'No Child' Law Is Not Closing a Racial Gap
by Sam Dillon
The achievement gap between white and minority students has not narrowed in recent years, despite the focus of the No Child Left Behind law on improving the scores of blacks and Hispanics, according to results of a federal test considered to be the nation’s best measure of long-term trends in math and reading proficiency.
Between 2004 and last year, scores for young minority students increased, but so did those of white students, leaving the achievement gap stubbornly wide, despite President George W. Bush’s frequent assertions that the No Child law was having a dramatic effect.
So, everybody is learning more. And this is a problem?
Perhaps the federal government should just hit all the white kids over the head with a ballpeen hammer. That would narrow the gap.
Although Black and Hispanic elementary, middle and high school students all scored much higher on the federal test than they did three decades ago, most of those gains were not made in recent years, but during the desegregation efforts of the 1970s and 1980s.
No, I think most of the black advantage was picked up from ending the Jim Crow system of segregated schools in the South in 1969-1970, which really were bad.
That was well before the 2001 passage of the No Child law, the official description of which is “An Act to Close the Achievement Gap.”
“There’s not much indication that N.C.L.B. is causing the kind of change we were all hoping for,” said G. Gage Kingsbury, a testing expert who is a director at the Northwest Evaluation Association in Portland. “Trends after the law took effect mimic trends we were seeing before. But in terms of watershed change, that doesn’t seem to be happening.”
The results no doubt will stoke debate about how to rewrite the No Child law when the Obama administration brings it up for reauthorization later this year. Education Secretary Arne Duncan has said he would like to strengthen national academic standards, tighten requirements that high-quality teachers be distributed equally across schools in affluent and poor neighborhoods, and make other adjustments. “We still have a lot more work to do,” Mr. Duncan said of the latest scores. But the long-term assessment results could invigorate those who challenge the law’s accountability model itself.
Despite gains that both whites and minorities did make, the overall scores of the United States’ 17-year-old students, averaged across all groups, were the same as those of teenagers who took the test in the early 1970s. This was largely due to a shift in demographics; there are now far more lower-scoring minorities in relation to whites. In 1971, the proportion of white 17-year-olds who took the reading test was 87 percent, while minorities were 12 percent. Last year, whites had declined to 59 percent while minorities had increased to 40 percent.
So, how's that massive demographic change working out for us?
The percentage of Hispanic 13-year-olds in the NAEP sample increased from 7% in 1984 to 21% in 2008.
You can look at the 2008 NAEP scores versus old scores here.The scores of 9- and 13-year-old students, however, were up modestly in reading, and were considerably higher in math, since 2004, the last time the test was administered. And they were quite a bit higher than those of students of the same age a generation back. Still, the progress of younger students tapered off as they got older.
Some experts said the results proved that the No Child law had failed to make serious headway in lifting academic achievement. “We’re lifting the basic skills of young kids,” said Bruce Fuller, an education professor at the University of California, Berkeley, “but this policy is not lifting 21st-century skills for the new economy.”
But Margaret Spellings, Mr. Duncan’s predecessor under President Bush, called the results a vindication of the No Child law.
“It’s not an accident that we’re seeing the most improvement where N.C.L.B. has focused most vigorously,” Ms. Spellings said. “The law focuses on math and reading in grades three through eight — it’s not about high schools. So these results are affirming of our accountability-type approach.”
Whether anyone knows how to extend the results achieved with younger students through the turbulent high school years remains an open question.
The math and reading test, known as the National Assessment of Educational Progress, Long-Term Trends, was given to a nationally representative sample of 26,000 students last year. It was the 12th time since 1971 that the Department of Education administered a comparable test to students ages 9, 13 and 17. The scores, released on Tuesday in Washington, allow for comparisons of student achievement every few years back to the Vietnam and Watergate years.
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57 comments:
"The achievement gap between white and minority students"
I wonder whether the NYT and the other rags will refer to whites as minorities after say 2050 or so. Or will it just be "white" as in whitey.
