MONDAY, MAY 26, 2014
It's time the gaps were explained and explored: Tomorrow, we'll start a month-long series about our nation's "achievement gaps."
For reasons we'll be explaining, it's time that these very large gaps were explained and explored. Mainstream and liberal journalists are routinely reluctant to do so.
For us, this recent 10,000-word report in The Atlantic really drove home this point. We thought Nikole Hannah-Jones focused on a very old theme in her very lengthy report. In the process, she ignored and obscured a much larger story which had been uncovered by her reporting.
"Our month of the gaps" begins tomorrow. If we care about Ameircan kids—and it isn't entirely clear that we do—we think the topics we will explore will be extremely important.
Tomorrow: Porter describes the gaps
Achievement gaps are all about overprivileged people not checking their privilege. Here is victimized Elliot Rodger educating us on the healthy progressive obsession with rooting out relative privilege. It's so important to write blog and newspaper articles about your victimization, and remind those on campus who are whiter, richer, taller to check their privilege.
ReplyDelete"Life is so much fairer when you're a kid. When you're a kid no one has unfair advantages. Then your life becomes a living heaven or hell depending on how many girls like you. No girls liked me and I hate them all for it"
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RFmrUl2-1jg#t=113
Only someone who is not getting enough would make your comment.
DeleteIf this blog were moderated, a comment like this (@12:49) would be removed. I find it offensive that a tragedy is being used to score points in some game here.
DeleteWe need trigger wanrings in comments if we can't get a moderator.
DeleteAnon 1:54, have you similarly castigated those exploiting the same tragedy by celebrating one victim's father pointing his finger at the NRA?
Delete2:52 Don't you think you are calling renewed attention to the correlation between men who think with their dicks and men for whom gun ownership is a penis extension?
DeleteI think the gaps are very improtant as well and look forward to the series. That said, I find this statement about the gaps, "she ignored and obscured a much larger story which had been uncovered by her reporting" a little Al Gory. Perhaps you meant to say "which was untouched" by her reporting. The gaps, like Love Canal, was a known commoditity.
ReplyDeleteGaps are known in national statistics but Hannah-Jones article was about Tuscaloosa schools, and Central High in particular, in the context of resegregation. Environmental tragedies were a known commodity but Al Gore focused on one specific example, Love Canal, to alert people to that larger problem. I suspect this will be similar -- Central High was "uncovered" as an example of a larger problem.
DeleteI too look forward to this series.
I hope and expect you will do a much better job explaining the gaps, their meaning, and their importance. I certainly do not wish to finish you work, like we all did that of Hannah-Jones, wondering what the heck is segregation and how important is resegregation.
ReplyDeleteNot all of us were wondering those things.
DeleteSo what the heck is it and how important is its second coming?
DeleteThere was an extensive discussion of the differences between de jure and de facto segregation and what these terms meant in the past and how they seem to be used today. There was also a discussion of the differences between residential and educational resegregation and an exploration of Somerby's contention that resegregation is not as important as the other factors affecting African American children because it cannot be readily eliminated due to residential resegregation and social factors affecting school choice. He plainly said we should focus on the problems we can solve, not ones we can do little about.
DeleteIf you missed all that, you can go back and read it in the comments of last week. When we discuss these things, I doubt any of us think of it as "finishing" anyone's work, whether Somerby or Hannah-Jones, because there are many more aspects to any issue than can be discussed in a single article or blog post.
So we can't define it but it is not important.
DeleteWho ever said we cannot define it? Segregation is a term used different ways in different times and contexts. That doesn't mean it cannot be defined.
DeleteThen what the heck is it and how important is its reappearance?
DeleteGo read last weeks comments.
DeleteWhy? Because you cannot? The headlines posed the questions. The posts, not the comments should answer them.
DeleteWhat the heck is in the comments? How important is rereading them. According to many of his closest readers,
Somerby doesn't read them once. Why should I wade through the trolls and insults and mindless defenders a second time?
You are the one pretending there are unanswered questions. It is no one here's job to read the comments for you and regurgitate them to you on demand.
DeleteYou are the one suggeting the comments answered the questions posed by Somerby, not Somerby himself.
DeleteYou've done a good job showing how liberal journalists ignore this issue. Maybe you can follow up on this look at the issue published some time ago.
ReplyDeletehttp://www.salon.com/1999/11/01/elpaso/
What does it mean that you went so far back in time for find this?
DeleteIt was a good article. Don't you think it merits some follow up?
DeleteWow, 1:51, all the way back to 1999. That's ancient history, right?
