July 19, 2011

In a nutshell

From the NYT, a representative sample of contemporary thought:
School Discipline Study Raises Fresh Questions 
By ALAN SCHWARZ 
Raising new questions about the effectiveness of school discipline, a report scheduled for release on Tuesday found that 31 percent of Texas students were suspended off campus or expelled at least once during their years in middle and high school — at an average of almost four times apiece. 
When also considering less serious infractions punished by in-school suspensions, the rate climbed to nearly 60 percent, according to the study by the Council of State Governments, with one in seven students facing such disciplinary measures at least 11 times. 
The study linked these disciplinary actions to lower rates of graduation and higher rates of later criminal activity and found that minority students were more likely than whites to face the more severe punishments. ... 

In other words, minorities are more likely to get into trouble in school, to get into more severe trouble, to drop out, and to commit crimes after school. Ergo, as the rest of the article explains, white people need to shape up, STAT.
The study, which followed every incoming Texas seventh grader over three years through high school and sometimes beyond, joins a growing body of literature looking at how to balance classroom order with individual student need. 
Several experts said in interviews that the data, covering nearly one million students and mapping each of their school records against any entry in the juvenile justice system, was the most comprehensive on the topic yet. The report did not identify individual districts or schools.

A valuable study could, theoretically, be done comparing the Value Added in test scores of different disciplinary policies. My guess would be that strict order (e.g., KIPP) is most valuable for poor blacks and Hispanics, but a heavy hand eventually turns negative as we ascend the social scale to the most elite white / Asian schools, where progressive educational assumptions about students being self-motivated by curiosity and ambition work fairly well. But, apparently, this kind of analysis wasn't attempted. This article doesn't contain any information on the impact of troublemaking students on their classmates.
The findings are “very much representative of the nation as a whole,” said Russ Skiba, a professor of school psychology at Indiana University who reviewed the study along with several other prominent researchers.

My impression from test scores and imprisonment data is that blacks and Hispanics do better in life in Texas's conservative culture, compared to politically or culturally liberal places like D.C., L.A., and New Orleans.
... Several teachers and administrators in Texas were shocked to learn of the report. 
“That’s astronomical,” said Joe Erhardt, a science teacher at Kingwood Park High School in the Houston suburb of Humble, Tex. “I’m at a loss. 
Doug Otto, superintendent of the Plano Independent School District, said the data showed that “suspensions are a little too easy.” 

Why?
“Once they become automatic, we’ve really hurt that child’s chances to receive a high school diploma,” he added “We’ve got to find ways to keep those kids in school. Don’t get me wrong — we have to provide safe environments for all the other kids. But you have to balance it out and cut down the suspensions and expulsions.”  
Almost 15 percent of students, a vast majority of whom had extensive school disciplinary files, had at least one record in the juvenile justice system, according to the report. 

See, we have to be nicer to the 15% at the expense of the 85%. Why? Because the 15% are a minority while the 85% are a majority. And, as every enlightened person knows, minority rights come before the welfare of the majority, even if, as in this case, the minority is a self-selected minority of juvenile delinquents. Also, the minority of juvenile delinquents also tends to be racial/ethnic minorities, and thus punishing them for the good of majority violates the Prime Directive.
Minority students facing discipline for the first time tended to be given the harsher, out-of-school suspension, rather than in-school suspension, more often than white students, the study said. (The nature of the offenses was not noted.) A disproportionate number of minority students also ended up in alternative classrooms, where some have complained that teachers are often less qualified. 

Are you claiming that the more effective teachers, the ones with more on the ball, tend to be more effective at not getting stuck teaching classrooms full of juvenile delinquents? Next, you'll be telling me that Phil Mickelson's golf swing coach is better than the guys at my local driving range.
“What we really need to do is go in to those districts and see if these really are choices being made,” Mr. Skiba said. “We don’t really know enough about the reasons for African-American and Latino over-representation in school discipline."

I know, teacher! Ask me! Ask me!
"We have enough data to show that it’s more than just poverty and any greater misbehavior.

In other words, whites on free lunches are less trouble than blacks on free lunches. That's a recurrent finding -- that racial gaps in behavior still exist after adjusting for poverty.

The part about not "more than just ... any greater misbehavior" appears to be based on the assumption of racial equality. The article states above that "The nature of the offenses was not noted" so there's no evidence for that assumption.
"My guess is it’s very subtle interactional effects between some teachers and students.” 

It's those vicious white lady racist teachers who don't understand that the black kids go to black churches, which are more energetic than stuffy white churches, as the State Superintendent of Schools in California memorably explained a few years ago.
... While the study found links between school discipline and criminal activity, there is no way to know whether one caused the other.

My default assumption would be that a lack of school discipline is more likely to be causally associated with later criminality, but nobody's asking me.
Educators have long complained that many students, particularly from poor families, arrive in classrooms with problems far beyond academics that they have few tools to control. 

Why not try giving them more tools to control students?
A former alternative-education teacher in Texas, Zeph Capo still remembers the eighth grader who swore at teachers, threw books and pencils, and eventually was suspended and sent into the district’s disciplinary program. Mr. Capo said he did not know whether the student straightened out or slipped further. The study made him only more concerned. 
“Are suspensions the tool to improve student behavior and help them be successful?

