Greenwich Dems: “make every day a field trip for the Riverside elite.”
Greenwich: Black and Hispanic students rack up dismal test scores.
Greenwich Hispanic and black students’ 2013 state standardized test scores trailed their white and Asian peers’ results by wide margins, a trend highlighted by foundering performances among Hispanic pupils at the school district’s two racially unbalanced schools.
In every grade and in each of the four subjects tested by the Connecticut Mastery Test, the percentage of black and Hispanic pupils reaching the goal level fell short of rates for white and Asian pupils. Hispanic pupils also lagged well behind Asian and white students in goal-level scores on the Connecticut Academic Performance Test given to 10th-graders. Black students’ CAPT results were not available because the state Department of Education does not list score data for testing groups of fewer than 20 pupils.
Stark gaps differentiated white and Asian students’ scores from those for blacks and Hispanics in many cases, including the following examples:
In third-grade math, about 89 percent of Asian students and 83 percent of white students reached the goal-level, compared to 62 percent for Hispanic pupils and 38 percent for black students.
In fifth-grade reading, 87 percent of white and Asian pupils hit the goal range, compared to 66 percent for Hispanic pupils and 52 percent for black students.
In seventh-grade writing, 87 percent of Asian students and 84 percent of white students attained goal-level marks, compared to 53 percent for Hispanic pupils and 37 percent for black students.
In CAPT science, 79 percent of white students and 64 percent of Asian pupils scored in the goal range, compared to 44 percent for Hispanic students.
Minority students — including black, Hispanic, Asian and multiracial pupils — make up about one-third of the district’s population. At Hamilton Avenue and New Lebanon, the district’s two racially unbalanced schools, minority pupils account for about 70 percent of the populations.
We know Greenwich Time’s proposed solution to this: they hint at it twice in just the first few paragraphs of their editorial, but are other town Democrats on board? We already spend far more money on these schools than the rest, what’s next? Democrat School Board appointee Ramadamadingdong Tamm made herself unavailable for comment.
For What It's Worth 
There’s a really simple progressive solution to this problem. Take the highest grades earned from the 5 best performing AA and 5 best performing Hispanic students, get the mean store of all ten students and then forbid any student in the entire Greenwich School District from getting a higher grade than that.
Obama, Eric, Al and Jesse would all certainly approve of that solution.
I think these kids need new genes. Maybe they can trade with the russians.
I’d want to know how many of those poor illiterates are participating in the tutoring programs and summer school available to them. If the answer is “not many”, and I’m guessing it is, then I’d look to their parents for the solution.
Eternal struggle
Nature………..or Nuture
Word of God……..or evolution
In a nutshell, this article shows why any attempt to force white and asian kids who are currently in other elementary schools to go to New Lebanon or Hamilton Avenue will create great anger, move kids to private and home schooling, and fail to solve the achievement gap problem: even the white kids at these schools perform well below state averages, let alone district averages. NO parent of any race who cares about his or her child’s education would willingly take a child of average or above average intelligence out of a school where the achievement level of the kids is very high – and the level of instruction and the peer pressure reinforce the high performance – and move them into a school where the performance was abysmally lower. If for no other reasons than the other students would not be as accomplished or motivated, and the instruction would have to be (and ought to be) pitched to the far lower level of the kids.
It’s politically incorrect in the extreme to say it, but there really are average differences in cognitive ability between racial groups, even correcting for socioeconomic status. Additionally, the single greatest predictor of school achievement, as has been well documented at least since the ’70s – see Coons, Clune and Sugarman’s Private Wealth and Public Education and many books and studies since – that parental socioeconomic status is the single most accurate predictor of student achievement. Kids from comfortable to well-to-do families, whose parents are well-educated and well-spoken, in whose homes are books, music, often the high culture, and whose parents (and often European nannies) engage with the children and encourage their mental and physical development, are going on average to do better. No one should be surprised at this.
Maybe we’d be better off identifying the smaller number of kids from lower socioeconomic (and sometimes minority) backgrounds who aare capable of achieving at the same level as the kids in Riverside (etc.) and get those kids into schools where they will have instruction geared to their ability and peers who push them academically rather than hold them back.
