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WestlinnDuck
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https://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2020/01/liberalism-causes-achievement-gaps.php
Liberalism Causes Achievement Gaps
This report by Chris Stewart of Brightbeam is a blockbuster. It is titled: “The Secret Shame: How America’s Most Progressive Cities Betray Their Commitment to Educational Opportunity For All.” Stewart is a liberal activist from Minnesota who undertook to find out why the Twin Cities’ left-wing public schools have some of the country’s worst achievement gaps between white and minority (black and Indian) students.
Stewart compared achievement by race in a number of cities that he classified as progressive or conservative. The results didn’t surprise me, but they shocked Stewart. Conservative cities (as ranked by political scientists used as a reference for the study) consistently did a better job of closing student achievement gaps–sometimes, to zero–than progressive cities. This chart sums up the findings:
Stewart’s group looked at a number of variables that they thought might help to explain these findings. The result:
Of all the factors we looked at, progressivism is the greatest predictor.
The Brightbeam study does not attempt to explain the causation that its numbers clearly reveal, but calls on those who run progressive school districts to rethink their assumptions. Bacon’s Rebellion offers some obvious possibilities:
* Agency. By blaming racism and discrimination for the woes afflicting minority communities, progressives deprive minority students of agency — the sense that they control their own destinies and that their efforts will make a difference. If minority students see themselves as victims of systemic racism, why bother working hard and “acting white”?
*
* Discipline. Progressives have implemented “social justice” approaches to school and classroom discipline on the grounds that suspensions and other punishments disproportionately affect minorities. The resulting breakdown in classroom discipline has the perverse effect of disproportionately harming the minority students whose classes are being disrupted.
* Lower standards. As an offshoot of the “self esteem” movement, progressive educators don’t want to damage the self-esteem of minority students. Accordingly, they have lower expectations and set lower standards for minorities to offset the advantages that white students have from “white privilege.”
*
The most positive outcome of the Brightbeam study, so far, is this op-ed in the Minneapolis Star Tribune by local liberal activist Nekima Levy Armstrong, titled “Research shows progressive places, like Minneapolis, have the worst achievement gaps.” Armstrong describes the findings of the Brightbeam study:
The brightbeam report shows that progressive cities like Minneapolis do worse — and, surprisingly, conservative cities do better — when it comes to educating students of color. According to the report, conservative cities have gaps in math and reading that are on average 15 and 13 percentage points smaller than those in progressive cities.***Researchers also controlled for other factors that could potentially explain different educational outcomes, including poverty rates, population size, per-pupil spending and private school attendance rates. Surprisingly, none of these other variables made a difference in predicting the size of the opportunity gap.
What mattered most was whether the city was conservative or progressive.
In three of the most conservative cities — Anaheim, Fort Worth and Virginia Beach, researchers found that leaders have either closed or eliminated opportunity gaps in either reading, math or high school graduation rates.
Meanwhile, in our own “progressive” city of Minneapolis, the report showed that the shameful gap in math achievement between black and white students in K-12 is 53 percentage points, while the gap in math between brown and white students is 45 points.
Similarly, in reading, the gap between black and white Minneapolis students is 53, while the gap between brown and white students is 47.
Liberals are notorious for caring about good intentions–especially when those supposedly good intentions fatten their own bank accounts–rather than results. But Armstrong’s conclusion seems sincere:
The data should cause us to wonder how it is possible that cities like Minneapolis, known for prosperity and progressive values, could continue to fail our most vulnerable children so miserably within the public-school system.
When progressive leaders fail to act with a sense of urgency in addressing these highly disturbing gaps, it sends the signal that the system and its leaders are comfortable with the status quo.
Parents and concerned citizens must become empowered to place demands on our public education system to make the changes that are necessary to produce positive learning outcomes. We must use our outrage and frustration as fuel to be persistent in challenging the status quo and holding our elected officials accountable for addressing these disgraceful gaps within our public education system.
The most obvious way to shake up the failing progressive establishment is meaningful school choice, i.e., choice that includes religious (usually Catholic) schools. I understand there is a case now pending the U.S. Supreme Court, arising out of Montana, where the Court may rule that the free exercise clause of the First Amendment and the Equal Protection clause of the Fourteenth Amendment invalidate state constitutional provisions or laws that prohibit government funds from going to students in religious institutions (the anti-Catholic “Blaine amendments”). If liberals are serious about wanting to improve prospects for African-American and Hispanic children, the first thing they should do is get behind school choice.
Liberalism Causes Achievement Gaps
This report by Chris Stewart of Brightbeam is a blockbuster. It is titled: “The Secret Shame: How America’s Most Progressive Cities Betray Their Commitment to Educational Opportunity For All.” Stewart is a liberal activist from Minnesota who undertook to find out why the Twin Cities’ left-wing public schools have some of the country’s worst achievement gaps between white and minority (black and Indian) students.