I would think that suspending the disruptive students could help the non-disruptive students learn more, but what do I know?
"No, I don’t think that’s the case,” said Mr. Capo, now a vice president of the Houston Federation of Teachers who trains others in classroom management.

In other words, he managed to get the hell away from those little hellions and nows spends his days with other adults in a pleasantly adolescent-free environment. (Teachers are recruited from the ranks of the kids who liked school, so getting a staff job teaching teachers, which is the desired career path of most teachers after a few years on the frontlines, is a pretty stress free job. And the staffers like to keep it that way by discouraging teachers from sending troublemaking students to the office.)
“Sometimes there’s not a lot of choice left but to risk chaos and anarchy in your school. There are potential times when human beings have had it and they drop the hammer, and maybe the hammer crushes too far.”

In other words, the people, teachers and students alike, still stuck in the classroom with these brats should just suffer more in silence rather than send the little monsters to the office for us staffers to deal with. We staffers have important classroom management training Powerpoints to prepare, and therefore can't be interrupted by actual students.

As for the majority of students who aren't incessant troublemakers and might actually learn something if the minority of bad apples were sent away, well, too bad. If they wanted somebody to do a big study of their plight, well, they shouldn't be part of the majority.

72 comments:

alexis said...

The only professional development meeting I've actually walked out on had the speaker saying: "Studies show that the teacher controls 80 percent of a child's behavior in your classroom."

The dude who walked out with me (a stats/calculus teacher): "Show me the study. Show me the data, and show me the methodology that was used to come up with that number." No response, of course.

Eric said...

Damn, no wonder nobody wants to put their kids in public school.

Anonymous said...

"And, as every enlightened person knows, minority rights come before the welfare of the majority, even if, as in this case, the minority is a self-selected minority of juvenile delinquents."

Back in the 70's, early 80's, I self-selected myself into honors classes to avoid the delinquents who would sometimes take out their frustrations on a relatively happy, functional kid. As an adult I've seen the deliberate process of including dysfunctional kids who act out against their classmates as much as their teachers. They in fact call this "inclusion" which is a term that covers a wide range of policies for including learning disabled kids in a class where the rest of the students might be pretty gifted to placing a kid who is "emotionally disabled" in a room full of normal, healthy kids.

Invariable, the attitude behind such policies is that the more capable or more functional should be impinged upon to make up for whatever it is that keeps a classmate for performing at the same level. It's really an attempt to make children feel guilty for the good fortune of being born smart and/or having been raised well.

Anonymous said...

What I always wonder: does anybody believe the liberal spin in these reports? Do the vast majority just say to themselves, "Yeah, right" but not say anything out loud becuase of current rules of behavior (taboos are at least as strong as they were in Victorian days, just the topic is different).

Or do a lot of people nod their heads and go, "that makes sense" when reading liberal nonsense?

I really don't know, becuase nobody except Steve Sailer talks about it out loud (well, I talk to my husband, but not even my children).

Anonymous said...

"a heavy hand eventually turns negative as we ascend the social scale to the most elite white / Asian schools, where progressive educational assumptions about students being self-motivated by curiosity and ambition work fairly well."

Uhhh...Tiger Moms? Hello? You just got done with this obsession with Asian parents highly motivating their kids, whom they assumed were too lazy to do it themselves.

Anonymous said...

Something tells me that Asian kids don't get suspended at the rates whites do. Despite being about 3% of Texas school population, they aren't considered minority, but the students who make up 58% of students are called minorities. Whites are only 39% of students in Texas.

Maya said...

Ah, Steve... If only 90% of my daily energy weren't spent on suppressing chaos... Seriously, we have kids here who walk around during class, punch other kids right in front of the teachers, scream and yell, throw random objects for no reason, and, of course, never shut their mouths. However, we aren't allowed to send them to the office, but must go through the "discipline management steps" instead. It seems that all I ever do is go through "the steps". On the other hand, in my special program honors classes, we do projects, play games for prizes, have discussions and retain all the information- so the test results show. Sigh.

Anonymous said...

This is just a junior version of 'blacks get more death penalty.'
Never mind what blacks DO.
Just focus on what is DONE to them. So, if you're a teacher and working with two students--one white and the other black--, and if the black one gives the teacher lip and she sends him to the dean's office, she committed a 'racist' act since she punished the black kid but not the white kid.
Btw, how come these studies don't compare Asians and whites/blacks/browns? Aren't Asians part of a minority group?
And I'll bet rowdy Irish-American and Italian-American(as well as redneck 'white trash') students get in more trouble in school than nerdy Jewish kids. Injustice!!!

NY Times is so full of it. If it wants the truth, all it has to do is consult THE GODFATHER. The Corleones knew how to keep people under wraps. Some students need Clemenza sitting behind them with a rope.

Anonymous said...

I'll bet the difference between Jewish kids and black/brown kids is even larger.

Marlowe said...

Bob Heinlein used to say (repeatedly) that an armed society is a polite society. Could one not resolve this ill-discipline by arming the teachers and pupils? Introduce a dueling code like Prussian military academies and listen to the clash of sabres at dawn ringing over the dewy playing fields. Principles will have to endure the sad duty of writing letters of condolence to bereaved parents. Not exactly a nerd friendly policy I know but it will do good to toughen them up.

Maya said...