CR,
I only disagree, sir, with the notion that parental socioeconomic status is the driver of the bus. I believe it is driven by the parent(s) view that education is the foundation for all that follows. A singular focus and dedication to this ideal (not athletics or popularity) can overcome a lack of discretionary income. I know this from personal experience, given that I was not from a “comfortable” or “well-to do” family. My parents sacrificed a lot in the day to put all their 6 kids through parochial school, this at a time when NYC was busing kids all over the place to achieve racial balance (late 1960’s-1970’s). Also, look at the achievements of the Asian students, not here in Greenwich (where they may be affluent) but in NYC where they dominate in Bronx Sci or Stuy HS.Those kids parents are not all PhD’s. Many barely grasp the English language but are determined to see their kids make it.
Attitude matters. I guess I am old fashioned to thank that attitude and perseverance can overcome a rather thin bank account.
There’s actually no disagreement, though you may not be familiar with the academic research. When you look at any family and the children in it, it’s quite true that parental attitude is as important, or more important, than actual parental socioeconomic status. When you aggregate over large groups of students, however, socioeconomic status statistically is the best predictor. In most cases, of course, socioeconomic status is probably as much a proxy for parental attitude and parental intelligence as anything else. Where there are strong cultural factors in favor of achievement and education and advancement – as Asians demonstrate today and as Jews have demonstrated throughout the 20th century and into the 21st – achievement may well reflect those factors more than socioeconomic status. And, of course, it works the other way, too. Sadly, for high socioeconomic status black kids, the achievement gap remains with white averages (let alone whites of similarly high socioeconomic status), though it is very slightly less.
RAP culture, the Kardashians as role models and admiration of and adherence to the idiocracy of the SCoaMF and his merry band of nitwits is the perfect recipe for cultural and socio-economic decline.
I meant to add that broad statistical measures can only test things that are measurable. Socioeconomic status is directly measurable in a way that parental attitudes are not. Socioeconomic status is really a proxy for a whole lot of things, including especially the two I mentioned.
Asian kids are outperforming white kids by a significant margin. There must be some advantage that our schools are giving these Asian kids that they are not giving the White kids. It can’t possibly be that theae kids are working harder or have more support at home. We need to investigate and fix this problem so that we are all performing at the same level. This should not be about equal opportunity but equality for all. Fairness and equality is what I say. Maybe we should mandate that the Asian kids go to school four days a week to bring down the test scores.
I know you’re being sarcastic, but they’ll probably bus these bright kids first, to average things out, of course.
They need to bus in the smart kids so that the lazy ones can copy their test answers from over their shoulder
Clearly the teachers need more training, they should not be discriminating against right and wrong answers, no matter what the student answers they should all get the same result!
Unless they write 2+2=4, every good progressive knows that is wrong
Poor test grades of America’s b;ack students couldn’t possibly have anything to do with three generations of welfare or paying women to have children out of wedlock. Children being born out of wedlock has increased four-fold since early seventies. When you subsidize something you get more of it.
Yesterday, as an added bonus to the prog feeding frenzy, it was announced that 57,000 kids will be unable to attend the Head Start program this fall (fake sequester alert). No mention that Head Start stinks, that it has no proven track record for making kids do better once they hit elementary school, but the panic from the press (envision Diane Sawyer in her best earnest voice!) was palatable.
I’m with Once on this. Generations of black children with mothers who are walking illiterates and with fathers who are absent. It can’t make for a good learning environment for any child, no matter how badly he/she wants to learn.
Head Start is a very sad story – begun with exactly the right intentions, to give kids from deprived backgrounds (mostly, but not all by any means, minority) some of the same experiences middle and upper middle class kids got in nursery school. My mother, who was director of a highly regarded nursery school and later director of a child care center used as a demonstration/model in California, spent almost a decade running Head Start programs in the Summers in the mid-’60s and early ’70s. Used her regular nursery school teachers and interns from top early childhood programs like Bank Street in NYC. She was initially encouraged that the kids made good gains in the program, but over several years she became very disillusioned because the gains did not stick as the kids got into school (and she was able to follow their progress).
It failed mostly because parents use Head Start as free babysitting and childcare, not really a place for learning and growing. Plus, no matter how good Head Start teachers can be, it goes back to what Once said- if the environment at home says learning is for nerds, there’s little hope what they might learn stays.
Some may use it as free babysitting and childcare, but that was not what my Mother saw: maximum possible parental involvement was something she stressed (and later required if kids were going to stay in the child care centers she ran). The problem was the parents just didn’t/couldn’t sustain any effort and the kids’ peer environment relentlessly dragged them down. Most of the parents she saw (more Mexican/South American than black – this was California) wanted to do better and wanted better for the kids. But, it just didn’t happen.
