When modern teachers can't teach, and they are threatened with being paid based on their ability to successfully educate students, the obvious "correction" is to make sure nobody is properly educated and no students are allowed to succeed or demonstrate merit.

> "equity" -- equal outcome instead
> of equal opportunity.

Like all lefty scams, this appears first as a corruption of language.

There are magnet, charter, and other schools, including church-based schools, that choose students by lottery or are almost entirely minority that get the job done with high % graduation, performance at or above grade level, etc. Teacher unions do everything they can to kill these schools.
The bigotry here is that the teacher unions and their allies assume that blacks simply can't do the school work.
There are other countries where certain minorities get a special carve-out of jobs. This causes an attitude of entitlement on their part and resentment from everyone else.
As Amy Wax famously pointed out, if blacks were to finish school (and do homework while in school), get married and stay married, stay out of gangs and out of jail, the earnings difference would be pretty small. Progs want to normalize gang behavior and the thug life and still expect earnings to be equal. In my town there are plenty of my neighbors who are immigrants (India, Korea, China, Iran, etc) and minorities who work hard, cut their grass, and sit with their kids to do homework. There is nothing racist about working hard. Ask yourself why and how immigrants from Africa and the caribbean can make more than whites. Sure is an incompetent white supremacy that allows that, eh?
Of course there are still pockets of crazy white cops or skinheads, but my black friends report an entire life spent without encountering them. Most of that stuff is in the past and if it is in your town you should move.

Unlike most of this board, I do think we should be addressing inequality.At the education level. We need to focus on WHY the test scores are lower.

If indeed it is because welfare is causing broken homes we need to look at that.

If it is because there's a parenting problem we need to address that.

If it's lack of skilled teachers or over crowded classrooms we need to address that.

We needto get to theroot cause. College is too late.

Really, Nicole? You think the ppl here don’t care what happens to black ppl, or that they are suffering? Just bc we are not down with semantically overloaded phrases like BLM doesn’t mean we don’t care. I would love to see the black community thriving.

If you really are interested in answers to your questions, Heather McDonald has done the research and she explains why we don’t have “equality of outcome” in her most recent piece for City Journal:

https://www.city-journal.org/achievement-gap-explains-demographic-disparities

“Unlike most of this board, I do think we should be addressing inequality.At the education level. We need to focus on WHY the test scores are lower.”

We know why, but the answer is not a politically correct one. And it isn’t something that can be fixed through tinkering with the pedagogy.

“If it is because there's a parenting problem we need to address that.”

That one gets my vote. In contrast, I think the success of Asians in school is due to the lack of parenting problems. And, more than just the lack of problems. Also, due to parental demands and expectations.

We needto get to theroot cause. College is too late. ~ NicoleK at December 13, 2020 9:03 AM

I think we've all been saying that the problem needs to be addressed long before the college years; long before the high school years.

The debate here is whether primary education, parenting, culture, or environment are the avenue on which a solution should be routed.

I'm not saying that people don't care, Sheep mom, I'm saying it has often been said on this board that it isn't the government's job to fix problems, and I disagree.

If the problem is a parenting culture problem, steps can be taken to fix that.

I'm saying it has often been said on this board that it isn't the government's job to fix problems, and I disagree. ~ NicoleK at December 13, 2020 11:46 AM

I'd argue that it was the government which got us into this problem with the "War on Poverty" welfare programs that destroyed the nuclear black family.

Nicole, what do you see as some of those steps?

You need to say what you think should actually be done, NicoleK. As Conan points out well intentioned welfare programs destroyed the nuclear family. But it is both black and white now. I would like at least to see the government kicking people down like that less. That the boots doing the kicking come with rainbow colors and nice bows doesn't do much for me.

The only equal outcome they can promise & deliver on is being equally miserable.

It's good to be an elite, or at least in the nomenklatura.

If the problem is a parenting culture problem, steps can be taken to fix that.

What steps would those be? have government come into people's home and "insure" they raise their children "correctly"?

As Breitbart said, "politics is downstream of culture". Government is downstream of politics. Government is unable to fix culture.

It's been tried. It's always failed, whether that be Prohibition, music lyrics, or "violent" video games.

We know why, but the answer is not a politically correct one. And it isn’t something that can be fixed through tinkering with the pedagogy.
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Isab at December 13, 2020 11:00 AM

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> If the problem is a parenting
> culture problem, steps can be
> taken to fix that.

"Parenting," i.e. environment, causes a lot of damage, even it it's not "the problem."

But you're showing a lot more leg than you probably intend to show: A willingness to send government into people's homes to fuck with their child-rearing has made things worse, not better, across my lifetime and beyond.

An increasing cohort of people increasingly inadequate for living reasonably well in America is a useful prospect for progressives.

An increasing cohort of people increasingly inadequate for living reasonably well in America is a useful prospect for progressives.

Don't get your boxers bunched, no one is talking about going into people's homes.

So the concrete steps.

I would say start with research. Lots of it. Analyzing what we already have. It's been mentioned above that welfare caused the disintegration of the nuclear family. Can that statement be verified by research? If so, how do we change that without people going hungry? Do we gradually wean them off benefits, do we offer a wedding bonus to people who get married? A couple pilot programs would need to happen so we could see what works and what doesn't.

If we find it is a parenting issue, maybe parenting classes need to be offered for free to all expectant parents on welfare, or whose parents are on welfare. Make it a requirement of getting aid for the kid. Have a control group that doesn't get the classes. Then we see if the people who took classes have better results than those who didn't.

