MONDAY, OCTOBER 13, 2025
Mississippi's children: There was a time, for quite a few years, when we loved sifting through the reading and math scores from Grades 4 and 8 on the National Assessment of Educational Progress (Naep).
The Naep is the federally administered testing program known as "the nation's report card." For various reasons, it's long been considered the gold standard of domestic public school academic testing.
For many years, Naep scores were rising rather rapidly among all demographic groups. Black kids, white kids, Hispanic kids, Asian ancestry kids? Once the scores had been "disaggregated," scores from all four groups were rising.
That said, Asian kids continued to outscore white kids, and white skids continued to outscore Hispanic and black kids. Over here in Blue America, our journalists didn't seem to want to come to terms with that lingering state of affairs. So they kept refusing to "disaggregate" scores—and if you simply looked at national averages as a whole, the growing percentages of lower-scoring black and Hispanic kids kept the overall average scores looking fairly static.
"Nothing is working," the hapless journalists would say, even as average scores for each major racial / ethnic group were going through the roof.
Sic semper incompetents! Then, progress halted around 2013, just as David Brooks described in his column last Friday. In 2020, along came Covid, and things went downhill fast.
In Brooks' treatment, we were left with Mississippi as the miracle worker state, and with California as the dumbbell Blue American state left out in the cold.
The presentation shown below is basically accurate, at least as far as it goes. Under the circumstances, the headline on the column strikes us as perhaps a bit cloying:
Why Are the Democrats Increasing Inequality?
[...]
We’ve now had 12 years of terrible education statistics. You would have thought this would spark a flurry of reform activity. And it has, but in only one type of people: Republicans. When it comes to education policy, Republicans are now kicking Democrats in the butt.
Schools in blue states like California, Oregon and Washington are languishing, but schools in red states like Mississippi, Alabama, Tennessee and Louisiana, traditional laggards, are suddenly doing remarkably well. Roughly 52 percent of Mississippi’s Black fourth graders read at grade level, compared with only 28 percent in California. Louisiana is the only state where fourth-grade achievement levels have returned to pre-pandemic levels. An Urban Institute study adjusted for the demographics of the student bodies found that schools in Mississippi are educating their fourth graders more successfully in math and reading than schools in any other state. Other rising stars include Florida, Texas and Georgia.
[...]
The so-called Southern Surge came about because the red states built around a reading curriculum based on science, not ideology. The schools provide clear accountability information to parents and give them more freedom to choose schools. They send coaches to low-performing classrooms. They use high-quality tutoring, and they don’t promote students who can’t read, reducing the bureaucratic strings that used to control behavior in the classroom. They also hold schools and parents accountable. In Mississippi, Alabama and Tennessee, a child who isn’t reading at the end of third grade has to repeat it.
In Mississippi, "a child who isn’t reading at the end of third grade has to repeat it?" As we noted on Friday, that can create an apples to oranges type of comparison by the time the nation's kids take the Grade 4 Naep tests, with a lot of older kids in Mississippi being compared to a lot of kids in states like California who are normal age for Grade 4.
Is something "wrong" in some way with Mississippi's miraculous scores? We have no idea, but here are some of the figures we mentioned last Friday afternoon:
Above normal age for Grade 4
Naep reading test, 2024
U.S. nationwide: 39%
California: 35%
Mississippi: 54%
To what extent does that batch of older kids help tilt average scores in Mississippi's favor? At this point, we can't answer your sensible question. That said:
Looking back, Mississippi has always had an older bunch of fourth graders, even dating back before those reforms, to the years when it was a very low-scoring state.
Mississippi has always had an older bunch of fourth grader! But so you'll know, you see below the official way Mississippi's miracle has been shaping up ever since the state passed its 2013 reforms.
According to a very roughly rule of thumb, a ten-point gap on the Naep scale is often compared to roughly one academic year. We're omitting some years for the sake of simplicity. For all test data, start here:
Average scores, Grade 4 reading, Naep
All students: U.S. / Calif. / Mississippi
2024: 214.27 / 211.74 / 218.50
2019: 219.44 / 216.48 / 219.34
2017: 220.81 / 215.42 / 215.20
2015: 221.36 / 212.68 / 214.11
2013: 220.67 / 212.55 / 208.52
2007: 219.66 / 208.52 / 207.81
2003: 216.46 / 205.63 / 205.46
Mississippi was twelve points below the national average back in 2013. It had pulled even with the national average by the 2019 testing, and the state was four points ahead of the national average by the time the smoke had cleared from the Covid shutdowns.
