Florida Passes Plan For Racially-Based Academic Goals

A quote from the article: "On Tuesday, the board passed a revised strategic plan that says that by 2018, it wants 90 percent of Asian students, 88 percent of white students, 81 percent of Hispanics and 74 percent of black students to be reading at or above grade level."

Putting aside for the moment the racial and political issues, and because of the technical meaning of "grade level", the described goal is impossible.

Let's say for the sake of simplicity that the size of the four named groups are equal in the student population (the outcome of this thought experiment doesn't depend on this assumption). Using that assumption, this means the school board wants (90+88+81+74) / 4 = 83.25% of the students to perform at or above grade level. But by definition, the statistical category "at or above grade level" cannot possibly be greater than 50%, and if it was, the meaning of "grade level" would change to accommodate that reality.

Unless the town is named Lake Wobegon (where all the students are famously above average), this school board needs to learn some mathematics and statistics along with laws against discrimination based on race, creed or color.