Last December, I reported on Harvard University professor Stephan Thernstrom’s essay “Minorities in College — Good News, But…,” on Minding the Campus, a website sponsored by the New York-based Manhattan Institute. He was commenting on the results of the most recent National Assessment of Educational Progress, saying that the scores “mean that black students aged 17 do not read with any greater facility than whites who are four years younger and still in junior high. … Exactly the same glaring gaps appear in NAEP’s tests of basic mathematics skills.” Thernstrom asked, “If we put a randomly-selected group of 100 eighth-graders and another of 100 twelfth-graders in a typical college, would we expect the first group to perform as well as the second?” In other words, is it reasonable to expect a college freshman of any race who has the equivalent of an eighth-grade education to compete successfully with those having a 12th-grade education?
Maybe this huge gap in black/white academic achievement was in the paternalistic minds of the 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals justices who recently struck down Michigan’s ban on the use of race and sex as criteria for college admissions. The court said that it burdens minorities and violates the U.S. Constitution. Given the black education disaster, racial preferences in college admissions will become a permanent feature, because given the status quo, blacks as a group will never make it into top colleges based upon academic merit.
The situation is worse than we thought. U.S. News & World Report (7/7/2011) came out with a story titled “Educators Implicated in Atlanta Cheating Scandal,” saying that “for 10 years, hundreds of Atlanta public school teachers and principals changed answers on state tests in one of the largest cheating scandals in U.S. history, according to a scathing 413-page investigative report released Tuesday by Georgia Gov. Nathan Deal.” The report says that more than three-quarters of the 56 Atlanta schools investigated cheated on the 2009 standardized National Assessment of Educational Progress.
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It wouldn't matter if the culprit was No Child Left Behind. The precedent had long ago been set by the removal of standards altogether. When the philosophes starting teaching relativism and that there were no absolute standards, what did anyone expect?
When my daughter was in first grade, in 1992, she was given a test in math and her teacher, a tenured woman with at least 27 years in the classroom, was incapable of teaching anything to her class. It was another teacher's diligence that alerted me to the scandal, long before No Child Left Behind.
What this program has done, and I saw it with all my children, has ensured that children will be marked as slow learners deliberately, in order for the school to get government graft. This system is corrupt. I have seen it in our own school district, and the only solution as far as I can see is to dismantle the hydra of the Department of Education's monster.
If parents would get angry enough, maybe the best solution is to simply burn down all the corrupt and incompetent schools.
Gee Officer, it isn't my fault for driving 85 mph in a 60 mph zone. It's the DOT who is at fault for making these roads so smooth that it is impossible to keep my foot from pressing down on the accelerator.
I am so sick and tired of people in responsible positions blaming others for their ethical and moral shortcomings. As a Georgian, I am embarrassed by the actions of these so called professional educators and the damage they have done to these children is incalculable. Also, this is just another piece in the puzzle as to why so many of our Hope Scholarship recipients are losing their scholarships due to poor academic performance in their freshman year. These people should have criminal charges filed against them and they should never, ever be allowed to stand up in front of students to teach again.
the common denominator is always left out of these stories, like crime statistics.
teaching victimhood is not a smart practice.
but it feels so good if you don't know any better.
One question. Did the Atlanta teachers' changing the answers improve the scores?
lol ….yeah they made students who would have passed fail so they would not get bonuses for improving the school rankings.
nice try Alinsky
victimhood meet entitlement.
That's why Black students should go to the great HBC's , ie Morehouse, Spellman , Horward. Now , whites have figured out that these are great educations at reasonable cost. whites have stolen the great Black football and basketball players, leave the students alone!
I think black or other nonwhite ethnicities should not demand unfair advantages just because they want to get ahead via unfair means as they not only don't instill confidence in their own nonwhite communities but also caused resentment against them .
Yes, only the tip.
This is eduction's version of Affirmative-Action. Not only does it give preference to minority students but it also screws-over white students of good standing. Obviously, education's version of Affirmative-Action doesn't do any student any good whatsoever.