For what it's worth, until Covid hit, California's kids had been steadily gaining on the nation too.
(Those are the average scores for all students in the nation and in the two states. At this point, we haven't "disaggregated" those scores in the manner we've described.)
That represents a very large gain in average scores in a very short period of time. Could something possibly be "wrong" with those scores? At this pro-miracle site, we were struck by one testing expert's quoted assessment:
Four Reasons Why Mississippi’s Reading Gains Are Neither Myth Nor Miracle
[...]
Andrew Ho, a testing expert at Harvard University and previously a member of the board that oversees NAEP, said his instinct is to question big test score gains. But in the case of Mississippi, he said, “I don’t see any smoking guns or red flags that make me say that they’re gaming NAEP.”
We agree with Ho's instinctive skepticism. Long experience has taught us to be very skeptical about miraculous score gains.
Often, you can see that something is wrong when you start looking inside the data. Ho says he can see no sign that the system is being gamed here. To that, we would only add this point:
The fact that you can't see that something is wrong doesn't necessarily mean that nothing actually is wrong, perhaps through no bad intention.
We may continue to noodle around with those test score data. Warning:
There's almost always someone with something to gain when these "simple solutions" start getting promoted. And as the New York Times has proven in the past, journalists who aren't specialists are easily stampeded by educational experts.
We will share one final point before we're done with this resurgent topic. For years, the New York Times cared about only one thing. It cared about how many black and Hispanic kids would get into prestigious Stuyvesant High.
Forget the 99 percent of New York City's kids. The Times seemed to care about the top one percent only. They would make a big deal about this matter on an annual basis, right on the paper's front page.
That was one of the unattractive ways we Blues displayed our lack of concern about the vast bulk of black and Hispanic kids. This year, in what looked like a flight from the woke, the Times scaled that old line of reporting way, way, way, way back.
In truth, it was time for that fetish to go. But nobody ever actually cared about any of this, and when the Times changed its approach, nobody said a word.
Mississippi's children deserve the best. So do California's kids, who are very heavily Hispanic.
So do the children of Israel. So do the children of Gaza.
ReplyDelete"Black kids, white kids, Hispanic kids"
What's with all the racist shit, Bob? Who cares if a kid is "black" or "white"? Does it make this kid different somehow? Are you a Democrat or something?
Some things done in the name of helping the underclass actually hurt them. When things like Covid or heterogeneous classes or ending special programs happens, the upper class parents are most able to make up the school's deficiency at home. So, these practices widen the gap between classes of students.
ReplyDeleteMississippi put a lot of hard work into teacher training, employing reading specialists, identifying struggling students early (1st grade not 3rd), assigning specialists to work with struggling kids with interventions, so that retention became a last resort, and making sure improvements reached all schools. They deserve credit for funding & implementing effective changes. They don’t deserve Somerby’s hints about cheating (gaming) or his nigilism over whether any learning can be improved. Knee jerk denial that improvement is ever possible undermines progress in the classroom. Thank God Somerby stopped teaching.
ReplyDeletenihilism
DeleteI prefer nigilism, tbh.
DeleteSo does Nigel.
DeleteAlbanian spelling. This is, of course, where Soros bot farms are.
DeleteAs I recall, the NY Times also focused on parent complaints about how students with reading problems (dyslexia) were being treated and why more effective help was not being provided. The concern over why only 8 black students were being admitted to selective science high schools seemed justified to me and not at all as elitist as Somerby implies.
ReplyDeleteI agree that we should be concerned about why only 8 black students were being admitted to selective science high schools. Where people go tragically wrong is thinking that racism is the cause. It takes no educational expertise or knowledge of facts for people to proclaim that others are racists and to boast about how virtuous they are. The focus needs to be on why so few black students have the knowledge and ability to participate in the selective science schools. The answer lies somewhere in the educational methods and in black culture. Ignoring these and simply blaming hypothetical racists is a dead end.
Delete"Acting white" is certainly a big part of the problem. (In the United States, acting white is a pejorative term, usually applied to Black people by other Black people, which refers to a person's perceived betrayal of their culture by assuming the social expectations of white society. It is theorized that some students in racial minority groups are discouraged from achieving in school by the negative prejudices of ethnic peers.) I know this is a real problem. My cousin Lizzy and her brother as sister had to cope with it.