Stewart compared achievement by race in a number of cities that he classified as progressive or conservative. The results didn’t surprise me, but they shocked Stewart. Conservative cities (as ranked by political scientists used as a reference for the study) consistently did a better job of closing student achievement gaps–sometimes, to zero–than progressive cities. This chart sums up the findings:
Stewart’s group looked at a number of variables that they thought might help to explain these findings. The result:
Of all the factors we looked at, progressivism is the greatest predictor.
The Brightbeam study does not attempt to explain the causation that its numbers clearly reveal, but calls on those who run progressive school districts to rethink their assumptions. Bacon’s Rebellion offers some obvious possibilities:
* Agency. By blaming racism and discrimination for the woes afflicting minority communities, progressives deprive minority students of agency — the sense that they control their own destinies and that their efforts will make a difference. If minority students see themselves as victims of systemic racism, why bother working hard and “acting white”?
*
* Discipline. Progressives have implemented “social justice” approaches to school and classroom discipline on the grounds that suspensions and other punishments disproportionately affect minorities. The resulting breakdown in classroom discipline has the perverse effect of disproportionately harming the minority students whose classes are being disrupted.
* Lower standards. As an offshoot of the “self esteem” movement, progressive educators don’t want to damage the self-esteem of minority students. Accordingly, they have lower expectations and set lower standards for minorities to offset the advantages that white students have from “white privilege.”
*
The most positive outcome of the Brightbeam study, so far, is this op-ed in the Minneapolis Star Tribune by local liberal activist Nekima Levy Armstrong, titled “Research shows progressive places, like Minneapolis, have the worst achievement gaps.” Armstrong describes the findings of the Brightbeam study:
The brightbeam report shows that progressive cities like Minneapolis do worse — and, surprisingly, conservative cities do better — when it comes to educating students of color. According to the report, conservative cities have gaps in math and reading that are on average 15 and 13 percentage points smaller than those in progressive cities.***Researchers also controlled for other factors that could potentially explain different educational outcomes, including poverty rates, population size, per-pupil spending and private school attendance rates. Surprisingly, none of these other variables made a difference in predicting the size of the opportunity gap.
What mattered most was whether the city was conservative or progressive.
In three of the most conservative cities — Anaheim, Fort Worth and Virginia Beach, researchers found that leaders have either closed or eliminated opportunity gaps in either reading, math or high school graduation rates.
Meanwhile, in our own “progressive” city of Minneapolis, the report showed that the shameful gap in math achievement between black and white students in K-12 is 53 percentage points, while the gap in math between brown and white students is 45 points.
Similarly, in reading, the gap between black and white Minneapolis students is 53, while the gap between brown and white students is 47.
Liberals are notorious for caring about good intentions–especially when those supposedly good intentions fatten their own bank accounts–rather than results. But Armstrong’s conclusion seems sincere:
The data should cause us to wonder how it is possible that cities like Minneapolis, known for prosperity and progressive values, could continue to fail our most vulnerable children so miserably within the public-school system.
When progressive leaders fail to act with a sense of urgency in addressing these highly disturbing gaps, it sends the signal that the system and its leaders are comfortable with the status quo.
Parents and concerned citizens must become empowered to place demands on our public education system to make the changes that are necessary to produce positive learning outcomes. We must use our outrage and frustration as fuel to be persistent in challenging the status quo and holding our elected officials accountable for addressing these disgraceful gaps within our public education system.
The most obvious way to shake up the failing progressive establishment is meaningful school choice, i.e., choice that includes religious (usually Catholic) schools. I understand there is a case now pending the U.S. Supreme Court, arising out of Montana, where the Court may rule that the free exercise clause of the First Amendment and the Equal Protection clause of the Fourteenth Amendment invalidate state constitutional provisions or laws that prohibit government funds from going to students in religious institutions (the anti-Catholic “Blaine amendments”). If liberals are serious about wanting to improve prospects for African-American and Hispanic children, the first thing they should do is get behind school choice.
Comments
*
* Discipline. Progressives have implemented “social justice” approaches to school and classroom discipline on the grounds that suspensions and other punishments disproportionately affect minorities. The resulting breakdown in classroom discipline has the perverse effect of disproportionately harming the minority students whose classes are being disrupted.
* Lower standards. As an offshoot of the “self esteem” movement, progressive educators don’t want to damage the self-esteem of minority students. Accordingly, they have lower expectations and set lower standards for minorities to offset the advantages that white students have from “white privilege.”
That's your answer right there.
