[billw55]

hrothgar, on 2012-September-12, 07:15, said:

In general, any time you have to caveat your posts by saying "I'm not saying that black kids are dumber" you ARE saying just that...

Poverty and education achievement are strongly linked. As a coincidental effect of this relationship, blacks have lower overall achievement also. This is obviously not causal, and it's disappointing that anyone would attribute such a position to me. I thought I was reasonably clear.

To me, your remark sounds like standard PC talk, whereby nobody can say anything at all about race without it being cast as racism.

[kenberg]

Race is a minefield, that's a fact. A little history of Maryland education. We have something called the HSA (High School Assessment I think it is). When these were first proposed as graduation requirements both my wife and I were drafted to help prepare the math tests. I was impressed, but skeptical. Can the kids, most of them, really do all this? Of course reality set in and in the final form the exams expected much less. Still, there was a ruckus, and it was very much phrased in terms of race. Kids would not be graduating, and it would be disproportionally African American kids who would not be graduating. Of course this could have been phrased as it being disproportionally kids from disadvantaged backgrounds who would not be graduating, but it was not primarily framed that way. The solution was to have kids who failed the exams twice have an alternative route to graduation.

I will be delighted if we ever reach the stage where we don't feel the need to check the color of a kid's face before we decide whether we favor these exams, but the fact is that we are not there yet. Progress maybe, but not there yet.

For me, with my priorities, I had different objections to the way this played out. The eventual form of the exams does not demand much, and the heavy concentration on getting kids through takes time and resources away from more advanced classes. My personal experience with minimal requirements came in my 1952 gym class, freshman year in high school. We were all (the boys only, this was 1952!) required to run a mile in six minutes. I did it, first try, Until around November or so I would sit on the grass with a slowly increasing number of other students while the rest of them slogged their way around the course. Maybe all of should have been expected to do our best instead of having this arbitrarily defined minimum?

[hrothgar]

billw55, on 2012-September-12, 08:56, said:

To me, your remark sounds like standard PC talk, whereby nobody can say anything at all about race without it being cast as racism.

To me, your original post sounds like the sort of thing that I associate with ignorant bitter white trash who learned not to use the word nigger in public a couple generations back and have cleaned up their act slightly more since since then...

[dwar0123]

hrothgar, on 2012-September-12, 09:35, said:

To me, your original post sounds like the sort of thing that I associate with ignorant bitter white trash who learned not to use the word nigger in public a couple generations back and have cleaned up their act slightly more since since then...

One of you two has issues and right now it isn't looking like its Bill.

[TimG]

billw55, on 2012-September-12, 06:44, said:

No way [tracking] will ever happen in the US. Any administrator that did this would be promptly fired for racial segregation.

There is no tracking in the all-white school district in which I live. Though when I spoke to the elementary school principal about it, she did say that one reason there is no tracking is for the sake of diversity.

[kenberg]

In my 1940-50s education, thee was no tracking in elementary school, but there was college prep and non-college prep (I forget the exact name of non-college prep) in high school, and, later, a vocational track where the students went to a vocational school in the afternoons. In 2012, I believe all the grandchildren are tracked, and from quite early on. I think the third grade twins, for example, are in the accelerated math. As far as I know, the three year old and the one year old have not been tracked yet. The three year old is really good on the monkey bars though, so we can hope for some sort of advanced placement soon.

[Bbradley62]

When I was in second grade (1969-70 school year) my 95+% white suburban public elementary school tiered us for Math and for Reading. Of course, they didn't tell us that's what they did, but it was perfectly obvious to us. I was put in the highest of the six Math classes, and in the second highest Reading class. It pissed me off, and I worked hard to get promoted to the highest Reading class the next quarter. They stopped doing this the following year, and I've always thought that was a shame.

[cherdano]

As always, the union-bashing-robots in the NY Times editorial pages are siding with the employers on this one:
http://www.nytimes.c...tml?ref=opinion

[Phil]

kenberg, on 2012-September-12, 09:21, said:

We were all (the boys only, this was 1952!) required to run a mile in six minutes. I did it, first try, Until around November or so I would sit on the grass with a slowly increasing number of other students while the rest of them slogged their way around the course. Maybe all of should have been expected to do our best instead of having this arbitrarily defined minimum?

Yikes!

[Phil]

hrothgar, on 2012-September-12, 09:35, said:

To me, your original post sounds like the sort of thing that I associate with ignorant bitter white trash who learned not to use the word nigger in public a couple generations back and have cleaned up their act slightly more since since then...

How do you know Billw55 is white?

[Bbradley62]

cherdano, on 2012-September-12, 14:09, said:

As always, the union-bashing-robots in the NY Times editorial pages are siding with the employers on this one:
http://www.nytimes.c...tml?ref=opinion

Then, is the Obama Administration also union-bashing-robots for having passed the Race to the Top legislation, described in USA Today as "a federal grant competition that pushes schools to use standardized test scores to retain and reward teachers"? Is the Illinois state legislature a bunch of union-bashing-robots for having unanimously passed (in 2010) the Performance Evaluation Reform Act, a law requiring all school districts (by 2016) to implement a teacher evaluation system that includes standardized test scores? Is Democratic Governor Pat Quinn a union-bashing-robot for signing this legislation? Is the Chicago Public School district union-bashing-robots for doing their best to abide by that state law? Or are all of us who think the Chicago Teachers Union is out of line also union-bashing-robots?