Why does Steve keep citing the NYT? That toilet paper is bias central with a smirk hidden behind a straight face. They are committed to twisting facts until they go bust.
More shocking results!!!!
Study after study, yet no one wants to introduce ol' reliable Occam. If we didn't waste so much money, it would be fricking hilarious.
"I fear all we have done is to awaken a sleeping giant and fill him with a terrible resolve." (Adm. Yamamoto)
I have started tracking the references to "gaps" in which "whites" is the base referent and no comparison is made to Jews or Asians.
Even in California, in which "whites" are now a minority the LAT and NYT generally do not mention the Asian/black gap or the Hispanic/black gap, and never the Jewish/black gap.
But surely as the white population drops even further the singling out of "Whites" as the sole oppressor and base referent is going to seem either stupid, wilfully blind, or (I hope) oppressive.
After all, if the goal is to point out drastic disparities as a way of encouraging change, why avoid the most dramatic ones of all: Jews to Blacks or Asians to blacks?
Of course if the goal is really guilt inducement and resource extraction, I suppose going after white folks and not Jews or Asians would be best ... for a little while longer, anyway.
tighten requirements that high-quality teachers be distributed equally across schools "Thanks Mr.GoodTeacher, for your hard work and effort we're sending you to New Faljuah to teach".
Anonymous: Why does Steve keep citing the NYT?
For a racist/sexist/homophobic paleocon, Steve Sailer is remarkably SWPL.
"Education Secretary Arne Duncan has said he would like to [...] tighten requirements that high-quality teachers be distributed equally across schools in affluent and poor neighborhoods"Projected consequence: teachers making sure they don't do too good a job so they won't get transferred down to Central High.
A good number of race realist comments in the "reader's recommendation" section. Readers of this blog should mosey on over and recommend them to send the NYT a message. I did.
But Margaret Spellings, Mr. Duncan’s predecessor under President Bush, called the results a vindication of the No Child law...these results are affirming of our accountability-type approach...
I see this as a problem: bureaucrats et al who are invested in ever more nanny state activities spin these results as a need for ever more intervention.
Steve wrote, "Perhaps the federal government should just hit all the white kids over the head with a ballpeen hammer. That would narrow the gap.".
On CBS years ago I saw an attractive young half-white-half-black-"educator" PLEAD WITH PARENTS NOT TO TRY AND TEACH THEIR PRE-SCHOOLERS TO READ OR COUNT!!!!!!! because it "interefered with the professionals". I had no illusions to what she wanted to do, as many white parents help their kids at home. She wanted to take that private emphasis on education away to where the kids only learned at school and nowhere else, so the effect would be "levelling" on everybody.
m
Perhaps the federal government should just hit all the white kids over the head with a ballpeen hammer.Yes, though a mallet would be gentler. I've been trying to explain to my fellow realists that the gap can indeed be closed-- but down, rather than up. As in Churchill's "equal sharing of misery".
But I think the children themselves would prefer to do it with alcohol, as in, "Better a bottle in front of me than a frontal lobotomy."
Or, to borrow from Churchill again, "Rum, sodomy, and the lash."
I believe that Richard E. Nisbett's book "Intelligence and How to Get It: Why Schools and Cultures Count" is going to replace gould's "Mismeasure of Man" in popularity amoung anti-iq lefties .
They should ask this guy for his opinion:
http://www.movieactors.com/photos/casablanca145.jpeg
Quote (emphasis added): "Education Secretary Arne Duncan has said he would like to strengthen national academic standards, tighten requirements that high-quality teachers be distributed equally across schools in affluent and poor neighborhoods, and make other adjustments."
Oh goody. The Feds want to conscript "high-quality" (i.e., more intelligent, which is to say, white/asian) teachers and redeploy them so instead of teaching more intelligent (white/asian) students, they teach stupider (NAM) kids.
If carried through, that might help-- for a time-- to "reduce the achievement gap" since the smarter kids saddled with less competent teachers would surely learn less. It is not likely the stupid kids would learn any more, since their achievement is limited by innate ability rather than teaching quality.
