Texas Ed Spectator

Bush’s double standard on race in schools | csmonitor.com:

Not surprisingly, the Bush administration is supporting the plaintiffs’ arguments that the use of such racial criteria is unconstitutional. It was no doubt delighted to hear Justice Anthony Kennedy say during oral arguments that “characterizing each student by reason of the color of his or her skin should only be, if ever allowed, allowed as a last resort.”

But Bush officials are being inconsistent. They don’t apply that standard to their own public education policies. It’s time they embraced the premise of their own student testing rules – race matters – and support efforts to promote access and diversity in schools.

The No Child Left Behind (NCLB) law, is remarkable because it deals with racial issues in a manner at odds with nearly every other policy advocated by the Bush administration – including its current argument to the Supreme Court that school desegregation plans must be “race neutral.” NCLB requires that schools show adequate progress in each of 10 “subgroups” of students. These subgroups include nonracial categories such as disabled, poor, and limited English proficient students, as well as racial and ethnic categories such as blacks, Hispanics, Asians, native Americans, and whites.

So schools are free to say, “sorry, you’re black and don’t have high enough scores to be admitted to this college program” but can penalize a school for not meeting AYP for a sub-group of black students?

I suppose that you can make the argument that these “failures” should have been addressed by the time a student leaves the public school system and that is exactly what NCLB is trying to do. But that does bring up the problem with proposed vouchers solutions, why can a public school lose money because it doesn’t meet accountability standards but a private school can accept vouchers without meeting the same standards?

Then there are the implications for a NCLB system for colleges that is being proposed at both the state and federal level. Will colleges be evaluated on the performance of “sub-groups?” This would probably encourage schools not to make “modifications” or “exceptions” to admission standards so that they can reduce the number of students admitted that would need extra help. (Wow, what would happen to college football and basketball?)

I can see where advocates for minority populations will be outraged and do everything possible to prevent such actions. However, there would be another side to this. What happens when the minority students admitted under “the equal” criteria start failing at a higher rate than the general student population? Wouldn’t that prove that there is something about the college environment that hinders success among these minority students? Wouldn’t schools have to spend more money on these students to prevent them from showing up as a failing sub-group on whatever evaluation system is being used?

It seems to me society recognizes that it is important for our schools to succeed at educating “minority” students given that they will be a majority in a generation or two is some of our largest states, Texas included. But why should colleges and private schools get off the hook at having to admit applicants and avoid struggling “sub-groups” while public schools are punished for failing them? If we acknowledge that it’s essential for society to educate these students then what are we doing to assist schools in this task? How many private schools would be for a voucher system if they had to take any student that applied and potentially loose their ability to have any other students funded if some should fail?

The principled interpretation of NCLB is that race shouldn’t matter, therefore schools will be evaluated to make sure that they succeed at educating all students so we look at racial categories to make sure no group is being ignored. However, if the data show that race still matters in the public schools, why shouldn’t colleges develop programs to help address those deficiencies so that these students can succeed in college? Are we saying that even though we acknowledge that the public schools have failed certain groups that anything done to address that failure outside the public schools is discrimination?

Bush’s double standard on race in schools | csmonitor.com:

Yet NCLB is a tacit admission that race matters. How can the Bush administration force primary and secondary schools to pay specific attention to test scores of students of particular racial groups while arguing that similar racial attention should be illegal for admission to the same public schools being tested? Even conservative opponents of affirmative action have called this approach “schizophrenic” and unprincipled.

Worth a read by some Texas Legislators and State Board of Education Members as well.

An Open Letter to Margaret Spellings and Congress:

“Human history,” said H. G. Wells, is “a race between education and catastrophe.” If we stay the course with No Child Left Behind, catastrophe is a sure bet. You’ll soon be deciding the fate of this well-meant but appallingly simplistic piece of legislation. Continued failure to answer the legitimate questions of those you expect to carry out your mandates will further erode trust in your leadership.

Kerrville Daily Times:

The Texas Education Agency has reversed an earlier rating and given an “academically acceptable” rating to Tivy High School and the Kerrville Independent School District, according to a KISD news release.

This was a case of counting students who were assigned to Tivy High School because they were housed at the Kerr county Juvenile Detention Center.

Kerrville Daily Times:

The school and district were given an unacceptable rating because of completion rates for students housed at the Kerr County Juvenile Detention Center. Several students who didn’t graduate or complete a TEA-approved General Education Development program were from counties outside of Kerr, KISD Superintendent Dan Troxell said at a September board meeting.

It’s even better news for Texas education lobbyists:

Kerrville Daily Times:

In a September board meeting, Troxell told board members that the district had hired a Houston attorney to help Rep. Harvey Hildebran, R-Kerrville, draft legislation to modify the education agency’s system of rating schools and districts.

Don’t you think it’s a problem when an issue like this has to be resolved at the legislature (which meets only every two years to ensure responsive, good government) rather than dealt with sensibly by the district and TEA?

Report Says Education Officials Violated Rules – New York Times:

Department of Education officials violated conflict of interest rules when awarding grants to states under President Bush’s billion-dollar reading initiative, and steered contracts to favored textbook publishers, the department’s inspector general said yesterday.

In a searing report that concludes the first in a series of investigations into complaints of political favoritism in the reading initiative, known as Reading First, the report said officials improperly selected the members of review panels that awarded large grants to states, often failing to detect conflicts of interest. The money was used to buy reading textbooks and curriculum for public schools nationwide.

