Bill Turque, Washington Post, December 13, 2009
Last week’s federal report card on math achievement was a welcome piece of good news for D.C. public schools. Although the District still lags far behind the country’s top-performing systems, the report card showed fourth- and eighth-graders making strides at a faster pace over the past two years than cities including Atlanta, Chicago and New York.
But what remains embedded in the latest numbers from the National Assessment of Educational Progress is the persistent achievement gap between African American and white students both locally and nationally. The average scores of white D.C. fourth-graders over the past two years grew from 262 to 270 (on a scale of 500), but their African American peers’ rose just three points, from 209 to 212. The achievement gap actually grew between 2007 and 2009, from 53 to 58 points.
African American progress in the eighth grade remained essentially flat, dipping a statistically insignificant one point, from 245 to 244. Average white scores were not included in the test results because the sample size wasn’t large enough.
The picture across a six-year stretch isn’t more encouraging. The gap separating white and black fourth-graders in 2003, when the first NAEP in the District was given, was 60 scale points (262 to 202). Although the scores achieved by children in both groups have increased during this period, the difference has barely narrowed to 58.
Some education advocates in the District expressed concern last week that the gains celebrated by Chancellor Michelle A. Rhee and Mayor Adrian M. Fenty (D) were propelled largely by white students who are already high achievers.
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Rhee said the District needs to continue to find better ways to address the needs of low-achieving students. This fall, for example, some teachers are being trained to use a new reading curriculum, the Wilson Reading System, targeted to students in the upper elementary and middle school grades who didn’t master the basics of reading early in their school careers and are significantly behind their peers. “Everyday Mathematics,” a K-through-sixth-grade math curriculum emphasizing games and real-life experiences that was brought to the District under former superintendent Clifford Janey, is credited with some of the NAEP progress reported last week.
{snip}
Others say that the NAEP’s results highlight the question of whether Rhee can continue to lift the overall performance of the system and still provide the additional money and resources for low-performing schools that will be necessary to narrow the gap.
{snip}
Janey, now superintendent of schools in Newark, said in an interview this week that one essential element to closing the achievement gap is to lengthen the traditional public school year, currently 180 days in the District, to compete with charter schools.
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Original article
(Posted on December 14, 2009)
Comments
How is the “achievement gap” between blacks and whites relevant within the D.C. public schools? I don’t think there are any white students there. I think there is probably a fast growing non-black minority in the DC schools that is responsible for the increase.
“Everyday Mathematics,” a K-through-sixth-grade math curriculum emphasizing games and real-life experiences that was brought to the District under former superintendent Clifford Janey, is credited with some of the NAEP progress reported last week.
I was once on a committee to help choose new mathematics textbooks for the school district where I went to school. And this “reallifeization” of mathematics is mostly nonsense, because to the small extent it works, it can only help with, at most, complicated arithmetic and very basic algebra. Once you get past the first unit in most algebra classes, then its gets entirely cerebral, and there’s where almost all math-challenged students, black and otherwise, fall behind.
When school district test scores rise anywhere, it is usually because of an increase in asian enrollment, but that is never mentioned.Do you ever notice that?
“African American progress in the eighth grade remained essentially flat, dipping a statistically insignificant one point, from 245 to 244. Average white scores were not included in the test results because the sample size wasn’t large enough.”
I think it’s just a bit exciting that we are living in a time when we can read daily the lies this society operates by, pretending the white/black education gap is an “achievement gap,” rather than an intelligence gap.
Right along with that fallacy, they pretend as if there is ONLY a white/black gap and not an every race/black gap. And, when this deficiency in ther analysis is mentioned to them they pretend they don’t know what the person is talking about or they simply ignore the subject.
Years from now much will be written about how these pretenses were promoted and society en masse was living an abysmal lie. To what extent the information might be covered depends on how society finally evolves after the coming depression and the conflicts that occur during that time.
I would say that the best bet is to expect civil conflict and secessionist movements that will tear the country apart, and true to form, blacks will cause the conflicts to break along racial lines at some point.
A white-controlled area will not be kind to the liars that are in control right now. And if those like me have any say in the matter, the new area will not be kind to these people…….if they survive at all.
My God! This has been going on now for 50 years, and the solution is always the same: “We must re-double our effort to bring Blacks up to the academic level of Whites.”
It is time that our Nation accepts the truth that IQ is not distributed equally among the races. Let’s start with reality, for a change, and then design our education system accordingly. For example, maybe we could do what Germany and Japan do — identify low-IQ students early, and then provide those low-IQ students with an excellent practical education in work-related skills, such as “the trades.” Continuing to believe that all of us will become physicians and scientists is insane. The worst part is that we set Blacks up for failure, low-self esteem, and anger, when we tell them “you can do anything.” Then, when they fail, it is crushing and leads to social pathologies.