A few words about the special honors tracks in my elementary school: they are called "optional" tracks and parents have to wake up at 3:00am to get in line to sign up their kid. Also, the kids must have a certain test score. However, every one of my "regular" classes has several kids who could've been in an optional class if their parents cared enough to sign them up. They get the shaft. Also, every regular class has several kids who aren't smart enough for the optional track, but still want to learn at their pace. They get the shaft too because all the teachers' energy goes to maintaining some semblance of order. Lastly, in every regular class, there are several kids who misbehave severally because others misbehave severally. I'm certain (because I make sure to get to know each kid the best I can)that these children would behave normally if normal behavior were indeed the norm. So... I think that if I were able to suspend about 5 kids from each class, and the rest were made to understand that there are real consequences for disruptive/violent behavior, more than 80% of my ghetto students could receive something resembling a real, valuable elementary education. It;s true that some of them aren't smart enough to master fluent reading and pre-algebra, but most are. In fact, I highly suspect that some of my super ghetto, thug-emulating, completely unparented students are actually very smart, and surely capable of having rewarding careers down the line. It's a shame that I'm too busy with the worst of the worst to follow up on most of such hunches, let alone allocate enough time to help them develop.

Snippet said...

(Apologies if this is a double-post.)

I heard this this morning, and had a real, "There they go again." moment.

The wrap up of the piece was pitch-perfect NPR witness-leading.

Some liberal critic of was quoted. Something like, "When all you have is a hammer, all problems look like a blahblahblah...blobbidyblahblah... There isn't a one-size fits all solution." (The honest part of the piece - and portions of it were honest enough to admit that this program actually, like ... kinda ... WORKED - seemed to suggest otherwise.)

Followed by,

"Reporting for NPR, SANCHEZ."

As beautifully perfect, in its own way, as the Mona Lisa.

Anonymous said...

Has someone referred to POLITICAL CORRECTNESS as POCO? That sounds about right cuz poco sure is loco. Our culture is pomo and poco and loco. If gays are homosexual, straight people who support stuff like 'gay marriage' are pocosexual.

And though bohemians act so cutting edge, they are no less poco than mainstream libs. They might as well be called pocomians.

And then you have the pocougeoisie. Remember that movie BOUDU SAVED FROM DROWNING? Boudu is a free bum without worries but he is 'saved' by a bourgeois family. He is given the comforts and respectability of bourgeois life but he has to give us his freedom. (A variation of this was the Walter Brennan character in MEET JOHN DOE. And maybe DERSU UZALA by Kurosawa.) Anyway, Boudu gains the goodies of life but loses his liberty... until he fakes his death and goes off to be free again.
To enter the pocougeoisie, we too must give up our rough ways of thinking and being free. We must become 'Poco saved from clowning'.
But, it's better to be free than a member of the pocougeoisie like David Brooks and the rest of them.

Snippet said...

I need to clarify.

I heard NPR's version of the same story.

Steve is clearly citing NYT here.

Anyhoo, NPR did the same thing.

Black/Hispanic kids tormented/discriminated against by yet another evil attempt by racists/conservatives/narrow-minded simpletons to restore discipline.

NOTA said...

Without knowing the offenses the kids were suspended or expelled for, it's impossible to know whether this is a story about increasing behavior problems in schools, or overly strict zero-tolerance policies.

But it's good to see that the journalist reporting the story did his bit--he hammered the ambiguous and sparse facts into an approved narrative, apparently without doing any of that yucky, hard thinking stuff that might have otherwise inconveniently clogged up his narrative.

alexis said...

The eternal cry of students who endure an out of control "inclusion" classmate: "Mr./Ms. ____, make him stop!"

Kylie said...

From the article; "Minority students facing discipline for the first time tended to be given the harsher, out-of-school suspension, rather than in-school suspension, more often than white students, the study said."

I suspect that's because the discipline problems of minorities are ignored for as long as possible, allowing the problems to increase in frequency and/or severity until they can no longer be ignored. So when minorities are finally disciplined, the discipline is correspondingly harsher.

Thus what is probably the overly lenient treatment of misbehaving minority students is cast as unfairly singling them out for harsher treatment.

Anonymous said...

David Brooks will not be happy to learn that you've just preemptively destroyed his next column.

Anonymous said...

The "Elite" just keep getting stoopder and stoopder. I really don't know how their heads don't explode.

MDR

Justin said...

Ironically, the average black stands to gain more from greater discipline (same as greater law enforcement) since the average black is more subject to victimization from other blacks. Are they really too dumb to see that?

Anonymous said...

Steve, you hit the nail on the head here.

The problem is that the elite of the USA don't send their children to schools that contain lots of disruptive poor kids, so the elite don't really understand this problem.

there are plenty of people in the US that are happy with the values of the elite. It seems to me that there should be true Federalism in which certain political units are run according to the social rules of 1950s America and certain other political units are run according to the social rules of the elites.

This sorting has already happened, to some extent. If you want to live a more traditional lifestyle, places like Delta, Utah, or Provo, Utah, or Colorado Springs offer this traditional lifestyle. These places should be able to maintain their own unique traditional lifestyle without encroachment from the elites.

At the same time, it is perfectly appropriate for the elites to dominate places like New York, Los Angeles, and San Francisco. The majority of the people in those cities want to live by the cultural rules of the elites.

