GAPS AND INDIFFERENCE: Today we have naming of gaps!

WEDNESDAY, MAY 2, 2018

Part 3—Indifference and Dent:
When she was a senior in high school, Gabriella Ocampo stood at the wrong end of a very large gap.

She attended Birmingham High in Los Angeles. She couldn't pass Algebra 1, a course she took six or seven times.

Finally, this good decent kid dropped out of school. You couldn't graduate in California if you didn't pass Algebra 1.

When it came to high school math, Ocampo stood at the wrong end of a very large gap. Other kids in L.A., and around the nation, bad breezed through Algebra 1 in seventh or eighth grade.

She couldn't pass the course at all. We'd call that a very large gap.

(BREAKING: The state officials who forced her to drop out of school may have been standing at the wrong end of very large empathy/common sense gaps.)

Back in 2006, Duke Helfand reported on this situation in a lengthy, superlative, front-page report in the Los Angeles Times. Eight years later, The Atlantic's Nikole Hannah-Jones wrote about another high school senior who was standing at the wrong end of a very large gap.

That student's name was D'Leisha Dent. She attended Central High in Tuscaloosa.

By all accounts, Dent was a superlative kid. According to Hannah-Jones, she was "class president, a member of the mayor’s youth council [and] a state champion in track and field." During her senior year, she was voted homecoming queen as well.

According to Hannah-Jones,
this kid been "an honors student since middle school," but she had "only marginal college prospects." She couldn't attain a minimal score on the ACT. For that reason, she was having a hard time gaining college admission despite her athletic and civic achievements.

Based upon what Hannah-Jones wrote, Dent's whole school seemed to stand on the wrong end of a very large gap. As a senior, Dent was taking the school's Advanced Placement English class. According to Hannah-Jones, the 17 kids taking that class "made up Central’s brightest."

Despite this fact, Dent kept coming up short on the ACT. In many ways, her story sounded a lot like the story from Los Angeles:
HANNAH-JONES (May 2014): Standing one day last fall outside the counselor’s office at Central, D’Leisha looked up at the college bulletin board. It was dominated by National Guard and Army flyers, with some brochures for small Alabama colleges tucked among them. Students with D’Leisha’s grades and tough honors coursework often come home to mailboxes stuffed with glossy college brochures. But most days, nothing showed up in the mail for her, and no colleges had come calling. She had taken the ACT college-entrance exam twice already. The first time she scored a 16, the second time a 17. Her mother’s alma mater, the University of Alabama, expects a 21, the national average. Many four-year colleges will not even consider students who score below an 18.

“My biggest fear right now is the ACT,” D’Leisha said. “I don’t have a good score. It’s been on my mind a lot.”

[...]

Late last year, D’Leisha took the ACT for the third time, but her score dropped back to 16.
So early on a Saturday in February, she got up quietly, forced a few bites of a muffin into her nervous stomach, and drove once again to the community college where the test is administered. A few weeks later, she got her score: 16 again. She contemplated a fifth attempt, but could see little point.
D'Leisha Dent, a good decent kid, stood on the wrong end of a gap. As we noted all last week, achievement gaps are very large across this sprawling nation.

Except at this award-winning site, you've never heard a single word about Ocampo or Dent. You've never heard a word about them because, truth to tell, nobody actually cares.

Nobody cares about the kids on the short end of those very large gaps. Most strikingly, that includes our biggest, most beloved, "corporate liberal" stars.

You'll never hear Rachel, Lawrence or Chris talk about kids like these, unless some such kid gets shot, and only then if he or she gets shot by the right person. Our stars don't care about those kids. Few things could be more clear.

Last week, we chronicled the types of gaps which routinely leave kids like these on the margins of American life. Today, just for clarity's sake, we're going to have the naming of gaps. We'll distinguish three different kinds of gaps we chronicled last week.

We'll start with the largest gap of all. We'll end with the most painful.

The largest gap of all:

The largest gap we looked at last week was drawn from last year's Naep. Below, you see the average score in Grade 8 math for kids from the nation's schools, public as well as private.

