Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
I don't pretend to have any answers but continuing along the path we've been on vis a vis public education in this country will continue to yield disaster....but I do have some ideas - steal good ideas from countries that educate their kids well.
1. Ramp the requirements to become a teacher - it's just too easy to become a teacher in The USA. Thankfully, a number of states have already initiated efforts in this direction.
2. Find a way to disconnect the notion that K-12 education is all about per-pupil funding. The US is always 1, 2 or 3 in adjusted per pupil spending among OECD countries. New York spends exceptional amounts of money education kids and gets results only a tiny bit better than Texas. CA spends, most years, a little bit more than Texas and has better results than NY. Utah always spends the least or near the least and its kids do well across many metrics.
3. Stop using race and income as excuses for educational failures.
*A good friend of mine is Chief Diversity Officer (that's not his title I don't want to give away his identity) at a large university a few states away, a professor and he's a black man with impeccable academic bonafides who also happens to be maybe the funniest human on the planet. This guy gives diversity talks, seminars, advises companies etc. etc. about race, achievement and failure along educational lines. A couple of of the points he makes over and over are how can it just be about money when the poorest white kids and even more so the poorest Asian kids routinely equal or outperform the richest black kids on any of the ACT, SAT, ISEE and other tests? It's technical but he also utterly destroys the notion that any of these tests are significantly racially biased.
I don't pretend to have any answers but continuing along the path we've been on vis a vis public education in this country will continue to yield disaster....but I do have some ideas - steal good ideas from countries that educate their kids well.
1. Ramp the requirements to become a teacher - it's just too easy to become a teacher in The USA. Thankfully, a number of states have already initiated efforts in this direction.
2. Find a way to disconnect the notion that K-12 education is all about per-pupil funding. The US is always 1, 2 or 3 in adjusted per pupil spending among OECD countries. New York spends exceptional amounts of money education kids and gets results only a tiny bit better than Texas. CA spends, most years, a little bit more than Texas and has better results than NY. Utah always spends the least or near the least and its kids do well across many metrics.
3. Stop using race and income as excuses for educational failures.
*A good friend of mine is Chief Diversity Officer (that's not his title I don't want to give away his identity) at a large university a few states away, a professor and he's a black man with impeccable academic bonafides who also happens to be maybe the funniest human on the planet. This guy gives diversity talks, seminars, advises companies etc. etc. about race, achievement and failure along educational lines. A couple of of the points he makes over and over are how can it just be about money when the poorest white kids and even more so the poorest Asian kids routinely equal or outperform the richest black kids on any of the ACT, SAT, ISEE and other tests? It's technical but he also utterly destroys the notion that any of these tests are significantly racially biased.
I looked up your last point, that poor white kids outperform rich black kids, and it is indeed correct. However, that's true for ALL income levels. Whites outperform blacks at all income levels. Therefore I think the claim that it's not a race or cultural issue is unproven. Others have analyzed these scores (which are from 2008) and proposed that black net worth is not apples to apples with white net worth. Black high incomes are often first generation, so there isn't a family legacy of placing high value on education, test prep, utilizing resources to get the children up to speed on test taking skills.
My point is this kind of data is often used inappropriately. For example when I looked into this I found on one blog, an author using this limited data set to claim that " Why are such privileged blacks scoring so low on the SAT? The obvious answer, noted by many others, is genetics and the fact that these affluent blacks probably have their incomes as a result of affirmative action." Disgusting commentary...let's not support such racist idiots even unintentionally.
I don't pretend to have any answers but continuing along the path we've been on vis a vis public education in this country will continue to yield disaster....but I do have some ideas - steal good ideas from countries that educate their kids well.
1. Ramp the requirements to become a teacher - it's just too easy to become a teacher in The USA. Thankfully, a number of states have already initiated efforts in this direction.
2. Find a way to disconnect the notion that K-12 education is all about per-pupil funding. The US is always 1, 2 or 3 in adjusted per pupil spending among OECD countries. New York spends exceptional amounts of money education kids and gets results only a tiny bit better than Texas. CA spends, most years, a little bit more than Texas and has better results than NY. Utah always spends the least or near the least and its kids do well across many metrics.
3. Stop using race and income as excuses for educational failures.
*A good friend of mine is Chief Diversity Officer (that's not his title I don't want to give away his identity) at a large university a few states away, a professor and he's a black man with impeccable academic bonafides who also happens to be maybe the funniest human on the planet. This guy gives diversity talks, seminars, advises companies etc. etc. about race, achievement and failure along educational lines. A couple of of the points he makes over and over are how can it just be about money when the poorest white kids and even more so the poorest Asian kids routinely equal or outperform the richest black kids on any of the ACT, SAT, ISEE and other tests? It's technical but he also utterly destroys the notion that any of these tests are significantly racially biased.
Unless your friend is a psychometrician and has analyzed the item level data for himself then he has not destroyed the notion that these tests are not racially biased.
Last edited by OkieSoonerGuy; 01-10-2017 at 01:05 PM..
Unless your friend is a psychometrician and has analyzed the data for himself then he has not destroyed the notion that these tests are not racially biased.
A. That's not how science works.
1. He's not trying to destroy any notion. He's attempting to stop youngsters from using bias claims as catch all crutches for testing underachievement.
2. As you know through your academic related exploits these test scores tend to track grades, diploma/degree completion and overalll academic success to a significant degree.
3. And my buddiy's thesis point is even if he is wrong the tests still matter. No one is becoming a doctor without a solid MCAT, Step 1 and 2 and state boards. Except at UNT Dallas no one is winning a law school slot with a poor LSAT showing.
