S.F. Schools Take On Racism, Classism
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Jill Tucker, San Francisco Chronicle, May 28, 2008
{snip}
The district’s strategic plan adopted by the school board 6-0 Tuesday night focuses on reversing the typical academic outcomes for black, Hispanic and poor students.
Although that sounds almost like a reworked version of the federal No Child Left Behind Act, district officials say they are working off a corporate model that puts everyone—from school board members to custodians—under the microscope in different ways.
A new grading system will expose schools—even the popular, high-scoring ones—that are failing to address the institutional racial inequities within their walls.
{snip}
The question, however, is how to solve those deep-rooted societal problems that are playing out in schools. So far, no urban district has bridged the achievement gap or created schools of equal quality for children regardless of their race or income.
The solution, according to the superintendent’s plan, starts with a top-down acknowledgement that the schools are contributing to the inequities in society, Smith [Tony Smith, deputy superintendent of instruction, innovation and social justice] said.
{snip}
A scorecard will measure school and the district performance across a wide range of indicators including:
—”Percentage of schools that are fully integrated racially, ethnically and socio-economically.”
—”Percentage of SFUSD teachers with a district supplied laptop that is functional and has current software.”
—”Number and percentage of students who drop out of school between grades 6-12.”
—”Number and percentage of students who vote in their local student government elections.”
The scorecard is based on a business model created in the 1990s.
The district’s plan has evolved over the last several months, with the involvement of 1,000 parents and students as well as community leaders and district staff, district officials said.
{snip}
Board members and district staff said Tuesday that adoption of the plan is the start of a long process that will include community input and the development of ways to create equity in the schools.
One of the next steps in implementing the plan will be to identify the schools succeeding and those still needing work, Smith said.
{snip}
Email Jill Tucker at jtucker@sfchronicle.com.
(Posted on May 28, 2008)
Comments
Another witch hunt for white racists.
Posted by Dwayne O. at 6:18 PM on May 28
The words “re-arranging”, “deck-chairs” and “Titanic” come to mind. Then again, what do you expect from loony-left San Francisco.
Most European Americans and many Chinese Americans who live in San Francisco send their children to private schools; that’s why S.F. public schools fail miserably. It’s what’s left…
Posted by at 6:46 PM on May 28
Gee, I guess it’s just not possible to address the remote chance that different groups have different intellectual capabilities, on average?
Nah, impossible. It must be institutional racism. It must be.
Posted by at 7:29 PM on May 28
“S.F. Schools Take On Racism, Classism” ?
In a world where what happens to whites is considered too, how about, “Even more racism to be directed at whites” as a more accurate headline?
Posted by LHathaway at 7:34 PM on May 28
Well, it is hare brained or hair brained?
Posted by Whiteplight at 7:37 PM on May 28
A comment below —- under an earlier San Francisco Chronicle on California’s “achievement gap” —- provides an insider look at the methodology our government schooling monopolies use to “take on racism, classicism”:
“As a long-term veteran teacher of the Oakland schools, I can only said that I completely dread the likely professional development which is surely to come, in which white teachers will again be told how culturally insensitive we are and how we fail at teaching. I have been hearing this (it’s nothing new) for my entire tenure of nearly two decades in the district. I have been called a racist for every imaginable reason…except actual racism. Both black parents and students assume racism on the part of white teachers, and it’s up to you to prove otherwise. Meanwhile, if I try to address issues such as absenteeism, illiteracy, or failure to do homework, I am taken to task by students and their families. The real story that should be investigated is the endless racism TOWARDS white teachers in the schools. Almost every white teacher in Oakland has been subjected to treatment that would be headline news if it were black teachers being treated this way. Welcome to OUSD!”
(“Summit called to address racial disparities in academic performance, San Francisco Chornicle, November 12, 2007)
Posted by Tom Shuford at 8:14 PM on May 28
I believe the percentage of whites in the SF public schools is abotu 8 per cent. The schools are about 80 per cent asian, mostly chinese and korean.
Note the article implies that as usual, it is all evil whitey’s fault even though there are few white teachers, administrators or students in the SF public, private or religious schools.
And the parents of the successful 80 percent asians could care less about the blacks and hispanics. The asians view hispanics as useful below minimum wage workers in the asian sweatshops. The asian view of blacks is unprintable in a politically correct society.
Posted by at 8:46 PM on May 28
“A new grading system will expose schools—even the popular, high-scoring ones—that are failing to address the institutional racial inequities within their walls.”
The only institutional racial inequities in place in the school system right now is against whites.
That they don’t admit to this is further proof that the educational system is rife with liars and incompetents.
Case closed.
Posted by Robert Kelly at 8:55 PM on May 28
That’s right, school board leftists; those last 9,000 “strategic plans” designed to close the Mystery Gap didn’t work, but this one *surely* will. No doubt about it. THIS time you’ve got it exactly right.
Just kidding, of course. “Classicism” takes its place beside “institutional racism,” “stereotype threat,” “test bias” and “eurocentric ways of knowing” as the latest in what seems to be an infinitely regressing series of ghost entities designed to explain a comically simple thing: black intellectual incapacity.
Posted by Cassiodorus at 8:55 PM on May 28
What will they try next? Maybe they should enlist the help of witches and shamen. Nothing else has worked.
Posted by White and proud at 8:58 PM on May 28
What a conumdrum. Until they magically figure out how to raise IQ’s of minorities and make their thick skulled “families” (I use that term loosely) value education, it is a lost cause.