You'll also see the scores recorded by kids near the top and the bottom of last year's eighth grade population. The gap between those groups of kids is the largest gap of all:
Grade 8 math, 2011 Naep
All U.S. schools, public and private:

Average score: 283.85

90th percentile: 329
10th percentile: 237
That's the largest gap of all! Consider:

As a very rough rule of thumb, ten points on the Naep scale is often equated to one academic year. On the basis of that rule, a gap approaching eight years obtains between the nation's highest- and lowest-achieving kids.

Again, that's the gap which obtains at the end of eighth grade—a year when many kids breezed through the class our Los Angeles kid couldn't pass four years later.

That's the largest gap of all. Except among the terminally daft, those data help us grasp the enormous range of achievement which obtains among American kids of the same age and grade.

The gap between suburb and city:

We looked at a second type of gap last week—the gap between suburb and city. In this case, we drew on data compiled by Professor Reardon and his associates in a recent nationwide study.

Reardon came up with numbers like the ones shown below for kids in Grades 3-8. He drew on work in reading and math. This is a very large gap:
Where the average student stood:
Lexington, Mass.: 3.8 years above grade level
St. Louis, Mo.: 2.1 years below grade level
In Reardon's estimation, the average kid in affluent Lexington, Mass. is working 5.9 years above the average kid in low-income St. Louis, possibly by the start of sixth grade. That is a very large gap.

For the record, Lexington is the nation's highest-scoring suburban district, according to Reardon's data. But many other districts come close.

Other cities score below St. Louis. The gaps in our nation are large.

The most painful gap of all:

We looked at a third type of gap last week—the "racial" achievement gap. Again, we worked from last year's Naep. The numbers look like this:
Average scores, Grade 8 math
American public schools, 2017 Naep:

White students: 292.16
Black students: 259.60
Hispanic students: 268.49
Asian-American students: 309.52
You're looking at the face of our brutal history—and at a very large modern-day gap. You're also looking at the face of our massive modern indifference.

Many white kids are struggling in school. Many black kids are doing great.

That said, those average scores speak for themselves. So does our endless indifference.

Long ago and far away, liberals cared about this. Jonathan Kozol and others wrote books. Liberals discussed this topic.

Today, our agenda has changed. Rachel would jump off the Golden Gate Bridge before she'd talk about that gap which, because of our gruesome racial history, is the most painful of all.

She's been on the air for almost ten years. She's never spent a single minute discussing ways to address that punishing gap. Nor does she to start. She knows that car wouldn't sell.

What might we do about that gap? In part because we don't care, we liberals don't like to discuss that! When we do, our answers are often perhaps a bit strange. Tomorrow, we'll ponder this fact.

At any rate, we thought we'd devote some time today to the naming of gaps. That largest gap is highly instructive—especially when educational experts crazily say that everybody in the eighth grade should be taught the same Grade 8 math.

On what planet does that make sense? In the larger sense, from what planet have our modern academic and journalistic elites been sent?

That largest gap is highly instructive. But that "racial" achievement gap is the most painful of all.

What should we do about that gap? Tomorrow, some hackneyed ideas.

Tomorrow: The problem with Central High

36 comments:

  1. that gap which, because of our gruesome racial history, is the most painful of all.

    Of course Bob has no way to know what the causes of the gap are. Slavery and Jim Crow are politically correct, but a more accurate statement would be, "that gap which, because of unknown causes, is the most painful of all.

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    1. Today we keep Central Americans out. In 1924 we kept Eastern European Jews out.

      https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Immigration_Act_of_1924

      Delete
  2. There's no 'gap' Bob. When you study something -- at a public school, or university, professional training, or any other institution -- you need to pass the test to get your diploma. You either pass it or not.

    There's, of course, a huge socioeconomic gap between Lexington, MA and St. Louis, MO. But that, fundamentally, has nothing to do with schools and math grades. To pretend that it does is just bullshit and liberal Zombie-talk.