As has been commented upon many times here, the elites seem to have fertility levels far below replacement levels. While non elites, whether the non elite are Mormon, or Evangelical Christian seem to have above replacement fertility.

It seems that both should be able to coexist well.

Don't forget that the current arrangement of society in Silicon Valley, in Hollywood, in Cambridge works well for the elite. The elite prefers to bring high IQ people like Yan Shen to live in their communities and work in their companies as opposed to non elite Americans.

Fundamentally, the elite created Google, they created apple, they created facebook. They should be allowed to staff up their companies with whoever they want.

It is clear that the elites would rather associate with high IQ Brahmins and with high IQ Korean immigrants instead of with low IQ redneck prole Americans. Who are we to force the elite to associate with the redneck proles?

At the same time, the proles in places like West Virginia and the proles who post on Mangan's blog should be free to propogate their culture their own way.


It seems to me that a general rule in our society is that the super high IQ super productive whites, the whites that create special things like Google or high technology or Hollywood movies that entertain the whole world want to live with high IQ people of all races. And also want to live with a good smattering of homosexual high IQ people.

It seems to me that the low IQ whites generally don't enjoy being around those with high IQ. Low IQ whites EITHER want to become super religious and associate with other super religious people, or they want to do prole things like Nascar and hunting. It seems to me that low IQ whites and high IQ whites naturally want to segregate out from each other.

Schools that are made up exclusively of super high IQ types can of course safely relax the discipline.

Schools made up of the low IQ types need increased discipline

lowly redneck said...

"As has been commented upon many times here, the elites seem to have fertility levels far below replacement levels. While non elites, whether the non elite are Mormon, or Evangelical Christian seem to have above replacement fertility."

Well, the super high IQ elite will certainly be able to adapt one way or another. Do you think they will evacuate to ever fewer elite centers of culture and alternative lifestyles or build their numbers through cloning?

And what about that transhumanism - maybe they'll just super long lives so replacement level reproduction isn't really necessary for the super elite!

Crawfurdmuir said...

@Anon. of 8:06PM re "prole things like... hunting" - did the Labour party in Britain outlaw hunting with hounds because it was a "prole thing"? Do you suppose that quail shooting on the plantations of south Georgia, or hunting for elk or mountain sheep in Wyoming or Idaho are lower-class activities? How about African safaris?

The notion that guns and hunting are solely the interests of "rednecks" is one of the greatest canards of the past fifty years. NRA members have been shown to have considerably higher-than-average levels of education and income. I'd guess that those of Boone & Crockett associates and Safari Club members are even higher.

Anonymous said...

The answer is always return to tracking. Children who don't grow up with their basic needs met often have a harder time with longer term goals. This one does actually seem to be the fault of loopy middle aged white women, however, with their "Let them all be doctors" approach to curriculum design.

I can't believe we set such impossible goals for the majority of students then put teachers through cultural purification rites in which we claim the teacher's negative attitude due to racism is sabotaging their otherwise brilliant students' ability to learn. In the meantime, generations of kids are being denied the kind of education that could prepare them to be successful in life while teacher morale remains eternally low over not turning out Einsteins one after another.

Anonymous said...

Uhhh...Tiger Moms? Hello? You just got done with this obsession with Asian parents highly motivating their kids, whom they assumed were too lazy to do it themselves.

I don't know if you were interpreting that correctly, I think Steve was saying that even the high aspirations of Asian kids are not enough for their mothers, who drive them even harder. In other words, good isn't good enough for a lot of Asian mothers.

Anonymous said...

There really is no difference between the Blank Slaters and Progressives; they are one and the same. I watched as they destroyed the public school system in CA.

The only answer is for whites to put their kids in private schools, any damn private schools. That or home school them.

Whiskey said...

Anon confuses culture with IQ. A guy who went to Harvard, let's say Chad Buffington Throckmorton IV, who on a good day needs his butler to tie his shoes, might have a certain culture, but he's not very smart. He just inherited his position, wealth, and power. Like say, Anderson Cooper, son of Gloria Vanderbilt, Commodore Vanderbilt's distant heir. Is he a super-genius? Nope, just a Vanderbilt.

A "prole" who majors in say, Petroleum Engineering at Texas A&M, or Colorado School of Mines, or University of Oklahoma, will know a lot more (and be smarter than) Chad Buffington Throckmorton IV, despite vast cultural differences between them.
-------------
That being said, Zero Tolerance is just a way to expel a White kid who brought a steak knife to eat lunch in his/her lunchbox along with a Black kid who gave a teacher a beat-down. That's the whole point of Zero Tolerance, to punish White kids so the numbers (by which Administrators get evaluated upon and possibly sued) look roughly even.

Of course, the Khan Academy and other online venues will let White parents widely opt out of public schools, which will be either non-White hellholes or Asian/Rich White semi-prep schools.

Whiskey said...

I don't think anyone has really appreciated how the internet lets White people "opt out of non-Whites' in a large way.

Lots of threatening non-Whites at the local mall? AMAZON! Kids getting beat up at school, which is teaching "This Day in Gay" (in California Jerry Brown signed the "gay history bill" mandating teaching all kids gay stuff in history and culture) and other diversi-junk? Khan Academy! Heck the only reason to leave the house is buy groceries and work, or work out, or date. Netflix is better than a movie theater, and cheaper. Or Amazon or Hulu Plus.

