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Drudge, Racism and Student Achievement
A couple of days ago Drudge (which is effectively an arm of the Romney campaign) gave big SHOCKED! HORRIFIED! play to this story:
Palm Beach, Fla. (CBS TAMPA) – The Florida State Board of Education passed a plan that sets goals for students in math and reading based upon their race.
On Tuesday, the board passed a revised strategic plan that says that by 2018, it wants 90 percent of Asian students, 88 percent of white students, 81 percent of Hispanics and 74 percent of black students to be reading at or above grade level. For math, the goals are 92 percent of Asian kids to be proficient, whites at 86 percent, Hispanics at 80 percent and blacks at 74 percent. It also measures by other groupings, such as poverty and disabilities, reported the Palm Beach Post...
http://tampa.cbslocal.com/2012/10/12/florida-passes-plan-for-racially-based-academic-goals/
On Tuesday, the board passed a revised strategic plan that says that by 2018, it wants 90 percent of Asian students, 88 percent of white students, 81 percent of Hispanics and 74 percent of black students to be reading at or above grade level. For math, the goals are 92 percent of Asian kids to be proficient, whites at 86 percent, Hispanics at 80 percent and blacks at 74 percent. It also measures by other groupings, such as poverty and disabilities, reported the Palm Beach Post...
http://tampa.cbslocal.com/2012/10/12/florida-passes-plan-for-racially-based-academic-goals/
Like many of the racial outrage stories the RW pushes, there is nothing objectionable about it. But stories about numbers, government and race are indiscriminate button-pushers. Suggestive dog-whistles.
The target percentages in the plan are not a school board's expression of an ideal world. They are measures of a strategic plan to improve reading skills across the board and it is perfectly reasonable to set benchmarks within the context of current reality.
Despite the language or the article the Board obviously does not "want" Asian students to read better than black students on average. The Board wants 100% of all students to read at or above grade level, but it that would be a foolish six year strategic plan. It would be a mere slogan.
As an example, the percentage of white students scoring at or above grade level (as measured by whether they scored a 3 or higher on the reading FCAT) was 69 percent in 2011-2012, according to the state. For black students, it was 38 percent, and for Hispanics, it was 53 percent.
So the goal is to improve the current reality by 19 points (125%) among white kids, 27 points (150%) among hispanic kids and 36 points (195%) among black kids, in six years.
That's not endorsing low expectations. It's a very aggressive goal, doubling expectations for black students. It sounds like a crash program to get the black and hispanic scores up, and must involve redirecting resources.
As the article notes in passing, the plan also has goals for categories like poverty and disabilities. It isn't just race. And I'll bet the goals for poor kids are more ambitious than the goals for rich kids, and so on.
This is normal policy. You target areas most in need of improvement and set ambitious but achievable goals to measure how you're doing. Those goals are not caps, of course. The Board isn't trying to limit anyone.
Anything with race and numbers will controversial, but I cannot see anything at all ill-willed or unfair in this, from any political perspective.
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