(BiM)–The Chronicles

This is blog that has some useful information about education.

http://blog.myspace.com/betteredu

For those of you that are interested in college and other education option beyond high school, this is the site you should check out.

“No Child Left Behind”has become one of the Bush administration signature pieces of legislation. The legislation looks very progressive. It’s a bi-partisan effort. It demands that state make their student improve test scores. It’s expects students to have 100% proficiency by 2014. This includes:

Closing the achievement gap between advantaged and disadvantaged students

Reading proficiency for all students by the end of grade 3 by 2014

Math and reading proficiency for all students by 2014

A highly qualified teacher for every core academic subject at every school

To make the 2014 deadline, schools are supposed to make steady progressive steps. No Child Left Behind has laid out steps to make the deadline.

State must set benchmarks that school must meet. Those that don’t meet these Adequate Yearly Progress (AYP) goals will be held accountable.

Parents can also have more say in which school their children go to. They can demand information about their teachers and transfer out of “unsafe” schools.

States can also create and grant program that use federal money to improve schools.

School must also use proven method of learning. The must use teaching technique that have be scientifically proven to work. Teachers must take test to prove their competency. They must taking a “State High Objective Uniform State Standard of Evaluation and pass to be considered highly qualified teacher. No Child Left Behind also increases funding for teacher training programs. Math and Science Teachers also get cash bonuses to motivate them. It’s a know fact that the United States is mathematically deficient when compared to other developed nations.

Not only does the whole body have to improve. Certain subgroups must perform. Minority students, disabled students, and those of poor social-economic status must improve as well.

This is where things go wrong. The States, themselves get to decide what is proficient. They get to make the tests that determine whether their students are passing or not. Because the goals of No Child Left Behind are so lofty states have put more energy into cheating the system than improve their students education.

There are many ways fake improvement. Imagine a group of high jumpers. One third of them can only high jump 5 or 6 feet, one half still can jump 6 or 7 feet, and the rest can jump even higher.

One year the bar is set for 6 feet. Two thirds of the jumpers are able to jump over it. One year later, none of the jumpers have made any improvements. But this year you set the bar at 5 and one half feet. Naturally more jumpers will succeed this year than last year. Though no one has improved, more jumpers have passed. This gives the illusion that all the jumpers have improved.

Similar tricks have been used in the No Child Left Behind frenzy. How do we know this? The federal government like the state issues a test for student to take. Whereas some students very well on the State test, the same students might fail the federal test.

One thing that No Child Left Behind has done is providing the federal government with data. They now can see which states cheat the most.

Other tricks are also implements. The Subgroups are determined by the state. This means the states get to decide how big each sub group has to be. California sets the minimum sub group size at 100 students. That means that even though a school might have 50 black students they are not counted as a sub group. I know for a fact that at high school I was not counted in a sub group because there simply were not enough Africans Americans at my school.

Other states have different minimums. Because of the differences, two million students are not counted.

But one of the worst tricks states play involves confidence levels. If you know anything about statistic you’ll know that they are somewhat subjective. There is a margin of error. That percentage error can be used to inflate scores.

Say in a school that 20% of their students score a 0-59 on a test. 30% score of 60-69 and the rest score of 70 or better. A score of 70 is passing.

With no confidence interval 50% of the student of this school would pass. But imagine that there was confidence interval of 10 points. Those students that scored 60-69 would now have passed. Thus the passing rate is not 50% but 80%.

Some schools have confidence interval of 20 or 30 points. This drastically changes the statistics.

States and schools have become defensive. They want to protect their schools from No Child Left Behind instead of work towards its goals. Because of this, No Child Left behind has been less than effective.

This bill is up for reauthorization this year. Many Teachers hope that the bill will be defeated. They complain that it hurt student that speak English as a second language. It also is under funded. Other school haves suffer because they have not met the AYP. Some schools have been taking over by the state after 5 year of not meeting their AYP’s. Such schools are witness to firings and students transferring out. Other schools also get more funding as a reward for good test scores. The law is a source of controversy.

Statistically, it appears that since No Child Left Behind has been implemented that school have been improving. Reading, math, and science scores are up. Minority scores are up. The gap seems to be closing.
But critics say that No Child Left Behind is a plant that must be abandoned. It relies too much on testing, forcing teacher to “teach to test.” Basically teacher will be more concerned about teaching students about how to pass a test than to go into to other area of the field they are teaching. For insist a math teacher might not introduce student to a more advanced concept of trigonometry because they fear that it’s more important to prepare the student for the test. Plus standardized tests have their limits and pit falls (read the History of Standardized Test: The Legacy of Eugenics (Part 1)” article) These are just a few reason why No Child Left Behind has become unpopular.

