"Soft bigotry..."

The 'soft bigotry of low expectations' is a phrase I first heard in the writings of Thomas Sowell. It was later picked up by a Bush speechwriter and used when talking about NCLB. This article, from Texas no less, typifies the phrase when talking about test scores:

At Jane Long Middle School in Bryan, a fire alarm went off during the social studies TAKS exam. Bryan officials argued that the alarm had distracted the school's black students, whose scores had fallen short of the acceptable bar.

I'd love to sit in on the appeals hearing, if only to ask why the alarm distracted only black students.

Don't even get me started on schools and farking testing and bueracracy. I'm in the middle of the yearly evaluations of my son's IEP right now and I want to spit nails. The only saving grace to the whole thing is this is probably going to be the last time because he should graduate this year (knock on something wood-like).

It's not just Texas. Several years ago her elementary school started the process to assign my younger daughter to Special Ed because she was behind in math. We'd just moved into the state and the requirements were different and all the kids were struggling a bit to catch up. They tried to force her to be diagnosed ADD to get her scores out of the pool. There three or four kids they tried to pull that on, but the special ed program caught them and nailed them to the wall for it. I haven't heard anything about something like that from them since. All that happened was she did some extra math tutoring with a volunteer during lunch for three months and caught up.

This is not an example of "soft bigotry", it's an example of what happens when test scores become your sole source of funding. If it were Alaska and Eskimaux, they'd be doing the same thing in that situation, grasping at straws to keep the money flowing.

Soft bigotry occurred in DC when they simply shut down low-performing schools, scattering the population among better schools, on the theory that they just could not be improved.

This example of idiocy brought to you by No Child Left Behind and the Bush Administration.

From my time living in a predominantly African-American ghetto (south side of Chicago), I can say that living in that environment -- which is certainly not synonymous with any level of skin pigmentation, mind you -- you become desensitized to alarms pretty quickly.

That, or you never sleep for any significant stretch of time.

Edit: Momgamer, they did that to my brother, too. He's about to graduate early with honors from UW-Madison.

This is not an example of "soft bigotry", it's an example of what happens when test scores become your sole source of funding.

The antecdotes taken as a whole are examples of what can happen when test scores are the source of funding. Saying that black students, and only black students, are incapable of taking tests because of a fire alarm sounds like differering expectations.

I don't know JohnnyMoJo, the way I read the article was that they were appeal the scores of only the black students because they were the ones who failed. Of course the investigating body then found:

TEA officials denied the claim, pointing out that the majority of students had performed better in social studies than the year before. "This indicates the inability to focus was not widespread," Dr. Neeley wrote.

To me it sounds more like a school grasping at whatever straws it can to try and keep the money. And not about differing expectations.

JohnnyMoJo wrote:

The 'soft bigotry of low expectations' is a phrase I first heard in the writings of Thomas Sowell. It was later picked up by a Bush speechwriter and used when talking about NCLB. This article, from Texas no less, typifies the phrase when talking about test scores:
Quote:
At Jane Long Middle School in Bryan, a fire alarm went off during the social studies TAKS exam. Bryan officials argued that the alarm had distracted the school's black students, whose scores had fallen short of the acceptable bar.

I'd love to sit in on the appeals hearing, if only to ask why the alarm distracted only black students.

So where did you run across this little nugget anyway. That was truly reaching in order to make a point. Who took the time to link to this besides you?

So where did you run across this little nugget anyway. That was truly reaching in order to make a point. Who took the time to link to this besides you?

I originally saw it in an editorial in the WSJ. They have a much bigger research budget than I do.

They need a huge research budget to dig out the truly obscure stuff they need to make their points. If it were obviously happening all over, they could just throw an intern at it and get hundreds of examples.

Robear wrote:

They need a huge research budget to dig out the truly obscure stuff they need to make their points. If it were obviously happening all over, they could just throw an intern at it and get hundreds of examples.

I'm not sure if that confuses the job descriptions of "journalist" and "news aggregator." Then again, with the amount of Fark jokes that end up in the national news, maybe that confusion was already there.

I'll go back and find a source if you want, but I do remember a study being done revealing that minority students performed worse on exams that began with a demographics questions (Are you a)Caucasion b)African-American c)Hispanic etc). The theory was that while a white student would have no problem with it, other students were being reminded on a subconcious level that their test scores reflected on their race as a whole and not just themselves, and the added pressure caused them to underachieve on the tests.

This example was simply someone grasping at straws. Unfortunately, it also is indicative of an overall mentality of "let's find an excuse why the black students are preforming poorly," or even worse, "their scores shouldn't affect the white kids scores because the white kids can concentrate better." I don't think it's the example of soft bigotry JMJ was looking for, but that's what I see when I look at it.

Jolly Bill wrote:

I'll go back and find a source if you want, but I do remember a study being done revealing that minority students performed worse on exams that began with a demographics questions (Are you a)Caucasion b)African-American c)Hispanic etc). The theory was that while a white student would have no problem with it, other students were being reminded on a subconcious level that their test scores reflected on their race as a whole and not just themselves, and the added pressure caused them to underachieve on the tests.

This example was simply someone grasping at straws. Unfortunately, it also is indicative of an overall mentality of "let's find an excuse why the black students are preforming poorly," or even worse, "their scores shouldn't affect the white kids scores because the white kids can concentrate better." I don't think it's the example of soft bigotry JMJ was looking for, but that's what I see when I look at it.

I've heard of that study, but when I learned about it in a psych survey back in college, they said it was because the students' subconscious minds were reminded of stereotypes (such as girls are bad at math, Asians are good at math, other minorities underperform, etc) and because of that, they tended to get scores more reflective of the stereotype than if there was nothing to trigger the idea of the stereotype.

Although they seem to have kind of botched it, I always liked the French principle that the government isn't allowed to make any distinctions at all based on race, religion, etc. Functionally, that means laws and government institutions (e.g., schools) are not allowed to be even cognizant of skin color. It's not perfect in practice, but I like the idea.

'soft bigotry of low expectations'

Lowest common denominator, and parental disinterest are killing our school system across the board, regardless of race.

fangblackbone wrote:

Lowest common denominator, and parental disinterest are killing our school system across the board, regardless of race.

You also forgot the lovely way media and Hollywood treat people who like school, do well in it, are well educated, ect... But lets not get too off topic.

So it's parental disinterest and a lack of positive role models? I can dig that. But, so as not to disappoint Johnny, let's get this back on the racism track.

Say it's proven that parental interest in a child's schooling is a greater factor in their advancement than any other factor (class size, school budget, educator training, etc). Should the government take steps to correct this? How can you affect such a change? Also, since the demographics could point towards certain minorities as 'at fault' here (either through low achievement in school or some measure of parental interest), how should the government approach handling this with minorities in mind?