They never give up (CRT Division)

[cordex]

The standardized tests should be a Godsend argument for the educational establishment, because it gives the perfect opportunity for objective statistical analysis of teacher effectiveness.

With apologizes to MillCreek's wife, it seems like you've bought into teacher union propaganda that teachers can make substantial positive changes in their students.  By and large they can not.  Outside of a few exceptionally rare examples in either direction, teachers simply maintain the trajectories that parents set their kids on.  Thus, standardized tests can not really measure teacher effectiveness, they measure the culture in which their students are raised and probably some self-sorting of underlying hereditary capacity as well.

Imagine how a teacher would react if the following were in place?
[snip]

All that only works if teachers are capable of making significant shifts in student performance.  I do not believe that it is at all self-evident that they do.

If you could get an annual $10k bonus for excelling, wouldn't you strive for it?

Only if it were achievable.  Instead of working hard you'd probably be better served offering to split the bonus with someone capable of giving you kids who performed better than average the previous year.

[dogmush]

Perhaps we could stop pretending that all cultures  (and subcultures) are just as good at advancing  civilization.

[Hawkmoon]

The standardized tests should be a Godsend argument for the educational establishment, because it gives the perfect opportunity for objective statistical analysis of teacher effectiveness.

Except that in practice you get what resulted in a school principal in a nearby city fired a few years ago. She was a career "educator," who was made principal of a troubled school in a low-income section of a low-income city. Miraculously, her school's scores on the standardized tests began to improve. The next year they improved again, and the year after they repeated. She garnered all sorts of praise and, IIRC, won an award of some kind.

And then an audit proved that her staff had cooked the books on the test scoring, and there actually hadn't been any improvement at all. She was fired, and the school went back to being the sewer it always had been.

I've always wondered how long she thought she could get away with the scam. If the test scores are better and better every year, but the kids still can't read, write, or add 2 plus 2  and get 4 when they move up to the next level ... sooner or later somebody's going to notice.

[Hawkmoon]

Update: Examples of how CRT was included in one of the math books Florida banned:

https://notthebee.com/article/florida-releases-examples-of-math-textbooks-it-rejected-for-being-woke

[Ben]

Update: Examples of how CRT was included in one of the math books Florida banned:

https://notthebee.com/article/florida-releases-examples-of-math-textbooks-it-rejected-for-being-woke

That's actually mild compared to some of the other - specifically math - verified examples that I've seen released. I think a few of them are posted somewhere around here. With a couple of them, it was difficult to tell that math was even in the equation, as it were.

[HankB]

That's actually mild compared to some of the other - specifically math - verified examples that I've seen released. I think a few of them are posted somewhere around here. With a couple of them, it was difficult to tell that math was even in the equation, as it were.

They're trying to remove actual math from math class because math is racist.

[Hawkmoon]

They're trying to remove actual math from math class because math is racist.

Not "remove" it. They just want to make math more "relatable" ... by using it to explain to everyone just how racist the world is and how much White privilege continues to hold back black people.

[Hawkmoon]

Here we go (again): https://www.newsweek.com/math-racist-crowd-runs-rampant-seattle-portland-opinion-1701491?utm_source=spotim&utm_medium=spotim_recirculation&spot_im_redirect_source=pitc

This framework has hurt Seattle students.

As noted in Luke Rosiak's book Race To The Bottom, black students' state math exam scores in these pilot programs plummeted to shocking lows. After years of consistent progress at John Muir Elementary, for example, the passing rate for black students fell from 28 percent to 18 percent after the introduction of the ethnic studies framework.

Despite the results, the district doubled down.

The basic argument from the "math is racist" crowd is that "white supremacy culture" is endemic to mathematics classrooms, and it's why black students' math scores are lagging white students'.

[zxcvbob]

black students' state math exam scores in these pilot programs plummeted to shocking lows. After years of consistent progress at John Muir Elementary, for example, the passing rate for black students fell from 28 percent to 18 percent after the introduction of the ethnic studies framework.

That is by design.  In my opinion, the people pushing these programs want to keep blacks barely-literate (if even that) and unemployable for anything but menial labor.

[230RN]

I have heard of a lot of different things from the state and federal laws that tie the hands and local schools.  Not sure how much is that versus bad local management.  I am all more getting rid of all federal control/funding and leaving it to the states and local control.  At some point, some of the worst schools need decent local people to take over school boards and make sure the local school leadership has education as their primary goal.
Bolding mine

We got rid of several:

https://www.armedpolitesociety.com/index.php?topic=66350.msg1348343;topicseen#msg1348343

Encouraging.  It's a start.

Terry