Posted on 05/04/2009 9:06:48 AM PDT by NormsRevenge
With the Class of 2006, California began requiring high-school students to score at least 60 percent on a test of 10th-grade English and at least 55 percent on eighth-grade math to graduate. With numerous chances to take this exit exam, 90 percent of all students pass it before the 12th grade and graduate with a diploma.
Why, then, do the relative few not pass and not graduate with a diploma? Sean F. Reardon, an associate professor of education at Stanford University, is seeking answers.
Using records of the San Diego, San Francisco, Fresno and Long Beach school districts, Reardon compared the graduation rates of the lowest-achieving students just before the exit exam became mandatory and just after.
The lowest-achieving female, black, Latino and Asian students who had to pass the exam, he reports, graduated at rates far below their predecessors who didn't have to pass it.
That isn't surprising. While the exit exam is objective, letter grades may be subjective. But Reardon notes an anomaly.
Of students in the bottom quartile on earlier standardized tests, 5 percent of the girls and 10 percent of the minority students had scored high enough to expect they would pass the exit exam. Yet they did not . They underperformed, moreover, greater extent than boys and whites whose prior test scores were similar. Further statistical research, Reardon says, eliminates the usual causes, such as test bias and varying school quality. This relative underperformance, he concludes, is consistent with “stereotype threat.”
According to this theory, high-stakes tests such as the exit exam particularly stress minorities and girls because they fear the results will “confirm negative stereotypes about the academic skills of their group.” If told, for instance, that a test measures intelligence or asked to write their race, ethnicity and gender on the answer sheet, low-achieving girls and minorities underperform, but similarly low-achieving whites and boys do not.
Therefore, Reardon reports, the perceived stereotype threat compromises the exit exam as a measure of the true academic skills of all students. Therefore, the high school diploma conveys to potential employers a false impression of the academic skills of underperforming girls and minority students. Therefore, the state should either ditch the exit exam or offer them a less crippling alternative.
No one has yet asked these students why they think they failed. But Reardon now offers all underperformers an academic rationale for faulting society at large and demanding an easier path to a diploma. In the movement to lower academic expectations of low achievers, any excuse will do.
The scientific theory of “Enviromental Materialism” is sinking faster than the Bismark or Titanic. Basically it is defended by libs and conservatives with some skin in the game (meaning their source of income) and wacked out crazy libs on the cusp of emotional and mental breakdowns over the hard facts of reality closing in on them.
It is becoming more apparent with each passing day that the rebuilding will not begin until the entire structure has collapsed. Life will be hard for a while, but there will be plenty of raw materials lying around.
I am a publik skool teacher, and I do not agree with this article at all. Who gives a SHIT what color or ethnicity a student hails from?!? Students should only be passed on based on MERIT! I only pass those students who demonstrate mastery of the subject. The school doesn’t like it, but I have far too many years in for them to easily get rid of me...;-) (Kind of a catch-22 with that tenure thing...;-))
How is the test discriminatory? When my daughter took the test it was all multiple chose and T/F.
She passed the test in the 10th grade, first year given and asked the principal if that was all she needed to do to graduate she wanted her diploma so she could go right on to college.
I have observed, and some other teachers have confirmed to me, that some minority students will actually ridicule those of their "group" if they work hard in school, or even take assignments home.
There is also, apparently, a subset of a "group" who remain convinced that professional sports is their future, and thus, basic educational fundamentals (reading, writing, math) will not be necessary.
Then, there is the two-parents-at-home effect, which I believe might be fairly well-described.
My question for you...are these somewhat in line with your "puplik skool" observations?
.
These kids don’t do well on the tests because their education is only a veneer, memorized, but not incorporated.
Then stop asking Race on the test.
Truth is a very ugly thing Seaplane... the reality about minority academic achievement and social ostracism is not a MYTH...I have seen it first hand, once as a student and again as a teacher
You can stop reading right there. Tests cannot be biased, although the teacher can. Test bias is a complete oxymoron. The student either knows the material or they do not.
It is possible for the grader to be biased on certain types of tests (essay tests, for instance) but in a multiple choice or fill-in-the-blank test, as standardized tests typically are, bias is impossible. The student either knows the material or they do not. If they do not, they fail. If they do, they pass. It's pretty simple.
Biology is destiny.
Ah, you obviously do not understand the need for empathy for the student that was:
not loved enough.
loved too much.
poor.
born to immigrant parents.
in a divorced family.
other:__________________________________
PICK ONE! /sarc
There are large differences in average academic achievement between whites and Asians and blacks and Hispanics, and high school exit exams (HSEE) will reflect this. Although HSEE are not biased just because they do not produce equal results, I am wary of using them to deny high school diplomas, because where do you draw the line? I think many employers of high school graduates want someone who follows the rules and gets to work on time, even if they don’t know algebra (which is tested on the California HSEE). I say use an HSEE (along with the SAT and high school grades) to determine admission to 4-year public colleges and for some 2-year programs, but not for a diploma. On high school transcripts, list the scores for the various subjects, and let employers decide how they want to use that information.