The whole article is a call for suspending lots of White kids for Zero Tolerance infractions (a knife in the lunchbox to cut up an apple) to match Black/Hispanic ultra-violent suspensions/expulsions. They'll get their wish -- but a White population opting-out for internet-delivered education is not going to vote for school bonds, or educational spending at all. Public Education dies the moment enough Whites have opted out for private/online education.

Anonymous said...

why does this situation exist in the first place?

Because it is necessary for racial integration to take place.

And why does racial integration need to take place?

Well, look at what was happening in america before the Civil Rights "movement" in the 1960s:
when segregation was the norm in america, white people made such decent wages that moms could stay and home and raise the kids. Why? Because Labor was united. We had unions. There was solidarity, relatively speaking. That labor solidarity provided a nice lifestyle where the white majority could have high wages, health insurance and other nice things.

The rich people did not like that. So they started the civil rights "movement" to integrate america racially and thus divide labor.

Any questions?

Anonymous said...

"Or do a lot of people nod their heads and go, "that makes sense" when reading liberal nonsense?"
This is an interesting question. My experience is that even bright young people are proud to have learned the upside-down logic of advanced PC. It is something like achieving a colored belt in karate or learning to speak another language. Their inclination is to show off their new skill for a while. But it gets old.
Lifetime liberals are a different case.
Gilbert P.

Auntie Analogue said...

Our We-Know-What's-Best-For-Everyone "Progressive" elites have a perfect track record of ignoring - and flouting - time-proven wisdoms, only to yield a consistent string of ever-worsening consequences. In this instance they've done away with the wisdom in "Spare the rod, spoil the child."

Auntie Analogue said...

Mr. Sailer, let me recommend to you Chapter Three of Roger Scruton's new book 'The Uses Of Pessimism.'

alexis said...

"The notion that guns and hunting are solely the interests of "rednecks" is one of the greatest canards of the past fifty years. NRA members have been shown to have considerably higher-than-average levels of education and income. I'd guess that those of Boone & Crockett associates and Safari Club members are even higher."

Hunting is big money and big business where I'm from.

Polistra said...

Amazingly, Britain has recently introduced a new set of rules that finally do something real about school discipline. The rules are completely uncompromising, a FULL return to the old-fashioned way of doing things. Removes all legal obstacles to proper discipline.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/education/educationnews/8628832/Use-reasonable-force-on-classroom-yobs-teachers-told.html

Won't happen here, of course. Lawyers and ACLU and Sharpton and Jackson won't even let the thought be formed.

guest007 said...

To use the idea that Halfsigma has been doing, everyone should look at Alan Schwarz the author of the article. He has a wikipedia entry http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alan_Schwarz .

Mr. Schwarz is a graduate of Scarsdale High School (a school that is currently 85% white and 10% Asian http://www.greatschools.org/cgi-bin/ny/other/3555#students ). Mr. Schwarz attend Penn (a school that is 7% black and 6% Hispanic http://www.collegeresults.org/collegeprofile.aspx?institutionid=215062)

His wife, Laura Werbel, attended Kennedy High school in Bellmore New York. A school that is 95% white.


His son,Teddy, http://www.nytimes.com/2011/07/17/sports/baseball/k-rod-deal-costs-a-fan-5-his-innocence.html?ref=childrenandyouth is five years old and will be starting kindergarten in the fall. I doubt that young Teddy will be attending a school that is less than 80% white and will probably costs more than $30K per year.

Beliavsky said...

The NYT does allow Sailerite comments, and I suggest that iSteve readers post them. Note comment #3 of mine at the NYT site:

'The study and the article on it is trying to make school discipline a civil rights issue. Maybe students of different races really do misbehave at different rates. This is certainly true for adults. The "solution" of de facto racial quotas in school discipline will just drive more whites and Asians out of schools that are primarily black and Hispanic.

Lot of students don't want to be in school and do not have the intelligence to learn abstracts subjects such as Algebra II. They should get apprenticeships and jobs. Not everyone is high school material, much less college material.'

Chicago said...

The study, the author writes, raises "fresh" questions. What planet has he been living on? There's nothing fresh about the question at all but has been an issue for the last forty plus years, ever since those who know what's best for us decided everyone's children (except their own, of course) should be forced to participate in this great social experiment of school integration.
When I was a kid, though, a significant number of students, if you can call them that, dropped out at age sixteen from grammar and high school. Lots of them started disappearing at age fifteen. This solved the problem to some degree as it cleared the table for those who were left.
The vast majority of blacks/browns gain no benefit from school beyond age fourteen so keeping them beyond that is harmful to all parties. The liberal missionaries are unwavering in their drive to make them all into imitation whites, something that just goes against their nature.

Shawn said...

“What is it Like to Teach Black Students?”

by Christopher Jackson

"Until recently I taught at a predominantly
black high school in a southeastern
state.

The mainstream press gives a hint of
what conditions are like in black schools,
but only a hint. Expressions journalists
use like “chaotic” or “poor learning
environment” or “lack of discipline” do
not capture what really happens. There
is nothing like the day-to-day experience
of teaching black children and that is
what I will try to convey."

