Right fair enough, but that’s a bit different from what SpoilerVirgin was suggesting.
Also, as per the funding equality suggestion, can you as a teacher think of any way to do that? Generally I find that funding inequality comes because schools are funded locally, not because people distribute it inequitably.
Funding locally isn’t working. Stop funding locally. At the very least, make it a statewide thing.
Do you think parents have the right to improve their local school?
And when Connecticut and New Jersey have better schools than Alabama, what then?
Certainly. I have parent volunteers that come in all the time.
We need to establish a baseline financial minimum for schools to succeed. Clearly we haven’t done that so far.
mswas, I’ve got no objection to federalizing educational funding if that’s what we need to do. I suggest going to statewide funding as an intermediate measure. The goal is to get all schools up to snuff; we need to do what’s necessary to achieve that goal.
I’m going to look at SpoilerVirgin’s list out of order.
This requirement would seem to suggest some kind of racial gerrymandering, or mass migrations: that is, to make certain that the districts in the Senate and House of Representatives are formed in such a way that nationwide racial density is taken into account at the state and county level. For instance, Washington State is fairly white: 88.64% white, 4.12% black. All things being equal, most of the candidates running for office in Washington State will be white. That’s what you’d expect to see, given the statewide demographics. Mississippi by contrast is not so white: 62.37% white, 36.66% black. In that state there are almost no Hispanics — less than 2%.
I’m not sure how realistic this goal is, frankly. Black people constitute about 13-14% of the U.S. population — let’s call it 40 million people. Half the U.S. black population lives in only 9 states. If you were drawing marbles out of 50 hats, each representing racial demographics in each of the 50 states and treating black and white (and yellow and brown) marbles all equally, your chances of drawing 14% black marbles overall is not very good.
I think a more accurate and realistic goal would be based on rates of arrest and rates of conviction. For one thing, if the average sentence is (let’s say) 20 years, then it’ll take 20 years to flush any existing imbalances out of the system. For another, you can’t really control which people will commit crimes, or even which people will be arrested — violent crime may be lower in a state based on non-racial factors such as gun laws or alcohol — but supposedly a fair system would see that everybody who was arrested had an equal chance in the courtroom.
And to add in the other, "when the percentage of blacks in professional sports reflects their percentage in the country. My objection to both of these is the same: you can’t control what people will do with their lives, or what they will choose.
We have pretty close to 50% women in this country, but more women go to college. I don’t know how you can mandate equal participation in college if people just don’t want to, or for whatever reason don’t go.
These are probably the best goals you have listed. This is how it can and should be.
Availability of assistance programs and charity could vary from state to state. It’s hard to see how national demographic goals will be met in this way. Suppose white voters in Utah don’t want a welfare system, but a less-white state like Georgia does.
Should parents be able to improve their schools through fundraising?
Yeah, I completely disagree with you on that one. I understand where you are coming from though.
So why wouldn’t people just vote themselves low property taxes locally if they are not benefitting from them? Or, if it has no impact on the school districts why don’t they just pick where they live based on low property taxes rather than on good schools?
Imagine you’re a bureaucrat with the power to put this in place. Think of solutions. I don’t want to be proposing ones and have you find loopholes in them; I think ths would be a major, but surmountable, challenge, and any halfway-decent bureaucrat could solve the problem.
For example, we probably would stop funding schools via property tax.
Daniel
Hmm, I am not sure that I have your faith that halfway-decent bureaucrats are in great supply.
Yeah, we’d probably see funding for schools dry up in general as more and more kids went to Private school.
Would you ever, in any circumstance, accept a conclusion which ascribes a black-white difference to innate average differences? Because if you would not, then it’s pointless to to ask for studies to find out what the reason is–you’ve already excluded the very reason that is the crux of the debate: Is it nature as much as nurture that accounts for the differences?
Say, for instance, someone showed that upper-income black students underscored poor white students by more than 60 SAT points…would your reaction be, “Oh; maybe it’s not malnutrition or poverty or crappy schools–but it must be teacher attitude or it must be black culture…” or would your reaction be, “Gee; maybe it is innate…”? (And that is, by the way, exactly what SAT score analysis shows.)
See, I think the target is constantly moved for those who believe that performance differences are innate to the underperforming populations. They will never satisfy those who, a priori, refuse to accept innate differences as a possible explanation:
It’s lack of money for education–wait minute; DC schools spend a fortune…
OK; it’s poverty at home–wait a minute; wealthy black kids underperform poor whites…
OK; it’s lack of role models–wait a minute; the most powerful person in the world is black and the President of the US is almost as powerful as she (Oprah) is
OK; teachers don’t think black kids can learn and don’t teach them properly–wait a minute; black students in identical college preparatory programs underscore white students on the Medical College Admission Test by a huge margin (and again on licensure tests at the end of Med School…
And on it goes.
If the game is simply to prove that variables can never be eliminated so it can never be shown that anything other than innate differences account for black-white differences, it’s already been won by those who keep adding variables. There is no end to them.
This is a really good post. What it doesn’t do is explain how these kids differ from poor rural white children. Appalachia has areas of grinding poverty where this same cycle keeps repeating itself generation after generation. I guess my question is, is this a black problem or a poverty problem?
I don’t know the answer to that. If we had data showing that upper-middle income black students had levels of achievement similar to white and asian students I would be inclined to put aside the color issue and hope for policies to address poverty. I don’t believe that is the case if I remember the data and I do think cultural attitudes are a significant part of the reason. I have no idea frankly what the answer is.
I do think that with the election of Obama we will see a lot more of this debate, and, somewhat ironically, a lot less support for affirmative action policies. I really can understand that viewpoint. With a ‘black’ president African Americans made a huge stride forward, but have also lost momentum in their case for more attention to African American underachievement.
Chief Pedant The problem with race as an indicator is that race isn’t easily quantifiable. What difference does Obama’s Luo ancestry make as compared to a west African slave descendant?
Africa is the most genetically diverse continent on the planet.
And others start taking things straight to exaggeration instead of staying on point.
What I want to know is why there should be the same percentage of blacks in whatever job as there are blacks in the population, without consideration of whether or not any given black person is the most qualified person for that job? How long are people going to believe that “helping” black people is just treating them like children?
And why is this always a black vs white thing? What about the other races in this country? Why don’t they deserve all this help and hand wringing - or need it?
I don’t think what exists - racism? Of course it does, and it always will at some level. What I am commenting on is the call for “helping” black people by making sure that they occupy whatever job you want to look at on the same percentage as they are in the general population, yet no mention is made of whether or not all of these helped folks would actually be qualified. And no mention is made of whether or not any other races need or deserve this help, it is always the blacks who are the oppressed and in need of help.
Why would you say that?
Here, even as more kids go to private schools, bonds for funding for schools are still passed.
What percentage are in Private School? Schools are funded based upon butts in the seats.
I believe that is federal funding, not local bonds.
No, it’s not money. You might find this interesting.
He wants to do away with local funding, that’s the point.