Anonymous wrote:[
So you're saying it's nonsense that Teacher A in a school could consistently have kids across sub-groups who perform better on a measure of reading skills than Teacher B?? That happens all the time. And Teacher A coaches Teacher B on his or her methods .Some sub-groups need more contextual reading supports, more practice with phonics etc. than others and sometimes those differences intersect with race/SES. And Teacher's A's strategies for teaching reading might be more effective for all groups, while Teacher B's only works with kids who have a lot of pre-literacy skills developed already (thus consistently producing gaps).
I wish all educational equity discussions were this close. You two seem to be arguing about the minutae. I agree with a lot of what you are both saying. Meanwhile, our son's principal is pushing the racist Kendi on his students and believes that a test is racist if black kids don't score as well as white kids. There's an ES teacher who said he will not assign books written by white men. And an admin who defined whiteness as a system of oppression. These people are mentally ill and should not be allowed near children.
Anonymous wrote:[
So you're saying it's nonsense that Teacher A in a school could consistently have kids across sub-groups who perform better on a measure of reading skills than Teacher B?? That happens all the time. And Teacher A coaches Teacher B on his or her methods .Some sub-groups need more contextual reading supports, more practice with phonics etc. than others and sometimes those differences intersect with race/SES. And Teacher's A's strategies for teaching reading might be more effective for all groups, while Teacher B's only works with kids who have a lot of pre-literacy skills developed already (thus consistently producing gaps).
I wish all educational equity discussions were this close. You two seem to be arguing about the minutae. I agree with a lot of what you are both saying. Meanwhile, our son's principal is pushing the racist Kendi on his students and believes that a test is racist if black kids don't score as well as white kids. There's an ES teacher who said he will not assign books written by white men. And an admin who defined whiteness as a system of oppression. These people are mentally ill and should not be allowed near children.
Do you ever think that maybe your school has an issue and you are mistakenly labeling that issue CRT? Several educators are telling you what equity initiatives look like at our schools and it isn’t what you describe.
Anonymous wrote:Yeah - fake post. Well the “post” is real in that exists. Typical racists crap. Anyone of average intelligence who graduated with a teaching degree - and that obviously does not include the person making the post - understands the issues that disparity imposed, and that you cannot ignore them in the classroom.
The issue largely arose because kids in classrooms were largely from the same socio-economic group. But, obviously, that has never been the case with all students in the classroom and ignoring that fact is not permitted. So - no - you cannot assign a project that requires kids to have access to materials or abilities that are not available to all kids.
Example: Everyone in your 3rd grade class needs to go to the public library and get a library card. Problem: Billy’s mom is single parenting and his Grandma watches him after school. Grandma is great but does not drive and it is a 3 mile walk from Grandmas house to the library. When Billy’s mom gets home the library is closed. When Billy cannot show his new library card in class 2 weeks later shall we blame Billy? What do you think Billy got out of that assignment? Did it make Billy a more confident student? Did it make Billy want to go to the library and get books to read? Or, did you just embarrass and humiliate Billy?
Frankly - embarrassing and humiliating Billy is what the poster wants. Ha ha. Isn’t that fun?
Well I am the OP and I am a real person. Contrary to the many assumptions here I am not an ignorant recent graduate but a middle aged teacher who came from a different district to this one. You seem to come from a place of caring about kids — while slinging unfounded insults at me — but nevertheless have not defined for me what “equitable outcomes” are supposed to be. No one in my former or I presume my new school would ever give an assignment like the one you describe, so it is an unfair straw man. In my old school, and in much of the country, “outcomes” are test scores. I cannot guarantee they will be equal, or equitable, however we define that.
You are still stuck —quite stupidly— on the idea that equitable outcomes means equal. You’ve been told your perception is incorrect. I am terribly worried that you might teach one of my own kids or be a coworker.
Anti-racism says that any policy or action that results in unequal racial outcomes is racism. Many school districts have adopted anti-racism as one of their core ideals and have vowed to stamp out racism. How do you square that with what you just said?
1) Yeah, you are still wedded to the idea of equity means equal. It’s not what anti-racism is asking of you as a teacher. Multiple posters have tried to help you grasp the difference. I don’t think you lack the intelligence to understand. You are ideologically committed to misunderstanding because otherwise your argument falls apart.
2) You act as those there’s a knee-jerk situation in which a teacher gives one test and if there are not equal scores across all races, she or he is accused of being racist. That is simply not how it works. For one thing, teachers and administrators look for patterns that lack other explanations. For another, teachers and administrators are given multiple opportunities to address inequitable outcomes regardless of the cause —unless the cause is blatant racism, in which case, would you really want to give the adult multiple chances to desist being blatantly racist OR would you want them to stop being a blatant racist immediately? I hope the latter.
I no longer believe you are a teacher at all. I think you are just a troll and not a really effective one either. .
1. I am the PP, not OP. I'm a parent, not a teacher.
2. The exact scenario you described was called "systemic racism" by our child's principal last year as he explained unintentional racism. He went on to say that the test would need to be changed or done away with which is insane. This is the sort of race to the bottom that many of us are seeing. And again, many districts have adopted anti-racist policies as defined by Kendi. This means that if a principal or teacher's students consistently perform differently by race, at some point the admin are going to blame that principal or teacher.