However, it would drive the more intelligent teachers to leave for non-teaching jobs. The main career goal of most public-school teachers is to gain enough seniority to transfer to a "good school" (i.e., one filled with smarter kids, which is to say, not with NAM's). It is more rewarding to teach smarter kids, and they're less likely to assault their teachers.
If Arne Duncan gets his way, watch the few remaining competent public school teachers resign and absolute achievement of smarter kids fall even further.
tighten requirements that high-quality teachers be distributed equally across schools in affluent and poor neighborhoodsHas someone already brought up here, the likelihood that this is where the (downward) movement will come from? Forcing teachers to play lotto (or less savory games) to decide who goes to heaven and who goes to hell seems like a good way to keep more of them away from any chance of either.
"So, everybody is learning more. And this is a problem?"
It is a problem to socialists like Bush and Obama who value, or claim to value, sameness and conformity.
(I'll bet the biggest difference between than-and-now is that the new tests are easier)
“We still have a lot more work to do,”
If it doesn't work, do more of it.
"That toilet paper is bias central with a smirk hidden behind a straight face."
True, but it's funny how many people take it seriously, though fortunately that number's decreasing.
Pay no attention to the panda in the room.
1. The Federal money handed out by the Education Department is a river of death flowing into communities across America. The Department of Education needs to be abolished.
2. I have gotten the impression recently that some members of the liberal establishment realized that race exists and effects behavior on November 5, 2008 - the day AFTER they voted en masse for an African thinking he was the perfect candidate for the Office of President.
Oh well, a day late, a dollar short...
Steve, would you kindly explain to us why the Jim Crow system was "really" bad? Are you saying southerners (or Bostonians, Rhodesians, South Africans, French Africans, etc.) were "really" bad for segregating themselves from blacks? for not recognizing the simple genius of Citizenism? or were they not "really" bad, but simply not as enlightened as you, Razib, John Derbyshire, etc.?
I have started tracking the references to "gaps" in which "whites" is the base referent and no comparison is made to Jews or Asians. Even in California, in which "whites" are now a minority the LAT and NYT generally do not mention the Asian/black gap or the Hispanic/black gap, and never the Jewish/black gap. - Big Bill
The truth is that it's already being noticed. California, our first white minority state in the contiguous 48, is on its way to establishing affirmative action for whites. I'm against affirmative action in theory, but if everyone else is going to play this game, we're going to have to, as well.
I have gotten the impression recently that some members of the liberal establishment realized that race exists and effects behavior on November 5, 2008 - the day AFTER they voted en masse for an African thinking he was the perfect candidate for the Office of President. Oh well, a day late, a dollar short...
More like "a day late, 9.3 Trillion dollars short" pal. Oh well - crank up the printing presses.
Fernandinande: It is a problem to socialists like... Obama who value, or claim to value, sameness and conformity.
Your homework assignment, should you choose to accept it: Analyze the concepts of "sameness and conformity" as they apply to the DCPS & the Sidwell Friends School.
the Obama administration brings it up for reauthorization later this year. Education Secretary Arne Duncan has said he would like to strengthen national academic standards, tighten requirements that high-quality teachers be distributed equally across schools in affluent and poor neighborhoods
---------
In Arne Duncan's old town of Chicago, the poor neighborhood students are killing each other.
Teachers forced to work in that kind of enviroment will quit.
http://archives.chicagotribune.com/2009/mar/18/local/chi-chicago-kid-killed-18-mar18
High school kids from Finland and New Zealand were the best in natural sciences in an international OECD survey. The worst students were in Spain, Turkey, Italy and Greece. I don`t know how the United States did in the survey.
the story
Here you can find some advanced level high school exit exams in Finland.
the exams
Half of the high school boys take this exam and about 29 percent of the girls. About half of the kids go to high school in Finland.
