december-you should know by now that this is NOT a valid cite.
Where did you get this?
This is counterintuitive. It seems to me that “social promotion” would be more prevalent in affluent schools where parents are less likely accept a child be retained for fear of social ramifications.
No, I want them to make the public schools work right, instead of using social promotion to mask the problems. If they can’t make the schools work, let’s introduce vouchers and let private and parochial schools do the education.
What’s happening now just isn’t fair to inner city kids.
There’s been lots of public controversy over social promotion in big city school systems, such as LA and NYC. Based on many newspaper articles, my impression is that Social Promotion is widely used in the inner city.
Relatives of mine who teach in New York City have told stories supporting what I’ve read. The funniest one was a cousin who tried to talk Manny Ramirez into knuckling down and actually learning something in high school. He blew her off, saying he would earn a living from playing baseball. He was right!
I’m going to say this once and for the last time:
Personal anecdotes to NOT a reliable cite MAKE! Got it? Unless you can back it up with FACTS. Not just “my impression” based on something as vague “many newspaper articles.”
ALL RIGHT?
Dammit!
:mad:
You sure sound mad, with all those capitalized words. However, so far this thread has had exactly one cite, and it was mine. If you’re angry at me, you should be really, really angry at all those other posters. Dammit! Dammit! :mad: :mad:
Seriously, a personal anecdote isn’t a cite, but does that mean it has no place in a GD thread? I don’t see why. I’d be happy to hear from others on this point.
Because you’re using personal anecdotes to back up your arguements.
“My impressions…blah blah blah…”
sigh
December, so it appears the truth of your position is that you want to force the public schools into a crisis so you can move to private schools without having to provide any evidence that they will do a better job.
you posted the OP, so it’s absolutely expected that you support it.
Now, of course, personal stories have a place, but not in lieu of data to support the sort of all encompassing OP that you have here.
You state that SBOLE exists (posit #1)
also that it’s pervasive (posit #2) listing several areas in which you believe that it exists and is pervasive.
and that Minorities have been hurt by it (posit #3)
YOu’ve not begun to even prove that it exists. You’ve posted one cite that gives some data re: education, inner city schools, and a tiny bit of data regarding races of the students.
This doesn’t even begin to cover posit #1.
Using your school example, you’ve shown one cite that gives multiple pieces of data about inner city schools, and some data about the races of the students. this does nothing, less than nothing to demonstrate that the root cause of any of the data it talks about comes from lowered expectations for the students.
that’s your OP. You have anecdotal info about some minority student who was passed along. Well, so what? I pointed out that a good number of jocks in my damn near all white school were also passed along. This may suggest that there’s some sort of ‘gentlemens’ agreement to pass atheletes, but does nothing to indicate your OP has any shred of truth.
You posited the OP. Don’t complain when we’re not coming up with data to support or detract from it. My first post was asking you for data to support it before I’d even begin to attempt to refute it.
I told you in the Pit Thread that I wasn’t convinced that it even existed, let alone was prevelent. You’ve yet to demonstrate that it exists.
**
No, I posted a cite in response to your claim that Head Start has been a failure. And you still haven’t proved that this statement is true.
Maybe your impressions would be more impressive if it was evident that you have any expertise or knowledge about what you’re talking about. Like, if you actually worked in education and had first-hand experience with all those poor, misled minorities. But it doesn’t really seem like you do, december. That’s why reading your posts is frustrating work sometimes.
**
Personal anecdotes only go so far with me, though I sometimes post my own anecdotes to make a point. If you share an experience that’s directly related to the topic at hand, that’s one thing. But sharing what someone else has said or done and treating this as “evidence” is a bit of a stretch, don’t you think?
Sorry, I had overlooked your cite, Monstro. Your cite described a study that found evidence of lasting benefit for females, but not for males. [It goes without saying that these averages don’t mean that Head Start didn’t benefit you personally.]
I have no problem accepting that Head Start does has some benefit. Having some benefit is a much lower standard than the original goal of creating edcaitonal equality between rich and poor. My complaint remains that those running Head Start are comfortable and content with limited success. In fact, they resist attempting improvements that might lead to even greater success.
