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Re: CA State results shed new light on wealth vs. poverty debate.

I don't think there is much debate about wealth vs poverty. Apart from those who have taken a vow of poverty, not too many people are arguing in favor of it.

In any event, improving schools for poor children and minority children is everyone's responsibility, not just the responsibility of the "rich" or the "corporate". Trying to make this into a class thing is fighting an unnecessary battle and I think some people enjoy going off on that more than they care about doing the hard work of getting schools to work better.

Art

-----Original Message-----
From: Peter Farruggio <pfarr@cal.berkeley.edu>
To: arn-l@interversity.org
Sent: Sat, 18 Aug 2007 11:59 am
Subject: [arn-l] CA State results shed new light on wealth vs. poverty debate.


Printed in the Sacramento Bee, official house organ for the
California corporate standardistas.


They're spinning the test results to divert the focus away from
social class and poverty, which is clearly designed to avoid debate
on underfunding, especially the criminal underfunding of low income
urban schools, which are almost exclusively Black and
Latino. Heavens forbid we tax the rich and the lucrative
corporations in CA to raise the revenue to fully fund quality public
ed!!!! At the ports of Long Beach and Oakland alone, huge profits
are made from the Pacific Rim trade.


Some questions about the questionable data they use:


Where are all these "poor" white kids in CA, and how many are
they? To my observation, they're concentrated in rural areas,
certainly not in the devastated inner cities. If their schools are
anything like those in poor rural South Texas, then there is no
comparison with the much worse dilapidated monstrosities of truly
poor neighborhoods in Los Angeles, Long Beach, Oakland, East Palo
Alto, etc Urban poverty in the US has become a multifaceted horror
for child development, much different from rural poverty. I haven't
seen many white kids in the segregated working class urban schools.


Middle class vs poor: not qualifying for free lunch does not mean
you're "middle class" Research on the Black middle class has shown
that few who qualify by higher income are truly as middle class as
most upper income whites, as far as having non-job-related wealth and
"country club" connections. I think the "middle class" Blacks and
Latinos they discuss in this propaganda piece are just working class
families with "too much" income to qualify for free/reduced
lunch. For the most part, their kids attend urban schools (low or
medium income) that are crappy and doing test prep curricula. The
real middle class is in mostly white, well funded public schools or
private schools


Of course, the standardistas don't like to mention that most of CA's
Latino kids are English Learners who are being tested in their second language.


Pete Farruggio




----------





Tests show racial achievement gap











State results shed new light on wealth vs. poverty debate.











By Laurel Rosenhall - Bee Staff Writer

Published 12:00 am PDT Thursday, August 16, 2007







Whether they are poor or rich, white students are scoring higher
than their African American and Latino classmates on the state's
standardized tests, results released Wednesday show. And in some
cases, the poorest white students are doing better than Latino and
black students who come from middle class or wealthy families.



The so-called achievement gap -- the difference in performance
between groups of students -- has long been chalked up to a
difference in family income. It makes sense that -- regardless of
race -- students whose parents have money and speak English would do
better in school, on the whole, than students whose families
struggle with employment, food and shelter.



But this year's test scores show that the difference in academic
achievement between ethnic groups is more than an issue of poverty vs.
wealth.



On the standardized math tests that public school students take
every year from second to 11th grade, 38 percent of white students
who qualify for subsidized lunch scored proficient or above,
compared with 36 percent of Latino students and 30 percent of black
students whose families made too much money to qualify for school
meals. On standardized English tests, poor white students did about
the same as non-poor Latino and African American students.



"These are not just economic achievement gaps," state Superintendent
Jack O'Connell said in announcing the test scores from an elementary
school in Inglewood.



"They are racial achievement gaps, and we cannot continue to excuse
them."



It's a new twist on what has become a common theme for O'Connell --
the danger the achievement gap poses for California's economic
future. About 56 percent of the state's public school students are
Latino or black, so their academic performance now will have a big
influence on the work force of the future.



"I've been pounding this drum and am going to continue to do so, not
just for the moral imperative that we have, but for the economic
imperative," O'Connell said.



"We're going to focus on (the achievement gap) like a heat-seeking
missile during my last three years here as the state superintendent."

In general, test scores were flat compared with last year, but up
from five years ago. Forty-one percent of students were proficient
in math this year, while 43 percent were proficient in English. Even
though students are doing better than five years ago -- when 35
percent were proficient in math and English -- the achievement gap
between racial groups has remained a constant, with white and Asian
American students scoring higher than their Latino and African
American peers.



O'Connell said little Wednesday to explain why the achievement gap
persists.



"That is the $50 billion question," said Francisco Estrada, public
policy director for the Mexican American Legal Defense Fund, one of
several Latino and African American activists who lauded O'Connell
for drawing attention to the issue, even while they criticized the
state government for not doing enough to improve education for
students of color.



"Superintendent O'Connell should be commended for not just simply
saying, 'We're doing great and let's keep doing what we're doing,'
which is what we've heard in other years," Estrada said.



Russlynn Ali, director of Education Trust West, said state
policymakers are responsible for the achievement gap that has kept
black and Latino students behind because they've done little to put
experienced, well-trained teachers and rigorous high-level courses
in schools that predominantly serve those groups.



"Our system takes poor kids and kids of color -- not just the
students of color who are poor -- and provides them less of
everything research says makes a difference," she said.



"That is the underlying cause of the achievement gap."



While Ali blamed the government for distributing resources
inequitably, others said the gap is due to teachers' expectations.



"The expectations are not as high for African American students as
they are for other students," said Anita Royston, an education
consultant who used to work for the Sacramento City Unified School
District.



That district's school board president once found the same to be
true in his Latino family. In 1989, Manny Hernandez said, his son
was forbidden from taking college-prep classes in high school.



"That kind of tracking took place, not because people were bad or
racist, but because that was the expectation," Hernandez said.

When he became a school board member some years later, Hernandez
wanted to change the district's expectations about who goes to
college. The Sacramento City Unified school board increased
graduation requirements, so that more students will graduate with
more of the courses necessary to enter college.



Sharroky Hollie sees the achievement gap yet another way. He is a
professor of teacher education at California State University,
Dominguez Hills, who focuses on strategies that help Latino and
African American students learn. Hollie says the achievement gap
reflects a biased education system that doesn't accept behaviors and
learning styles common in African American and Latino communities.



For example, he said, an African American student who is talkative
and frequently gets out of his seat will be seen as disruptive and
defiant in most schools. Instead, Hollie said, teachers should
develop teaching strategies that work with the student's social and
kinesthetic nature, a trait that could be attributed to his cultural
background.



"The first thing we want schools to do is to change their mind-set
in seeing these behaviors as cultural and not negative," he said.
"The rest of it is: How can the instruction be reshaped to validate
and affirm the cultural behaviors as a segue to standards-based
learning?"



Testing experts said too many factors affect test scores to
attribute the racial differences to any one thing. Jamal Abedi of
the UC Davis School of Education said the test questions use complex
language that may throw students off, particularly those who are not
native English speakers or who speak in the vernacular at home.



"Those terms prevent students from understanding the assessment
questions," he said. "Therefore, they may not be able to respond."

Wednesday's release shows how students did on the California
Standards Tests they took in the spring. Their scores are divided
into five categories -- advanced, proficient, basic, below basic and
far below basic. The goal is for all students to reach proficient or
advanced. Later this month, the state Department of Education will
use these scores to calculate an Academic Performance Index number
for each school and to determine whether schools are meeting the
requirements set by No Child Left Behind.










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