Other Sites Discussing No Child Left Behind

http://www.pbs.org/newshour/indepth_coverage/education/no_child/basics.html
http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2007/07/20070726-2.html
html http://www.educationworld.com/a_issues/issues273.shtml
http://www.pbs.org/newshour/bb/education/july-dec07/nclb_08-14.html

On July 11th I wrote an article about 3 bills, AB 428, SB 405, and AB 178. These are billed the Applied Research Center (ARC) have been trying to pass for the last few months.

To get an idea how to these bills are faring, I interview Jarad Sanchez of the Los Angeles Applied Research Center.

After two month the bill AB 178 has already died. It did not get passed the Senate Education Committee as expected. The committee found that it was too expensive.

Normally you would not expect the Senate Education Committee to take the price of the bill into the account. That is supposed to be the Senate appropriation’s job. However we live in a world of politics.

Politician gamesman ship between the committee and the appropriation is not new. Before California instated a term limits, the chair of the education committee made the “suspense file.” All education bills that cost more than a certain amount of dollar were placed in that file for the committee to review. The committee, which normally looks at policies, would view these expensive bills and take economics into account.

Why would the committee care about the economics of a bill when they have appropriations? Well, the appropriations and committees are in cohorts with each other. Both departments have different members and each make their own bills. Working together ensures that bills each branch makes get passed. So basically if one branch make a bill the other is supposed to let it go through. If the two did not work together, both sides would be willing to kill each other’s bills and no one would win.

So that is why AB 178 died before it even got to appropriations.

There is good news. SB 405 and AB 428 are on the governor’s desk. The governor can either sign the bills or veto the bills. If the Governor veto’s the bill both house could over rule his decision with a 2/3 majority. Sanchez doubts that SB 405 and AB 428 have the support neede to gaina 2/3 majority in both houses.

So what are SB 405 and AB 428? What have they become? They have indeed been amended. Both bills have gone through steps. On the way, the bills have been altered.

SB 405 is a multi million dollar plan. It would help schools upgrade their curriculums and their resources. New textbooks and equipment will be given to schools. Student would then be told about A-G requirements and taught how to pass the high school exit exam. SB 405 would help student that are suffering form a lack of A-G class availability.

The repercussions for violators have been amended. Before, the state would be penalized and the system held more accountable. Schools would make reports to track the bill’s progress. But now the SB 405 has schools sent benchmarks. The new goal of the bill is not to punish school, but to help them.

With these changes Jarad Sanchez believes that the bill has not been weaken or strengthen. It has held its integrity quite nicely. AB 428 has not fared as well.

AB 428 is another bill that is supposed to teach student and their parent about A-G requirements. Parents are supposed to get an annual mailing. Details about A-G and other CSU and UC requirement would be added. Parent would be directed to websites that would tell them how to get A-G classes into their student’s curriculum.

The amendments have changed what information these letters would contain. ARC added an amendment that would make sure that parent receive their student’s counselor’s contact information. The mailing would also include information about Career Colleges and technical schools.

Jared Sanchez believes AB 428 has been weakened. Sanchez is also unsure whether the governor will sign the bill. The governor’s staff was not enthusiast. They warned ARC that the governor might not sign the bill be cause it is unfunded. AB 428 does not have a money plan. How people are going to pay for AB 428 and how much it will cost is ambiguous. The governor is more likely to sell SB 405 because it has concrete funding.

So now the road of AB 178 has end and SB 405 and AB 428 is ending, we will see what these bills will do for California and its education.

Affirmative Action is not about diversity. It is not about making campus “balanced.” Before you argue that we need diversity you have understand what Affirmative Action is really about.

Affirmative Action was made to help the disadvantaged. It was made to level the playing field. 150 years after Emancipation Proclamation, and 470 years after witch trials, and decades after “operation wet-back,” bigots have found new and more innovated ways to hurt minorities. Whether it be redlining to prevent integration or channeling minority student into remedial classes, many policies have damage the poor and non-whites.

They argue that minorities are unqualified because of low SAT scores. They say that high drop out rates illustrate low work ethic. The fact that is easier to blame minorities for their problems makes these stereotypes easier to accept.

The race problem in America is probably not your fault. Most have probably not been activate in the obsessive system. But what many people are guilty of is lack of action. Between the real estate “reformation” of New Orleans, to the genocide in Darfur, most people do not care.

Many people will try to appear as if they are not racist, by arguing that colorblind is the way to go. This is why Affirmative action must go.

