Separate but uniform; Black Students Lose Again

[Jahness]

Separate but uniform

Black Students Lose Again is the headline on John Tierney's Jan. 7 New York Times column on the Florida Supreme Court's decision to throw out vouchers for students attending low-performing schools.

Democrats once went to court to desegregate schools. But in Florida they've been fighting to kick black students out of integrated schools, and they've succeeded, thanks to the Democratic majority on the State Supreme Court.

Most voucher recipients are black students who've used the tuition aid to transfer from nearly all-minority schools to integrated private schools that offer a college prep education. Tierney cites Adrian Bushell, who chose a Catholic school that is 24 percent black instead of Miami Edison, a large local high school that's 94 percent black and 6 percent Hispanic.

His experience is typical. In other places that have tried vouchers, like Milwaukee and Cleveland, studies have shown that voucher recipients tend to move to less segregated schools.

Besides helping Adrian (who's got a 3.1 average and plans on college), the Florida program has also benefited students in public schools like Miami Edison. Because each voucher is worth less than what the public system spends per student, more money is left for each student in the public system. And studies have repeatedly shown that failing Florida schools facing voucher competition have raised their test scores more than schools not facing the voucher threat.

The court majority ruled the vouchers are unconstitutional because Florida is required to provide a "uniform" system of education.

While some minority advocacy groups, including the Urban League of Miami, supported vouchers, the NAACP sided with the teachers' unions, Tierney writes.

The group that once battled the segregationists' fiction of "separate but equal" schools signed on to the legal fiction that there's something admirably "uniform" about a public school monopoly that keeps students in Adrian's neighborhood trapped in a segregated, inferior school.

"Separate but uniform" is the Democrats' new education motto, Tierney writes.

Of course, there's nothing uniform about the quality of education provided in Florida's public schools.

Posted by joannej at January 7, 2006 05:05 PM
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If a foreign nation did to Blacks what the educrats have done, it would be reason enough to go to war. The tacit fiction that Blacks are ineducable flies in the face of real world experience, but it still seems the primary motivation of minority education.

Posted by: Walter E. Wallis [TypeKey Profile Page] at January 7, 2006 06:27 PM

And, of course, the democrats went to court to stop desegregation. That was why I stopped being a democrat.

Posted by: Walter E. Wallis [TypeKey Profile Page] at January 7, 2006 06:28 PM

When I was growing up in the 1950’s, the Dixiecrats were doing everything in their power to keep the schools in the South segregated. Now we have Dixiecrat judges doing the same thing. Plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose.

Posted by: Richard Nieporent [TypeKey Profile Page] at January 7, 2006 07:41 PM

The State of Florida maintains one of the most unequal school systems in the US, in terms of NAEP scores.

1996 NAEP 8th grade Math (Numbers and Operations) 90th-10th percentile score difference (Fla) is 90 points, 15th from the bottom out of 41 States. 75th-25th percentile score difference (Fla) is 48 points, 15th from the bottom out of 41 States.

1996 NAEP 8th grade Math (Algebra and Functions) 90th-10th percentile score difference is 92 points, 10th from the bottom. 75th-25th percentile score difference is 50, 9th-12th (tie) from the bottom.
The coefficient of correlation (delta, %20K+dist) is 0.53 Numbers and operations, 90th-10th. and 0.58, 75th-25th, wherewhere "%20K+dist" is the fraction of a State's total enrollment assigned to large districts .

The coefficient of correlation (delta, %20K+dist) is 0.45 Algebra and Functions, 90th-10th. is 0.45, and 75th-25th.

1992 NAEP 8th grade Math, Numbers and Operations, mean score by parents race and level of education. Children of white high school graduates mean score - children of black high school graduate parents score (Fla) is 31 points, 9th from the bottom out of 41.

1992 NAEP 8th grade Math, Algebra and Functions, mean score by parents race and level of education. Children of white high school graduates mean score - children of black high school graduate parents score (Fla) is 31 points, 9th from the bottom out of 41.

1992 NAEP 8th grade Math, Numbers and Operations, mean score by parents race and level of education. Children of college educated white parents mean score - children of black high school graduate parents score (Fla) is 48.9 points, 11th from the bottom out of 42.

1992 NAEP 8th grade Math, Algebra and Functions, mean score by parents race and level of education. Children of college educated white parents mean score - children of black high school graduate parents score (Fla) is 32 points, 27th from the bottom out of 42.

Across the US, the correlation (%20K+dist, score) is negative, "score" is NAEP Reading or Math score (mean, proficiency, or percentile). Performance falls as districts increase in size. The correlation is stronger (more negative) for black mean score than for white mean score. The district size effect harms black kids more than white kids.