More:

http://www.thenationalpolicyinstitute.org/2009/07/06/what-is-it-like-to-teach-black-students/

carol said...

some funny comments at NYT..

"In my Masters in Teaching program we spent a great deal of time trying to understand how an African-American child will be raised differently then an asian child, therefore as teachers, we can't necessarily have the exact same expectations of the two students..."

I'll bet this nice white lady has been teaching a long time, too!

ben tillman said...

The study linked these disciplinary actions to lower rates of graduation and higher rates of later criminal activity and found that minority students were more likely than whites to face the more severe punishments. ...

Um, once again, it needs to be said that all children in Texas are minorities. Whites became a minority in Texas circa 2003.

And when it comes to their proportion of public school students in Texas, I would imagine that Mexicans are NOT a minority.

Baloo said...

Steve, Ex-Army riffs on this post, as he does on so many of your posts, and makes an intriguing comparison of your work to something else. It's HERE.

ben tillman said...

Ironically, the average black stands to gain more from greater discipline (same as greater law enforcement) since the average black is more subject to victimization from other blacks. Are they really too dumb to see that?

Are WHO too dumb?

If you're talking about the ruling elite, no, they know exactly what they're doing.

The legislative enactments designed to destroy the White community in the mid-to-late '60s (Immigration Act, Voting Rights Act, and housing, employment, and public accommodations anti-discrimination laws) were matched with measures that destroyed the Black community (welfare, public housing, etc.). Was that really a coincidence, or is it more likely that the destruction of the Black community was in fact the intended result?

JSM said...

"The rich people did not like that. So they started the civil rights "movement" to integrate america racially and thus divide labor.

Any questions?"

Aye. With the added benefit of less White people getting born:


Whites are extreme K-strategists, meaning we tend heavily towards having fewer kids and investing more effort in them.

Forced integration means White moms must work full time to afford a house "with good schools," i.e., in a safe, White, neighborhood.

A full-time job plus the workload of bearing and mothering, sufficient for a K-strategist, three or more infants is impossible for the average White woman to manage.
Most income-producing women can only manage one kid, or at best, two.

John Dewey said...

Nowadays, the inmates don't just run the asylum. They're put in charge of the educational system, too. Victory!

Camlost said...

Blacks always do best in US Military schools due to the no-nonsense discipline policies there, and no attention given to whining.

It amazes me that liberals NEVER try to take any lessons from this fact.

Kylie said...

"'The notion that guns and hunting are solely the interests of 'rednecks' is one of the greatest canards of the past fifty years."

Let 'em think it. It's always good to be underestimated by one's opponents.

Anonymous said...

From reading the many comments at Nemko's site, it seems that people are blissfully unaware that (1) proportion of NAMs in given school population makes a difference in how they behave, and (2) that culture can and usually does degenerate in times of general decadence.

Luke Lea said...

A recent statistical study by IowaHawk comparing Texas public schools with those in Wisconsin showed that blacks, Hispanics, and whites all did better in Texas, contrary to what many people supposed. The same results held for the nation as a whole.

Anonymous said...

Maya said, " I think that if I were able to suspend about 5 kids from each class, and the rest were made to understand that there are real consequences for disruptive/violent behavior, more than 80% of my ghetto students could receive something resembling a real, valuable elementary education."

Agreed.

Maya, do you, by any chance, teach in California? I ask because our admins never told the new teachers/young teachers or others, really, that a teacher can expel a student from class for behavior which disrupts the educational environment. CA ed code law says that the teacher shall, upon expelling the student from his or her class, write up the referral, send it to the admin, and notify the parent or guardian of the action and the reason for the action.

This teacher expulsion can last a maximum of 3 class sessions if that is the duration the teacher deems appropriate.

All this can occur without ANY say from the administrative staff, who, of course, don't want problem
kids sent to the office for several days because they will have to figure out what to do with them.

Our new teachers are always given an orientation in which the admins fail to tell them of this law. Instead, they flat out tell the new teachers that they have to go through steps 1, 2, 3, etc. even when the offense might be as bad as the kid saying, "Fuck off" to the classroom teachers.

I considered myself a very good disciplinarian of high school kids, but the job became incredibly more difficult the more our school was populated by ghetto behaviored students. I made up my mind I wouldn't put up with it from the get-go. A few of the offenders, after finding out they couldn't get away with their vulgar and disruptive behavior, actually shaped up and achieved something. Sadly, most didn't. They wound up at the continuation school or elsewhere in the system, including the criminal justice system, but not before they destroyed the classrooms of a whole host of other kids and in so doing, managed to promote their anti-social behavior.

The more experienced teachers among us didn't let that happen, but there were only so many of us.

Difference Maker said...

It seems to me that a general rule in our society is that the super high IQ super productive whites, the whites that create special things like Google or high technology or Hollywood movies that entertain the whole world want to live with high IQ people of all races. And also want to live with a good smattering of homosexual high IQ people.

This new elite is girly. The old elite was better. We need to reconstitute it. Pretty girls and the happy children of the future will thank us for it.

Anonymous said...

At the same time, the proles in places like West Virginia and the proles who post on Mangan's blog should be free to propogate their culture their own way.

Two "a's" in "propagate" there, Mr. Elite Kato Sockpuppet. You type "a's" with your other left.