Same as it ever was.
https://brightbeamnetwork.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/01/The-Secret-Shame_v4.pdf
There is no arguing with this research. Some selected stats that should shock everyone into awareness:
Progressive Cities Have Larger
Achievement Gaps Than
Conservative Cities
• Progressive cities, on average, have
achievement gaps in math and reading that
are 15 and 13 percentage points higher than
in conservative cities, respectively.
• In San Francisco, for example, 70% of white
students are proficient in math, compared
to only 12% of black students reaching
proficiency — a 58-point gap.
• In Washington, D.C., 83% of white students
scored proficient in reading compared to 23
percent of black students — a 60-point gap.
• In contrast, three of the 12 most conservative
cities — Virginia Beach, Anaheim and
Fort Worth — have effectively closed or
even erased the gap in at least one of the
academic categories we examined.
Now please read the following which is also written by Chris Stewart. This is exactly why this is not going to change. Liberals are in charge and they are not about to give up the power they have over education and minority votes. This lady is the Chancellor for NYC schools. Yes, NYC schools. She is a liberal elite. She is the racist who cherry picks the smartest for her schools. When she gets an opportunity to smear Charter schools she does it by basically calling them racists and elitist. She is doing what all rats do, she is lying to keep her power while doing herself what she is falsely accusing others of doing.
It would take decades for the education system swamp to be drained and that would only have a prayer of happening if there was a Conservative revolution in this country that lasted for 30 years. We are doomed to millions more inner city children to be tortured by liberal educators who clearly have no heart or any level of decency. They love the power and will never give it up. As a matter of fact, school choice is being fought by almost all inner city school systems around the country. We know the left has fought public funding for religious schools even those that can pull many in the crumbling inner cities up with a good education. In my opinion this is the most heartless aspect of the rat platform and has been for decades. Not only are the giving the kids a substandard education, they are telling them they are victims at the same time.
https://educationpost.org/farina-pot-calling-kettle-black-moment/
New York public schools Chancellor Carmen Fariña had charter school leaders seeing red a couple of weeks ago, after her remarks suggesting those schools excel by pushing out children with special needs and low test scores and by targeting high-achieving students for recruitment.
As Chalkbeat reported, Fariña said, “There shouldn’t be a whole movement out of charters the month before the test” and “that the kids that are accepted in are not just kids who get postcards because they’re level 3s or 4s to come to the school.”
CAREFUL WHAT YOU SAY
When a major education leader makes such goading statements with implications for tens of thousands of students, parents, educators and school managers, you might expect it to come with more than a high horse and a political dog whistle.
An accusation of this magnitude should be supported by data, logic and a good dose of sobriety.
WORTH A CONVERSATION
But, let’s not be hasty. Just because Fariña seems short on facts, rationale, reason and honesty shouldn’t stop us from considering her point.
I say that for two reasons:
My guess is that school pushouts are a trackable phenomenon in American public education. Compassionate people should want to know whether or not schools are tracking the neediest students and casting them away.
We shouldn’t pretend charter schools invented the practice of student pushouts. As a former urban school board member I can tell you that I saw traditional district schools use various pushout practices to get students out of regular classrooms—especially in the toniest of public schools—to keep overall test scores up.
LOOKING TO THE EXPERT
I suspect Fariña may be just the person to help explain the “cherry-picking” phenomenon, and her own professional experience can be the supporting evidence.
Reading the 1999 New York Times profile of Fariña, which was widely re-circulated after her appointment as Chancellor last year, reveals her connection to the practice of using student antiselection—or “cherry-picking”—as a means for school improvement.
As principal for Public School 6 in Upper Manhattan, Fariña is credited with transforming a school “known for serving the children of janitors and doormen” to a school “competitive with the city’s top private schools and attractive to those who can afford them.”
How did she do it?
The article calls it “Darwinian selection” and compares her admission process to that of Ivy League institutions.
Last year, about 200 children applied to P.S. 6, going through an interview intended to detect a certain spark, and about 1 in 7 made it, Fariña said.
At Harvard, the ratio is 1 in 8. For the winners, admission means a free, top-flight education; for the losers, it often means paying $15,000 or more in private school tuition.
One parent remarked of Fariña’s leadership: “Her attitude was, ‘Well, look-it, if you don’t like it, there are many other wonderful schools.’”
If any public school is pushing kids out in the name of test scores, that should be addressed and stopped. But here we have Chancellor Fariña—whose success is built on being the “principal everybody loves to fear” and using an interview process to select only children with “a certain spark” to attend her school—standing on baseless allegations in judgement of the success and accessibility of charter schools, which—by law—do not have access to the student-achievement data of potential students and enroll students only through a random lottery.
Pot, meet kettle.