I taught for years in public school. Good teachers just leave the district when they are forced to transfer to a school they don't like. There is always a market for the best.
Like competent people in any other profession, it is hard to control smart teachers. The good teachers want the good jobs and are smart enough to find them.
Also remember that when the smart kids leave the schools (and they are the first to leave) when they don't have good teachers, the scores for the school fall like a rock. No administrator (whose pay is tied to student test scores) these days would be stupid enough to transfer a great teacher who is teaching AP Lit, Calc, or History, down to teaching remedial classes and replace him with an average or new hire. He knows those parents would flip. Those are the PTA parents, booster club presidents etc.
Here is a question.
How well do NAM students in families with both mom, dad married, living in the home and family income of say at least $75,000 compare to white students?
Have you seen any studies comparing these?
Without dismissing race out of hand, it would be interesting to control for a few more variables.
I forgot to add that the students have a book, which can be used in test and which contains all the needed (like the definition of derivate and continuity) and formulas. Also you can use a graphic calculator.
Anonymous: How well do NAM students in families with both mom, dad married, living in the home and family income of say at least $75,000 compare to white students?It would be interesting if you could find any NAM families which fit that criteria and in which the breadwinner was actually earning the bread and not having it handed to him on a silver platter by AA.
I once read a statistic - years and years ago, maybe late 1980s/early 1990s, maybe in Commentary, or the American Spectator? - which held that well over half of all employed American blacks were in fact employed by some form of government [local, federal, state, or other].
Actually, it would be very interesting to see what that statistic looks like now - if you could find anyone capable of compiling it & then willing to release the information.
A little off-topic, but I've seen some statistics for the outlying regions of the UK [Northern Ireland, Scotland, the Border Lands, etc] which lead me to believe that the overwhelming majority of the people in those environs are on the dole [in one form or another].
Hey Gc,
I have seen those exams from Finland before. Basically the top performers take the test and do well. No surprise there.
Guess how well the top 50% of white boys and top 29% of white girls here in the US would do?
Don't forget that 10% of US students are in private schools which perform much better than public schools (partly because they get to deny service to some).
When you consider that most countries don't test low performers, it helps you understand why some countries look better on paper. US public schools include the severely and profoundly retarded on their reporting. That means a teacher reads the question to the student and if the student doesn't even answer the questions, the test is still turned in blank and counts in the scores.
Anynomous,
Those weren`t actually finnish high school students in the study, in Finland 15-year olds are not in the high school, so it contains the whole finnish population. In finnish high school it is much more fun when 50 percent of the boys take AP courses in math, so you don`t get your ass kicked too often and don`t stand out as a freak.
Lucius Vorenus made a comment about Sidwell Friends school, which I did not quite follow
What I do know is that they have an affirmative action program and admit in unqualified blacks and they do have numerical quotas against Indians
And there are elite high schools in Finland in every "big" town, because you can apply to any high school in the country.
"Reg Cæsar said...
Or, to borrow from Churchill again, "Rum, sodomy, and the lash.""
On that note: Rum, Sodomy, and the Lash are no longer the only traditions of the Royal Navy. They are now the only traditions of the Episcopalian Church.
My point was that Obama had the opportunity to send his daughters off to experience the "sameness and conformity" of the DCPS, but he chose instead to send them to the unsameness and nonconformity of the Sidwell Friends School.
And, at the same time, he yanked the DC voucher program which would have allowed some of those very sameful & conformist children of the District to have joined his daughters at Sidwell Friends.
You know, I really do loathe, despise, and abhor The Left.
"After all, if the goal is to point out drastic disparities as a way of encouraging change, why avoid the most dramatic ones of all: Jews to Blacks or Asians to blacks?"
Excellent question. The answer is probably not going to get posted here. The answer of course is that Jews, who control our politics and culture, still perceive whites as their main enemies. It's whites who have to be put down by any means. THAT is why you will never hear about the Jew/black gap or the anybody-but-white-people/black gap.