    ReplyDelete
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  3. "Tomorrow, we'll ponder this fact"

    Just get to the point. Tomorrow never seems to come at this blog.

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  4. It does not make sense that an honors student fails Algebra 1. In this case, it may not be the school system that is failing her, it could be her family.

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    1. This could be true. Perhaps her parents are working multiple jobs, and don't have the time to put in for helping her with her school/homework.
      It's plausible since, unlike the growth in corporate profits, executive pay, and corporate efficiency, wages have stagnated since 1970.

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    2. It does make sense. A child can be an honors student simply by doing all the work on time and thoroughly. But algebra requires understanding word problems and variables. The word problems involve translating a situation into an equation that can be solved. Variables are an abstract concept that is difficult for kids who are not developmentally ready to think about abstracts and assign symbols to stand for them.

      People are always so quick to blame the parents.

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    3. Does anyone ever actually read these articles that Bob links for weeks on end? Gabriella Ocampa was not an honors student as far as what the LAT wrote.

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    4. The commenter didn't mention Ocampo. Somerby does mention D'Leisha Dent, an honors student who couldn't perform on the ACT. This is from Hannah-Jones, also linked to by Somerby.

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    5. However, she didn’t fail Algebra. She had problems with getting the ACT scores she needed for college. There is no honors student that failed Algebra in either the Atlantic or LAT, unless I missed something.

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  5. I wonder what we should do about ANY gap. There is always going to be a gap. People are not equal. So there will always be a 90th percentile and a 10th percentile. As a society should we worry about the 10th percentile? Should we pour resources into helping the 10th percentile?

    If so, why? So we can have cab drivers who can do calculus? So we can discuss Chaucer with our cashier while we check out at Wal-mart?

    Since the girl was named who could not pass Alegbra, I wonder where she is 12 years later. Might be bad, or it might be okay. My boss, after all, is a high school drop out.

    My brother and sister would not tell me their ACT scores. I got a 30. My sister did not do nearly as well. Supposedly if she had gotten a 26 she would have told me. My brother said that his score compared to my sisters was like my sisters score compared to mine.

    Although, if he is that good at ratios, why didn't he get a better score on the math portion?

    He went to college - twice. The first time he spent most of his time drinking and could not pass western civ. Then he attended the little podunk private college in my hometown, and got a degree in hotel management.

    He's had a decent career as a hotel manager, although he also has more gray hair than his older brother. My own career has been in the shitter (rim shot) - like Will Hunting, even though I am really gooder at math, I clean toilets for a living.

    Thank god for STEM.

    Could be worse though - it could be raining. I remember my freshman roommate. He was going to be a brain surgeon he said - an MD and a PhD. Except he could not pass calculus. He was working as a city bus driver and perhaps had some drug problems, and he killed himself in 1999 at the age of 37.

    I was not part of his life. We were strangers when we met as roommates. I called his sister after a google search told me he was dead.

    My questions would be these.

    1. Is a person "wasted" if they only work as a bus driver or a cashier instead of doing something awesome like being a doctor or part of the wrestling team? (I am thinking of Bender here (Breakfast Club))

    2. Can a person still have a good life even if they only work as a cashier or a bus driver or a janitor? Even if they are only in the 10th percentile at school? Or should we worry that the 10th percentile will be treated like the no-skill scum that they are unless we dedicate the resources needed to bring them closer to the 90th percentile?

    Of course, that is one of the ideas being touted with education reform - the idea that we can raise the 10th percentile. The 90th percentile will be doing differential equations, but everybody must do algebra.

    Really, would you want your bus driven by somebody who didn't understand L'Hospital's rule?

    As I say at work, when the valedictorian mops your floor, you can tell it wasn't done by a mere salutatorian.

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    1. Dr.T. Wat-“Or should we worry that the 10th percentile will be treated like the no-skill scum that they are unless we dedicate the resources needed to bring them closer to the 90th percentile?”

      You sound really nice

      Delete
  6. Taking the same test over and over without a different approach to studying is useless. If there is no one available to help students figure out a different approach to the material, they will flounder.