Herman Brutsaert compared the performance of students in parochial schools to the performance of students in State schools in Belgium, which subsidizes a parent's choice of school. Parent SES is less strongly correlated with student performance in parochial schools than it is in State schools.
State schools exacerbate inequality.

Political control harms most the children of the least politically adept parents ("Well, duh!, as my students would put it).

Posted by: Malcolm Kirkpatrick [TypeKey Profile Page] at January 7, 2006 07:44 PM

There's really nothing surprising about the Democrats' stance if you look at it the right way.

From where do the Democrats draw their strongest support? From the the disadvantaged - mainly African-Americans. If they were to to become so self-sufficient that they no longer needed the Democrats and their largesse, the Democrats would be in serious trouble.

Thus it's in the Democrats' interest to maintain the status quo.

Posted by: ragnarok [TypeKey Profile Page] at January 7, 2006 07:51 PM

Malcolm,

There are NAEP results for 2002 and 2005. I appreciate citations -- but shouldn't they be current?

Posted by: Prof210 [TypeKey Profile Page] at January 8, 2006 05:20 AM

Year 2002 and 2005 NAEP results would be more data, no better and no worse.

I used the latest (1992) NAEP results when I started, in 1994. I also used 1990 results. When NCES made 1996 results available, I used those, but not always to answer the same questions. My interest was the effect of district size and age (start) of compulsory attendance on standardized test performance (smaller is better, later is better). The results didn't change much from year to year, so I did not see the point of using 2002 and 2005 results, especially since NCES made "by State" comparative data more difficult to gather. The Great Halloween Flood of 2004 didn't help, either. The Government Documents section of Hamilton Library lost most of its collection.

There is an interesting exception to the "smaller is better" generalization wrt district size: the correlation (%20K+dist,score) is slightly --positive-- when "score" is the mean score of children of college-educated white parents. Wretched K-12 policy doesn't hurt children of the elite; in the competiton for acceptance to college and grad school, children of privilege benefit from the institutional lobotomization of poor and minority kids.

Hawaii has the lowest mean score (1992 NAEP 8th grade math, Numbers and Operations), children of high school educated white parents, and the lowest mean score(1992 NAEP 8th grade math, Numbers and Operations), children of high school educated black parents. Hawaii has the fourth-lowest mean score (1992 NAEP 8th grade math, Algebra and Functions), children of high school educated white parents, and the lowest mean score(1992 NAEP 8th grade math, Algebra and Functions), children of high school educated black parents. Asians dominate the bureauctracy and legislature in Hawaii, so the generalization that schools serve best (or harm least) the children of politically adept parents has confirmation which excludes a white majority. Also, it is interesting that a large percentage of black kids in Hawaii schools are military dependents, so these are not children of poverty. Their parents are employed, and are educated.

NCES aggregates Asian and Pacific Islander scores and doesn't make student, school, or school district-level data available to unaffiliated researchers. The Hawaii DOE uses the Stanford Achievement Test to evaluate schools and makes school-level results public. The correlation (%Asians/%Pacific Islander enrollment, score) is positive. Understand: Hawaii's "Asians" are Americans. This isn't stereotypical Asian reverence for education. The Hawaii mean score (1992 NAEP 8th grade Math, top one-third of schools) is lower than three States' mean score (bottom one-third of schools). Even "Asians" get a wretched education in Hawaii, but not as bad as Polynesians.

Political control of school harms most the children of the least politically adept parents.

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[CreatorsCollege]

Why mince words? The STATE is and will always be the enemy of African liberation. The state is not interested in a population of conscious thinking people in general, Africans in particular.

The State and its support apparatus are enemies of Africans, where their first assault is on the mind of african youth in their indoctrination programs organized as schools.

We fail to call this situation for what it is, and suffer for it. Parents must stand up for their children, and home-school children where schools have failed, which means everwhere.

Education our youth is not our priority, and thus we pretend to care by blaming the state, when we know the state is not interested in an educated, functioning African youth.

This is circular logic and strategy. EMPTY THE SCHOOLS, period. Though that's too much liberaion for most. We're still under the illusory "authority of the state."

If African children and youth and their future worldnot are the focus/center of liberation strategy, our work is in vain, for what is the goal of liberation if not for the betterment and enjoyment of those who come after us?

Our priorities are missed placed, and we're worried about the wrong thing. The question is, how do Africans take ownership of the educational experience of African children and youth -WITHOUT the state's input or influence? Not -how can we get the state to do us a favor and properly educate our kids?

It is of no benefit to Africans to receive "equal" indoctrination, for yte kids are being indoctrinated into statist philosophy and ideology as well, the primary difference is it supports a world-view and construct that places them at the center and in control.

Peace!