Because far-right whackos are becoming more involved in education and school administration, I thought a separate thread would be useful. Of course, idiots are of all political stripes, so they can be included here. It doesn’t have to just be links-stories about your own experiences are of course allowed.
Here’s a disgusting one to start: A group of students in a Florida school were brought into an assembly to discuss their bad grades. Which students? Only the African-American ones.
To
In the ensuing furor the school administration promised to not do it again. By which they meant promised to not get caught doing it again.
Their failure to learn things at the school is making the administrators look bad.
Learn Harder, you little jerks!
Here is something interesting. Finland has the reputation for having an outstanding public education system. So much so, in fact, that many pundits consider it the best education system in the world.
10 reasons why Finland’s education system is the best in the world
To be fair to Florida, if we hadn’t ended slavery these African-American students wouldn’t have to worry about their grades because they’d be learning useful skills.
And from the article (bolding is mine) “In speaking with Mrs. Evensen, it is clear there was no malice intended in planning this student outreach."
Ok, WTF were they thinking?
They don’t actually hate the black students, they just think they are lesser human beings.
I can give a pretty good guess as to what they were thinking, as long as you promise not to think I’m condoning it, because this was goddamned awful.
The “achievement gap”–the difference between how White students and Black students (or other students of color) score on standardized tests–is a huge deal in public education circles. I cannot count the number of meetings I’ve been in where we look at our local numbers and agonize over them, or get scolded over them, or strategize around them.
There are different theories to account for this gap. Discarding the obvious racist ones, here are the main ones I hear:
So, this school was probably facing tremendous pressure to decrease their achievement gap. They settled on that last explanation and decided that if the goal was to raise Black kids’ test scores, go to the source: talk to the kids. That’s already bad enough, because nobody gets browbeaten into an academic mindset; but then, rather than focus on the kids whose scores were low, they just pulled in all the Black kids.
It’s a combination of three factors, then:
I’m an instructional systems designer and IMHO, even assuming that there isn’t racism (and I certainly believe that there is) there certainly is a lot of incompetence, intellectual and professional laziness, and ignorance.
“Sufficiently advanced stupidity is indistinguishable from malice.”
– Grey’s Corollary to Hanlon’s Razor.
I didn’t see any bolding. I wonder if that’s something with my computer?
(gasp!) Heretics!!!
How DARE they.
Recently, Gov. DeSantis boasted of how well Florida 4th graders were doing on national assessment scores, and how that vindicated his decision to keep schools open during the pandemic.
What he didn’t mention was the dramatic regression of Florida students by the time they got to 8th grade.
Maybe I’m more hopeful than you, but the linked article gave me the impression that most people involved realized what a bad idea this was.
I think that anyone capable of actually realizing that would have already realized it before, and stopped it before then. What they’re actually realizing is that not everyone else is as racist as them, and so they need to hide their racism slightly better.
For some reason, quite possibly related to the fact that I watched one or more PragerU videos that were linked to in the recent SDMB thread “Florida Schools Will Teach How Slavery Brought ‘Personal Benefit’ to Black People”, YouTube thought, correctly, that I might be interested in the following video explaining why PragerU’s “educational” materials are awful from an educational, as opposed to a political, standpoint:
Or they’ve realized they should say “We’re really sorry.” to get out in front of it Maybe I’m too cynical.
Edit: Or Chronos said much the same thing. Ninja’ed!
On point, the rest of that quote following the “malice” bit: “However, sometimes, when you try to think ‘outside the box,’ you forget why the box is there."
Would speaking to a group of Black students help educators figure out what the educators are doing wrong?
This one ties in with DeSantis: the New College of Florida is having a rough time with their new year. Several professors have left, making it hard for some students to get their degrees. https://www.cnn.com/2023/08/26/us/new-college-of-florida-chaos-reaj/index.html