DeleteSo, who's working on solving this problem? Is there a government program? Is the NAACP is doing something? No, they're busy promulgating the falsehood that racism is what's holding black students back.
David, your view of "acting white" is white bigotry, spread by conservative blacks like Julian McWhorter and white bigots. Being stupid has never been part of black culture, so acting smart is not part of white culture either. Look at MAGA to see that in action. The anti-elitism of the right is way stronger than any view among blacks that getting good grades is being a race-traitor.
DeleteALL children, regardless of color or culture, have peer pressure to be less teacher-pleasing. Teachers have been working on the "problem" by offering other kinds of motivations and incentives to performing well in class and on tests. It is part of teaching. Just like no adult in any workplace admires the suck-ups who try to win points with the boss instead of being part of a team of workers with common goals.
YOUR racism is evidenct. For one thing, this myth about black students is at least 30 years out of date. For another, wouldn't the brother of your cousin Lizzy also be your cousin? Same for her sister? Or are you talking about some kind of blended family?
It is not impossible (especially in Somerby's world) that she is letting you believe what you want to think about black/white identity because it is too tiring to argue with you when you clearly want to believe something negative about her peer group?
Self-handicapping is generally associated with under-achievers (kids with high IQs but poor performance due to some problem needing intervention). The theory as I heard it was that black children may be afraid of failure and thus adopt a stance of not caring about success as a self-protective mechanism. When encouraged to strive, they begin to succeed and then don't need the ego-defense. Kind of like the way people make excuses before trying their hand at karaoke.
I've also seen this used to mock black kids who do not understand how to dress and act "cool" like the American black kids, so they are teased for trying to be white (but this occurs in movies, not in real life). Again, all kids want to belong and fit in and not be outcasts. That is universal. How they accomplish it varies and with emotional support at home and school, kids can find ways to do it that are not self-defeating.
When I was a teacher, we were warned that kids without social skills are especially vulnerable to becoming drug abusers because kid drug culture will accept any kid, no matter what they are like, as long as they participate in taking drugs. So kids join for the sense of belonging, and then wind up with other problems. But white kids do this as much as black kids.
These days, white supremacists recruit the kids lacking social skills for the same reasons. They are seeking an accepting peer group, and the white supremacist groups will accept any kids as long as they accept their hate ideology. Some evangelical Christian groups operate the same way, offering friendship in exchange for conversion to that religion. Lonely kids are most vulnerable.
correction: "because kid drug culture will accept any kid" should say "drug culture will accept"...
DeleteBlack students, because of where they live in NYC, were being tracked into middle schools that did not prepare them for the science high school entrance exam. The same is not true for Asian and white students, who have access to middle schools that do prepare them for that test.
DeleteThis is a straightforward problem of lack of access to resources in black schools. This is the sort of thing that improves with desgregation of schools, which also depends on integration of residential neighborhoods. It has nothing to do with black kids avoiding "acting white" or David's other bogus racist explanations.
I lack social skills, but kid drug culture never tried to recruit me.
DeleteHow can lack of resources be the problem? National average spending is $16,000 per student, but New York City spends $38,000 per public school student. And, some of the worst inner city schools spend $50,000 to $65,000 per student!
Deletehttps://nypost.com/2024/08/24/us-news/some-nyc-schools-spending-massive-amounts-on-per-pupil-budgets-but-show-dismal-results/
@7:26 I mentioned Lizzy because she's been discussed on this blog. Bob devoted a segment to her. Her brother David and sister Miriam are indeed my cousins also. BTW, as a generality, Jewish, Asian and Mormon children do not have peer pressure to be less teacher-pleasing. Or, at least, they have offsetting peer pressure the other way.
DeleteHow many Mormon children do you personally know, David? How do you know that they don't have a subculture where it is cool to be less devout and wear gentile clothes instead of garment-concealing gear?
DeleteIt is backwards reasoning to assume that if someone does well in school, they have no obstacles to success.
I know quite a few Asian students and have Asian friends. Rebelling against parents is a thing for them too. They are not all good at math. Watch the film Better Luck Tomorrow for an examination of how Asian kids feel about your stereotypes.
How helpful do you think our society's sports fetish is to physically talented black and Hispanic youth? How about music culture? If anything, black kids are not oriented toward being less white, but heading for the NFL, NBA, and for Hispanic youth, soccer and baseball, Hip Hop, Rap, K-Pop and becoming influencers. David, when you dredge up old racist theories you sound way older than your actual age.
All societies fetishize sports.