I believe Kalifornia’s attempts to eliminate the home school option is part of the overall effort to force better scores by forcing white kids to go to the socialist indoctrination centers they pass off as schools.
Posted by Aunt Bea at 11:13 PM on May 28
As soon as they have milked this one for all its worth, they can set to the task of eliminating “Ismism” and once and for all close the “Gap gap” that prevents us all from getting along.
Bourbon please!
Posted by Mr. Smith at 11:20 PM on May 28
These ever-slippery liberals have grabbed on the to word “equity” as if it means the same thing as “equality.” This is a signal to me that they are experiencing cognitive dissonance— they need to change their words so that the meaning is less clear:
. . . the start of a long process . . . to create equity in the schools.
It is harder to argue with people when their language is unclear in its meaning. I think they do this intentionally.
Posted by Reader-1 at 12:08 AM on May 29
The only cure for a Bolshevik-run loony bin like S.F. is its complete and utter annihilation courtesy of an asteroid or 10 megaton nuke.
Posted by at 12:40 AM on May 29
Here’s more on the “all whites are racist” movement:
http://www.worldnetdaily.com/index.php?fa=PAGE.view&pageId=65532
Posted by at 1:36 AM on May 29
FWIW the percentage of White students in SF public schools is 9.2%.
Since integration generally means mixing Whites with whomever I think they have their work cut out for them.
I loved this quote:
“Shortly after his arrival, he toured schools to see what was needed. He said he remembers the shock he felt, walking into classrooms full of blackboards - not even the newer green ones - with erasers and chalk lined up neatly on the shelves below.
“I hadn’t seen a chalkboard in some time,” Garcia said some months into the job.”
Oh the horrors, classrooms filled with blackboards and chalk…! I didn’t realize I was so deprived when I was growing up.
Posted by Stillwarm at 3:35 AM on May 29
This, folks, is why intelligent European-Americans in San Francisco send their children to private schools. Everyone knows it, but nobody talks about it.
I happen to live there and have seen the disastrous consequences of this “equality” idea first hand. They’ve been busing kids from the projects into rich white districts for years now. The idea isn’t so much to bring the underachiever’s grades up, but rather to spread them around and thereby bring everyone else’s grades down. Presto! That magical land of equality. Which, of course, means equal amounts of failing grades, remedial classes, truancy and petty crime in *all* neighborhoods.
I have friends with children who live here and have seen their nightmares firsthand. Do not move to San Francisco for the public school system! It really is a joke considering the amount of wealth in this city. I could go on for hours….
Posted by ChurchillLovesIdiots at 5:52 AM on May 29
“The question, however, is how to solve those deep-rooted societal problems that are playing out in schools. So far, no urban district has bridged the achievement gap or created schools of equal quality for children regardless of their race or income.”
Key passage is above. How about a little common sense for a change. No school system in the country has succeded in closing the racial gap. What is so special about the SF school system that will allow it to succeed where all other systems have failed?
Here is another application of common sense. When lots of motivated people having been trying to do something for a long time with no success, why doesn’t it occur to folks that maybe what is being tried is impossible?
Pete A.
Posted by pete a at 6:19 AM on May 29
Another hare-brained scheme to close the achievement gap.
In order to close the racial achievement gap, the less intelligent minorities should refrain from having progeny at all and the more intelligent minorities should seek the most intelligent mates that are willing to procreate with them.
Posted by A Reader at 6:28 AM on May 29
Also, have you noted that they accept any “Liberal” nonsense, e.g., that blacks under-achievement is a result of white racism, without a shade of proof, but when it comes to other, much more credible theories, e.g., high inheritability of IQ and Malthusian behavior of less intelligent populations, they summarily reject them as “unproved hypotheses”.
Tell me more about double standards. The “principled” “Liberals” have mastered the art of applying them.
Posted by A Reader at 6:40 AM on May 29
In other words, the schools should be at the forefront of the war against Whitey and children should learn how Whitey is the oppressor.
Posted by at 11:19 AM on May 29
Comparing the scheme to a reworking of the No Child Left Behind Act was enough for me, and I didn’t have to read any further than there.
Posted by ODDL at 1:18 PM on May 29
“The question, however, is how to solve those deep-rooted societal problems that are playing out in schools. So far, no urban district has bridged the achievement gap or created schools of equal quality for children regardless of their race or income.”
When you forbid yourself from acknowledgeing the cause, while endlessly attempting to alter that cause’s effects…well, it’s a bit like watching a fish flop that still thinks it’s in the water.
Posted by Gary at 1:43 PM on May 29
“the percentage of White students in SF public schools is 9.2%.”
Notice how when a school is 91% white, the school district and the media rally around the cause of these minorities. But when a school is 91% non-white, there’s no obsession with what happens to the white students there. Far from it. Suddenly, ‘race is a social construct’. In both cases, it’s as if whites don’t exist, outside their role as officially designated oppressor. They certainly aren’t mentioned here, except for the ‘racism’. Those 9.2% of whites students must be awfully evil. Apparently, that’s not offensive to anyone. Perhaps Jill Tucker of the San Francisco Chronical is waiting until there’s so few whites that the ones left can be mentioned by name to include them in her story. Except that there are already districts like that and the whites there don’t get covered either.
Posted by at 2:39 PM on May 29