You know, until they are able to turn everything over to the free market, they’re going to have to deal with these pesky requirements such as public panels, general inspectors, and congressional requests.

Report Says Education Officials Violated Rules – New York Times:

In one e-mail message cited in the report, from which the inspector general deleted some vulgarities, the director of Reading First, Chris Doherty, urged staff members to make clear to one company that it was not favored at the department.

“They are trying to crash our party and we need to beat the [expletive deleted] out of them in front of all the other would-be party crashers who are standing on the front lawn waiting to see how we welcome these dirtbags,” Mr. Doherty wrote.

It’s nice to know that federal officials are so committed to ensuring that children receive education programs and services most appropriate for their specific needs rather than merely conforming with some political ideology or corporate welfare program.

Visit Schools Matter for a detailed description of what has been going on with the Reading First program and how it’s no suprise to anyone who has been paying attention, like School Matters.

Schools Matter:

As I have said before, if you really want to know what is beneath the surface of Bush Co., pay attention to the weekly news dumps that occur each Friday afternoon. This week Spellings AP lackey has this story of an ED Inspector General’s Report just in time for the weekend. It will no doubt go unreported by most of the corporate media per usual.

The article’s various titles definitely uses the word “parents” suggesting more than one parent.

Parents call for one way to rate U.S. schools:

Many parents and educators are confused by conflicting U.S., Texas rankings

However, only one parent is even mentioned:

Parents call for one way to rate U.S. schools:

Tiffany Davis thought she had found the perfect school for her daughter. Pilgrim Elementary was fewer than three miles from her office, and on Aug. 1, the state declared it “exemplary” based on student test scores.Davis was sold — until the state made another announcement less than three weeks later: Pilgrim Elementary failed to meet the academic demands of the federal No Child Left Behind Act. The acclaimed Houston Independent School District campus now bore a scarlet letter.

“What’s going on?” Davis said she thought. “It was extremely confusing.”

Although the article does go on to mention “parents” again.

Parents call for one way to rate U.S. schools:

“If we had a national accountability system, then we wouldn’t have this confusion. Parents would have clear information,” said Michael Petrilli, a vice president at the conservative Thomas B. Fordham Foundation, based in Washington, D.C.

So where are all these parents? The reporter apparently found only one parent who was confused. She’s not reporting about a group of parents who have banded together to question school authorities about test scores. This one parent gets to represent all parents for whom this testing is being done as suggested by Michael Petrilli.

I suspect the reason why the reporter wasn’t able to talk to a group of concerned parents is because no such group exists. Consider the following report about an academically unacceptable school and parental attendance:

Making the grade:

Only a handful of parents showed up Tuesday evening for a public hearing at Waxahachie Ninth Grade Academy relating to the campus’ recent rating as academically unacceptable by the Texas Education Agency.According to information from the TEA, the rating resulted from a low math score posted by a freshman student sub-group on the TAKS test administered during the 2005-2006 school year.

Of 26 indicators for the district, Assistant Superintendent David Truitt said Waxahachie ISD posted gains in 25.

Does the fact that hardly anyone showed up mean that parents don’t care about the school? Or could it mean that most parents realized the issue didn’t affect their child directly and choose not to attend? Of course, we will never know the extent of parental concern from the Houston Chronicle article since only one parent mentioned. She is, however, ideally suited for the article.

Parents call for one way to rate U.S. schools:

Gayle Fallon, president of the Houston Federation of Teachers, suggests looking at the data behind the labels.

“Once you get the rating, the next question is, ‘Why?’ ” Fallon said. “In some cases, it’s more serious than others.”

Fallon gave the same advice to Tiffany Davis, the concerned mother who works in her office. In the end, Pilgrim Elementary was full, Davis said, so she enrolled her daughter at Memorial Elementary, a state “recognized” school that also met the federal requirements. “I was trying to find a good school,” she said.

Because she found the rating systems so “confusing”, she’s going with a different school that is acceptable by both standards. I have to feel sorry for her daughter’s teachers. Her mother selected a “good” school based on labels that can fit on a school welcome sign. Don’t you just think she’s the kind of parent who will assume that it’s the teacher’s fault when her child fails?

I saw this and couldn’t help thinking about Spellings’ “99.9% pure” statement regarding NCLB.

US military death count for Baghdad excluded bombs, mortar and rocket attacks – Africa & Middle East – International Herald Tribune:

BAGHDAD, Iraq The U.S. military did not count people killed by bombs, mortars, rockets or other mass attacks — including suicide bombings — when it reported a dramatic drop in the number of murders around Baghdad last month, the U.S. command said Monday.

The decision to include only victims of drive-by shootings and those killed by torture and execution, usually at the hands of death squads, allowed U.S. officials to argue that a security crackdown that began in the capital on Aug. 7 had more than halved the city’s murder rate.

But the types of slayings, including suicide bombings, that the U.S. excluded from the category of “murder” were not made explicit at the time. That led to considerable confusion after Iraqi Health Ministry figures showed that 1,536 people had died violently around Baghdad in August, nearly the same number as in July.

Let’s see, so when the federal government is actually responsible for developing and carrying out policies, flexibility in measurement standards are allowed. If the federal government is only mandating standards as in NCLB, then there is no room for exceptions.

Dallas Morning News | News for Dallas, Texas | Texas/Southwest:

In other words, a student who moved to Dallas in June and attended a local school the entire school year would still not be counted in that school’s scores the following spring.

Does this mean that the students who move away from Dallas will be counted in the school’s scores for the next year as well?