DeleteIt is 15 years ago. That seems kind of old to me. But my point was that you couldn't find anything between 1999 and today. That does suggest the issue has been ignored in the meantime.
DeleteSeems like you didn't bother to follow the link or chose not to answer my question.
Delete1999? Wasn't that the year somebody almost got somebody killed? I remember reading something about it somewhere recently.
DeleteHere is a different way of looking at the story Hannah-Jones covered and the "gaps" as well.
ReplyDeletehttp://www.nytimes.com/2014/05/18/magazine/who-gets-to-graduate.html?ref=education
Clearly with a full month to focus on the gaps, Somerby will return again and again to his theme of how much better minority kids are doing.
ReplyDeleteDavid Berliner, co-author of “The Manufactured Crisis: Myths, Fraud, and the Attack on America’s Public Schools,” added an important point about how impromper focu on gaps altered the education narrative.
“What Clinton got us to do, and Bush [Jr.] capitalized on it, was focus on the achievement gap. The achievement gap gets you away from thinking about equal educational opportunity, which was the focus of the Johnson years. Johnson was a former teacher who said that a lot of the problem with schools are that kids are poor, they don’t have good food, they don’t have security, there are drugs and crime, and broken families, and high mobility rates, and migration … That was all input-oriented.”
With Clinton, the focus shifted. “Once you start looking at the gap, you stop looking at the causes of school problems as being outside the school. You start looking for the causes of school problems as being inside the school,” Berliner says. “I call it the ‘great switcheroo.’ They stopped looking for societal problems, the ‘Great Society’ that Johnson wanted, and started looking for teacher problems, school problems, and Bush capitalized on that, first in Texas, and then nationally.”
“If you see the wreck — you know, black kids score a year, two, three or four years lower than white kids — the people closest to the wreck get blamed. If you talk about equal educational opportunity, then we’re all responsible."
Are we all responsible?
DeleteNo. We should rely on an all volunteer force to make sure there is equal opportunity in America, just like we rely on an all volunteer force to defend our freedom.
Delete"For reasons we'll be explaining, it's time that these very large gaps were explained and explored." Somerby
ReplyDeleteIt's time? Time they were explained?
The children of the rich perform better in school, on average, than children from middle-class or poor families. Students growing up in richer families have better grades and higher standardized test scores, on average, than poorer students; they also have higher rates of participation in extracurricular activities and school leadership positions, higher graduation rates and higher rates of college enrollment and completion.
Whether you think it deeply unjust, lamentable but inevitable, or obvious and unproblematic, this is hardly news.
There isn't as big a difference between middle class and rich families as their is between middle class and poor families. It is poverty, not income difference, that results in a gap. You seem to think there is a linear relationship between income and academic performance but it is curvilinear with most of the impact at the bottom of the scale.
DeleteI "seem" to think it isn't news. You "seem' to respond like Somerby.
DeleteAnonymous @ 7:05: In recent years, liberals have started reciting versions of this claim, trying to show how great our schools are except for the effects of poverty. This is a silly, bogus claim. It’s depressing to see the liberal world act like employees of Fox.
DeleteHere is a piece on performace gaps I found informative:
ReplyDeletehttp://www.salon.com/2013/06/03/instead_of_a_war_on_teachers_how_about_one_on_poverty/
Large gaps are explained by gaps between whites and blacks in the area of parental negligence before producing offspring and after.
ReplyDeleteGaps in racism are explained by parenting as well.
DeleteShow your work, there, Bunky (2:54).
Delete72.3 percent of non-Hispanic blacks are now born out-of-wedlock; 66.2 percent of American Indians/Alaska Natives; 53.3 percent of Hispanics; 29.1 percent of non-Hispanic whites; and 17.2 percent of Asians/Pacific Islanders.
DeleteParents who produce illegitimate children have already demonstrated they are negligent toward their offspring, and the pattern usually continues for the life of the offspring until it ends up a combination of a dropout, drug addict, criminal, convict, unwed mother.
Well 5:02, based on your data and theory, the gaps should be widening and acheivement levels falling.
Deleteanon 6:06, the illegitimacy negligent parent rate between whites and blacks isn't widening, it's narrowing with white negligence on the increase.
DeleteThere is no correlation between parental achievement gaps and academic achievement gaps. That is conservative propaganda.
Delete2:54 may sound intelligent. But he is just lucky his parents suffered through a bad marriage for his sake.
DeleteTed Bundy was an overachiever and a rising Republican star. He found out he his dad wasn't really his dad, but his grandad. Then he found out his sister was his mom. It turns out his grandad may have been his dad and his mom may have been his sister. This is why we must make lemondade out of lemons and may explain why most serial killers were white guys who had dad issues.