But saying that Affirmative Action must go is saying that the problem has been fixed. When faced with the statistics about difference concerning income, health care, and political presence, you can either believe that minorities are just that unqualified, or that the system is corrupt. Either way racism still exists today.

So why are we hesitant to confront he problem? The race problem has been a bottled up problem for a long time. Few generations have been willing to face the problem head on. This is because racism is so controversial and seems to affect so few of us. It’s something that is talked about behind closed doors. Many people have strong feeling about race but are unwilling to admit their true feelings. When people’s true feelings are revealed it’s pretty shocking.

According to a poll taken by the Washington Post in 1996, 60% of white people believed that black people were just as well off if better off when it came to job in income.
According to the 2000 Census, the average black household earned 64-68 cents for every dollar the average white household earned. Black people also have a higher rate of unemployment. Even if you take into account welfare, as far as money goes, white people are better off financially.

About 2/3 of white people argue that reverse discrimination is a bigger problem than the discrimination against people of color. However Fred L. Pincus, in his book Reverse Discrimination: Dismantling the Myth, found between 1995 and 2000 the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission resolved 183,000 cases involving alleged racial discrimination. Less than 17,000 were reverse discrimination cases. These case were much less successful than their colored counterparts. If reverse discrimination is such a problem, then why are white people not reporting these problems?

Many whites also argue that white people have given black and brown people everything they have. Brown and Black people argue that white has taken most of what they have away from them; black and brown people are the last to reap benefits and the first to receive blame. This leads us to Affirmative Action.

After a child finds out that they are not going to their top choice school, they want a reason to explain why they were not accepted. When someone does not get a job, they want an excuse for not getting that job. Racism seems an easy scapegoat.

“I didn’t get accepted because someone else took my place.” It’s an argument used by both sides of the divide. So who is taking whose place?

Even schools with Affirmative Action have a disproportionate amount of white students and in some case Asian students. Schools like Stanford, Harvard and Wellesley which are know for their Affirmative Action policies still do have high percentage of non-white and non-Asian students. Even if you take into account HBCU’s, the percentage of minority students going to college is much lower than their white and Asian counterparts.

This is not because people of color do not want to go to college. Despite the conception that all black and brown people don’t care for college polls show the opposite. 66% of people of Hispanics and 44% of black parents stress the importance of going to college. Only 32% of white people do. But college enrollment does not reflect these numbers. 30% of black people and 20% of Hispanics ages 18 to 24 participate in higher education. Worse yet only 15% of African Americans and 11% of Hispanics had attained a bachelor’s degree in 1998. 25% of White people have a bachelor degree.

Stats show that black people are about 50% more likely to drop out. This shows how lazy black students that get into college are, right? Unlike their white counterparts, more black people drop out for financial reasons. 42% of white people say that they left college because they could not afford it. 69% of black students said that they left because they could not afford it. This makes sense. Since the average black person makes 64-68 cent to the white dollar, they would have more financial issues.

Affirmative Action tried to raise the percentage of minority students by changing the standards of college acceptance. Some schools would take a harder look at students with lower SAT scores and try to see if they indeed had what it took to go to college. This is contrary to the myth that Affirmative Action lowers standards for minorities; Affirmative Action should rearranged standards for minorities and women. SAT scores and grades matter less; activities, essays, and recommendations count more.

But many damaging myths have been circulated though out the years.

Most schools and businesses that practice Affirmative Action do not use quotas because it’s mostly illegal. This myth stems from the Regents of the University of California v. Bakke case in California.

The group affect by Affirmative Action the most are actually females, mainly white females. Even though women are 51% of the population many colleges have a 3/2 female to male ratio. For minority students that’s not the case in most colleges. Even with Affirmative Action few school can say that because of Affirmative Action 20% of their school is black while black people make up 13% of the population.

Not all black people admitted under Affirmative Action needed Affirmative Action to go to college. Most of them just go to better schools than they would have without Affirmative Action.

I’m probably a good example of this phenomenon. I was accepted into UCLA, which has no Affirmative Action, but I did not get into UC Berkeley. I am going to Stanford this fall.

My boards scores were not that great 1860/2400 on the SAT which about 150 point lower than many of my white and Asian friends, who took AP course after AP course. However I was able to prove the admissions committee though my website that I worthy of admittance.

Many people would ask me, “You got into Stanford! What did you score on the SAT?” I tell them and they would be skeptical, but then I so them my art portfolio. They are speechless.

So is weighing my art portfolio more than my SAT scores lowering the bar? If you think that the SAT is that great, absolute and perfect a test and, then yes, it is.