The answer is blacks from families of 70K+ income still do slightly worse than white trash with family income below 10K. At least when it comes to SAT.This would appear to support Lucius Vorenus's thesis that a substantial number of the middle to upper middle class NAMs are there by virtue of some massive government externalities.
Case in point, the Obamas, who appear to be in hopelessly over their heads.
--Senor Doug
No administrator (whose pay is tied to student test scores) these days would be stupid enough to transfer a great teacher who is teaching AP Lit, Calc, or History, down to teaching remedial classes and replace him with an average or new hire. He knows those parents would flip. Those are the PTA parents, booster club presidents etc.
4/29/2009
In Obama's home town of Chicago, that scenario does not exist.
School teachers and administers work at the pleaseure of the political machine. They will do what they are told, or they can find a new line of work.
Will Obama spread the Chicago-style machine/corruption to the nation? Only time will tell.
I once read a statistic - years and years ago, maybe late 1980s/early 1990s, maybe in Commentary, or the American Spectator? - which held that well over half of all employed American blacks were in fact employed by some form of government [local, federal, state, or other].
What's the "other," welfare cases and inmates? If you include those two groups it's certainly well north of 50% - possibly even 70%.
I've seen some statistics for the outlying regions of the UK [Northern Ireland, Scotland, the Border Lands, etc] which lead me to believe that the overwhelming majority of the people in those environs are on the dole.
The public sector accounts for 22.9% of all employment in Scotland, a figure which is depressingly high, but probably nowhere near black government employment in the US. (Remember that the UK has socialized medicine).
"How well do NAM students in families with both mom, dad married, living in the home and family income of say at least $75,000 compare to white students?"
You must remember that income and IQ correlate. Your question is like asking to compare white vs black vertical leap... but using NBA players as your sample. Do you see the problem?
"The answer of course is that Jews, who control our politics and culture..."
*grabs tinfoil hat to tune in*
Anonymous: "How well do NAM students in families with both mom, dad married, living in the home and family income of say at least $75,000 compare to white students? Have you seen any studies comparing these?"Oh yeah. Google John Ogbu Shaker Heights or read, e.g., "Rich, Black, Flunking," which opens
"The black parents wanted an explanation. Doctors, lawyers, judges, and insurance brokers, many had come to the upscale Cleveland suburb of Shaker Heights specifically because of its stellar school district. They expected their children to succeed academically, but most were performing poorly. African-American students were lagging far behind their white classmates in every measure of academic success: grade-point average, standardized test scores, and enrollment in advanced-placement courses. On average, black students earned a 1.9 GPA while their white counterparts held down an average of 3.45. Other indicators were equally dismal. It made no sense."
(Ogbu's work is also notable for the ferocity with which it was rejected by Black parents.)
-Stark
California, our first white minority state in the contiguous 48,Reports of New Mexico's demise have been much exaggerated.
Why don't they read this - it explains a lot.
Rushton, J.P. and Jensen, A.R. (2005). Thirty Years of Research on Race Differences in Cognitive Ability. Psychology, Public Policy, and Law, Vol. 11, No. 2, 235-294. [easily located on the web]
Also, note the recent genetic changes with the advent of agriculture & population expansion over the past 10,000 years:
"The sweeping alleles we see are mostly regional - you see them in one group and not the other two. A fair fraction are neurological and likely to affect behavior in some way. For example, you see new versions of SLC6A4, a serotonin transporter, in Europeans and Asians. There’s a new version of a gene (DBA1) that shapes the development of the layers of the cerebral cortex in east Asia."
http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2007/12/new-evolution-f/
Big Bill sed:
Of course if the goal is really guilt inducement and resource extraction, I suppose going after white folks and not Jews or Asians would be best ... for a little while longer, anyway.
Good point. I wonder how that's working out in Zimbabwe. Since the last farms were stolen, the media has become real quiet about that dump. I guess that fits in with your observation. As long as there is something to steal from whitey, the guilt-mongering will keep flowing.
