“ The teacher notified the school principal who suspended Isaiah for five days and called the El Paso County Sheriff’s Office to conduct a welfare check on the boy without calling his parents first.”
We’ll probably see push back from parents as they become aware of the state of education.
This pandemic is going to expose a lot of the education system to parents.
The hope would be the education system learn from this hybrid of state education + home schooling experiment and also for parents to get more involved and have a say —but likely there would be tremendous pushback from unions who would not want that.
Calling the sheriff’s department to physically go to the kid’s house to deal with a toy (unintentionally) shown to a bunch of 12 year olds in an online art class is a ludicrous abuse of trust.
Law enforcement house calls like this have literally gotten people shot over trivial misunderstandings. If I sent my kids to that school I’d be demanding the principal’s resignation.
Black conservatives like Walter Williams and Thomas Sowell have often decried that "affirmative action" is used by whites namely liberals to avoid fixing the issues with public education school systems that are in charge of so many black and brown kids.
THE ISSUES:
- Underfunding
- Disproportionate discipline
WHO IS TO BLAME?
- Conservative legislatures who push funding to rural areas over heavily populated liberal cities
- Democratic big city administrators beholden to teachers unions
- Liberal colleges who "focus on diversity at expense of all else"
WRITINGS:
- https://www.pilotonline.com/opinion/columns/vp-ed-column-wil...
- https://www.creators.com/read/walter-williams/07/18/college-...
First of all, not all kids are meant to go to college or university. Second, we’re teaching fewer useful skills that are needed to function in industry and society. We’re also teaching them dependence and less independence.
One of the main benefits of a liberal arts education is honing critical thinking. In a world awash in misinformation and conspiracy theories, I wish more people were taught to think independently, instead of just function.
Your statement here is self-contradictory, or perhaps you intended to write “means to an end” instead of “end in itself”? (The two are opposites.)
Here's a paper called "The Effects of Liberal Arts Experiences on Liberal Arts Outcomes" that seems to suggest otherwise. https://www.wabash.edu/news/docs/ASHE_LAE_proposal_2006.pdf
Interestingly, Black students in the United States are subject to disciplinary action at rates much higher than their white counterparts. These disciplinary actions put students at higher risk for negative life outcomes, including involvement in the criminal justice system.
QUOTE: "Black children do not misbehave more than their White peers, rather they are punished more. In fact, Black students are more likely than their White peers to receive a disciplinary action for a discretionary offense like talking back, violating a dress code, or being defiant. Black children are also more likely to be suspended out of school for their first offense."
SOURCES:
- https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2678799/
- https://www.pnas.org/content/116/17/8255
- https://www.marshall.usc.edu/sites/default/files/slittle/int...
- https://edtrust.org/the-equity-line/for-black-children-atten...
- http://kirwaninstitute.osu.edu/racial-disproportionality-in-...
- https://csgjusticecenter.org/youth/breaking-schools-rules-re...
- https://edtrust.org/the-equity-line/for-black-children-atten...
The Hoover Institution at Stanford has long supported the data-backed studies of conservative economists on disparities in schooling from Thomas Sowell, Mike Petrelli, Walter White and Chester E. Finn Jr among others.
The general conservative reaction to the mountain of data is that the studies are correct. The concern is in "what to do next?" or "Yes, the data is bad but it doesn't mean that racism lurks behind every tree."
A change in policy may result in even worse outcomes.
STUDIES & OPINION:
- https://fordhaminstitute.org/national/commentary/how-think-a...
- https://www.educationnext.org/disparate-impact-theory-bad-fi...
- https://fordhaminstitute.org/national/commentary/disparities...
The Stanford/Hoover Institute studies are obviously the contrarian view so yes "society" allows an opposing viewpoint...backed by data.
Last I checked, you're free to conclude whatever you wish even when lacking verifiable data unless your actual goal is to be liked by some particular segment of "society."
Can't speak for ed25519FUUU, but I certainly do not have anything against the above linked research. I think ed25519FUUU's point was that doing honest research has become tricky: if a researcher were to get a factually correct but politically incorrect result, could the researcher publish it without facing negative consequences?
It was not an argument against the linked research, it was just a tangential hypothetical.
This is NOT true.
This kind of misinformation is especially harmful to black kids in particular when you erase any real issues that they might be suffering from, and externalize it all as racism.
The fact that black kids are simply less likely to have parents that have free time to spend with them, and are less likely to have a nutritious breakfasts can go a long way to explaining their disciplinary and performance problems. Other factors are that parents are less trusting of social workers, and so learning problems go untreated longer. Black kids are less likely to get glasses, and less likely to get treated for things like dyslexia.
These are IMPORTANT issues, and by blaming any disparate outcomes on racism, you are completely erasing these very real problems that can be addressed, and getting in the way of actually helping.
It is egregious that when there are kids who have very visible health problems from malnutrition, there are these consultants who are blaming everything on their teachers "unconscious racism", and wanting to put their teachers through these laughable unconscious bias apparatuses.
> QUOTE: "Black children do not misbehave more than their White peers, rather they are punished more. In fact, Black students are more likely than their White peers to receive a disciplinary action for a discretionary offense like talking back, violating a dress code, or being defiant. Black children are also more likely to be suspended out of school for their first offense."
I don't think your sources are very relevant. your csgjusticecenter.org link is 404.
The very fact that black kids tend to come from a different socioeconomic background means that they will not have exactly the same needs and behaviors as other kids, so it is unreasonable to assume that they will be disciplined exactly the same.
The article attributes it to https://web.archive.org/web/20200202151016/https://csgjustic..., but the closest I was able to find in that report was:
To address any suggestions that children of color in Texas simply are more likely to break school rules than their white counterparts, researchers included in their analyses a comparison between profiles for students whose behavior prompted a discretionary action and students who received a mandatory removal from school.
The "comparison between profiles" part is rather vague, so I can't figure out what exactly it is they did. As for the results of that comparison, I could only find the following:
While refuting some potential explanations why African-American students were particularly likely to be disciplined for lower-level violations of a school code of conduct, this analysis does not pinpoint the reasons for it.
And it might be more apt to compare vs. Hispanic students, since they are the largest demographic in Texas, as the report notes: the student population, which is 49 percent Hispanic, 33 percent white, and 14 percent African American, reflects a diversity that increasingly typifies many school systems in the United States.
Or doing that yourself.
"A welfare check, also known as a wellness check, is when police stop by a person’s home to make sure they are okay."
https://thelawdictionary.org/article/what-is-a-police-welfar...
I can't imagine how bad it has gotten now
https://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=124043...
I'm not a parent, but IIRC a lot of K-12 schools provide laptops (Chromebooks usually?) or tablets to students. That excuse is going to be suspicious if the standard issue equipment has one.
Might be better to just be honest and cite this story and state that you don't trust the school/teachers to act responsibly in light of stuff like this. Maybe give them a chance to show how their policies and procedures would lead to a different outcome.