Fact is if you don’t like Affirmative Action and you do not like the racial discrepancies in our society, we need a different solution. However, we have yet to come up with a nation wide system that would help the problem. We’ve tried integrating high schools, but that is unconstitutional. We’ve mentioned reparations but that is too costly. We want schools to be equally funded, but property tax inhibits that. What other options do we have? You can tell minorities that all they have to do is “just worker harder” but that has not worked over the last 150 years.

So let’s say that we kept Affirmative Action and ignored the ramped problem concerning lower education, defacto segregation and home ownership. If we refuse to solve the problem from the bottom up than we will have to use Affirmative Action to level the playing field. Sadly 40 years of Affirmative Action has yet to undo 350 years of racial disparity between color and white.

The main problem with Affirmative Action is that it fails to address the financial situation of people of color and yes- white people. Right now the main beneficiaries of Affirmative Action are middle-class to rich people of color (most of which are second generation beneficiaries) and white women. This fails to help the people that need it most. Those who are poor and suffer from poor education need legislation like Affirmative Action. Income and to an extent race and gender should be taken into account in the college application process. A person’s income is a great indicator of their education success. Since test scores are split between race and gender and income, all should be a factor. Since drop out rates correlate with income, it is a major factor in a person’s success.

Then schools have to make an effort to keep these students in school. Students need help filling out crazy financial aid forms. They need to find study groups so they do not fall through the cracks.

By accepting and keeping disadvantage students, The United States will find itself a better place. It might find that it does not need to import its engineers from other countries. Poverty rates will go down because with education, the once poor will get better jobs. The United States will be more competitive and compete successfully against the engineers and scientist in the industrialized world.

Some might think that we do not need to educate our children more, that the United States is as educated as it should be. But why shouldn’t we be more educated? What’s the shame in teaching children how to spot Iraq on a world map? Why not learn about other cultures so we can improve diplomacy and international relations? Fact is as great as America is; we depend on the world and ourselves to keep being great. Education is one of the best why to keep raising the bar.

Until we fix our lower education we will have to rely on our high education to power the United States, and if we rely on Higher Education we will have to rely on Affirmative Action to see that every one has a chance to go to college. It is that concept, not diversity that powers the ideal behind Affirmative Action.

I was reading the one book by Tim J. Wise called Affirmative Action: Racial Preference in Black and White. I haven’t read the whole book. I’ve just been sampling bits and pieces of the book and thinking.

I came across one section that I think many minorities student should know about. It was about the “Stereotype Threat.”

Many black, Latino, and Native American students go to college. Many of them drop out. People often say that because black and brown people drop out so much that they should be accepted into colleges. But this book gave an alternative reason that might prevent future college students from dropping out.

As a black or Latino/a or Native American student, you have extra pressure on your shoulders. You have been chosen to represent your own “kind.” Because you are desperate to prove your self you are more likely to make mistake other kids would not.

These mistakes are independent of your previous academic record. Just because you did well previously in high school does not mean that you will do well in college. If you put to much pressure on yourself (a.k.a. the “stereotype threat”) you might end up failing and dropping out.

None of us want to let “our people” down. So how do you succeed in an environment that is scary, or hostile? You use the power of groups.

Studying alone is a trap. In the 1970’s UC Berkeley Calculus Professor Uri Treimen decided to help his black students that were doing far worse than their white and Asian counterparts. He noticed that they are for the large part studying alone. This meant that they had less help and more stress. He created what he called an honors challenge and encouraged the black student to work together. By not forcing them into a remedial course, he kept morale up and stress low. Students that had previously received 400/800 on the SAT math section were now outperforming their white and Asian counterparts while graduating in percentages identical to whites and Asians.

So the answer to this problem was to work smarter not harder. Lots of minority students work themselves into the ground and don’t get anywhere. They isolate themselves. You need to find a group to study with: a group that will help you succeed. You need to ask trust teachers for help. By sticking together you will avoid the remedial path and better your chances of success.

The fear of comforting to the negative stereotypes is one that affects not just college students but high school students as well. Many attribute the low SAT score to the “stereotype threat” along with lack of funds and preparation. When a minority student is told that they are about to take an intelligence test they do worse. When they just take an IQ test with out knowing so, they do far better. Experts like David White and Shana Levin and Claude Steele believe that the “stereotype threat” inhibits test takers’ abilities.

So it not just he lack of funds, that inadequate schools, it’s also the “stereotype threat” that has been hurting you. The key is understanding that this pressure is there and that when you work with your follow students you can overcome this obstacle.

Wise, Tim J. Affirmative Action: Racial Preference in Black and White. Routledge Taylor & Francis Group: New York, 2005.