DeleteAll societies don't tie participation to race/ethnicity.
DeleteMamdani says he will eliminate gifted programs in NYC. Hard to see how that will help anything, but it may please Somerby if geeks have no labs or mentors to pursue their nerdy interests. Who needs science (or literature or math or social studies) amirite!
ReplyDeleteAnonymouse 6:31pm, Mamdani is projected to win. That’s some indictment against all those liberal New York voters.
DeleteCecilia - It sure is and indictment. In June I had lunch with three high school classmate. All highly intelligent women. All Jewish. All were contemplating voting for Mamdani. They discussed their choices in terms of individual personality.
DeleteDavid, are you saying that your lady friends think Mamdani is cute?
DeleteLOL. My friends saw no significant difference between Mamdani and the other Dem candidates regarding policy or antisemitism or experience or ability, so they based their choice on other things.
DeleteIt was unfortunate when giftedness was linked with elitism. People who haven't met these very prococious kids with very high IQs (from early childhood) tend to think that pushy parents with money are seeking advantages for them that other kids could benefit from too. In fact there are teachers who also think that. But the severely gifted kids (3+ standard deviations on aptitutde and IQ tests above the mean) need to be stimulated and not bored in the classroom, need smart kids around them to form friendships where they are not considered oddballs (a peer group), and counseling and emotional support for their sources of difference. Like other kids with differences, they are more prone to suicide and authority problems that derail success in later life, without appropriate academic intervention. I hope the educators can straighten Mamdani out on this, if he is elected.
DeleteSomerby's continual equating of higher education with elitism reflects the anti-intellectualism of the right. I consider it a form of bigotry aimed at those who are different. Given the overlap discovered between high functioning autistic people and those with very high IQs, Trump's encouragement of RFK Jr's war on autism is troubling to me. Forcing children into a one-size-fits-all school system is a bad idea, even from the perspective of equality. ALL kids deserve an education that meets their specific needs and helps them maximize their individual potential, pursuing their own goals wherever they lead. Not producing a chain of identical widgets to suit the authoritarian state's needs.
Why is it any surprise that David's high school friends are as silly as he is?
Delete@638- it's to their credit.
Delete"RFK Jr's war on autism"??? He is trying to learn the causes in order to effectively reduce autism.
DeleteAutism is referred to as a spectrum because people with autism perform along a continuum that ranges from severe developmental delay to genius. When RFK perceives autism solely as a disorder he ignores those who contribute at the highest levels of intellect in science, technology, the arts, and other creative fields, including literature. Failure to acknowledge the contribution of autistic people while claiming we must engage in studies to eliminate it, makes as much sense as trying to eliminate left-handed people because some of them are born with severe developmental disorders. Autism is a genetic variation involving differences in brain organization. Most often autistic people do fine in life and in some cases they are exceptional in their fields, winning Nobel prizes and making important contributions to society and scientific progress. Why should that be eliminated or reduced?
DeleteMany autistic people go entirely undiagnosed into late adulthood. The parents of those who are having problems need support and resources, not "reduction" of autism as a human variation.
RFK is doing no research to find causes of autism. He is trying to link autism using correlation with benign drugs such as Tylenol in pregnancy or childhood, so that he can claim progress in his conjob of parents who need real help, not previously debunked theories. Imaging students show different brain functioning in autistic people. THAT is not caused by Tylenol. It is structural and functional, just as handedness is, or language organization, spatial visualization or various other kinds of thinking.
There are many good books about autism. Instead of believing Trump or RFK Jr. or these charlatans, go read some books. They are available via Amazon or in university libraries. It is better that you educate yourself than that you repeat idiotic garbage that serves only to persecute people who are different for genetic reasons, not because their moms gave them a mild painkiller in early childhood.
(How much Tylenol would a person have to take to change their brain functioning for the rest of their life?)