Cato: I meant that most use it as free babysitting and childcare TODAY, not when your mother was involved. Back then it was thought to be an excellent opportunity. But like many things that start with good intentions, those roads became paved with free ObamaPhones and a shitload of welfare recipients.
Mothers around here help with homework. Fathers do not. On the off chance that they want to try and “help” that’s when the kid runs away in tears.
So not so sure about your “fathers who are absent” statement.
I posted this elsewhere, but it’s more appropriate here. Sorry for the duplication:
So the GT had an article today about the significant gap in test score between minorities and majorities, pointing particularly to the two “unbalanced” schools in town.
Is anyone here familiar with scores or where they can be found for the State? Specifically, does anybody know whether the “gap” is less wide in “balanced” schools than in “unbalanced” schools?
dogwalker:
The link for the CMT scores is:
http://solutions1.emetric.net/cmtpublic/Index.aspx
I haven’t had to time to delve into all the data, but in looking at the third grade date for Math scores, it does allow for the analysis of the questions you ask. Also, this is only for “Hisp/Lat or any race” as again the “Black or African American” sub group has <20 at each individual school. Sub-group titles are from the CT report.
3rd Grade Math
Hispanic population
Balanced Schools: 66 students – 74.3% goal or advanced
Hamilton Ave: 28 students – 42.9% goal or advanced
New Lebanon: 20 students – 50.0% goal or advance
Total CT: 38.6%
White population
Balanced Schools: 407 students – 87.7% goal or advanced*
Hamilton Ave: 23 students – 43.5% goal or advanced
New Lebanon: 10 students – 90.0% goal or advanced
Total CT: 73.9%
* – as noted, scores for samples with <20 students were not available, but since all of the other schools and Total Greenwich figures were available, it is possible to calculate the New Lebanon figure in this case. I will recheck figures to validate (heh, it is after midnight).
Black or African American population
Total Greenwich: 24 students – 37.5% goal or advanced
Total CT: 34.3%
Asian population
Total Greenwich: 61 students – 88.5% goal or advanced
Total CT: 78.5%
Results for Writing appear to be similar. Data for Reading is not available due to <20 Hispanic students tested at New Lebanon.
CAVEATS: Obviously a small sample, and further analysis needs to be done. Scores vary widely from grade to grade and subject to subject, so this does not tell the full story.
I have a FB friend, a young black woman from South Carolina,
She is a rare black conservative who despairs that God made her black
and possibly less smart than white people. The conversation we had about that was painful. I pointed out Thomas Sowell, Allen West, Clarence
Thomas, Denzel Washington, ( sigh) and so on, but she has a lot of self loathing to sort through…
The woman has a rather odd understanding of God, seems to me. And some serious personal issues.
Yeah, true, we talked about that…
Seems racist to say that people from a certain background have less aptitude. Every race has people capable of high performance and those not capable if it. This issue is about home environment.
Agreed
Why is it racist to state facts, just because they are uncomfortable. It’s quite true, as you say, that every race/ethnic group has members capable of high achievement and those who lack the cognitive ability. And it’s further true that group averages do not mean that any particular individual of any group is smart or not so smart.
But, it is a statistical fact that over the large groups, there is approximately a 1 full standard deviation gap between black average IQ and white average IQ.
If you recall basic statistics, you will recall that a little over 2/3 of any population falls between + or – one standard deviation either side of the mean. If the white mean is 100 (by definition when the tests were scaled), that means 2/3 of whites are between ~85 and ~115 (a range that encompasses from what’s called ‘low normal’ to the average college graduate, since 110 is generally considered the level needed for traditional college level work). The other slightly less than 1/3 is equally split between ~1/6 who are below the normal range and ~1/6 above the normal range. When you break it out further, ~14% are between 1 and 2 standard deviations above the mean (the 115-130 band) and ~2% are between 2 and 3 standard deviations above the mean (130-145), and a very, very few are > than 3 standard deviations above the mean.
If the black mean is a standard deviation below the white mean, it would be about 85 (on the same scale as white) and 2/3 of blacks fall within 1 standard deviation of the mean, that means that 2/3 of black have IQs between 70 and 100. Applying the same normal distribution, for blacks ~1/6 have IQs above 100. Broken out further, as above, ~14% are between 100 and 115 and ~2% are between 115 and 130, with very, very few above 130.
