I will give the link here for you to read the article yourself in case I am mis-interpreting it.
As I see it, Gwinnett County wants freedom from state education mandates. Such a mandate dictates things like required instructional time and class size. To avoid these mandates they must create and sign an agreement with the state called IE2 contracts.
So far, it sounds fair enough. Meet reasonable benchmarks, set your own rules. Cool.
The details of the agreement are the problem. Simply put, They set acheivement standards of African American Students lower than that of White and Asian students. Also, standards for hispanic students are set just above that of students with disabilites, and ESOL students are even lower than that.
This is very telling. Approximately 40% of white and Asian students are expected to meet benchmarks. Meanwhile just 25% of blacks are expected to meet the same standards. It just spirals down for Hispanic students.
There is a mindset here that is troubling at best. This tells me that my African American child is not given the benefit of doubt that he or she can meet the same standards of their white neighbor. Meanwhile, they live next door to each other. We may even go to the same church, and be on the same sports teams. Heck, they may even be best friends. But because my child is perceived to be less academically strong, for no other reason than the color of their skin, they will surely not be given the same kind of attention in the classroom.... because... why bother? We don't expect much of the anyway.
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6 comments:
I came back from the story with more questions:
1. These "standards" are probably nothing much anyway, right?
2. Pretend the standards are good and objective somehow. Are black and Hispanic students CURRENTLY doing what could OBJECTIVELY be considered a lousy job on the tests as a group? I'm asking because if that's the case, the schools are simply looking at the kids "where they are now" and figuring not much will be different in 5 years. Which is a shame but not necessarily racist in and of itself... more like a "meh, whatever, I don't care" sort of attitude.
3. Does it do something to the very psyche of a black child to be constantly looked at and compared as a "group" instead of a "person." Then again, I wouldn't want schools doing a crummy job with a kid JUST because he's black. Mixed feelings there.
4. The average parent isn't going to be able to do much about anything, particularly as they change the state tests around and scores from, say, 1997 are not comparable to those in 2012.
And as schools more uniformly teach to the test, only the very ELITE public schools will allow its children to divert from the mundane and *gah* gruelly-horrid curriculum that plagues our public schools. Their brains will not acclimate to the taste of good literature or sound numerology and I'm DEAD SERIOUS when I say this is a bigger national security issue than whether Junior has a fatt butt. Junior can diet when he's 19. He'll never be able to redo school.
5. Ok, about half of that was off-topic but those are my thoughts...
Happy,
I read several articles on this subject and here's what I came away with the assertion that standards where raised for white kids and lowered for black kids.
Also, these low expectations spill over into every day life. As a black person, I have seen people be overtly impressed by a black child who excels. I have been inundated with complements simply because my children speak well, are clean, and intelligent. It's grating. I so badly want to say "and you expected....?"
Finally, Yes. Children can tell what is expected of them, and do no more than that. It doesn't take long to figure out how to game the system. Expect less, get less, then even less is expected. It is a vicious cycle.
People COMPLIMENT you because your children are CLEAN? Seriously, I've never never gotten that one. My oldest is 18. Never. Intelligent, maybe occasionally... not "clean" and not "speak well" once we're past the toddler stage, yk?
I have often told parents I think their kid is smart or polite especially if I see the mom working on that with her child. :)
Though... if I got "clean" and "oh he's so eloquent" stuff all the time, I could easily see myself distrusting/hating "intelligent" too. Hm.
Your children are, though, you know, to do all the things they are involved with.
To believe that these types of things are still happening in this day and age! Sometimes I feel like I time traveled back a couple of hundred years or something! I wonder if part of it is a Southern thing. I don't even know how such a thing would work here, in Seattle, where we have a very, very, very mixed immigrant population. Would, say Jamiacans get lumped in with African-Americans from Africa and with African Americans whose families have been here for hundreds of years? What about Pakistani's do they get lumped in with Asians or do you set different standards for western Asians? And so forth and so on... Of course, it can go equally with Caucasians - do you lump the Russian immigrants in with the English immigrants or the Swedish Americans whose families have been here for hundreds of years. How about this - we don't lump anyone together?
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