Do not make the mistake of thinking that because my conclusion is the same as another person's that my reasoning is the same
On the front page because the comments are configured to strip out table, tr and td tags.
Did you read "Different colored hoops to jump through"? Here's a select quote:
Manzanita and Golden Gate both soared about 50 points this year on California's Academic Performance Index. Both hover around 614 on the 1,000– point index. And test scores rose higher than expected at both. The schools are nearly twins in academic performance.…Golden Gate, with two subgroups –– black and low–income students –– met all of its federally required academic goals this year.
Manzanita, with five subgroups –– English learners and black, Asian American, Latino and low–income students –– did not, though it came close. Had six more black students scored at the "proficient" level in math, Manzanita would not have to accept state help as part of a federally mandated program for underperformers.
I thought I'd give some context on the two schools in the article I linked to.
First Golden Gate Elementary, the school deemed acceptable by NCLB standards:
| Ethnicity | # | % |
| African American | 210 | 90.1 |
| Asian | 9 | 3.9 |
| Caucasian | 2 | 0.9 |
| Filipino | 1 | 0.4 |
| Hispanic | 7 | 3.0 |
| Pacific Islander | 4 | 1.7 |
| Total | 233 | 100 |
Now Manzanita Elementary which was deemed to have come up short:
| Ethnicity | # | % |
| African American | 304 | 40.8 |
| Asian | 193 | 25.9 |
| Caucasian | 5 | 0.7 | < /tr>
| Filipino | 2 | 0.3 |
| Hispanic | 227 | 30.5 |
| Native American | 2 | 0.3 |
| Pacific Islander | 5 | 0.7 |
| Other | 7 | 0.9 |
| Total | 745 | 100 |
Now, since Manzanita has 304 Black students, those six students that, had they scored at the "proficient" level in math, would have brought the school rating up to an acceptable level, represents 2 per cent of the Black students in the school.
Two percent.
And we don't know if they were all in the same grade or what. Nor do we know by how much these students missed the mark. So it's hard to say a whole lot about the situation based on the article. I had to go to the Oakland Unified School District's official web page to say this much.
What can notbe said is that the school has failed Black students because of this ill–defined two percent. Which is fortunate, since that's not what the article was about.
Posted by P6 at December 23, 2003 05:15 PM | Trackback URL: http://www.prometheus6.org/mt/mt-tb.cgi/2620Can't read the tables. Black text on an almost black background.
Even if they aren't failing black students (and they are failing to educate the 6+ black students in question) the original assertion still holds; how is it bad that the school is getting more funding?
It's bad because it's a misallocation of a limited resource (money).