California, our first white minority state in the contiguous 48... --Captain Jack Aubrey
++++++++++++++++
Not even close, Cap'n...
The 1820 census showed whites to be a minority in South Carolina, Mississippi and Louisiana. Not until 1950 did every state have a white majority. (And that was the last time.)
The madness didn't start in 1964. It goes at least as far back as 1619.
...would you kindly explain to us why the Jim Crow system was "really" bad? --Beastmaster
+*+*+*+*+*+*+*+*+*+
Doesn't common sense dictate that if it's a bad idea to share a public bathroom with someone, it's an even worse idea to share a continent with him? "Apartheid" was anything but.
...the Jim Crow system of segregated schools in the South in 1969-1970, which really were bad.****************
Beastmaster didn't read closely enough. "Which" refers to the schools themselves (hence the plural "were"), and not the Jim Crow system as a whole.
The black schools of the South 50 years ago probably were less effective than urban schools of the day, which had been teaching mostly mulattoes for generations. But how could they be any worse than the hip-hop urban minority schools of today?
Well, they were. Just about the only thing Arthur Jensen found of the environment affecting IQ was that among Southern blacks, older brothers who attended Jim Crow schools tended to have lower IQs than their younger brothers who attended public schools after equalization of school year lengths and the like.
Steve, the Jim Crow schools may have lowered IQ, but they also produced students that were less criminally inclined. Which is better, having Black students that are slightly dumber but law abiding or having students that are smarter but most grow up to be criminals?
The madness didn't start in 1964. It goes at least as far back as 1619.
No, because there weren't 48 contiguous states back then.
:)
Yes, I do mean in modern times.
Serfdom >>> Slavery >>> Illegal/Mass Immigration
- the latter is merely the continuation of a process that has gone on for centuries of the powerful trying to keep more of the fruits of somene else's labor.
I see from 2007 census estimates that New Mexico is only 42.3% white. I stand corrected.
"Beastmaster didn't read closely enough. "Which" refers to the schools themselves (hence the plural "were"), and not the Jim Crow system as a whole."
Sorry about that.
The madness didn't start in 1964. It goes at least as far back as 1619.Yeah, it always cracks me up when I mix it up with racial liberals and anti-racist types and they accuse me of being an apologist for slavery (the real idiots accuse me of wanting to reinstitute slaverty). Slavery was just about the worse thing that ever happened to white folks. Look at Haiti for God's sake, or Jamaica. Once upon a time actual identifiable white folk lived on those Islands, but they slaved themselves out of existence.
Sailer wrote: "Well, they were. Just about the only thing Arthur Jensen found of the environment affecting IQ was that among Southern blacks, older brothers who attended Jim Crow schools tended to have lower IQs than their younger brothers who attended public schools after equalization of school year lengths and the like."
What was the average age difference b/w brothers? I guess Jensen accounted for the Flynn Effect, which was in full swing at the time.
"Once upon a time actual identifiable white folk lived on those Islands, but they slaved themselves out of existence."
Yes, and once upon a time before that, native Jamaican and Haitian folk lived on those islands, but they whited themselves out of existence...c'est la vie!
Why was my post censored?
Soul Searcher: Why was my post censored?
Cheer up.
My post about 1619 Jamestown & John Wilkes Booth also got censored.
"The madness didn't start in 1964. It goes at least as far back as 1619.Yeah, it always cracks me up when I mix it up with racial liberals and anti-racist types and they accuse me of being an apologist for slavery (the real idiots accuse me of wanting to reinstitute slaverty). Slavery was just about the worse thing that ever happened to white folks. Look at Haiti for God's sake, or Jamaica. Once upon a time actual identifiable white folk lived on those Islands, but they slaved themselves out of existence."
Probably not on Haiti, but there are a reasonable number of white Jamaicans. Listening to one speak is funny because they have the "hey man me wanna drinka lilt accent".
A ballpeen hammer? Nah ... the conventions must be observed. The only way to stop those who unfairly get ahead of others is the tool used in "Harrison Bergeron".
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