States Omit Minorities' School Scores

[proud2BlibKansan]

By FRANK BASS, NICOLE ZIEGLER DIZON and BEN FELLER, Associated Press Writers 2 hours, 2 minutes ago

States are helping public schools escape potential penalties by skirting the No Child Left Behind law's requirement that students of all races must show annual academic progress.


With the federal government's permission, schools deliberately aren't counting the test scores of nearly 2 million students when they report progress by racial groups, an Associated Press computer analysis found.

Minorities — who historically haven't fared as well as whites in testing — make up the vast majority of students whose scores are being excluded, AP found. And the numbers have been rising.

"I can't believe that my child is going through testing just like the person sitting next to him or her and she's not being counted," said Angela Smith, a single mother. Her daughter, Shunta' Winston, was among two dozen black students whose test scores weren't counted to judge her suburban Kansas City, Mo., high school's performance by race.

more . . .
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20060418/ap_on_go_ot/no_child_loophole

[gumby]

1. This procedure was perfected in Texas by

Bush and his first Sec. of Education, fellow Texan Rod Paige.

During Bush's first run, I read a lot about the Texas version of NCLB. It was/is a sham there then as it is nationally now. Plenty of people in Texas were trying to sound the alarm. Of course, the MSM completely ignored them.

Both Paige and Bush are complete phonies. (to say the least)
:puke: :puke: :puke: :puke: :puke: :puke:

edit: The worst part of their scam was that the school system actively encouraged those "bad" students to drop out of high school before they had to take the graduation test.

Can you believe that!!!!!!!!!!!

The Texas school system has been intimidating "those" students to drop out of high school before the senior test.

This is what Bush and Paige consider "education."

May they both rot.

[proud2BlibKansan]

2. yes I remember

Wasn't there an investigation going on?

[msgadget]

3. another reality defying policy,

his whole schtick in texas was supposed to be education, right? He made a big deal about a return to phonics as I recall. To make it worse his brother still has an educational software company. Damn. Should be NRLB for No Relative Left Behind.

[proud2BlibKansan]

7. It's not really software

When I saw it a few years ago, Neil's program was VIDEOS.

[msgadget]

8. Really? When I saw it a few years ago it was touted as

a comprehensive software 'system'.

[proud2BlibKansan]

9. It could be different now

But it was also called software when it was presented to us.

[IndyJones]

5. Eliminating bad numbers is the Bush way. Education, unemployment....

because we all know that once someone drops off of the unemployment stats, that means they have a job, right? If kids drop out and are not counted, and if minorities are not counted because the schools are doing a piss poor job, that's okay, right?

Out of sight, out of mind...the Bush policy.

[rodeodance]

4. "Bush has hailed the separate accounting of minority students"..Now, now

will these 'people' (I presume he means the kids) be left behind it they are not counted in the first place?


...Spellings said she believes educators are acting in good faith. "Are there people out there who find ways to game the system? Of course," she said. "But on the whole ... I fully believe in my heart, mind and soul that educators are people of good will."

Bush has hailed the separate accounting of minority students as a vital feature of the law. "It's really essential we do that. It's really important," Bush said in a May 2004 speech. "If you don't do that, you're likely to leave people behind. And that's not right."

Nonetheless, Bush's Education Department continues to give widely varying exemptions to states:

_Oklahoma lets schools exclude the test scores from any racial category with 52 or fewer members in the testing population, one of the largest across-the-board exemptions. That means 1 in 5 children in the state don't have scores broken out by race.

[proud2BlibKansan]

6. What I didn't realize

is that the number of kids you don't have to count varies from state to state. I was under the impression the standards were standardized. That would sure make more sense.

I am going to defend excluding some kids for this reason: in a small school with only a handful of minority kids, it would be unfair for those test scores to cause the entire school to fail. However, this should be a SMALL percentage, and it should be the same in EVERY school nationwide.