I’m not sure what you mean by root cause. My cite showed that social promotion is pervasive. No doubt many of the other 1,739,999 google hits would agree. Frankly, this point is so well-known that I’m not that interested in pursuing it. If anyone actually disagrees, and seriously wants to argue that social promotion is rare, I’ll look for more cites.
The more interesting question is whether social promotion is harmful, and how it might cause harm. I thought Ned had a good point
If the only choice is social promotion or retention (which used to be called being left back), then social promotion may be preferable for many students. But, it’s intolerable that so large a percentage of students are faced with this ugly choice. The problem is that education is not working in a lot of areas, but the public isn’t demanding that it be fixed. In particular, the racial gap is far too large,E.g..
Here’s another article on the NAEP that’s even more upsetting. The whole thing is worth reading, but here’s an excerpt
Got that? 73% of Black 17-year olds don’t know how to use fractions and decimals.
I know that posters here are just as much in favor of minority educational advancement as I am. (Except for JanL 
) Why aren’t you all frantic about this situation? Why isn’t society desperate to fix thing? One of the reasons why, I would argue, is that social promotion helps keep the problem hidden.
december root cause, the reason the students were passed w/o merit - it’s central to your claim about TSBOLE.
It is not sufficient for you to establish that significant amounts of students are passed w/o merit.
It is not sufficient for you to establish that of these students, significantly more minorities are passed w/o merit.
It is encumbant upon you, who stated in the OP that TSBOLE exists, is pervasive and hurts minorities, that the reason that these minority students were passed w/o merit is because of TSBOLE
(sounds of the Jeopardy final theme)
that’s your claim. prove it please.
remember the pit thread where you brought out this point??
and you used as support that TSBOLE exists, that op ed piece and I ripped it apart??
Remember how???
The OP/ED piece used as an example that TSBOLE exists, the two murder cases, where one was a male parent murdering his children (and wife, and other assorted relatives) and the other was a female parent murdering her children. The columnists (attempted) point was since the gender of the two were different, that was the reason for the difference in public outcry.
However, as I was able to show (and frankly anyone who’d read the general news accounts could have attested to), there were many, many other reasons (and good ones) for the differences in how they were handled.
Because I spelled it out for you there, and because I asked you again here, spelling it out what you need to show, I’m wondering why in the world you’re claiming ‘confusion’.
For example - my elder sister got worse grades than I in school. she’d get heaps of praise for a “B”, while I got “hey, what happened here?” . now, there were quite a few differences between my sister and I. She was 2 years older. She was taller. She liked to rearrange furniture. She dyed her hair. I wore glasses. I had to take Speech Therapy for several years; and (wait for it), I typically had a much easier time w/schoolwork than she did.
Now, if I specultated that the reason my parents treated her differently (w/r/t grades) than me was 'cause she was older, and evidence that my parents were ‘agists’, people would correctly land on me w/both feet. Just 'cause there’s a difference doesn’t mean squat.
So, work on google etc. to try and find some piece of evidence that the reason for the differences you’ve found is that somehow, the system is exhibiting TSBOLE, that teachers are saying, gee, both little Johhnie and Little Frankie are failing. But Little Frankie is a minority and gosh darn, he’s trying his best, little Johnnie, the white boy isn’t, so I’ll just pass little Frankie 'cause he’s a minority, but fail little Johnnie. (not simply that they failed Johnnie but passed Frankie and Frankie’s a minority; but that they passed Frankie because he’s a minority. )
Quote: "My cite showed that social promotion is pervasive. No doubt many of the other 1,739,999 google hits would agree. Frankly, this point is so well-known that I’m not that interested in pursuing it. If anyone actually disagrees, and seriously wants to argue that social promotion is rare, I’ll look for more cites. "
I disagree. I believe that social promotion is a rare phenomenon. I would consider data proving that my belief is wrong.
For instance: unbiased, statistically rigorous interviews of a wide cross-section of American public school teachers.
Written policies from a wide cross-section of American school boards urging the promotion of students who are unable to pass exams or participate in classwork, with the stated objective of reducing feelings of inferiority in minority students (not just in all students) or maintaining equal “success” ratios for minority students.
This sort of thing is what we call “evidence”—facts, collections of facts, statistically rigorous analysis of facts.
