By Rich Kozlovich
The Truth Isn't "abhorrent", It's Just the Truth Part I
Are black students doing less well than other groups? Yes, and by a lot, and is it being caused by systemic racism? Yes! But not in the way its presented to the public by a corrupt media, corrupt teacher's unions, corrupt politicians, leftists and race hustlers, or for that matter possibly even in the way you think. Blacks are the source of this systemic racism, not whites.
So, I need to prove that, and we'll start with this piece, as the author points out:
"The William D. Kelley School has long been one of the most troubled in the district. The school’s student population is 94 percent black and 100 percent “economically disadvantaged.” Academically, it is one of the worst-performing schools in Pennsylvania. By sixth grade, only 3 percent of students are proficient in math, and 9 percent are proficient in reading. By graduation, only 13 percent of Kelley students will have achieved basic literacy." .....the teachers and administrators ....have gradually abandoned traditional pedagogy in favor of political radicalism."
Okay, that's one school filled with race hustlers, but that's an aberration, right? Wrong! The author goes on to say:
In recent years, the entire Philadelphia public school system has embraced the philosophy of “antiracism.”... denouncing the United States....white supremacy and capitalism” ..demanding “reparations for Black and Indigenous people,” and “uproot white supremacy and plant the seeds for a new world.”
The end result?
The fact is educating children is hard work but when one fails in their duties to actually teach, "political fantasy is a useful diversion".
The cartoon below deals with destructive effects of these ridiculous lockdown rules governors have imposed on the nation to children's' education. However, if you substituted "race baiting and social demagoguery" for Covid, the end result is the same, and this pattern is a nationwide disgrace.
All this leftist race baiting destroyed the education of America's black children, and as the Lieutenant Governor of North Carolina points out, it's destroying all of America's children's education, and it's the real pandemic impacting the nation, even the wealthy and the elite are embracing the insanity.
Robert Cherry October 7, 2020 article, Algebra for All Doesn’t Add Up, saying:
How the narrative about white supremacism in math results in delusional policy. The desire to expose underprivileged students to more rigorous math curricula is noble, but the idea that black and Latino students would be successful at algebra in the eighth grade at the same rate as the most successful school districts is delusional.
It ignores the profound deficits of a large share of students in the most impoverished districts. In 2013, 142 elementary schools registered chronic absenteeism rates of at least one-third of their students; only 18 of these schools achieved a Common Core pass rate of at least 20 percent on the math exam. And the absenteeism and exam scores weren’t any better in middle schools......that only 30 percent of black and Latino students in traditional public schools were math-proficient. Thus, a large share of black and Latino students has neither the skills nor the attendance record needed to be successful in an eighth-grade algebra course.
And so, going back to Part I, professors are expected to ignore their failures in college or be fired? Did I get that right? Do I understand that properly?
In a Walter Williams article he cited these statistics reported from An Education Week article:
- In the 2015-16 school year, "5.8% of the nation's 3.8 million teachers were physically attacked by a student."
- In the 2011-12 academic year, there were a record 209,800 primary- and secondary-school teachers who reported being physically attacked by a student.
- Nationally, an average of 1,175 teachers and staff were physically attacked, including being knocked out, each day of that school year.
- In the city of Baltimore, each school day in 2010, an average of four teachers and staff were assaulted.
- 18% of the nation's schools accounted for 75% of the reported incidents of violence, and 6.6% accounted for half of all reported incidents.
These are schools with predominantly black student populations.
So, is racism systemic in America's schools? Yes, and it all being practiced by blacks, and is a direct result of black culture in America.
Having said that, this lack of focus on real education didn't start yesterday, and public education isn't only impacting black America, this has been a multi-decades festering problem that has metastasized into a national cancer eating away at the very muscle and organ tissue of America.
"The only way for Americans to avoid being pulled down in a vortex of
the self-indulgent ignorance that characterizes our education
establishment is to cut loose from that establishment: to stop funding
it, and to create another, honest one." Angelo Codevilla
During Word War II, only 4 percent of some 18 million draftees were illiterate. Despite (or because?) of massive expenditures on education over the subsequent two decades, 27 percent of the Vietnam war’s draftees were judged functionally illiterate. Between 1955 and 1991, the inflation-adjusted average K-12 per-pupil expenditure in America rose 350 percent. In 1972, 2,817 students scored 750 or better on each half of the SAT. By 1994, only 1,438 made this score though the test had been made easier.
But affirmative action insanity has made it worse, especially for Asians. In order to get into Harvard Asian males have to score over 1380 out of 1400 on the PSAT. White males can score 70 points less and be admitted over Asian males, and for Asian females it's by 40 points. Blacks only have to score just above the national average of 1000. And they're expected to thrive in that kind of environment? They don't, and often scores are fixed to allow them to survive, not thrive, survive! That's a 380 point difference for blacks to be admitted over Asian men, and 340 over Asian women and 310 over white males.
And this is kind of academic corruption is pandemic throughout the nation.
Here's the pattern in the real world of public education as outlined by Lawrence M. Ludlow in his piece, Worse Than Ever: Government Schools After 35 Years:
Group identity and outrage culture dominate public schools. Children learn to pose as victims despite enjoying a standard of living unmatched in human history and by 95% of the world's current population. Instead of learning to function as unique beings with free choice and that the smallest minority is an individual facing a mob, they are swapping a legacy of individual rights for group identities that — unlike individuals — don't bleed and are manipulated by special interests to undercut genuine rights.
If you wonder why students at schools like the University of Michigan cannot tolerate free speech and need trigger warnings and safe spaces, look no farther than public schools. They are a political Trojan horse — a "free" government "gift" with plenty of strings attached.
- Latin was a dumping ground for students who already had failed another language; "picking up a few phrases" was the goal.
- Many teachers expected little but awarded high grades.
- Students were subjected to parental pressure to obtain good grades regardless of performance.
- A department head had been demoted for teaching at a pre-college level and refusing to lower his standards.
- Senior teachers were dropping out in disgust; younger teachers had no choice but to accept the situation.
- Under parental pressure, the principal was establishing a process to prevent students from having to take more than one test on the same day. College prep?
In short, the school embraced grade inflation, propelled by the following dynamic:
- Parents of high-performing students are "satisfied customers." Their kids study and bring home good grades, so they think they are getting their money's worth from high taxes. But they don't know that there is no correlation between per pupil spending and student performance. And they never complain.
- Parents of low-performing students also want good "results." They hear their children's tales of woe and complain constantly.
Subjected to this one-sided feedback, administrators tacitly urge teachers to lower standards, despite proclaiming the opposite in public. Like the Dodo in Lewis Carroll's Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, "everybody has won, and all must have prizes."
Tomorrow I will expand on this subject in Part III, in the meanwhile you may wish to peruse these pieces, Aztec worship chants now proposed for California public schools., and, Most American Schools Are Damaging Your Child, and the ask ourselves: How did we lose our minds?