DeleteTomorrow we will explore and explain why pro-life may promote death and why fathers are obsolete in a society where sperm banks and vibrators provide women with better and more reliable choices in today's society.
I think it just stands to reason that people who don't have their shit together shouldn't have kids. If you're under or unemployed- not a good idea. Will it be left to grandma to raise the child? Splurge on the .99 cent condom instead.
DeleteSocietal issues are at play, but so is poor individual judgement ... often across racial lines.
Ted Bundy is an anomaly. Blacks with no father and a single mother with multiple children and no job living in a culture that supports this pattern and is supported by stupid white liberals is the norm. The gaps are intellectual or cultural. Putting intellectual aptitude aside leaves what is changeable (culture). It's not going to change because cultural degeneracy = "progress."
Delete1:13, you would think it stands to reason. You would think.
TDH has consistently stated the mainstream media and liberals, don't
ReplyDeletecare about this issue.
To prove it, he once posted about a front page article in the New York
Times on the acheivement gap. I am not sure how this article proved his point, but he claimed it did. Then it took over a day for any of his readers to comment on the post.
Today's TDH readers are different that those way back in 2012, though.
http://dailyhowler.blogspot.com/2012/02/very-poor-children-very-big-story.html
I should point out that none of TDH's commenters on that post
Delete(and there seemed to be only two) really commented on the substance of the TDH post. The first commented on the lack of comments. The second called the first commenter a troll.
Undeterred, Somerby turned this into a four part series. Most got few. Comments.
You cannot judge how many people read this blog by the number of comments. You cannot estimate how many mainstream liberals or other liberals care about this issue by the number of comments at this blog.
DeleteI never suggested no liberals care. That is Somerby's claim.
DeleteHe repeats it agains and agains. Alas, he says it some more. That said, he claims it a lot. Gack.
I didn't say anyone cared or did not care. I said his post about the New York Times front page article on gaps, which he said proved his point about the media, got no comments other than comments about the lack of comments and accusations about trolling.
Having skipped ahead to the previewed topic, I can guess this month long series won't be an explanation or exploration of the gaps.
ReplyDeleteIt will instead be another lengthy demonstration of why Somerby feels he is smarter than the working press corps.
Bingo.
DeleteApparently a gap exists in job performance as well as in school. One federal agency will deal with it by going into denial.
ReplyDeleteThe Consumer Financial Protection Bureau announced on Monday that it will now award all employees the highest rating regardless of performance reviews.
Astonishing. Fascinating to watch a once great nation flush itself into oblivion by implementing the idealism of leftist retards.
DeleteNot astonishing. Fascinating to watch rightards lie to themselves as they lie to everybody else.
DeleteTypical DAinCA crap from rightwing websites. Sounds like the CFPB now has a permanent policy of simply awarding all employees the highest rating no matter their performance.
What actually happened is that the CFPB found that their cumbersome performance review system was discriminatory. Likely it wouldn't have been able to survive a legal challenge, so they scrapped the year's reviews and gave everybody high marks. Cheaper than going to court. Of course, they plan to implement a better system.
Is it fair to criticize this decision? Of course, it's gonna cost taxpayer money to fix because the agency got its performance review policy wrong. But it's not like they've decided that reviewing is so inherently bad that they're not going to do it.
I suppose that all employees in this unit will get top raises and bonuses. Presumably the problem arose because some supervisor(s) were biased in their ratings. Apparently, the supervisor(s) who caused the problem will also get top raises and bonuses. Nice work if you can get it.
DeleteFascinating to see a blog purporting to talk about explaining gaps in education attract commenters who think calling people anything with "tard" in it does something beyond demonstrating their own intelligence level.
DeleteI don't know who gets what at the CFPB, except that those in "senior leadership positions" don't benefit from the SNAFU. It's likely they who approved the review process in the first place, not first-line supervisors who reviewed staff performance, but I don't know the details. And if all you had done was criticize a government agency for screwing up something as important as performance review, then I'd have had no problem with your comment.
DeleteWhat I object to is your usual bullshit -- swallowing whole the spin from right-wing web sites. I followed the link, and guess where your right-wing web site gets its spin? Yep, from the American Bankers Association. Go figure. In spite of what your credulity has led you to believe, the CFPB will not adopt a policy going forward of abandoning performance review and just giving everyone an A+. They scrapped their first performance review system and its results.
deadrat, if you don't like the conservative Daily Caller as a source, how about the liberal Washington Post? In this editorial, they slam almost the entire federal government, and blame Obama and Congress for not fixing the problems.
