Comments on: Minding the gap

By: Bandit

Bandit — Tue, 20 Nov 2007 15:54:00 +0000

Success only comes before work in the dictionary - but consciousness raising consultants have at least convinced some people there’s a way around it - my kids attend the Boston public schools - where the soft bigotry of low expectations thrives.

By: Walter E. Wallis

Walter E. Wallis — Mon, 19 Nov 2007 22:03:32 +0000

“US whites today score about a standard deviation above US whites of three generations ago.”
Hey, wait a minute - I’m 3 generations ago.

By: Cardinal Fang

Cardinal Fang — Mon, 19 Nov 2007 21:05:36 +0000

Herrstein and Murray (the Bell Curve authors) themselves acknowledge:

The national averages have in fact changed by amounts that are comparable to the fifteen or so IQ points separating blacks and whites in America. To put it another way, on the average, whites today differ from whites, say, two generations ago as much as whites today differ from blacks today. Given their size and speed, the shifts in time necessarily have been due more to changes in the environment than to changes in the genes.

This is from the Bell Curve, quoted in Thomas Sowell’s review of it, quoted here.

As Sowell, in his review, points out, once one concedes that the fifteen point difference in IQ between whites in the 1940s and whites now is environmental, it becomes difficult to claim that the fifteen point difference between blacks now and whites now is genetic.

By: TMAO

TMAO — Mon, 19 Nov 2007 20:19:21 +0000

Citation for the narrowing of IQ gap between Blacks and Whites: http://www.brookings.edu/views/papers/dickens/20060619_IQ.pdf

By: Malcolm Kirkpatrick

Malcolm Kirkpatrick — Mon, 19 Nov 2007 19:51:49 +0000

Zuzuzpetals: “Did you miss the post about which state has the highest math scores? It was not California, but it was a state which ranks high in the NEA/AFT/AFSCME presence list. Very high.”

In a bottle of preservative in the Marine Biology exhibit of the the Natural History Museum, London, floats an intestinal worm from a sperm whale. In large whales these parasites can grow to enormous size. I don’t credit intestinal parasites for the whales’ large size.

By some measures, North Dakota was the top-scoring US State. Back when I studied the relation between instutional structure and performance on standardized test scores, I used NAEP 4th and 8th grade Math and Reading percentile, proficiency, mean and mean scores by parents’ race and level of education.

By: Sigivald

Sigivald — Mon, 19 Nov 2007 19:36:01 +0000

Doesn’t clapping and being raucous and speaking loudly get you in trouble not because ‘the teacher is white and doesn’t understand’, but because it distracts the other students?

I’d certainly hope so, at any rate.

By: HW

HW — Mon, 19 Nov 2007 19:14:24 +0000

Our public screwl system is so, so broken. I quit school in the 7th grade and am now 46 years old…extremely successful, retired at 44, happily married for over 14 years, an avid reader (taught myself since teacher was too busy to help me) and am extremely happy. Not one single public screwl teacher had even a shred to do with my success, none of it, public screwl teachers suck and are so totally selfish, at least every single one I had. Biased? Maybe, but based on MY experience, public screwl teachers are totally worhtless… To me anyway. Not one took the time to help me, not one! I did it all on my own.

By: Ann

Ann — Mon, 19 Nov 2007 18:56:49 +0000

So very, very blessed to have our kiddo in private school… and not paying seattle taxes..

By: Ragnarok

Ragnarok — Mon, 19 Nov 2007 18:49:06 +0000

“US whites today score about a standard deviation above US whites of three generations ago.”

Very interesting, cite?

By: Pat

Pat — Mon, 19 Nov 2007 18:35:01 +0000

In my opinion…It seems to me that no matter what race you are dealing with as a teacher, if you don’t teach the student at the reading level they are at…it’s going to be a very frustrating experience for any student and that just may be the reason that some students don’t succeed. I think this is a fundamental problem with the Public School system. If the student can’t read but is expected to be able to read at an eighth grade level to learn a particular subject, how then is the student going to be able to do well in that subject. It seems to me that that alone (reading) is a basic problem that needs to be dealt with early on before going on to higher level grades. The Public School system just ignores the problem and expects the student to catch up…too bad, so sad if they don’t. I’m generalizing and know this isn’t always the case, but too often it is.

If a teacher does teach at a student’s level, say 3rd grade when the student should be at an 8th grade level. The student does the work and does it well and then the teacher gives the student an excellent grade, the teacher is likely to be penalized because that student usually gets low grades and the teacher is making the other teachers look bad. I’ve seen this happen with a teacher friend of mine.