Posted on 07/01/2011 3:58:12 PM PDT by reaganaut1
To better diagnose achievement gaps and help education leaders tailor solutions, federal civil rights officials on Thursday released an expanded, searchable set of information – drawn from schools in more than 7,000 districts and representing at least three-quarters of American students.
The survey’s data show, as never before, the education inequities that hold various groups of students back.
For example, in 3,000 high schools, math classes don’t go higher than Algebra I, and in 7,300 schools, students had no access to calculus. Schools serving mostly African-American students are twice as likely to have inexperienced teachers as are schools serving mostly whites in the same district.
“Transparency is the path to reform, and it’s only through shining a bright spotlight on where opportunity gaps exist that we can really make headway on closing the achievement gap,” said Russlynn Ali, assistant secretary for civil rights in the US Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights (OCR) in a conference call with reporters Thursday.
“These data paint a portrait of a sad truth in America’s schools,” she said, “that the promise of fundamental fairness hasn’t reached whole groups of students that will need the opportunity to succeed, to get out of poverty, to ensure their dreams come true, and indeed to ensure our country’s prosperity.”
Part 1 of the 2009-10 Civil Rights Data Collection was released Thursday. Among many items, it includes whether districts offer pre-kindergarten or gifted and talented programs. It shows how many counselors each school has. And it breaks down most items into racial groups, as well as disability status and whether students are English-language learners.
(Excerpt) Read more at csmonitor.com ...
The teachers probably aren’t qualified or intelligent enough to teach beyond that level.
This is right up there with the Obama initiative to generate “certificates” to help with the employment of junior college students. You can paper the situation any way you want; you can call arithmetic calculus, but it isn’t a civil rights issue. The NEA would gladly have its teachers run the classes in question if the student body at these schools could take them.
This isn’t surprising, but it says a lot.
Why do you need algebra to spend your life hoeing and jiving.
Abolish public schools altogether. The local governments (townships) would meet the education needs of the parents, who would now have a lot more say in the education of their kids. Right now parents are the enemy to the gubmint indoctrination centers we call public schools.
This is a very strong argument for school vouchers. Public Schools are VA Hospitals.
Not too many teachers with good math skills would choose a war zone over a calmer suburban school.
Schools have long had the cart well out in front of the horse.
So-called Advanced Placement and Honors programs are, in reality, those classes beyond Algebra I that used to be part of the core curriculum. They provide a convenient bragging point for teachers, schools and students so nobody is willing to upset the apple cart. They also provide cover for grade inflation. Now students get meaningless GPAs of 4.51798 to go with their meaningless diplomas - how fitting.
Don’t get me started on all the ‘Gifted’ programs popping up like mushrooms. Er, no. Mozart was gifted. Newton was gifted. Little Timmy is not gifted because he lucked into getting 20 vocabulary words correct.
Math test for high schools located in Detroit, South-Central Los Angeles and other Democratic strongholds:
1. Duane has an AK47 with a 30 round clip. If he misses 6 out of 10 shots and shoots 13 times at each drive by shooting, how many drive by shootings can he attempt before he has to reload?
2. If Jose has 2 ounces of cocaine and he sells an 8 ball to Jackson for $320 and 2 grams to Billy for $85 per gram, what is the street value of the balance of the cocaine if he doesn’t cut it?
3. Rufus is pimping for 3 girls. If the price is $65 for each trick, how many tricks will each girl have to turn so Rufus can pay for his $800 per day crack habit?
4. Jarome wants to cut his 1/2 pound of Heroin to make 20% more profit. How many ounces of cut will he need?
5. Willie gets $200 for stealing a BMW, $50 for a Chevy and $100 for a 4x4. If he has stolen 2 BMW’s and 3 4x4’s, how many Chevy’s will he have to steal to make $800?
6. Raoul is in prison for 6 years for murder. He got $10,000 for the hit. If his common law wife is spending $100 per month, how much money will he have left when he gets out of prison and how many years will he get for killing the bitch that spent his money?
7. If the average spray paint can covers 22 square feet and the average letter is 3 square feet, how many letters can a tagger spray with 3 cans of paint?
8. Hector knocked up 6 girls in his gang. There are 27 girls in the gang. What percentage of the girls in the gang has Hector knocked up?
If your schools use these two curiculums, fight it now. Should we be surprised these come from Chicago?
Math Education: An Inconvenient Truth
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tr1qee-bTZI
A country of morons but good union workers.
Is this the type of Algebra where x=anything you want it to?
I gave my chemistry class a table contaning two variables and asked them to solve for a specific Y value using Y = mX +B. Only one of my students knew how to solve the problem.
Don’t the cash register keys at McDonalds, KFC and Subway have a picture of the food item on them? What math is required to do that?
As my 30+ years AP-qualified high-school math teacher spouse will testify; the minority populations in her on-level Algebra 1 classes REFUSE to be educated. The blacks consider it acquiescing to the white-man’s way and the hispanics (several illegal aliens) resent the gringo.
All the money and attention focused on these groups only serves to reinforce their attitude that they are entitled and deserve material goods and respect without any effort on their part. It is a cultural divide!!
As might be expected, she is usually the only one reciting the Pledge of Allegiance at the beginning of these classes.
My 7th grade Chino, California mentally gifted minors program required an actual IQ test, just like MENSA. Of course, that was in 1972, not now.
And considering the large number of illegitimate children the condoms on cucumber classes are not too well represented either.
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