DeleteCongratulations on keeping your string intact. No, WaPo didn't slam almost the entire federal government; they traced systemic problems to antiquated personnel and management systems. They claim that it's VA today just as it was FEMA during Katrina. Is that true? I don't know. That's the claim of the Max Stier and his merry band of Yale assholes at the Partnership for Public Service, a non-partisan goo-goo organization in bed with big business. Are they right? I don't know that either, although I'm suspicious of any organization associated with Yale assholes and people who want to run government like a business. For the better part of 15 years, the US government has danced to the tune of people who hated government and believed that governance led only to problems. So I wouldn't be surprised that government now has some large systemic problems.
DeleteMy complaint is not with your reporting about problems at the VA or FEMA or CFPB. My problem, per usual, is your swallowing right-wing propaganda and then vomiting it all over the commentary here. The CFPB, contrary to your assertion, is not "going into denial" about discrepancies in performance by deciding in soft-headed fashion that performance review is thereby worthless. The ABA would like you to believe that.
But then they would.
And then you did.
As usual.
A very robust ending to a thoroughly engorging subthread in a lively comment box. How do you do it time and time again and still have room to answer the Spellcaster spam?
Delete
ReplyDeleteGreetings to every one that is reading this testimony...
I am Malissa Delh by name, currently living in New jersey city, USA. I am a widow at the moment with three kids and i was stuck in a financial situation in June 2014 and i needed to refinance and pay my bills. I tried seeking loans from various loan firms both private and corporate but never with success, and most banks declined my credit. But as God would have it, I was introduced to a Man of God a private loan lender who gave me a loan of $85,000USD and today am a business owner and my kids are doing well at the moment, if you must contact any firm with reference to securing a loan without collateral , no credit check, no co signer with just 2% interest rate and better repayment plans and schedule, please contact Mr James Lewis. He doesn't know that am doing this but am so happy now and i decided to let people know more about him and also i want God to bless him more.You can contact him through his email: lewisloancompany@yahoo.com
Hello Everybody,
ReplyDeleteMy name is Mr Greg Peterson and i live in the USA California and life is worth living right now for me and my family and all this is because of one man sent by GOD to help me and my family, i once had a life filled with sorrow because my first SON needed a kidney transplant and all our savings were going towards her medications and this normally leaves us with no money to pay our bills or even put enough food on our table and our rent was due and no funds to pay these bills and life felt so unfair to me and every night my wife will cry herself to sleep every night until one day, i was browsing through yahoo answers and i saw a striking advert of a man that gives out personal loans and that the offer is opened to all and i have heard so many things about internet scams but at this point of my life, i was very desperate and ready to take any risk and at the end of the day, i applied for this loan and from one step to another, i got my loan within 12 hours through bank transfer and you know, it was all like a dream and i called Mr James Lewis A Mark who is the GOD sent lender i found and said, i have received my loan and he smiled stating that to GOD be the glory and i was so shocked as i have never ever seen anyone with such a GOD fearing and kind heart and today, i am the happiest man on earth because by GOD’S grace, my SON kidney transplant was successful and today he is healthy, i and my family are living very comfortable and happy and if you are in my former situation or in serious and legitimate need of a loan, you can reach this GOD sent lender via dorosmithloanfirm@outlook.com
TRUSTED LENDER (LEXIELOANCOMPANY@YAHOO.COM)
ReplyDeleteMy name is Michael Lee a citizen of Illinois, USA. i have been scammed by 7 different Internet international lender, they all promise to give me a loan after making me pay several fees which yield nothing and amounted to no positive result. i lost my hard earn money and it was a total of 23930USD. One day as i was browsing through the internet with tears on my eye i came across a testimony of man who was also scammed and eventually got linked to a legit loan company called MARTINEZ LEXIE LOAN COMPANY where he finally got his loan, so i decided to contact the same loan company and then told them my story on how i have been scammed by 7 different lenders who did nothing but to course me more pain. I explain to the company by mail and all they told me was to cry no more because i will get my loan in their company and also i have made the right choice of contacting them. I filled the loan application form and proceeded with all that was requested of me and to my greatest surprise my loan was granted to me without further delay and here i am today happy because Martinez Lexie Loan Company HAS GIVEN ME A REASON TO LIVE, so i made a vow to my self that i will keep testifying on the internet on how i got my loan. You are to contact this GODSENT LENDER via Email: Lexieloancompany@yahoo.com OR Text +18168926958