I looked up your last point, that poor white kids outperform rich black kids, and it is indeed correct. However, that's true for ALL income levels. Whites outperform blacks at all income levels. Therefore I think the claim that it's not a race or cultural issue is unproven. Others have analyzed these scores (which are from 2008) and proposed that black net worth is not apples to apples with white net worth. Black high incomes are often first generation, so there isn't a family legacy of placing high value on education, test prep, utilizing resources to get the children up to speed on test taking skills.
My point is this kind of data is often used inappropriately. For example when I looked into this I found on one blog, an author using this limited data set to claim that " Why are such privileged blacks scoring so low on the SAT? The obvious answer, noted by many others, is genetics and the fact that these affluent blacks probably have their incomes as a result of affirmative action." Disgusting commentary...let's not support such racist idiots even unintentionally.
But IMO we shouldn't squelch difficult conversation because dumb people will misdirect some of those thoughts and ideas.
My point is this kind of data is often used inappropriately. For example when I looked into this I found on one blog, an author using this limited data set to claim that " Why are such privileged blacks scoring so low on the SAT? The obvious answer, noted by many others, is genetics and the fact that these affluent blacks probably have their incomes as a result of affirmative action." Disgusting commentary...let's not support such racist idiots even unintentionally.
It's not racist simply by being an inconvenient truth.
As usual, most people fail to come up with a valid conclusion because they failed to understand the numbers. Affirmative action used to be a boon for minorities, but unfortunately that is not the case anymore, and hasn't been for years. Here's why.
Let's say there are only two races, white and black. Whites make up 90% of the population, blacks make up 10%. Now let's take a population sample of 10 people. There will be 9 whites and 1 black.
To be in the 90th percentile academically, that means only 1 out of 9 whites would qualify. But for a black to qualify, you would have to increase the sample size by a factor of 10 for the number of qualified blacks to be the same as the whites.
Now here is where affirmative action screws everything up... It doesn't account for population or statistics. No, it's an arbitrary number assigned to boost minority admittance in schools and for jobs, whether or not they would actually be a "90th" percentile candidate or not. And so, you do have minorities in schools and jobs that they are not qualified for, but they are there to satisfy a quota.
I saw this first hand back in my college days, where minorities had been admitted to programs that they wouldn't academically qualify for. In the end, it's doing these people a disservice, as well as keeping other qualified candidates out of a program, just because of race.
A. That's not how science works.
1. He's not trying to destroy any notion. He's attempting to stop youngsters from using bias claims as catch all crutches for testing underachievement.
2. As you know through your academic related exploits these test scores tend to track grades, diploma/degree completion and overalll academic success to a significant degree.
3. And my buddiy's thesis point is even if he is wrong the tests still matter. No one is becoming a doctor without a solid MCAT, Step 1 and 2 and state boards. Except at UNT Dallas no one is winning a law school slot with a poor LSAT showing.
Ummm, you're the one who stated "it's technical but he also utterly destroys the notion that any of these tests are significantly racially biased." And for science sakes if he were performing measurement invariant and differential item function analyses on the items that were on these standardized exams or drew his conclusions from reports that ran these statistics and found no statistically significant differences among racial groups then yes he would have destroyed the notion these assessments are/were racially biased.
It's not racist simply by being an inconvenient truth.
As usual, most people fail to come up with a valid conclusion because they failed to understand the numbers. Affirmative action used to be a boon for minorities, but unfortunately that is not the case anymore, and hasn't been for years. Here's why.
Let's say there are only two races, white and black. Whites make up 90% of the population, blacks make up 10%. Now let's take a population sample of 10 people. There will be 9 whites and 1 black.
To be in the 90th percentile academically, that means only 1 out of 9 whites would qualify. But for a black to qualify, you would have to increase the sample size by a factor of 10 for the number of qualified blacks to be the same as the whites.
Now here is where affirmative action screws everything up... It doesn't account for population or statistics. No, it's an arbitrary number assigned to boost minority admittance in schools and for jobs, whether or not they would actually be a "90th" percentile candidate or not. And so, you do have minorities in schools and jobs that they are not qualified for, but they are there to satisfy a quota.
I saw this first hand back in my college days, where minorities had been admitted to programs that they wouldn't academically qualify for. In the end, it's doing these people a disservice, as well as keeping other qualified candidates out of a program, just because of race.
The real inconvenient truth is that AA has helped white women more than anybody else.
It's not racist simply by being an inconvenient truth.
As usual, most people fail to come up with a valid conclusion because they failed to understand the numbers. Affirmative action used to be a boon for minorities, but unfortunately that is not the case anymore, and hasn't been for years. Here's why.
Let's say there are only two races, white and black. Whites make up 90% of the population, blacks make up 10%. Now let's take a population sample of 10 people. There will be 9 whites and 1 black.
To be in the 90th percentile academically, that means only 1 out of 9 whites would qualify. But for a black to qualify, you would have to increase the sample size by a factor of 10 for the number of qualified blacks to be the same as the whites.
Now here is where affirmative action screws everything up... It doesn't account for population or statistics. No, it's an arbitrary number assigned to boost minority admittance in schools and for jobs, whether or not they would actually be a "90th" percentile candidate or not. And so, you do have minorities in schools and jobs that they are not qualified for, but they are there to satisfy a quota.
I saw this first hand back in my college days, where minorities had been admitted to programs that they wouldn't academically qualify for. In the end, it's doing these people a disservice, as well as keeping other qualified candidates out of a program, just because of race.
Are you saying that blacks scoring lower is due to genetics and Affirmative Action is "an inconvenient truth"? If you are then count yourself among those who read the Daily Stormer.
Please register to post and access all features of our very popular forum. It is free and quick. Over $68,000 in prizes has already been given out to active posters on our forum. Additional giveaways are planned.
Detailed information about all U.S. cities, counties, and zip codes on our site: City-data.com.
Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