Throwing more and more money at the D. C. public schools system, and unfurling programs, in an effort to close the “learning gap” between whites and Bantus is like trying to apply more and more lipstick to a pig, in order to make it look as beautiful as Jessica Simpson.
A waste of both money and lipstick.
Don’t they know the real reason by now? Why doesn’t someone give a copy of “The Bell Curve” to these educators for Christmas?
If one excludes black scores on math tests then IMO US students are not substantially different from math scores of students in other nations.
Coming soon: Behavioral differences between dog breeds have researchers stumped - as they seek purely environmental causes. Breedism is surely to blame.
the report america really needs to see is the one that describes how white students are handicapped by having to attend schools with black populations greater than 10%. It is all too easy for young students to fall into group mentalities, and if the group happens to be black, they will end up wallowing at the bottom of their class. the other aspect of the black handicap is that teachers end up catering to the black students, they end up teaching to the level of the lowest, leaving white students to flounder and fend for themselves, and then just imagine some poor white kid having to sit through 3 weeks of debate about who built the pyramids or just exactly when black explorers discovered america, followed by a month devoted to the wonders of the peanut
with so many stories about schools cheating and inflating these scores, you have to be skeptical about the black scores, especially if they are not matched by other cities
This academic “achievement gap” is easily the greatest fraud of our time, and perhaps, the most obviously so! Yet, tens of millions of Americans STILL dutifully pretend not to undersand how or why this “gap” persists. There is only ONE logical answer here, and all of here at AR know that this is also the one answer the establishment will NEVER offer!
Anonymous wrote at 6:49 PM on December 14:
He said, “This is unacceptable. We must re-double our efforts….”
I said to my wife, that is how exactly how you hang on to your job. Support the fiction that it is just a matter of “re-doubling” your efforts. And it that doesn’t work, “why we will re-redouble them again.”
“But what remains embedded in the latest numbers from the National Assessment of Educational Progress is the persistent achievement gap between African American and white students both locally and nationally.”
Yes, ‘The Gap’. That old elusive, persistent, consistent, ubiquitous, unexplainable, incomprehensable ‘gap’.
“or example, maybe we could do what Germany and Japan do — identify low-IQ students early, and then provide those low-IQ students with an excellent practical education in work-related skills…”
Europe does this, and has no race quotas (yet!!), which is great, but instead of the US learning from Europe (track people early according to ability, better and more voch tech schools, better job training generally, pay people in the trades decent $$ & treat them with resopect as professionals), we have entrenched the “everybody goes to college” psychosis, and Europe seems to be imitating us.
If only we had slotted people into appropriate jobs instead of trying to equalize everybody, we might have happy, competent black plumbers and mechanics, and our universities would not be two tier funhouses where black students study “blackness” and everyone else does normal work.
They never seem to have concern about white students being held to the 262-270 score range out of a possible 500. What would these whites be capable of if they were in decent classrooms.
I went to an al black jr. high. How much do ou think I learned compared to a white student in a white enviorment.
They do not have a whit of concern for the white students.
Detroit had the lowest scores. The whites are 3% of the population; Blacks 86%; Latinos 11%.
“…. the District needs to continue to find better ways to address the needs of low-achieving students….”
As long as the prevailing dogma in the government, media and academia insists on the Big Lie: that it’s possible to move those with double digit IQs from the left side of the Bell Curve to the right side, the educational-industrial complex will be screaming for more money, better programs, better teachers. Blame, as always, will be placed on inadequate teachers, lack of money and White Racism, never the low IQs of the students.
To me, this shows how far Western Civilization— marked by scientific inquiry, cold reason and dispassionate logic— has fallen: that those in control of the new all-powerful government, without challenge, are able to promote the outright falsehood of racial equality in academic ability when ALL empirical evidence ALL scientific evidence, ALL logical conclusions indicate human races are not equally intelligent and that it’s not possible to raise general intelligence (g).
You can bet the hypocrites who promote these lies to you do not believe that blacks are are equally as intelligent as their precious children. If they did, Sidwell Friends would be out of business tomorrow.
How much money, for close to 50 years, has been shoveled, fire-hosed and helicoptered into the K-12 ‘academic’ system to maintain the Big Lit that those of sub-100 IQ will be able to comprehend Algebra II and Geometry (required subjects for graduation in the district in which I’m employed) and the nuances and inferences of Shakespeare (also required reading in high school)?
When is enough enough? When will stupid excuses such as White Racism be exposed for the pernicious deceptions that they are just as ‘The Earth is Flat’ and ‘The Sun Revolves Around the Earth’ were finally proved to be laughably false?