If there are a billion gazillion Google hits, that proves that “social promotion” is a currently hot topic. It does NOT prove that the phenomenon actually exists.
OK. I’ve provided three pieces of evidence
– A cite that says social promotion is widespread.
– The huge number of google hits. A rare phenomenon wouldn’t have literally millions of references
– The results of the NAEP tests. Seventeen year olds who can’t do fractions must have had social promotion. Otherwise, how did they get into high school?
Your turn, AuntPam.
Surely a personal anecdote can be a valid cite? Its authenticity may be more in question than some other website or news article, if the person is using it to promote their own opinion.
However for a minority person to come in here, and give a personal anecdote about how their cousin missed loads of school because of race-hate bullying, I would give that some time of mind.
It depends on how you define “personal anecdote” I guess.
There is no such thing as a 100% reliable cite. Any website/news article/whatever we link to has the potential to be biased, inaccurate, misrepresentative, outdated, or wrong. It’s about how reliable we judge it to be, and what we consider the motive for it being there in the first place?
Likewise while a personal anecdote may score a lot lower on the reliability scale, it must be remembered that not every story makes it to print. Personal anecdotes - even other people’s - are a form of primary evidence, a form of oral history. Just because most ULs are often also reported personal anecdotes (“my friend’s cousin’s friend knew a guy who…”) does not condemn the whole genre/phenomenon.
december, I can’t find a single cite that finds that inner city schools are more like to “social promote”. However, I did find that alternative (retention) is not that attractive. How are these for some stats:
(From this site: http://www.nasponline.org/information/pospaper_graderetent.html )
I’m pretty sure that you are going to have a hard time finding anything to support your OP on social promotions. You’re going to have to concede that you are wrong on that one.
So let’s move on shall we?
Here are some statisics about the long-term effects of head-start (from this site: http://www.nber.org/digest/aug01/w8054.html )
in addition:
The odd thing about the Soft Bigotry Of Lower Expectations is that the largest beneficiary of this is the president himself! His expectations were so low, that when he didn’t make an ass of himself his approval ratings went throug the roof!
Just as an exercise in logic.
Have you? That is by common standards, not your, ahem, uniquely naive approach to the concept of evidence.
Fine, I leave this to others.
This gem is amazing.
Well, I can get a huge number of google hits on UFOs. A rare phenomenon like UFOs would’t get literally millions of references – oh wait! I’ve assumed my conclusion! Oops, logicial. Bzzzzt. Sorry december old man, this isn’t evidence of anything other than, as Aunt Pam said, it is a hot button topic. Rather like what, child molestation rings. Were we to have had google during that blow up, one would have been able to turn up similar ‘evidence.’
Again, decemberian logic, assuming the conclusion.
There are alternate explanations, not encouraging ones but ones that leap to mind. Example: The school itself was defective in general, without qualified math teachers.
You have to find actual proof of ‘social promotion’ as to its extent etc – never mind linking this with minorities – before assuming that poor maths skills are proof of the same. Linkage, else we hafve myriad other explanations.
Oddly, I actually don’t have much of an opinion on the actual social promotion issue. However your display of astounding, piss-poor illogic is, as usual, deeply irritating. I mean really, the google thing, what the fuck are you arguing there?
Nope. Some one testing out that they don’t or can’t do fractions means: (wait for it) either they don’t like doing fractions, didn’t want to right then, might not remember doing them or might never have known in the first place. Doesn’t prove social promotion.
you posted one study and auntie pam had specific issues with that study. Mentioning that you’ve got a google search lots of hits doesn’t prove the essence of your point. It may be (for all you know) that the hits say “while there’s a claim of rampant social promotion, we have no evidence to support it”
we shouldn’t really have to demonstrate and tell you over and over what consitutes ‘evidence’.
Yes indeed. And his opponents helped him, by continually calling him an idiot. 
For those posters who question the existance of social promotion, note that bio-brat’s cite implies that social promotion is common. It says
I agree with this statement. I expect we all do.
They suggest what should be done instead of these two policies. However, my concern isn’t so much on the nature of improvements, but on the lack urgency.
How does TSBOLE stack up against TPFoCDR ?
My thesis is that the the powerful force of cognitive dissonance reduction is a real problem. It arises grossly in many manifestations. E.g.
It makes a sucker of you december.