    Many students can do math using rote memory up until algebra, but then it becomes conceptual and if they don't have the idea of how numbers work, they will be unprepared. That's why math curriculum has changed. Somerby is using some old examples here -- would the same student have problems with algebra using a more modern approach to math?

    My husband failed algebra repeatedly in high school but was able to do it in college. Some kids frontal lobes don't mature until later.

    Somerby wants to attribute these kids' problems to race. My husband is white. I teach kids in my college level statistics classes who are black and well prepared and kids who are white and poorly prepared. I don't see this as a race issue.

    There are certainly bad schools, bad counselors and bad teachers. Whether this is a racial matter is no longer clear.

    Dr. T asks whether people need advanced learning for certain jobs. Probably not, but algebra isn't advanced learning and it is important even in lower skilled jobs. Today, 90% of jobs require math competence. Letting kids graduate without it is not kind because those kids will have severely limited job prospects. And they will be cheated by others who are more math competent, as they try to buy cars, homes, consumer products and are offered deals involving money. Should their school disadvantage be allowed to handicap the rest of their lives? Now argue that society needs chumps, not just dishwashers. Businesses thrive on uninformed consumers certainly, which may be why it doesn't care much whether students are educated beyond what is needed to do a certain job.

    And then we can talk about the problems when undereducated people vote and control our democracy. Shall all citizens now become as ignorant as Trump?

    We have already raised the level of performance of the 10th percentile. There is no inherent reason why nearly all students cannot achieve a minimum level of competence. It takes the will to reduce class sizes, provide more individual attention, do a better job of diagnosing and helping students with learning deficits, and the money to recruit and retain better teachers.

    The problems Somerby describes would have been helped by returning professional counselors to the schools. Those jobs were severely cut back and even eliminated years ago. Support staff in school do important work.

    If I see another post here full of NAEP scores talking about gaps, I think I may scream. When is Somerby going to focus on solutions? On every other education blog on the internet, that is what people are doing.

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    1. When? "Tomorrow", says the blogger-procrastinator.

      Delete
    2. Again, has a single commentator read any of the LAT article?

      “Now the Los Angeles school board has raised the bar again. By the time today's second-graders graduate from high school in 2016, most will have to meet the University of California's entry requirements, which will mean passing a third year of advanced math, such as algebra II, and four years of English.

      Former board President Jose Huizar introduced this latest round of requirements, which the board approved in a 6-1 vote last June.

      Huizar said he was motivated by personal experience: He was a marginal student growing up in Boyle Heights but excelled in high school once a counselor placed him in a demanding curriculum that propelled him to college and a law degree.

      "I think there are thousands of kids like me, but we're losing them because we don't give them that opportunity," said Huizar, who left the school board after he was elected to the Los Angeles City Council last fall. "Yes, there will be dropouts. But I'm looking at the glass half full."“-LAT

      Bob for the past 2 weeks or so has been writing about Bill Clinton’s “we don’t have a single person to waste,” according to the former board President we have plenty of people to waste. Bob is writing about the absurdity in his mind of having a one size fits all approach to a nation of 320 million people made up of different experiences and so many numerous other differences. I don’t really see the need for students not attending college to have to pass Algebra I, and certainly not Algebra II. Lastly, why were many of these students sent back to the same exact class and some times the same teachers? Why no remedial course work to identify trouble spots and work on those stumbling blocks?

      I think that if student faile Algebra I, they should have small 10-15 size classes for those students with the teachers able to identify what needs the student has to progress. Couldn’t California have a basic diploma and another one for students that passed the Algebra II (the current requirement according to Bob’s link) requirement?

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    3. @6:55: Great. You've just solved the problems in the LA school district. Now if you could just look at the other thousands of school districts where different rules are in place, rather than assuming that the LA school district represents all school districts.

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    4. @6:55 Smaller class sizes? Remedial classes? Those ideas have been around for decades. Yes, there have been some smart people looking at educational issues over the years, contrary to what Somerby wants you to believe.

