Re: Please purge "Achievement Gap" from out discourse...

[aburke5054@aol.com]

-----Original Message-----
From: Csubstance@aol.com
To: taunar@plateautel.net; arn-l@interversity.org
Sent: Sat, 8 Dec 2007 4:55 am
Subject: [arn-l] Please purge "Achievement Gap" from out discourse...

There never was an "achievement gap." I wish people here would stop 
using the
ruling class's language to describe the impacts of viciously segregated 
class
society on what happens inside schools.

As long as we let Ed Trust and the rest of those pigs and hogs define 
the
terms we use to discuss these problems, the further we are from real 
solutions.....
_______________________________________________________________
If it's true, for example, that the average African-American 12th 
grader achieves at the level of the average White 8th grader and that 
the dropout rate for minority students in some systems is 50 percent, 
it takes an enormous degree of denial, not to mention astonishing moral 
blindness, to claim that the achievement gap is not real.  The sad 
presence of racial and ethnic inequality in American society 
undoubtedly contributes to unequal educational outcomes, but so do 
differences in the quality of schools attended by poor children and 
minority children.  The "pigs and hogs"  that believe the achievement 
gap is real include La Raza, the Mexican-American Legal Defense Fund, 
the Citizens' Commission on Civil Rights, and other liberal and 
progressive groups such as Ed Trust.  They also advocate changes to 
public education to reduce it.  Amy Wilkins hit the nail on the head, 
or in this case pinned the tail on the donkey, when she said that there 
are enemies of children both without and within public education.  
Schmidt is wearing a large tail indeed.

Art

________________________________________________________________________
More new features than ever.  Check out the new AOL Mail ! - 
http://o.aolcdn.com/cdn.webmail.aol.com/mailtour/aol/en-us/text.htm?ncid=aolcmp00050000000003