My guess? Soon it will be Hate Speech to mention facts about racial differences, punishable by heavy fines and serious prison time. The NWO Torquemada will be high-powered Justice Department lawyers ready to mete out justice for those who dare to challenge the dogma that ALL races are equally intelligent and that the children of Somali refugees are interchangeable with White Euro children.
Books such as The Bell Curve and Race, Evolution and Behavior will be banned and burned, sites such as this will be outlawed, Hate Crimes charges will be brought against Rushton, Lynn, Murray and others of their type and they will be brought up on specious charges, paraded in a show trial, made to denounce their research and findings.
Don’t believe me? Ask the Canadians.
“… Ezra Levant, a lawyer and lifelong libertarian pundit based in Alberta, was brought before an Alberta Human Rights Commission tribunal for his own ‘crime’: publishing the controversial Danish ‘Mohammed’ cartoons…”
http://www.vdare.com/misc/080506_shaidle.htm
Bon, “E pur si muove”
We all pay a price by focusing on this black achievement obsession. We spending so many resources and energy on the dysfunctional, we largely ignore the gifted students that with a little extra attention, could benefit us all. The schools athletics programs don’t work this way. If a player can’t cut it, he’s simple cut from the team. No hand wringing no guilt, no apology.
Why is, “Son, looks like you just weren’t born to play XYZ.” Obvious
“Lemont, looks like you just weren’t born to go to collage.” Shocking?
Everybody has stated the obvious. You have an “achievement gap” because there is an immutable IQ gap. And IQ drives achievement. Ain’t fair, but there it is. The solution is to STOP trying to change what can’t BE changed, and restructure according to what IS. Namely, put blacks into schools of their own (segregation) with black teachers who know and accept their behavioral peculiarities, and who won’t try to shine them on that any one of them can be a rocket scientist. Hispanics who cannot speak English fluently enough to comprehend should NOT be in public schools period. Asians are essentially welcome if they behave. Their only problem really is a penchant for Asian gang activity if such is in the area. But their involvement is LOW because their respect for parents and law is HIGH. Unlike blacks and hispanics.
Here in America, ALL students are above average, and we don’t care how much money it costs or how long it takes to force reality into this ideology.
QD:
“…Once you get past the first unit in most algebra classes, then its gets entirely cerebral, and there’s where almost all math-challenged students, black and otherwise, fall behind…”
The first chapter of the Algebra book is as far as the NAEP tests go—no further than the first chapter, precisely because of the reason you noted: After chapter one, the material becomes too esoteric for those with double digit IQs.
Charles Murray notes in his book Real Education:
“…When The Brown Center for Education Policy analyzed items on NAEP’s math test, they discovered the required math on the test for eighth graders had usually been taught by the middle of the third grade. The tests measure familiarity with concepts and do not measure the ability to do actual mathematics.
The NAEP pays scant attention to algebra beyond the rudimentary topics that are found in the first chapter of a good algebra text…”
There are only two ways to close the achievement gap: Dumb down the tests to raise the scores of blacks or lower the scores of Whites to match those of blacks. Both of these things are actively being done in the schools.
If merit pay comes into force, and I believe it will eventually (merit pay, for those not familiar with the concept, means tying teacher pay to the kids’ test scores), there will be even more massive cheating in the classrooms during testing than there is now—I suspect the answers will be written on the board for the kids to copy.
That is, if they can find a teacher capable of answering the math problems! From what I can tell, teachers are getting dumber—schooled in ‘Social Justice’ and multi-culturalism, not in the basic skills necessary to succeed in life (such scorned things are reading, writing and arithmetic). Also, with the tremendous push for non-White ‘role models’, there are many illiterate, innumerate teachers in the schools who have been admitted to college via AA and pushed through. These teachers are labeled ‘highly qualified’ by NCLB standards—in teachers’ meetings, it is unbelievable the ignorance and garbled logic I hear from young teachers, and the utter lack of ability to put together a coherent thought or write a cogent sentence.
One young teacher (black) recently asked me to edit a plan she had written for the accreditation of the school where she is an administrator-in-training. I no longer waste my time helping those who I know would never help me, but out of curiosity I read the first page. I was told the proposal had already been edited by an outside, professional editor.
What I read was a garbled mess. The syntax was completely tangled, freely switching back and forth from passive to active voice, tenses varying willy-nilly from past to future to present and back again, embarrassing misspellings of common words, and punctuation marks either non-existent or improperly used. It looked as if it were written by someone who was trying to make herself seem highly qualified and highly educated through use of language and vocabulary she little understood but thought might impress the accreditation committee. The entire paper should have been shredded and burned, the college from which she graduated sued for handing out bogus diplomas.
I knew if I attempted to untangle, sort out this mess and re-write it, I would be called a racist.
I handed back the proposal and said: “I wouldn’t change a thing!”