      Some districts have implemented your idea. For many, adding extra, smaller, or remedial classes represents a huge additional cost in manpower, training, supplies, etc. The cost can be prohibitive in many cases.

      Delete
    5. Didn’t state it was everyone, just posted 2 examples I remembered off the top of my head, since the previous poster wanted examples of indifference. Please share the examples of the Big 3, Fox, or the cable networks of diving into the state of education in the US or in a local jurisdiction? It can’t be some charter schools BS than MSNBC did with Mark Zuckerberg a few years back.

      I read the WP, my hometown paper, and they push charter schools and only look at DC schools for school administration scandal, MD and VA for sex abuse. Of course there are exceptions, but there is never deep reporting on what is actually working or any real analysis.

      Also fill me in how the LA school board remedied this situation, because when I read the comments sections in the LAT it is usually racist drivel. Don’t really see much concern for children young adults left behind by indifferent policy and standards, YMMV.

      Thanks for the response, if you are just providing information. However, it seemed like you were attempting to put a spin on my response, that I felt was not fair to what I actually wrote.

      This place has been a contrarian cesspool for too long, since Bob just likes to phone it in anymore. He has never engaged with his regulars. It is certainly his right, but his writing and teaching skills have atrophied. No one ever thanks anyone or admits that they have reconsidered the original opinion. It is vitriol and excrement all the way down.

      Delete
    6. The LAUSD has just appointed a new Superintendent with no education experience and a business focus. That should help matters.

      There is a literature now that identifies the hierarchy of basic math concepts needed to do algebra. You got back to wherever the student is competent and work forward from there. Teaching methods have improved, for example using manipulatives to teach concepts. Algebra isn't rocket science. And it IS needed for basic employment. I would argue that calculus is not, but algebra is important.

      In California, too many students were being excluded from the opportunity to attend one of the Calif. State University campuses because they had not taken the prerequisite courses. In many cases, they didn't know they had to take them. In other cases, the courses weren't available to them. The change is rules was made so that any student attending high school in the state could be assured of qualifying for the public university system. Whether they want to do that is a different question. There shouldn't be institutional obstacles to applying based on the luck of which high school you happened to attend.

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  7. Where is the evidence that anyone was indifferent to what was happening to any of these students?

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    1. I am not seeing much reporting on education other than Morning Joe or CNN lamenting the failure of the country’s education system when something like “Waiting for Superman” gets the elite’s attention. YMMV

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    2. Morning Joe and CNN aren't "everyone." People in Los Angeles read about Gabriela Ocampo in their newspaper, and parents and teachers there are undoubtedly interested in their local schools. Remember, most school policy is set at the state and local level.

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    3. I didn’t state it was everyone. I posted 2 examples I remembered off the top of my head, since the previous poster wanted examples of indifference. Please share the examples of the Big 3, Fox, or the cable networks diving into the state of education in the US or in a local jurisdiction. It can’t be some charter schools BS that MSNBC did with Mark Zuckerberg a few years back.

      I read the WP, my hometown paper, and they push charter schools The tend to only look at DC schools for school administration scandal, and MD and VA for sex abuse. Of course there are exceptions, but there is never deep reporting on what is actually working or any real analysis.

      Also fill me in how the LA school board remedied this situation, because when I read the comments sections in the LAT it is usually racist drivel. Don’t really see much concern for children young adults left behind by indifferent policy and standards, YMMV.

      Thanks for the response, if you are just providing information. However, it seemed like you were attempting to put a spin on my response, that I felt was not fair to what I actually wrote. Although, It might be me that is reading too much into your response and ascribing nonexistent motives, if so forgive me.
      Enjoy your evening.

      This place has been a contrarian cesspool for too long, since Bob just likes to phone it in anymore. He has never engaged with his regulars. It is certainly his right, but his writing and teaching skills have atrophied. No one ever thanks anyone or admits that they have reconsidered their original opinion. It is vitriol and excrement all the way down.