Imaging studies (not students) -- typo correction
Delete@8:07 - Do you seriously claim that RFK is doing no research to find causes of autism? He's doing a ton of research. Now, it may be that this research is not coming up with correct results, but he certainly has his scientists doing a lot research. E.g., see NIH launches $50M Autism Data Science Initiative to unlock causes and improve outcomes
Deletehttps://www.nih.gov/news-events/news-releases/nih-launches-fifty-million-autism-data-science-initiative-unlock-causes-improve-outcomes
I am seriously claiming that RFK Jr is doing no research to find the causes of autism. Correlating tylenol use with autism does not prove causation. Repeat after me: correlation is not causation. The studies already do not support his thesis but he is wasting money by repeating them. When you look for a cause, you do not assume one and then try to prove it. You do exploratory research to figure out possible mechanisms for autism in a developing brain, and you look for genes in the genome. The genetic contribution to autism is stronger than for IQ, which is also thought to be genetic. RFK Jr. is doing no genetic studies. He is repeating studies favored by existing autism-quacks to support their pseudo-scientific cons. RFK Jr. is not any kind of scientist. Creating false home by touting false "cures" is unkind to parents and families of those with disorders, but the large majority of autistic people do not have disorders. Portraying autism as only the disabled prevents those who are functioning well from being hired and accepted into society by neurotypical people. So this renewed focus on discredited theories in order to be doing something (while ignoring actual autism research) is harmful to those who are autistic. Spending a bunch of money (without issuing a competitive call for proposals) while defunding the work of existing scientists (as NIH has already done at Trump's demand, via DOGE) favors pseudoscience over real work by those who have dedicated their scientific careers to studying autism and how to improve outcomes. There has been an industry preying on parents who seek hope for their children. Encouraging con artists over actual science should be a crime, but is mainly evil. RFK Jr is a crackpot who knows nothing at all about science or autism, any more than he knows how to prevent measles.
DeleteYou are confusing the title of a very large grant with any of its findings -- none. This is a huge waste of money that could and should be directed to actually benefit families of those who are disabled, not scaring pregnant women out of using mild painkillers that have studies showing they are safe and DO NOT CAUSE autism.
People grift off of the families of disabled autistic children. They will not be going to heaven. Neither will RFK Jr.
DeleteThey should eliminate all-star sports teams.
DeleteThey should pay athletes properly and treat them better after their careers end.
DeleteAthletes are elitists.
Delete"...he certainly has his scientists doing a lot of research..." Interesting choice of words. Understand that no one working at NIH would refer to themselves as Kennedy's scientists any more than the top military brass would refer to Hegseth as an authentic leader. That status does not get bequeathed by some clown to either Kennedy or Hegseth. They are not Kennedy's anything. And to the extent that Kennedy gets to foist his pet projects on to the desks of bone fide scientists who regard him for what he is, a recovered heroin addict with no scientific credentials and a resume filled with garbage ideas, that is the unfortunate outcome that rubes like DiC have the fucking temerity to try to normalize.
DeleteWe blues don’t care about minorities because we used to complain there was too little access to NYC science high schools? That makes no sense at all, Somerby.
ReplyDeleteBob’s concern was that all the media focus was on these very elite high schools to the determent of regular schools where most kids (of all ethnicities) attend.
DeleteSomerby's concern is misguided. The media was also saying that minorities (except Asian students) were being tracked into middle schools that did not prepare them to take those science high school entrance exams.
DeleteAnonymouse 7:37pm, I don’t remember there being any suggestion from the media that qualified black candidates were being passed over by elite high schools. Quite the contrary. The impetus of NYT’s stories was that they should make it easier for black students to qualify for the elite schools. Somerby’s argument was about that media focus.
DeleteThe NY Times reported that only 8 black students were admitted to that year's incoming class in the special science high schools. Parents were upset about that and complaining. The NY Times was examining why so few were qualifying. Part of the reason was lack of preparation in the middle schools. There were also suggestions that kids should be admitted based on strong science interest and teacher recommendations, not just test scores on a test that was not properly validated as racially fair. That isn't the same as making the test "easier." As I recall, Somerby argued that it would be unfair for a black student to displace an Asian student and that the city should create more slots for all kids. That is unrealistic given the realities of school funding and how long it takes to build another properly equipped science magnet school (schools need labs with science equipment, not just chairs and blackboards). This discussion went on for months.
DeleteSomerby spent next to no time discussing the NY Times reporting on the dyslexia parent protests and the changes in reading instruction demanded for struggling students. He only cared about reading struggles when Mississippi reported progress, not when the NY Times was talking about it every day.
Anonymouse 8:16pm, I don’t remember Bob ever suggesting that they ought to create more spots for black kids. He never argued that there should be a quota for qualified Asian kids. The impetus was that the academic and media focus should be upon getting regular kids up to snuff.
DeleteYou are misremembering the conversations. Go back and read them again. I am not making this up.
DeleteSomerby's ongoing focus has been on NAEP scores and TIMMS, going back to the beginning. But when he discussed NYC schools, he focused on opposing desegregation of schools (in general) and on chiding the Times for not reporting on his focus on getting all kids to perform better. He considered the science high schools elitism and he didn't care if there wasn't access for black students.