Bon
I went to school in the Detroit area and was in honors math classes (taking geometry in 9th grade instead of 10th, for example). I don’t recall seeing any blacks in those classes. Typically they were in basic math or remedial math or whatever. That is, if they weren’t hanging around in the commons and chatting it up with the black security guard.
Just curious, does IQ testing and tested math/verbal ability parallel each other? If so then why waste resources on trying to prove equality? Education would do better teaching social and life skills. There is nothing wrong with being tracked into the trade schools. The overarching goal is to educate children to be productive contributors of society instead of trying to prove a point that all people have the same abilities.
Dr. Hendrik F Verwoerd, the so-called “architect” of apartheid, said that “What is the use of teaching the black child mathematics when he/she cannot use it in practice?”, this was in the 1950s, foresight or racism?
Wait a minute… There still are white kids in the public schools of a majority black city?! In a city like Washington DC, only a very small percentage of white residents with school aged children probably send their kids to the public schools. I live in a city that’s about 30% black with Hipsanics not far behind and I RARELY see white kids hanging around public school playgrounds, waiting in front of the schools for buses to take them home, etc. The few white students in DC schools are probably from low-income families and yet they still manage to perform better than their black counterparts. Amazing, huh? But that really shouldn’t surprise, given that the Bell Curve made note of the fact that blacks kids from prosperous families averaged IQs no higher than whites from poor families. The question is, will the fiction that intelligence is distbuted evenly across the races persist, or will it be discarded to its rightful place in the waste bin of history? If this fiction does persist, the u.s. in surely on its way to becoming a third-world counrty/
Bon wrote:
It looked as if it were written by someone who was trying to make herself seem highly qualified and highly educated through use of language and vocabulary she little understood but thought might impress the accreditation committee
That’s the way a lot of blacks, especially those in the high double digit IQ range, act. They think they’re a lot smarter than they actually are, so they use big words because they think they sound smart, when in reality they don’t know how to use them. They also use nonsense empty phrases that they can’t explain, and the people to whom they’re saying it can’t define, but they think it sounds smart coming out of their mouths. An example would be from the lawyer article in AR a few years ago, the black woman client said, “they’re putting me through the changes,” as an excuse to why she couldn’t pay him. About a dog, I heard a black woman say that “she know how to make do.” A dog, mind you.
Bon’s post is right on. I’ve been a teacher for 15 years. I just joined a major public school system (for the health benefits) a couple of years ago. A lot of the young teachers are - my goodness - clueless. I do not remember being that utterly dumb when I was 22-25. And all that social justice stuff - it is, in my opinion, an actual bona fide religion! Paolo Cuelo is the prophet. His books are the tomes of light. Diversity and social justice are the teachings. Sins are elitism, etc.
I was born and raised in an all-white area of the midwest, and now I’m on the east coast. Every morning when I drive to work, I pass by about ten schools here and there. I have never seen more than one white face among the kids coming to and fro in the last two years. Only one time did I see a scared looking blond girl walking alone and apart from the huge throngs of minority students. Haven’t seen her since.
My students are all black and Latino. About a quarter of the Latinos are okay and want to assimilate, this while the other Latinos tease them and call them gringos. I would guestimate that over 50% of my high school Latino students are capable of doing fourth grade work. 25% are really smart and 25% are average. So over half of them are useless. Yes, when statistics comparing our country’s kids with those of others are bandied about, there’s a reason ours are skewed downward.
It’s all a game now. Test scoring is a joke. Diplomas mean little for most. Dumbing down and lowered expectations are the order of the day, even as the social justice people talk out of the side of their mouth about raising standards, skills for a global world, etc… What kind of world will my children and grandchildren have? I am plagued by worry now every single day.
I got a degree in biology from The City College of New York in 1981. At the commencement ceremony they had the graduates of each department stand up. When they called “biology” there were about 25-30 of us, all White except for one Black girl. (She was quite intelligent and had worked hard like the rest of us.)
When they called “sociology” almost everyone who stood up was Black. In sociology, of course, you don’t have to struggle through chemistry, physics, calculus, genetics, cell physiology, etc., etc.
It was quite telling.
By the way, we also had to suffer through a commencement
Something I have to clear up about my post at #1 above is that, while higher level mathematics has many practical applications, immersing yourself in those practical applications can’t possibly help you do the complicated math behind them any better, in fact, not at all. Furthermore, you need the intellect to understand both the practical application and the math behind it. Think about it: Will taking you on a field trip to a freeway interchange help you learn how to solve differential equations?
You can make it easier for some students to learn arithmetic and very basic algebra using real life scenarios.
To Realist:
Daniel F. Malan, the South African prime minister is regarded as the founder of apartheid, around 1948, I believe. Hendrik Verwoerd was the Minister of Education.