You can do similar things with (Chinese and Japanese) Asian and Jewish scores with their means clustering around 110 and 108 respectively.
I don’t like any of this. But, it’s not something to like or dislike. It’s fact. It’s not racist to try to understand the facts. Those who do research in the area have pretty much reconciled themselves to these facts being accurate. The issue is can it be changed. No one wants to conclude it cannot. We do not anyone any favors by assuming that any individual is dumb or smart because of his or her background, but neither do we do anyone any favors be refusing to acknowledge that the differences in the averages exist.
I suggest this is the reason for all our wordly woes: too many Harvard students and not enough burger flippers.
@UberFacts: McDonald’s rejects a higher percentage of applicants each year than Harvard.
Well duh – there is only one Harvard and there are thousands of McDonald’s….
anybody seen this before? rather longish, but, it brings up uncomfortable issues i had never considered. still can’t decide whether it really made sense in the first place.
I’ve said this before, but:
Why is it OK to say some kids are better athletically, and get to be on the varsity teams, but NOT OK to say some kids are better academically (thanks to hard work, parental involvement, genes, etc.)?
I don’t have an answer for that. But, that belief – for lack of a better word – forms the basis for public educational policy in nearly all areas. I don’t think struggling students should be marginalized or treated poorly by any means. (My Dad often talks about the “Stupid Kids” class at his elementary school – somehow, most of those kids didn’t end up doing so well.) However, I just don’t understand how anyone could look at the current “mixed ability” class structure and NOT see the obvious: that both the best and worst performers in the classroom are getting short-changed, even in the “good” schools. The sensible solution to improving test scores – and struggling students’ understanding of the material – is to take those students and put them in the same class(es). They need more intensive instruction and more help, not bloody mainstreaming. Would it “fix” inadequate home environments? No. But it is something that a school can actually do. However, the Orthodoxy of the Heterogeneous Classroom is so deeply entrenched, I don’t see this ever happening.
If 1/3 of the town keeps failing, what do you think that’s ultimately doing to our high school? And I venture to guess, terrific high schools equals terrific real estate values
Here’s a snapshot of some gaps between free/reduced lunch and their peers.
Math – 3rd grade scores Free/Reduced – Non Free/Reduced
At Julian Curtiss – 220.5, 269.9
Ham Ave – 234.8, 244.8
New Leb -243.3, (not enough non lunch kids to report but overall score for school is 255.6 combined)
State average F/R 229.3 Full is 272.1
Generally – the average Greenwich score without the Title 1 schools is a low of 270ish at Cos Cob and OG and up to 300+ at Dundee. Dundee has low income housing assigned to it but not enough for the state to report out on free/reduced lunch. Their average score was 309 and full price was 307 so the free/reduced lunch kids couldn’t have scored all that badly.
4th grade math for those curious (I took math because its consistent curriculum across all schools where as reading and writing tend to be less consistently taught in an equitable way with similar resources)
State F/R 237.1 vs. 280.9
Ham Ave – F/R score – 246.8 – not enough full price kids to report but full grade average is 255.9
New Leb – 248.1 F/R, full school is 250.9 (not enough full to report)
Rest of Greenwich averages-
CC – 275.4 (do they not know how to add in Cos Cob?)
JC 277.1 (but do full price only and they jump to 294.1)
Glenville 302.8
No Mi – 305.5
No St 296.9
OG 302.2
River 298.4
Dundee 302.2
But the failure of these kids is due primarily to their parents’ lack of education and in particular English language. You are dumping the poorest from the poorest nations on earth into a school with the wealthy, highly educated elite. So there is no contest. You cannot dump a bunch of day laborers kids in with the Princes/Princesses of Greenwich who have private tutors in every subject and expect there to be parity. It is never going to happen and it’s stupid to expect to ever occur.
The illegal immigrants are just offloading the raising of their kids to the State of CT and the town of CT and this is the result. You cannot expect any other outcome. It also seems crazy to tilt everything in the town towards the non-tax paying moochers while parents who pay tens of thousands of dollars in taxes or more are treated like the lowest form of racist scum.
It’s an outrageous situation and one the will not be effectively dealt with in the current climate of moronic political correctness.