Somerby started out criticizing the press for not appreciating the math and reading improvements over a span of time. Then he began demanding that the press disaggregate the schools (break them into means by race) so that people could see how badly the black kids were doing, the huge and persistent gap between white/Asian and black/Hispanic students. It is unclear why he wanted that done. Then he evolved into insisting that there could be no miracle improvement anywhere under any circumstances and that anyone claiming improvement was a huckster. I found myself wondering why he was so invested in showing that black kids cannot succeed under any circumstances. Around that time he complained about black students being admitted to open entry colleges where they were sure to fail, complained that black college students were being taught to feel discriminated against via anti-racism seminars and identification of microaggressions. He pooh-poohed examples of racism in the news. He stopped talking about black student needs (he had claimed that he was the only one who cared about them) and started suggesting that black kids were incapable of improvement but no one was acknowledging that. He briefly discussed the studies showing that black kids hear far fewer words while infants and toddlers, dismissing the gap as too big to surmount, and saying no one knows about the study (untrue). He never advocated for preschool for all, which was a political issue in NYC at that time.
Then he shifted to complaining about liberals being mean to The Other and said we were spending too much time labeling them as racist, sexist. He said the news wasn't paying enough attention to Trump supporters (that changed). Then he started complaining about we liberals thinking we are better than red voters, elitism, journalists with degrees from Ivy league schools, female journalists, and his array of more recent topics. He stopped discussing NAEP except when new scores were released, complaining that reporters were poorly trained in stats and didn't know how to disaggregate stats.
I suspect you were not around for this full evolution, Cecelia, even though you claim to have been reading Somerby forever.
One of the commenters here with a strong background in education kept suggesting that Somerby read some of the actual education blogs, such as Greene's Curmudgucation or Diane Ravitch's blog. He never did that and never involved any actual discussion by education experts on any topic. Somerby came back to the topic of education briefly when school book banning was being pushed by DeSantis, on the wrong side of course.
typo "disaggregate the scores" (not schools)
DeleteAnonymouse 9:21pm, I suspect that you are doing what you’re here to do and that is you’re going to take the opposite approach to whatever Bob argues. It’s not unreasonable to say that this is a subject that has to be unpacked very carefully if you’re going to examine it thoroughly. It’s going to be a process over the years. In order to lose patience with that approach, you have to be fairly shallow or completely invested in pointing the finger and shutting things down. Which you are. You will always make it personal at TDH. That’s why you’re here.
DeleteI used to be a Somerby fan until he started revealing attitudes that I not only disagree with, but are majorly inconsistent with being liberal, as Somerby always claims to be. I value truth. Somerby misrepresents himself here. I am not oppositional in the way you suggest. I do care about the values we liberals mostly hold.
DeleteSomerby is an asshole. People here mistakenly believe he is expert in things he knows very little about. Including you. I believe in the value of education. Somerby does not.
Here is a problem with your theory. If Somerby is actually examining complex issues, why wouldn't he read his comments? There used to be interesting discussions by people with expertise in the comments. If Somerby cared, he would have read them. He is old now, not capable of thinking any more clearly than Trump does, and he has chosen simplistic answers to important questions. I don't recommend believing what he says here, but I'm not your mother.
Here is what Mississippi did to improve reading scores:
ReplyDelete"Mississippi improved reading scores through the Literacy-Based Promotion Act (LBPA), a 2013 law that mandated early literacy reforms like early reading screenings, intensive teacher training in the science of reading, and third-grade retention policies for students who don't meet reading proficiency. These changes were supported by targeted interventions for struggling readers and the strategic use of reading coaches to support teachers. "
Somerby prefers the explanation that they somehow "gamed" the NAEP test, even if the expert Somerby quotes couldn't figure out how.
This is how bias works. That state is full of poor black kids and white kids with undereducated parents. Such kids don't typically learn well, according to Somerby's philosophy of teaching. His own kids struggled despite his own efforts, so these kinds of kids just can't do as well as the elites (white and rich people). So there must be some other explanation, even if Somerby doesn't know what it might be.