The problem is I feel like there's two ideologies that dominate the discourse, "We need to throw lots of money at programs and if they don't work let's add more" or "It isn't the government's business to solve these problems at all, sad as they are".

How about analyzing which work and doing that. I'm all for a hands off approach if we can prove it gets the best results. Or a more hands on if it is needed. But we need to analyze everything first. And get beyond the ideology that either hands on or hands off is the right way no matter what. We should be doing what -works-.

Someone upthread mentioned we can't name the problem because of political correctness... this is a huge problem. We need to be able to identify the source of the problem, state it, and then look for solutions. At the same time acknowledging some people are just going to be racist. That's why we need data to cite, so people don't just spout opinions like Group X is Stoooopid, or People are just Raaaaaaaacist.

NikoleK everything you suggest has already been tried

Remember the massive early educational program called head start?

Yea. No objective evidence at all that the kids in it do any better after about four years. Early small gains are wiped out over the long run. Massive amounts of tax money spent though,
Every one of these programs requires a large bureaucracy behind it that never goes away. They just pile any other program on top.

"I would say start with research. Lots of it." ~NicoleK

Ok. Done. Done decades ago in fact.

"It's been mentioned above that welfare caused the disintegration of the nuclear family. Can that statement be verified by research?"

Yes. At least as much as any social science thing can.

"If so, how do we change that without people going hungry? Do we gradually wean them off benefits, do we offer a wedding bonus to people who get married?"

Yes, you gradually reduce benefits. The wedding bonus thing has been tried and fails spectacularly. As for pilot programs, those have been done over and over again.

"If we find it is a parenting issue, maybe parenting classes need to be offered for free to all expectant parents on welfare, or whose parents are on welfare."

This has been tried too. And for more than just parenting. All evidence shows it hurts more people than it helps. This is best documented with job retraining where people who get such classes from the government take longer to find a job and make less money than those never offered the classes.

The problems seems to come down to two issues.
1) Lack of information
2) Lack of motivation

For issue one, no one knows what you need better than you. They may be smarter than you. They may be better educated than you. Wealthier, cuter, braver, ... all of it you will lose out to someone. But for all of that you know your life better than anyone else. Someone sitting in an office 1000 miles away doesn't know about your passion for sewing, or your gift for crossword puzzles, or whatever else. So they can't find the best job for you. Or the best house. Nor spouse, or even dinner.

Oddly enough for all your flaws you tend to make the best decisions for your life.

Issue two is similarly difficult. When you are spending your money you tend to focus and pay attention. Both when you spend it on you and on others. Even when you spend someone else's money on you a fair number of people do a good job of it. But when you spend someone else's money on yet another person? Well, most people do a really crummy job of it. Just look at the money US states lost to obvious fraud in covid welfare schemes. Or look at student loans in the US. It isn't just government that struggles with this issue. You can find example in business and especially charities quite easily.

Hence the government should do less crowd.

As an addendum since I tend to do the dollars and cents stuff, non-geriatric welfare is only a moderate issue for the US federal government's budget. Geriatric welfare (ss medicare etc) is over 47% of revenues. Welfare spending for the non-elderly is around 20% of revenues with half of that being healthcare spending. So the bulk expense is geriatric care. Non-welfare and non-defense spending is actually under 18% of federal revenues.

So quite a few pie in the sky programs are quite affordable. The main issue is are they functional.

A fun bit on medicaid, with the passage of Obamacare there was significant effort put to enroll more people in the program. This appears to have accounted for most of the people who 'got insurance'. It also appears to be responsible for the reduction in the average lifespan of Americans post 2014.

"Yea. No objective evidence at all that the kids in it do any better after about four years." ~Isab

I'd say that is a poor way to present that data, Isab. While in the head start program kids of all colors and genders do better. It is when they are reintroduced to the general school population you see a reversion to the mean of the school. And yes after four years all gains have been wiped out.

The obvious solution is to never exit the program. Which is what 'honors' classes are in many schools. You exit the program when you exit the school system.

Though I won't argue with you on the funding. Plenty of places have shown you can get the same gains for a fraction of the cost head start incurred.

> If the problem is a parenting
> culture problem, steps can be
> taken to fix that.

> no one is talking about going
> into people's homes.

Riiiiiiiigggggghhhhhhhtttt

> I would say start with
> research. Lots of it.

It's just so oblivious... As if cities full of careerists hadn't built fat lives of exploitation of your sincerity.

"Lot's of it"

Who's cars? Where'd they come from?

“The obvious solution is to never exit the program. Which is what 'honors' classes are in many schools. You exit the program when you exit the school system.”

What precisely would this look like in the real world? Kids raised in a kibbutz?
.

I think the lesson here is early gains don’t translate into statistically better outcomes.

My mother saw this time and time again. She taught piano. For your average student, it made no difference if they started piano at six or at ten. By the time the kids were twelve the one who started later learned everything and sometimes more than the one who had four years head start.

It looks like your standard honors track program at schools all over the nation.

But yes there is no magic front loading solution. Head start clearly showed putting a lot of effort into the beginning and then stopping did nothing. Back loading works better. Consistent effort still beats both.

"Who's cars? Where'd they come from?"

Probably Crid. He just flubbed where to put the magic password.

Yes, but my ego's too fragile to take the hit. I use an Autohotkey macro for Amy's pages, and it failed me… Horribly. The humiliation, it punishes and burns… If it weren't freeware, I'd sue.