It is not good for the U.S. that the proportion of educationally underperforming minorities is growing, but we need to be realistic in dealing with it and not pretend that everyone can be made ready for college if we just apply enough pressure.
I read a great journal article several years ago that showed what every teacher already knew - poorer students think they are better than they really are, and therefore are disappointed more often when they receive an appropriate score that reflects their true ability. These students then try to shift the blame for their scores to someone or something else.
Unskilled and Unaware of It: How Difficulties in Recognizing One’s Own Incompetence Lead to Inflated Self-Assessments Journal of Personality and Social Psychology Selected Article © 1999 by the American Psychological Association For personal use only—not for distribution December 1999 Vol. 77, No. 6, 1121-1134 Unskilled and Unaware of It: How Difficulties in Recognizing One’s Own Incompetence Lead to Inflated Self-Assessments; Justin Kruger and David Dunning; Department of Psychology; Cornell University
There is an omnipresent, palpable air of entitlement which inundates the minority students (mostly black), which, I purport, is one unfortunate upshot of the dominion of the hip-hop/gangsta rap mentality over the students. Everything deemed "too white" is demonized by minorities and avoided at all costs. Barack Obama worship runs rampant with these same students, which leads to exacerbated tendencies toward "minority pride".
As far as those students letting it all ride on a future sports endeavor, the ironic thing about that is that many of these students don't even participate in the sport they claim will be their meal ticket in the future (due to failing grades, nonetheless). Again, the pervasive sense of entitlement these "minorities" perpetuate, backed now especially by the constant message being rammed down their throats about race due to Odumbo, has been a major destructive force on the fabric of this country.
I could bloviate for hours on end about the ills perpetuated by race in the education system, but I imagine that any Conservative worth his/her weight in gold would consider it preaching to the choir...;-)
Diploma or no diploma, unless you are 6'11” tall with a hell of a jump shot or are gorgeous or have some other extreme talent or are born a Kennedy with hired talented handlers from birth, stupid does not forecast a prosperous future. And quite frankly, if you can't jump it really does not matter if the reason is inadequate legs or fear of heights.
With enough exceptions to confirm life is interesting, all the “high wage jobs” in America and elsewhere are for the 20% most smart. Job training and main stream education may usefully turn stupid, unemployed people into stupid people holding low wage jobs, but it does not cure stupid. So, noting that this “theory” is indeed more scientific than “creation science”, it is really a matter of whether or not you want to pass out attendance merit badges for feel-good purposes.
There are important questions in education. For example, are we educating our smart children as well as they can be educated? This matters because it is the 20% of them who are smartest that will be funding our social security checks, not the dumber 20% that will remain largely dependent even beyond high-school, with or without a diploma.
Our educators that have proved totally unable to qualify stupid people for “high wage jobs” (because they can not turn stupid into smart) are proven in their ability to disqualify smart people from ever holding them, because they can fail to educate. In the global economy if we have educated our smart children well, our social security checks will be there. If not, they will peter out before we do. It should not escape notice that before the information age, not being among the very smart was not such a competitive disadvantage.
But John Edwards’ “Two Americas” is both a reasonably correct observation and in the full blown information age of the 21st century largely reflects an increasingly visible separation of the pretty darned smart from the not. It would be nice if race was not a statistically disproportionate part of this dichotomy. Unfortunately, this is not the case. So discussion of it invariably risks being tarred a racist.
Here is the single most important political question of the age:
What can and should America offer “the unsmart” who surely are not earning the big bucks and never will, in degree attributable to chance and unfair inequity, but mostly because they are perhaps a few synapses short.
Deceptive as it may be, “leaders” among liberals and Democrats have an answer that is on topic and spins easily and well. Little matter that it reduces itself to “From each according to ability, to each according to his needs ...” which sounds pretty darned good to someone with real and imagined needs in abundance, no way out, and no accurate awareness of the history. Quite frankly, why would an “unsmart person” not believe that there is no money in their pocket because the rich guy has it all in his. And notice how adeptly this approach sidesteps ever speaking to the matter of differing ability leading to different rewards. Some pigs may be more equal than others. But don't talk about the dimensions of equality
In the 21st Century, what's our answer folks?
Re-emergent conservative success requires one because conservatism resurrected must offer a better economic future that can be seen and appreciated as offering a best case future to at least 70% to 80% of the population, a figure that reaches deeply into the “unsmart.”
And in the meantime, America's future comparative economic success in the world depends on our ability to educate the smarter children better, not the dumber.
“Why do they think they failed?” I volunteered in a jr hi-high school for a few years, a couple of years ago. I never saw such a slothful bunch of jackanapes. I observed some students who were working hard to pass, and a WHOLE BUNCH who had no clue/and could have cared less, about why they were there.
It was disgusting.
“Why do they think they failed?” I volunteered in a jr hi-high school for a few years, a couple of years ago. I never saw such a slothful bunch of jackanapes. I observed some students who were working hard to pass, and a WHOLE BUNCH who had no clue/and could have cared less, about why they were there.
It was disgusting.
Two easy solutions:
1. don't ask for race, ethnicity, or gender.
or
2. ask those questions _after_ the students complete the tests.
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