Like in the movie Legally Blonde. Elle decides to go to Harvard Law School, but she is "not serious" (which means sexy and blonde, a frivolous sorority airhead). She gets some prep books and spends a lot of time practicing for the test, has straight A's in her classes, makes a creative video admission essay and gets admitted, but she can't really be lawyer material, right, because she is still an airhead blonde no matter what her test scores and grades. She must have "gamed" the admissions system, and when she works hard and is successfully, she must have bribed some male professor with sex. Just like Kamala did to become DA in San Francisco, right?
Kamala is not blonde.
DeleteSomerby is only willing to credit her with a nice smile, as if she were Elle Woods.
DeleteAnonymouse 8:17pm, so what . The Republican women in congress don’t even have a nice smile in their favor. They’re are some of the most performative attention seekers on the planet. It is what it is.
DeleteCecelia, don’t ever vote for any Republican.
DeleteAnonymouse 9:16pm, sure thing. Now brush your teeth and go to bed.
DeleteRead me a bedtime story.
DeleteThe Three Little Democrats?
Delete@7:03 - As you know, "Legally Blond" is fiction. But, if you want to see a movie depicting a real instance of what you're describing, go see, "Stand and Deliver."
DeleteThat's fiction too, although based on a real account of a school accused of cheating because others did not believe Hispanic high school students could learn calculus. In real life (at Garfield High School in CA), there were faculty members concerned about the high pressure methods used by the teacher depicted and some felt the students were abused, despite the universal success shown in the film.
DeleteThe film Whiplash is closer to what some teachers felt was happening to the students.
In terms of learning, math without context is useless. Students need to know how to use what they learn and not just rote methods for answering questions on an exam (teaching to the test). A problem that disadvantaged students have is that they don't have the context that goes with what they are being force-fed and asked to regurgitate.
But Stand and Deliver is a feel-good movie with some accurate glimpses of Hispanic family life and the problems that get in the way of doing school work. There is an entire genre of feel-good education films that do not accurately portray teaching and learning. One that does a good job is Chalk, an Indie film that shows what being thrown into a classroom without preparation is like and why so many beginninng teachers quit. Jaime Escalante had no training for his job as math teacher and it promotes the mistaken idea that anyone can teach.
My theory is that Somerby also had a meeting with his doctor and was told his health problems were serious, so he has decided to abandon his pretense at being any kind of liberal and is letting it all hang out as a conservative. He no longer cares whether his misogyny and racism and xenophobia are obvious to all (even his trolls). It is too much work trying to sucker the rubes into believing he has anything to spew here except the same assholery as Charlie Kirk, Stephen Miller and his incel bros, and the Mothers Against Liberty.
ReplyDeleteOr perhaps he just decided that if we are now in the Civil War 2.0, it is time for him to declare sides in case ICE can't tell the players without a program.
I came her for the misogyny, and I stayed for the xenophobia.
Delete"WASHINGTON (The Borowitz Report)—Justifying his characterization of Chicago as a crime-ridden war zone, Donald J. Trump claimed on Monday that thousands of the city’s residents were seen “running for their lives” over the weekend.
ReplyDelete“They were running like dogs,” he said. “You’d run, too, if you were being chased by Antifa.”
Trump said that thousands of people running in the streets was a common occurrence in “Democrat cities,” noting that what happened in Chicago over the weekend has also taken place in New York and Boston."
Congrats to the finishers in this year's Chicago Marathon!
500 people being murdered each year doesn't seem as funny to me as it does to @7:43.
DeleteSo, do we consider you opposed to Marathon races then David? Are you aware that murders have decreased in Chicago, without any help from Trump or ICE? Are you opposed to progress in crime prevention too?
DeleteAll those people in Chicago and not one of them was assaulted or afraid of being assaulted. Almost as if Chicago were a normal place without violence and war, except that provided by ICE agents.
I can see David writing a protest letter to the organizers of the Indy 500, telling them how uncool their race is when there are so many car accidents each year. Oddly, except for Detroit, the major cities for car fatalities are all red states (several of the top 10 are in FL), Memphis, Tucson, Albuquerque, Kansas City. Distracted driving claims 3,300 people per year. Have you decided to stop driving, David? Hope so. How can you, in good conscience, participate in an activity in an area with way too many car fatalities (not counting pedestrians)!
Not laughing at a blue joke is one thing, but I'm sure you are a man of principle when it comes to not laughing at anyone else's tragedies. After all, Republicans are known for their strong sense of empathy, amirite! (Prove me wrong.)
Dems are better at empathy. (E.g., Clinton: "I feel your pain") Reps are better at fixing things and making them work right. (E.g., closing the Southern border. Peace in Gaza.)