[akwoo]

I think the standardized tests we have are horrible. Also any standardized tests that are not insanely expensive to develop and administer would be horrible.

Being a college professor, I can attest that we are getting more and more students that know how to do problems and can recall some facts but don't understand anything. (We are probably getting fewer students who neither know how to do problems nor know any facts nor understand anything. I question whether this is of much benefit.)

What's worse is that the tests are greatly distorting students' ideas of what education is about. Now a lot of students have the idea that being educated means knowing lots of facts rather than having an understanding of ideas.

This is like saying someone is good at bridge because they can quote the laws and SAYC from memory. Yes if we had to check if a few million people were good at bridge, it would be expensive to run games or tournaments for all of them. But we don't then decide that having multiple choice tests on the laws and SAYC would be a good substitute! Even if I do wish BBO players had a better grasp of what's in SAYC.

[mike777]

akwoo, on 2012-September-12, 15:54, said:

I think the standardized tests we have are horrible. Also any standardized tests that are not insanely expensive to develop and administer would be horrible.

Being a college professor, I can attest that we are getting more and more students that know how to do problems and can recall some facts but don't understand anything. (We are probably getting fewer students who neither know how to do problems nor know any facts nor understand anything. I question whether this is of much benefit.)

What's worse is that the tests are greatly distorting students' ideas of what education is about. Now a lot of students have the idea that being educated means knowing lots of facts rather than having an understanding of ideas.

This is like saying someone is good at bridge because they can quote the laws and SAYC from memory. Yes if we had to check if a few million people were good at bridge, it would be expensive to run games or tournaments for all of them. But we don't then decide that having multiple choice tests on the laws and SAYC would be a good substitute! Even if I do wish BBO players had a better grasp of what's in SAYC.

So the educationial system has gotten worse over the last ten years, not better?
The students are even less prepared than ten years ago?

All of this despite a 100% increase in govt spending the last 4 years, yet the complaint is for even more money.

Having attended Chicago public schools I am still trying to understand how a school there does not have a library per a teacher on CNN.

[onoway]

A high school teacher in Edmonton is embroiled in a battle to save his job after assigning zero grades for assignments not done such as papers not turned in. The school board apparently has a policy that teachers are not allowed to give zero for anything. The public response seems to be overwhelmingly in support of the teacher but the board members apparently feel that it is pschologically damaging to the fragile ego of adolescents to be told they failed, no matter how deserved the message.

So many things seem to get more bizarre by the year..

As a matter of interest, the free online university classes at Stanford (and later followed by M.I.T. and others) were inspired by Kahn, according to the Prof at Stanford who started them. (Listened to an interview with him the other day but don't now remember his name, sorry)

[hrothgar]

onoway, on 2012-September-12, 16:37, said:

As a matter of interest, the free online university classes at Stanford (and later followed by M.I.T. and others) were inspired by Kahn, according to the Prof at Stanford who started them. (Listened to an interview with him the other day but don't now remember his name, sorry)

The OpenCourseWare project at MIT dates back to 2002

Khan didn't start tutoring his cousin until 2004
The Khan Academy didn't start until 2006

[onoway]

Ah. Then the guy from Stanford was making claims he had no right to make, and the interviewer had not done her homework either. I thought the CBC was a bit more sensible than that. He didn't say it was inspired by the Khan Academy, but by Khan,fwiw, but he definitely was presented as being the first to develop the idea of offering the same courses online for free as were being offered to paying students on campus.

[Cthulhu D]

mike777, on 2012-September-11, 15:37, said:

Just saw a sign on CNN, the teacher said they had no library.

How in the world can a school in Chicago have no library at all? Can a charity or teachers even start their own small library..one just wonders what in the world is going on there.

Remember, one of the things that the Teacher's union is pushing for is that classes have their textbooks available on day one. They are certainly gunning for things to improve outcomes here to.

[mike777]

Cthulhu D, on 2012-September-12, 20:10, said:

Remember, one of the things that the Teacher's union is pushing for is that classes have their textbooks available on day one. They are certainly gunning for things to improve outcomes here to.

A school library
textbooks for students on day one...

It would seem wierd to have a budget without a library, ANY LIBRARY or textbooks.


I can only wonder what in the world is going on?

Here is the budget.

http://cps.edu/About...getOverview.pdf

iT SEEMS the money is there but.....union says no.

[Cthulhu D]

hrothgar, on 2012-September-12, 07:15, said:

In general, any time you have to caveat your posts by saying "I'm not saying that black kids are dumber" you ARE saying just that...

The problems are socio-economic caused by the legacy of racism, the rigid class structure in America and the denial by politicians of all stripes of point 1 and 2.

The upshot is that black kids are more likely to need help than white kids - but it's because black kids are more likely to be from poor backgrounds.

[cherdano]

Bbradley62, on 2012-September-12, 15:14, said:

Then, is the Obama Administration also union-bashing-robots for having passed the Race to the Top legislation, described in USA Today as "a federal grant competition that pushes schools to use standardized test scores to retain and reward teachers"? Is the Illinois state legislature a bunch of union-bashing-robots for having unanimously passed (in 2010) the Performance Evaluation Reform Act, a law requiring all school districts (by 2016) to implement a teacher evaluation system that includes standardized test scores? Is Democratic Governor Pat Quinn a union-bashing-robot for signing this legislation? Is the Chicago Public School district union-bashing-robots for doing their best to abide by that state law? Or are all of us who think the Chicago Teachers Union is out of line also union-bashing-robots?

I guess I should have marked my post as sarcasm...