      Delete
  8. Btw, David Gregory went to Birmingham High. As did I believe Michael Milken.

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  9. If Somerby had taken a social science course at Harvard, instead of philosophy, they would have introduced him to the bell curve. It describes most measurable properties of being human, including weight, height, mortality, reaction times, memory span, age at which baby teeth fell out, and so on. People differ. Galton quantified those differences and created statistics to deal with human variability. That variability is the major challenge involved in studying anything involving people, including preference for political candidates and favorite desserts.

    Somerby wants to attribute low scores to our racial history. That was more true when racial segregation resulted in deficient educational opportunities for racial minorities. But schools have changed. The people who went to those schools are grandparents now. Their sons and daughters went to different schools than they did, and each subsequent generation has too.

    Somerby ignores that the lower 10th percentile includes far more white students than black ones. Black students may be disproportionately found at the low end, but the bell curves overlap substantially and most black students as well as most white students are somewhere in the middle, not in that lower tail of the distribution.

    Are white students in the 10th percentile because of racial history? Or is it perhaps poverty, poor health, family disruption, genetics, and other factors to blame? Do these factors not also apply to black students? Does poverty perhaps complicate the ability of white and black students to cope with other forms of disability?

    Somerby focuses on race but it is perhaps the least tractable factor explaining educational differences. Why not put the focus and effort onto addressing the many other factors that prevent academic achievement, the ones that can be affected by resources and effort, the ones that correlate with race?

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    1. “Somerby ignores that the lower 10th percentile includes far more white students than black ones. Black students may be disproportionately found at the low end, but the bell curves overlap substantially and most black students as well as most white students are somewhere in the middle, not in that lower tail of the distribution.”

      What do you base your allegation that the lower 10th percentile includes far more whites?

      https://nces.ed.gov/programs/coe/indicator_cge.asp

      In 2014, whites made up 49.5% of public education students. Black students made up 16%. 10% of 49.5% is 4.95%, 25% of 16 is 4.0%. For example in the 8th grade math NAEP scores for 2017, the bottom 10% percentile for whites was 246, for the bottom 25% percentile for blacks it was 238. So depending on what the bottom 33% percentile was for blacks, there were almost assuredly more blacks than whites in the lower 10% when including all races.

      https://www.nationsreportcard.gov/ndecore/xplore/NDE

      Somerby focuses on race, because when you compare comparable socio-economic factors race appears to be a bigger factor than any other.

      We need to do better for all our children, because in the long run, we really don’t have any citizens to waste if we want a better society.

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    2. You have to take the percentiles and multiply by the total numbers of black and white students respectively. I was talking about absolute numbers of students and not restricted to public schools. Given that blacks are 12% of the population, they cannot be more than 88% of the 10th percentile, even if nearly all blacks were there, which they are not. The shapes of the score distributions for both blacks and white are bell shaped, leaving 10% in the tail. .10 x total number of blacks is not more than .10 x total number of whites taking the NAEP.

      Socio-economic factors are more readily addressable than race-related factors. Focusing on race is a waste of time. You cannot change race. You CAN change poverty and the environmental circumstances that permit children to maximize whatever their potential happens to be.

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    3. You are moving the goal posts. Somerby is referring to public schools, and you didn’t provide any explanation in your OP, until now. In addition, you still can’t get the numbers right.

      Blacks in the country are 12.6% of the population as of 2016. Whites are 73.3%. Hispanics are included in both figures, whereas in the public school figures they are a separate category. However, we are talking about school age children.

      https://factfinder.census.gov/faces/tableservices/jsf/pages/productview.xhtml?src=bkmk

      The number of school age children, 5-19 years old in the US, is 63.06m
      The number of white school age children, 5-19 years old in the US, is 46.79m-74.2%
      The number of black school age children,5-19 years old in the US,is 9.24m-14.65

      Continuing with moving the goal posts. You are the one that stated there are more white students in the lowest 10 percentile. I questioned how you arrived at that number. Then you conflated and introduced it into blacks aren’t 88% of the bottom 10% percentile.

