Florida Adopts Different Standards For Students Based On Race

No, we just shouldn't track things that don't determine a persons likelihood to succeed. I don't believe that being black means a less likely chance of success, do you?

What does being black or hispanic or asian or white have to do with your success level? You don't fail because of your race, you fail because of your environment. Your environment isn't determined by your race or there would never be racially mixed neighborhoods. The environments are stuck in a pre-civil rights era because the communities/governments have given up on their schools which is their best chance of escape.

 

Yes.

Obviously it's complicated, and obviously race is a proxy. But, it's probably a useful one here. The real units we're dealing with here are families. Some make their kids work hard and some don't. Some can supplement that education and some can't. But, the family is too fluid -- they intermarry, they divorce, they have black sheep, they move around the country, and so on. But, people marry within their race more often than not, they make friends within their race more often than not, they live in neighborhoods, go to schools and go to church with people of their own race more often than not. So, there's something persistent in family heritage around race that would be too fluid to manage around family units.

The reason the asians are lumped in with the whites here is that they by-and-large have a culture that emphasizes success in education and career. Jewish communities have had that emphasis as well. For a host of reasons, hispanic and black communities in the US have not had it. The phenomenon is real, it's race-community-linked, and if we don't do something to proactively address it, it will continue to persist.

I don't believe the problem in the black and hispanic communities is just family income (which is what I meant by money in the last post), or broken homes, or lack of educated parents, or racism -- though those are all factors -- there's a cultural element of what happens at the kitchen table when the kids gets home from school. When you're setting school policy -- which is probably the biggest lever of social engineering we have in this country -- it's not helpful to say 'we just need a level playing field and let the cream rise to the top' or shake our heads at soft bigotry. If you're going to fix it, acknowledge the problems for what they are, admit that you can't control factors outside the perview of the school, and compensate where you do have control so that a generation from now we're not staring at the exact same problem.

 

Because it is capitalism.

 

Okay, that makes perfect sense. Now, how does racial statistics help in a real world situation? What can a teacher gather from a survey that shows 40% of African Americans in his/her class are failing and 90% of Caucasians are succeeding?

What I fear is this: You look at a stat and see 70% of African Americans are struggling, but only 25% of whites are. Does that mean we essentially ignore the 25% of white kids to help the 70% of African Americans more? Why not, class by class, evaluate each student and determine the best course of action based on individual problems and not general racial problems that segregate people into 4 distinct groups when they aren't distinct at all. I don't think we realize how different we are from just 10, 20, 30 years ago.

 

I think it's naive to suggest race doesn't have anything to do with your chance of success. It may not be because their skin is black, but the culture, economic situation, etc. that they are a part of (most likely, statistically) is a real difference.

Reaching black kids in a black community and educating them properly is completely different than reaching white kids in a white community and educating them properly.

 

I agree that their is a correlation, and that the factors that actually play a part in a child's likelihood of success are indirectly determined by race. I don't agree that race determines your chance of success, and I believe too many are convinced it does which is more damaging in the end.

 

Maybe you do neglect the whites and focus on the blacks. Seems ethically questionable, but schools are facing the complementary dilemma now of sacrificing the most underperforming students to focus on the ones that will help them make their numbers. It might be better to sacrifice kids who have a safety net than the ones who don't.

Why not student by student? Teachers do, of course. They have the precision to give attention to the kids who need it instead of the kids who fall into whatever demographic category. But, for the school districts, I don't think it's an efficient way to handle tens of millions of people. Just like how companies profile their customers to customize how they sell, schools should be profiling to customize how they teach. In that regard, a simple race category is perhaps too simple (no business would do customer analytics like that), but you have to do something to put your customers into manageable categories.

Also consider: there may be an uneven distribution of service. Maybe tall people, or athletic people, or autistic people, or whatever will be underserved relative to the average. But, of all the ways you could have a statistically significant underserved population, do you want the people who get the short end be the black people, again?

 

I want to know how much does state have to do for the kids who r failing before parents will take responsibility. I personally think Black and Hispanic should have an easier time becoming successful than Asian. The reason they are not is because the parents are not willing to spend the time to help their kids become successful.

 

As a citizen, I want all the kids to become well-educated and highly-skilled productive members of society. I can wish and wish and wish that their lousy parents would suck it up and do their jobs and make their kids the model citizens I want to see. But, it ain't going to happen. So, I'm not content to sit back and shake my finger at bad parents and tell kids it's their parents' fault they're screwed -- all the while enjoying the relative success my kids have because I did everything the right way. That doesn't make anything better. If the parents can't or won't take responsibility the way I think they should, I'd rather use what tools are at our disposal -- the powers of the State -- to drag those kids up and make them edumacated despite their parents.

 

But how much should state do? If the parents smoke, drink, gamble should the state step in and raise the kids for them? Asian has it much rougher than black or Hispanic and most Asian manage to get better or stay in the same social economic class as their parent. I want to know why cant black and Hispanic do the same, why do we need to do more to help them than Asian.