City School Tests Reveal Sharp Ethnic Disparities (Berkeley)

berkeleydailyplanet.com ^

[WackyKat]

Reading, writing and math are just outmoded "Eurocentric" skills anyway.

[Walkingfeather]

I have a difficult time believing that asians scored less than whites in science and math.

[Carry_Okie]

More troubling is that for reading and math the achievement gap expanded from lower to higher grades.

The system is working exactly as intended. Our leftist PC Mecca has had every chance to prove otherwise.

I would bet that the disparities are less in the rural South.

[cyborg]

Hard for some to believe but there are stupid asians.

[resistmuch]

Fifty years from now, will the schools still be demanding and getting more money to correct these mysterious racial differences in achievement, or will we finally have admitted that the differences are intractable and move on to something more productive?

[chance33_98]

I just find the whole left to be racist, instead of looking at people individually and trying to help them they treat them based on their color.

[dagnabbit]

At the other end of the spectrum...six percent of Malcolm X students scored at the proficient level.

Obviously the first name change wasn't vigorous enought. Call the place the "Mumia abu Jamal Academy" and the kids are sure to pass at a rate of 90 percent.

[JRandomFreeper]

or will we finally have admitted that the differences are intractable

The differences are not intractable. Give me any child of any gender or race, before he/she is 7 and they will be reading well by the time they are 7. It takes a dedicated teacher that knows how to motivate, and phonics. That is ALL it takes.

It certainly doesn't take $6,000/student/year at some NEA rat-trap of a school.

/john

[Yaelle]

It is frightening to see Hispanics get higher scores in language tests than blacks. What is that all about? How could that be? Scoring less than people who started with a different language altogether?

[cyborg]

What differences? I bet they didn't poll black people from other countries. OR black kids in private schools OR EVEN MORE black kids being homeschooled. The only thing that is intractable is liberal stupidity.

[chance33_98]

I don't know, but could be the 'I have to learn more so I study harder' type thing. Like me when I was a learning a new programming language. The people I was speaking to on the topic didn't have the depth of knowledge I did because they became focused on a sub-set of it, and being afraid I knew too little I started out re-studying in depth computer science in general along with the language as well as assembly language.

I worked harder because I knew that I knew less, and the internal competition kicked in. Kind of like people I know who get certifications by studying for the tests and forget most of it later on, they don't spend time on the basics because they don't think they need to (I always see myself as less knowledgable than others so I keep myself studying all the time).

[umgud]

Berkley is a poor test-bed for anything social.

[lady lawyer]

Well, the problem is obvious. The liberals haven't yet done enough to suppress the white kids' scores.

[cyborg]

I agree

[William Terrell]

She added that it was hard to read too much into test results because the state has repeatedly “tweaked” the test, making trends over time difficult to discern.

You're supposed to "tweak" the student, not the test.

[Mad Dawgg]

City School Tests Reveal Sharp Ethnic Disparities (Berkeley)

More useless fodder for those on The Quest for Cosmic Justice.

[Jeff Chandler]

Writing tests given to elementary and middle school students also showed huge discrepancies between schools, prodding board members to question if the district had a consistent district-wide program.

Students at Jefferson and John Muir Elementary Schools scored the highest, with 37 and 36 percent of students respectively ranking as proficient. At the other end of the spectrum, only nine percent of Leconte students, and six percent of Malcolm X students scored at the proficient level.

Are these education professionals really that stupid?

[Yaelle]

I don't know your nationality or heritage, but you sound very much like the Asian immigrant families I know. And like my father, who, when he came to this country and saw the local university, worked the proverbial three jobs to afford it and busted his buns to graduate. Bravo. You can't not succeed by working that hard.

However, the Hispanic scores are not high. This can be attributed in part to the lack of language skills, although Asians have that same mark against them and yet their test scores are far higher. But why are the black scores so low? Those kids are English mother tongue, have access to everything in English, and yet are not as fluent as foreigners in their second languages. What is going on there? I hope it is not that fear of "sounding white" that keeps black families from guiding their children into decent language usage. That is just too sad.

[chance33_98]

I don't know your nationality or heritage,

My pic is on my profile page :) Just a regular old hill billy. And I am getting ready to move into a house out in the country and get some chickens and a goat. Checked out the little town I will be close to (about 2 miles) - We have a gas station there, and two cafes, and a place that does logging. I hate moving though :( I have two servers that weigh about 110lbs each and I have to get them safely down the steps. I don't think I will move again for a long long time!

As far as education, got a ged.