      According the numbers provided by the census, the bottom 10% would be 6.3m students. it would be made up of other students that are of other ethnicities as well. In addition, if you were comparing a certain grade like 4th, 8th, or 12th the bottom 10% would only be around 500,000. I have pointed out how in public schools it is not far more, there might be more actual black students in absolute numbers than white. Even adding the private and home school students, which will be even more economically advantaged than the public school students generally, you have not shown how you created that number other than to pull another number out of thin air with no supporting evidence.

      You have a fuzzy and limited understanding of the demographics, you are constantly changing the parameters of the discussion, and you deal more in emotion than in facts as evidenced by your complete dismissal of the racial component in so many issues facing African-Americans. Many poverty and environmental issues have been addressed (by no means enough),and there are still not comparable results, for example, when comparing AA college educated women with white women with the same qualifications in terms of infant mortality, income, mortality in childbirth. Poor white women with no HS diploma have better results in terms of infant mortality and childbirth. The poverty and environmental factors have been addressed, but there is still a negative diffrence for Black Women’s. Yet, you are asking others to take your suggestions seriously. If you can’t accept reality as it actually is, as opposed to how you would prefer or think it should be, then your suggestions have little chance at succes other than random blind luck.

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    4. You are making the same argument as Murray in The Bell Curve. It has been debunked. You seem to be suggesting that if kids cannot be made equal there is no point in helping them do their best. That's ridiculous. Our common fate depends on everyone doing their best, which is why we have public schools. The rest of this argument is smoke.

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    5. The comment I made below at 1:47 was meant to be a reply to your comment made at 11:51.

      I was trying to be nice to you, but you are either a poorly informed liberal rube, that Bob is always railing about, or a racist trying to pass himself off as a liberal.

      In the second paragraph of your original post, you dismiss Somberby’s mentions of our sordid racial history in explaining the difficulties blacks still face in achieving excellence in education. You claim that is ancient history, because segregation is no longer Constitutionallly protected. However, you don’t mention things like Redlining, Blockbusting, Busing, Sundowner communities, etc. These things are still impeding blacks from having equal acces to a quality public education. In addition, you didn’t mention the rise in Private schools and Homeschooling in the past 50 years that took many white children out of the public schools, because their parents didn’t want their kids to integrate.

      “According to the US National Center for Education Statistics, about three percent of all children in the US were homeschooled in 2011-2012 school year. The study found that 83 percent were White, 5 percent were Black, 7 percent were Hispanic, and 2 percent were Asian or Pacific Islander.[5] As of 2016, there are about 2.3 million homeschooled students in the United States.”

      https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homeschooling

      The founder of the Homeschooling movement was a racist, a Holocaust denier, and started the movement to get out of integrating.

      https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rousas_Rushdoony

      Some of this might be Bob’s fault, because he disappears much of this migration to the suburbs, and out of the public school system completely in his limited criticism. However, you should still be more aware of the past 60 years than you have shown.

      If are actually a liberal and not the racist your writings imply, you have got to be better informed. In addition, you need to address the many shortcoming in your thought and writings. Otherwise you come off as a ignorant wanker.

      Delete
  10. Are you capable of reading comprehension? Only someone unwilling to read what I actually wrote could come up with such a tortured and absolutely wrong summary. You are incapable of backing up your OP, so you attempt to align me with Murray who is a racist.

    My whole point was that you are falling into like a reverse Murray fallacy. You don’t think there is anything that can be done about racism, and I pointed out that it has to be addressed if we want true equality in this nation. However, if you can’t even admit that too many black public school students are being failed by our educational system, then I don’t see how you can fix the situation. Murray denies white supremacy has any effect on black success. I think it does, and you seem to be arguing that by ignoring it, things will work themselves out. I think that is dangerous lunacy.

    YOU are much more like Murray, because you don’t seem to really understand the Bell Curve. In addition, you misuse or disregard data that does not comport with your world view. Then turn around and use it to advocate things it is not telling us.

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