Why the "cognitive elites" have to come to my country to work for the Facebooks and Apples is anyone's guess. Why "cognitively elite" populations do the exact opposite of what the "cognitive elites" here are recommending is anyone's guess. You sure won't find a "cognitive elite" who can tell you.

Anonymous said...

Thank heaven we finally have the solution to school problems. Stop suspending black kids, and all will be well. Now, we can stop wasting money and cheating on test scores.

Btw, notice how NY Times go after schools in Texas, as if school problems in NY and DC are any better.

Anonymous said...

How about the military, often praised as the model for racial progress. Are black soldiers discipliined at higher rates? Well, we have more to do!!!

How about people on Death Row? Are at least 2% Jewish? I hope so, for 'social justice' sake.

How about penalties handed out in basketball? Do blacks disproportionately get called on technical fouls? Oh my, it's still a plantation run by 'racists'.

Anonymous said...

It's funny. NY Times supports NBA fining basketball players $50,000 or even $100,000 for saying 'faggot', but it's soooooooooooooooo shocked about teachers disciplining kids for rude behavior and fighting.

Anonymous said...

I think NY Times tried to live up to the standards expressed in this article. Jayson Blair was way out of line, but NY Times editor--so liberal and understanding--didn't discipline him, and Jayson got worse and worse, playing hookey and writing up fake homework as reporting.
Blair's idiocies weren't nipped in the bud and grew into a monster.

Btw, suppose white kids were disciplined more than black kids. Ny Times would bitch about that too--along the lines of 'racist teachers try to instill good values and discipline in white kids but neglect black kids who are left alone to be wild and unruly'.

From my personal experience from 6th grade--my last grade in city public school--, the substitute teacher(a white woman--hired to fill in for Mr. Corned Beef for a long duration--in a class that was 65% black with rest being white, Asian, Hispanic, and one Jewish kid)pretty much ignored black rowdiness because it was so commonplace--and because she was afraid of black kids. Unless black kids did something really bad, they got away scot-free. She was harsher on white, Asian, and Hispanic kids cuz they were easier to handle.

Even though black kids get suspended more, I'm guessing that black students, by and large, get away with more troublemaking than others.
Suppose a black kid creates 50 disturbances and a white kid creates 10 in a given year. Suppose the black kid gets disciplined 20 times and the white kid gets disciplined 8 times. Though the system may appear to be harsher to the black kid, the fact is he got away with more bad behavior than the white kid in percentage terms.
Also, since black kids are tougher, in mixed schools, they are more likely to act crazy and aggressive than white/asian/hispanic kids who tend to be more afraid.

By the way, I'd like to see the stats for straight and gay kids. And of course, boys and girls.

Difference Maker said...

The notion that guns and hunting are solely the interests of "rednecks" is one of the greatest canards of the past fifty years.

This is the province of masculinity. These would be elites are trying to cover up their shortcomings.

ben tillman said...

It seems to me that a general rule in our society is that the super high IQ super productive whites, the whites that create special things like Google or high technology or Hollywood movies that entertain the whole world want to live with high IQ people of all races.

Complete bullshit. Fabricated.

Just so.

alexis said...

Read the “What is it Like to Teach Black Students?” article. If that's the worst that dude put up with, he has no idea how bad it gets. He'd have to go through a couple of riots, drunken parents, kids passing out on crack, cops afraid to come to your school, and breaking up a rape-then he'd have some perspective.

eh said...

In a nutshell

Yes, I agree. Another post demonstrating "in a nutshell" why 'citizenism' is unworkable -- as long as you have 'diversity', you'll have these sorts of problems.

Anonymous said...

"I don't know if you were interpreting that correctly, I think Steve was saying that even the high aspirations of Asian kids are not enough for their mothers, who drive them even harder. In other words, good isn't good enough for a lot of Asian mothers."

Where does he say anything like that?

Doug1 said...

What is it Like to Teach Black Students?

by Christopher Jackson

Until recently I taught at a predominantly
black high school in a southeastern
state.

The mainstream press gives a hint of
what conditions are like in black schools,
but only a hint. Expressions that journalists
use like “chaotic” or “poor learning
environment” or “lack of discipline” do
not capture what really happens. There
is nothing like the day-to-day experience
of teaching black children and that is
what I will try to convey.



http://martynemko.blogspot.com/2009/06/white-teacher-speaks-out-what-is-it.html

The guy's blog on which this report is repeated is a liberal realist I'd say. I highly recommend you all read it.

Anonymous said...

Here is a 3-part essay from a black journalist in 2007 in which he describes what it was like to leave his newspaper job in Florida to accept a teaching position at Stillman College, an HBCU in Alabama.

This is a black male in a university setting who was dismayed at the dysfunction he found. It is pretty amazing and probably would never have been printed in an MSM paper if the author weren't black. The guy ending up quitting after 2 years.

Here is an excerpt:

The room was noisy, and two who had been in front of King Hall were horsing around. I put my books on the table and raised an arm for silence. When only a few students paid attention I raised my arm again, and this time I yelled.

"All right, knock it off! Take your seats and be quiet!"

I could not believe that I had to yell for college students to behave in a classroom. This is not going to be a good experience, I thought, unfolding the roster and preparing to call the roll. When I could not pronounce the second name on the list, I knew for sure I was in big trouble. As I fumbled with the strange combinations of alphabets and apostrophes, the class roared.

