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Re: CA State results shed new light on wealth vs. poverty debate.
Yes, the federal lunch forms are usually pushed pretty aggressively
in low income schools. They want to get everybody who's qualified
into the system, probably because the district gets an "economy of
scale" advantage for its food services division. But the
cross-checking of parents' input is not rigorous. They usually
accept your honesty if you claim you only earned so many dollars last
year. I'm not aware of government accountants poring over the forms
to catch cheaters. So those families who want to get those high fat,
high sugar, preservative loaded meals free or at discount usually
succeed. And who knows if undocumented immigrants are afraid to fill
out the forms, in which case their true poverty doesn't even
register? And in secondary schools, they usually have the kids fill
out the forms. No adolescent wants to stand in the free lunch line,
or to be teased for having uneducated parents, so they purposely
overstate both parents' income and education levels.
At 03:38 PM 8/18/2007, monicalucido@comcast.net wrote:
Hi, all.
The lunch forms we use ( I have one here in front of me) ask for,
gross earnings from work, pension, retirement, social security,
WELFARE benefits (?), and any other sources of income. So, I view
this as where some people may be getting the numerical figures for
income and then maybe cross check them with their student ID's.
HOWEVER, the real question is, as you pointed out, how is this
information verified? Except for maybe those who get food stamps
and have a case number, how is it proven that the income people give
is truly accurate? Couldn't they "fudge" their income to get free
meals and thus skew the data inadvertently?
-------------- Original message ----------------------
From: Susan Harman <susanharman@igc.org>
> The correlation to test scores thats most accurate is mother's
> education. The test forms also ask for something like, "highest level
> of ed", but that refers to either mom or dad. We also asked both
> parents for this info at registration. Again, I dont know of other
> schools that do.
> And theres no test form that collects various amounts of income. Its
> either "eligible for F/R lunch" or "not". So where do they get off
> talking about levels of income?
> Susan
>
> On Saturday, August 18, 2007, at 11:59 AM, Peter Farruggio wrote:
>
> > 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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