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The California High School Exit Exam statistics indicate some of the
problems inherent in education today.
First, the facts in short form, as taken from an article in the Los Angeles
Times:
20% of all seniors in high school are currently failing either the math or
English exit exam in California high schools
The math exam is written to 8th grade standards
The English exam is written to 9th and 10th grade standards
Caucasians (excluding Latinos) pass at a 90% rate
Asians pass at an 89% rate
Latinos pass at a 68% rate
Blacks pass at a 63% rate
Special Education students pass at a 35% rate
Passing means slightly more than 50% correct answers
The exam requirement has been delayed 2 years already because of concerns
about graduation rates
Hemphill's analysis of the entire article: Liberal groups are contesting the
exit exams as biased, unfair, and containing too may calories from saturated
fat. They recommend giving everyone a diploma if a student can pass the "fogged
mirror" test – because that would be “fair.”
Part of the problem in California with minority education is certainly not the
fault of minorities.
Seventeen years ago each California school district was ordered by law (Prop.
98) to report teacher’s salaries by school – but the compliance has been near
nil and school DISTRICTS continued to report AVERAGES by district. Consequently,
no one knows how much each individual school pays in teacher salaries, or how
much is spent per student in each individual school. Consequently, most school
districts have been able to hide the low per-teacher spending in predominately
minority schools!
The teachers, meanwhile, operate within their unions on a “post and bid” basis –
so teachers with seniority can bid their way out of predominately minority
schools! And they do! Predominately minority schools in California are populated
with new teachers who do not have experience, and that fact is hidden from the
public by the school district’s averaging of salaries.
The “post and bid” system is the same awful system that gives us the “Gray Hair
Brigade” on American Airlines flights enroute to Hawaii. Obviously, the former
stewardesses (now flight attendants) get to bid on the flight schedule…and you
will never see a comely lass on a Hawaii flight. Part of the common holdup on
in-flight service is the time taken to open flight attendant's Social Security
checks!
So, the affluent California schools get all the experienced teachers, and the
minority schools get the young and the restless. Minority students are thereby
being shortchanged by the teacher’s unions!
That is not the ONLY problem, but it is one that the very liberal teacher’s
unions can address IF they are as concerned about minority scores as they
profess.
Last week the Goveranator signed SB-687 which will again address the reporting
of teacher’s salaries by school rather than by district. Perhaps two laws can do
what one could not.
Meanwhile, the Harvard University Project on Civil Rights recently announced
that California schools fool the public by reporting the dropout rate of
minority students using ONLY the results of senior year dropouts. When minority
students who enter high school are compared with those who finish, the results
are abysmal – the actual dropout rate among blacks, as determined by Harvard, is
50.2%!
The Harvard Civil Rights Project began looking at California minority student’s
dropout rates four years ago because they claim that the California minority
dropout rate is a civil rights issue.
It is that, of course, but it is also a poverty issue, and a crime issue, and it
is a fairness issue.
The poor we saw in the vivid video from New Orleans were primarily minorities,
and they were primarily poor because they lacked education. Somehow, this nation
must solve the education/poverty problem, and we will not solve it until we
admit that it is a problem, and we stop covering up the numbers.
We can debate the reasons for the numbers, but the numbers are not debatable.
Once we acknowledge the problem, we can determine what can be done to solve the
problem.
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