and race baiting. That will help with the race to the top of the charter school implementation. It will also help with getting schools fully segregated in some areas- teachers as well as students.
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Florida is in very deep trouble as far as education of its children. I do not doubt that history will show them to be the racist state in our nation, the poorest educators of its kids, and a state with an economy of poorly trained and weak professionals for its population. Schools are the foundation of all the communities. At some point the post secondary will begin to show the impact as well.
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This is the unintended consequence of the changing reform standards hinging on “growth” as opposed to “proficiency” – outright labeling and measuring subgroups for the purposes of growth.
My question is, haven’t we been doing this along within AYP calculations? AYP is calculated based on the number of subgroups attaining proficiency, and the measuring stick was moved each year in hopes that more and more students would reach proficiency, and ultimately, the lower achieving subgroups would catch up. That was NCLB in a nut shell.
So why do we now have a problem with this approach when calculating “growth”, but we didn’t have a problem with it within AYP mandates?
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You are exactly right. No Child Left Behind is not as explicit about this practice as the states are with these waivers.
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As a Florida teacher since 1997, I have watched our state board enact bone-headed policies that make no sense, but of all of them, the race-based variable learning goals has to be most useless and inane, not to mention anti-education and unworkable. There are so many questions about the way these standards will be applied I wonder how they expect school districts to carry them out. If a child is mixed race, are they allowed to self-identify or must they submit to a DNA test or bring independent verification like a copy of their family’s Census report? What if the parents refuse to choose a race? If a child belongs to several categories, which takes priority or will school districts be able to categorize the student in a way that is most favorable to the district? E.g. where would a poor, disabled, Spanish-speaking Asian belong? Many Hispanic identify themselves as white or black. Could their category be subdivided to reflect their individual identity? The disabled category could include a wide range of classifications from blind and deaf to autism to learning disabled. Would all of these be classified in the same way? The only saving grace I find in the whole plan is the admission that NCLB’s goal of 100% of students reading and doing math on grade level by 2014 is impossible. Is it fair with so much riding on student performance and teachers being graded on how well their students progress to grade a school with a high number of Asian and white students more harshly than a school with a large number of black, Hispanics and disabled?
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And why stop with education…maybe the dental and medical fields should set standards for cavities, weight, wellness, etc by race. Maybe the mental health field, too. The possibilities are endless. Once again, this is ripe for satire or is it satire? Maybe there aren’t enough whites in the NBA or Jews in the NFL? Let’s check the athleticism gap?
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As I stated in another reply, a students’ race is whatever the parent puts on the application. I am not aware of districts fighting to change a race if it disagrees.
I believe disabled students are those with IEPs (Individual Education Plans). So, that will take care of itself.
I don’t think this will lead to schools writing off students because a lower percentage of certain races have to pass. This is a STATE goal and not a school-by-school or district-by-district goal. The individual teachers still have to worry about VAM. Race is not a factor in that. I don’t even think socioeconomics are involved. The schools still have school wide averages to worry about. Even if an individual school exceeds the racial goal but simultaneously has a lower average than the previous year, they will be punished in some way by the state.
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I hope someone will file suit! I certainly will bring this to the attention of the NAACP.
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What if parents didn’t identify a particular race for their child?
What if they skipped that whole section? After reading this, I’ve decided that I will never again identify a particular race for myself. My children are all grown up, but I will urge them to do the same for their children.
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Isn’t this part of the ESEA flexibility? I think the discriminatory standards and discriminatory rating systems are part of the waivers. And I’m pretty sure it’s not only happening in Florida.
Regards, Wendy Lecker
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Yes.
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Virginia and DC have similar goals. Florida was not the first state.
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Your outrage is about ten years too late. We’ve been evaluating test scores through a racial prism for at least that long. “Closing the Achievement Gap”? Is this not an apartheid-like measure? How many meetings have I attended in the past decade where we teachers poured over test scores that were laid out in “subgroups”? Where was your indignation when NCLB began forcing schools to parse state tests along racial lines?
During Jim Crow days southern states had laws establishing who was a negro and who was not. Alabama, if I remember correctly, designated anyone with a negro grandparent as colored, and instructed those folks to hie to the separate-but-equal water fountains. Mississippi said all you needed was one great-grandparent. I’d be curious if Florida has some law prescribing who exactly is an African-American or Latino. Or do they simply let the parents self-identify–which would open up a wonderful opportunity to sabotage the system. Everyone in Florida should declare their children as Mixed Race.
Don’t blame the people in Florida, They are simply the the inheritors of a system we tolerated–and I include myself. We didn’t speak up when these fools gave us this educational apartheid. Now we are reaping the logical extension of those ideas.
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“Don’t blame the people in Florida, They are simply the the inheritors of a system we tolerated–and I include myself. We didn’t speak up when these fools gave us this educational apartheid. Now we are reaping the logical extension of those ideas.”
Don’t blame the people because they didn’t speak up? Who else bears responsibility for that?
I don’t mean to pick on the people of Florida. People all over the U.S. have tolerated way too much without speaking up. But in a democracy (even in a sham democracy like our own), you can’t lay the blame anywhere besides the people.
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So the achievement gap is not only the fault of teachers, but it is now primarily due to the
white teachers and read the closing line…we have been looking for this advice for a very long time….our entire careers.
Wow…I heard they paid $300,000 for this study and for this advice.
So now if we can get rid of white teachers there will be no achievement gap. How do we determine who is white and who is light skinned but of mixed race. Can this get more absurd?
http://www.courant.com/community/windsor/hc-bridging-achievement-gap-1020-20121019,0,7135180.story
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We will see how this works out. If higher expectations were the only answer, we would have closed the gaps by now.
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Diane, can the above article be a post for discussion. Race baiting and racial issues are used as a means for under performing students/ associated helicopter parents to discredit teachers who ask a great deal of students/ high expectations. This means of having the lens of bias used to ‘close the achievement’ gap is seriously implemented, it could really mean segregation of the schools. It will be potentially incredibly polarizing. Biases of all kinds should be examined and addressed as a good means of self reflection of teachers but having seen race being used as a means to disqualify good and hard working teachers who cannot get out from under the cloud of suspicion around race now, I am very very concerned about this. The teacher who has class bias, athletics bias, nerdy kid bias, preppy bias. well connected parent or child bias or any other level of bias needs to reflect on teaching the whole class.
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It should be noted that every single member of the State Board of education is a republican. When this was announced the article on huffington post had a ton of people talking about his ‘liberal’ policy and how wrong it was. I pointed out to them they were all republican and they still didn’t believe me so I had to post the link to all of their bio’s and voter registration. Point is almost nobody thinks this is a good idea.
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I check Drudge when this story broke, and it linked to a website that had a TON of comments (most likely from Drudge readers). So many people were screaming liberal this and that. I had to explain that the State BOE is a group of governor appointees. We’ve had Republicans since 1997. This isn’t the Supreme Court, so I’m sure most if not all of these people were appointed in the past 5-10 years.
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I, too, am outraged by this. I wrote a post about it called “Racist To The Top: Florida Wins! yomizblog.wordpress.com. Thank you Diane for calling this to our attention in a few powerful, provocative words.
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