DeleteReps are also far better at electing administrations that are lawless, with statistics dating back to before Nixon proving that (indictments and guilty verdicts), and administrations that completely mishandled the economy as compared with their democratic counterparts. For the latter, it's not even close.
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DeleteSaying "I feel your pain" is not empathy. It's called "bullshitting".
Democrats used to be good at bullshitting, but not anymore.
“You can fool some of the people all of the time, and all of the people some of the time, but you can not fool all of the people all of the time.”
Jonathan V. Last has some important things to say about the administration's actions toward Antifa and individuals who wish to resist the trend toward authoritarianism.
ReplyDeletehttps://www.thebulwark.com/p/are-you-antifa-domestic-terror-no-kings-trump
Peace with Hamas has been brokered via MAGA.
ReplyDeleteHamas is misogynistic and xenophobic.
DeleteThose involved are being careful to say that a cease-fire has been brokered. There is a long way to go before achieving peace. MAGA doesn't know how to spell peace, much less recognize it when it occurs (hint: this ain't it).
DeleteMAGAGAZAGAZAMAGAMAGAGAZAGAZAMAGAMAGAGAZAGAZAMAGAGAZAMAGAGAZAGAZAMAGAMAGAGAZAGAZAMAGAZAMAGAGAZAGAZAMAGAMAGAGAZAGAZAMAGAMAGAGAZAGAZAMAGAMAGAGAZAGAZAMAGAMAGAGAZAGAZAMAGAGAZAMAGAGAZAGAZAMAGAMAGAGAZAGAZAMAGAZAMAGAGAZAGAZAMAGAMAGAGAZAGAZAMAGAMAGAGAZAGAZAMAGAMAGAGAZAGAZAMAGAMAGAGAZAGAZAMAGAGAZAMAGAGAZAGAZAMAGAMAGAGAZAGAZAMAGAZAMAGAGAZAGAZAMAGAMAGAGAZAGAZAMAGA
Delete"To be clear, we are already past the point where it’s only people in the U.S. without legal immigration status who are at risk.
ReplyDeleteIn Portland, Oregon, on October 5, ICE agents threatened to arrest and kill an ambulance driver. The incident is documented by witness reports filed with the ambulance crew’s employer and its union by different individuals, as well as 911 calls, dispatch reports, and emergency communications. The ambulance was called to the ICE office to treat an injured protester, but agents refused to let the ambulance leave once the patient was loaded. When the driver put the vehicle into park, it rocked forward, and an agent responded angrily, saying the ambulance driver tried to hit him. The driver reported that “they were not only accusing me of such a thing, but crowding and cornering me in the seat, pointing and screaming at me, threatening to shoot and arrest me, and not allowing the ambulance to leave the scene. This was no longer a safe scene, and in that moment, I realized that the scene had not actually been safe the entire time that they were blocking us from exiting, and that we were essentially trapped.”
A video filmed in September that recently went viral shows ICE firing on protestors and hitting Presbyterian minister David Black in the head with a pepper ball. The minister, who was injured, is now suing. DHS Assistant Secretary Tricia McLaughlin tweeted that the shooting was justified because “What this clipped video doesn’t show is that these agitators were blocking an ICE vehicle from leaving the federal facility—impeding operations.” Apparently, the new standard operating protocol is that if an ICE agent decides you’re in the way, they can shoot you. “If you are obstructing law enforcement, you can expect to be met with force,” she concluded her tweet, complaining that the minister had “flipped the bird” at Secretary Noem the previous week.
There are now so many of these stories flooding the country, and they come with such rapidity, that it’s impossible to keep up with all of them. In other words, these incidents aren’t the exceptions. They aren’t unusual. And there’s every indication that they are tolerated, even encouraged, by Trump’s machine.
Trump promised he’d deport violent criminals. Instead, ICE is going after legal residents and terrorizing children. The message: if you’re an American citizen, don’t exercise your First Amendment rights unless you want to become a target too."
https://joycevance.substack.com/p/are-we-the-nazis-now
Trump promised to deport private criminals, but in confidence to his family, he promised other things. There was some very interesting market activity especially in the crypto space in the hours before Trump made his Friday tariff statements, comments that sent bitcoin and the markets on a down trajectory. As in: large bets against the price of bitcoin that paid off very handsomely hours later. Who would know what Trump was planning to post on Truth Social in advance? There is no level of brazen corruption that this family of high stakes grifters is incapable of.
ReplyDeletePrivate=violent
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