"He can't even read, " a student said.

Anonymous said...

A guy who went to Harvard, let's say Chad Buffington Throckmorton IV, who on a good day needs his butler to tie his shoes, might have a certain culture, but he's not very smart. He just inherited his position, wealth, and power. Like say, Anderson Cooper, son of Gloria Vanderbilt, Commodore Vanderbilt's distant heir. Is he a super-genius? Nope, just a Vanderbilt.

I'm glad you chose an Anglo-Saxon name, and not an Ashkenazi name. Ashkenazis are 40% of the wealthiest people in America (Forbes), but when they die, their wealth of course evaporates and is somehow magically transferred to a whole new crop of Ashkenazis. Thus, the Ashkenazi elite is eternally brilliant and worthy and untainted by "privilege," in stark contrast to the dull, unworthy, "privileged" Anglo-Saxons. And obviously Ashkenazis are far too earthy for butlers.

Anonymous said...

It seems to me that a general rule in our society is that the super high IQ super productive whites, the whites that create special things like Google or high technology or Hollywood movies that entertain the whole world want to live with high IQ people of all races.

Of course. Thus, a million Mexicans a year.

Anonymous said...

Like Snippit, I heard the story covered on NPR (Morning Edition) before reading Steve's blogpost. You really had to hear it. It was an almost perfect NPR piece. Though the perfect NPR piece was the one I heard about the anti-illegal immigration rally somewhere in Texas that carried, in its opening sentence, a reference to a white supremacist group that was participating. I'll never forget it because when I heard the tease, I thought to myself, "This should be good." They exceded my expectations.

S. Smith

Anonymous said...

'I suspect that's because the discipline problems of minorities are ignored for as long as possible, allowing the problems to increase in frequency and/or severity until they can no longer be ignored. So when minorities are finally disciplined, the discipline is correspondingly harsher.' - from Kylie.

Exactly, and while we are at it, the same is true of affirmative action (AA) hires. I have seen a number of AA hires who were exempted from the normal 'probationary' stages that whites/Asians would have had to go through, not by company rule but by administrators' simply refusing to treat them like the other employees. When, after months of 'ordinary' screw-ups that would have gotten a white/Asian employee on the carpet or at least at a sit-down-talk-about, they screw up something royally, then and only then does the hammer come down because no other option exists. And when it comes down (1) it comes down hard and (2) the AA hire sues because (s)he was never alerted to the fact that (s)he was skating on thin ice.

I've seen several prevail w/this tactic despite the fact that they were given a lot of chances that a white/Asia employee would have never been afforded.

Chad Buffington Throckmorton IV said...

Thanks for the new user name, Whiskey.

NOTA said...

Anon 7/20/11 5:52 PM:

It's worth noting that in both the work and school case, taking it easy on minorities is not a kindness. Kids coming out of school and starting their first jobs often need a certain amount of feedback on stuff like showing up 15 minutes late, getting the work done reliably, dressing appropriately, making personal phone calls on work time, etc. Being unwilling to tell some new guy he's screwing up is often just setting him up for a bad fall later, when his failure to learn the basic requirements for keeping a professional job at 22 means he comes off like a buffoon at 30.

This is a very general pattern. Social promotion and grade inflation are always sold as benefitting the students, but inevitably, they're really about making life easier on the teachers. Usually, the recipients of the social promotions and Bs for C- work get screwed over, since they get past the class without having learned what they were supposed to learn. Almost inevitably, the whole surrounding system is messed up, too, as credentials like grades become less meaningful.

Maya said...

Nope, not in Cali. I teach in a fairly large city in the South.

"Social promotion and grade inflation are always sold as benefitting the students, but inevitably, they're really about making life easier on the teachers. Usually, the recipients of the social promotions and Bs for C- work get screwed over"

Easier on the teachers? Having kids at 10 different levels of ability in my class makes my job 10 times harder. Ask any inner city teacher. Also, if I could hold back those who really need to be held back, they (and their parents) might consider coming to class or doing homework once in a while.

Also, "B"s for C- work? HAHAhahahahahasha! Try "B"s for not doing ANY WORK WHATSOEVER. I taught summer school at a high school level very recently, and some students that never set foot in my class got "B"s in their report cards for the class I was teaching. I didn't give it to them. In fact, I thought they dropped the class before summer school began or were put on my roster by mistake or something... Anyway, they all happily graduated.

Anonymous said...

The fact that blacks and hispanics(and whites) tend to do better on average in Texas schools than in say Wisconsin schools indicates that there might be something to all this discipline stuff.

Anonymous said...

"Anyway, they all happily graduated."

Maya, my school district recently started a *Graduation Matters* campaign, and I immedidately suspected that it was really about keeping butts in seats, regardless of work done. I think many of the dropouts know they're way behind and run away from the work. At least they're that honest with themselves.

What good does it do to keep them in classes and give them a phony diploma?

Harry Baldwin said...

Anonymous Anonymous said...It was an almost perfect NPR piece.

There should be a contest to identify the perfect NPR story. I used to keep a tape of suitable nominations. My favorite headline for an NPR story was "Lesbian Dance Troupe in Havana Challenges Old Stereotypes," but I'm sure there have been better ones in the years since I stopped listening.