Nah -- your just racist. And, the problem for you, is that we no longer forgive it. We now call you a racist and reject your straw-man pretend arguments that you somehow think are relevant. They are not, but they are a good marker for knowing who to avoid as a racist.
If a teacher is consistently showing a discrepancy in test scores between any sub groups she might need to learn a larger pool of teaching techniques. That’s where I would start as a mentor of new teachers. I wouldn’t even mention the words race or gender or SES. I would use the names of the students that I wanted her to differentiate instruction for or consider offering more authentic assessment.
Teachers cannot overcome parenting or the lack of parenting. Therefore there will always be gaps. Putting the onus of closing this gap on teachers is a fool's errand and will chase teachers out of the profession while simultaneously making education worse by dumbing down the curriculum.
Why would we only see these gaps for one subgroup though?
Anonymous wrote:Yeah - fake post. Well the “post” is real in that exists. Typical racists crap. Anyone of average intelligence who graduated with a teaching degree - and that obviously does not include the person making the post - understands the issues that disparity imposed, and that you cannot ignore them in the classroom.
The issue largely arose because kids in classrooms were largely from the same socio-economic group. But, obviously, that has never been the case with all students in the classroom and ignoring that fact is not permitted. So - no - you cannot assign a project that requires kids to have access to materials or abilities that are not available to all kids.
Example: Everyone in your 3rd grade class needs to go to the public library and get a library card. Problem: Billy’s mom is single parenting and his Grandma watches him after school. Grandma is great but does not drive and it is a 3 mile walk from Grandmas house to the library. When Billy’s mom gets home the library is closed. When Billy cannot show his new library card in class 2 weeks later shall we blame Billy? What do you think Billy got out of that assignment? Did it make Billy a more confident student? Did it make Billy want to go to the library and get books to read? Or, did you just embarrass and humiliate Billy?
Frankly - embarrassing and humiliating Billy is what the poster wants. Ha ha. Isn’t that fun?
Well I am the OP and I am a real person. Contrary to the many assumptions here I am not an ignorant recent graduate but a middle aged teacher who came from a different district to this one. You seem to come from a place of caring about kids — while slinging unfounded insults at me — but nevertheless have not defined for me what “equitable outcomes” are supposed to be. No one in my former or I presume my new school would ever give an assignment like the one you describe, so it is an unfair straw man. In my old school, and in much of the country, “outcomes” are test scores. I cannot guarantee they will be equal, or equitable, however we define that.
You are still stuck —quite stupidly— on the idea that equitable outcomes means equal. You’ve been told your perception is incorrect. I am terribly worried that you might teach one of my own kids or be a coworker.
Anti-racism says that any policy or action that results in unequal racial outcomes is racism. Many school districts have adopted anti-racism as one of their core ideals and have vowed to stamp out racism. How do you square that with what you just said?
1) Yeah, you are still wedded to the idea of equity means equal. It’s not what anti-racism is asking of you as a teacher. Multiple posters have tried to help you grasp the difference. I don’t think you lack the intelligence to understand. You are ideologically committed to misunderstanding because otherwise your argument falls apart.
2) You act as those there’s a knee-jerk situation in which a teacher gives one test and if there are not equal scores across all races, she or he is accused of being racist. That is simply not how it works. For one thing, teachers and administrators look for patterns that lack other explanations. For another, teachers and administrators are given multiple opportunities to address inequitable outcomes regardless of the cause —unless the cause is blatant racism, in which case, would you really want to give the adult multiple chances to desist being blatantly racist OR would you want them to stop being a blatant racist immediately? I hope the latter.
I no longer believe you are a teacher at all. I think you are just a troll and not a really effective one either. .
1. I am the PP, not OP. I'm a parent, not a teacher.
2. The exact scenario you described was called "systemic racism" by our child's principal last year as he explained unintentional racism. He went on to say that the test would need to be changed or done away with which is insane. This is the sort of race to the bottom that many of us are seeing. And again, many districts have adopted anti-racist policies as defined by Kendi. This means that if a principal or teacher's students consistently perform differently by race, at some point the admin are going to blame that principal or teacher.
Nah -- your just racist. And, the problem for you, is that we no longer forgive it. We now call you a racist and reject your straw-man pretend arguments that you somehow think are relevant. They are not, but they are a good marker for knowing who to avoid as a racist.
If a teacher is consistently showing a discrepancy in test scores between any sub groups she might need to learn a larger pool of teaching techniques. That’s where I would start as a mentor of new teachers. I wouldn’t even mention the words race or gender or SES. I would use the names of the students that I wanted her to differentiate instruction for or consider offering more authentic assessment.
Then you'd be lying to her and misleading her. Worst of all, to buy into the myth that any teaching technique can eliminate discrepancies between groups. It simply isn't true, and that is a fact - a fact researched and proven time and time again. No has EVER managed to overcome inequity outside of school to produce it in school with any consistency.
This is the approach that is used especially when a teacher has sub-group scores that are lower than the average in their district/county (controlling for SES)--they often are unwittingly using inequitable practices. Then, by eliminating the most inequitable, the average gap narrows--AND average overall level of performance improves-- by raising those lowest scores. No teacher can impact all inequity, but there are documented improvements--that teachers even in the same school or county are using with success that other teachers can try.
That is the party line. It's like propaganda - you can say it again and again and people will even believe it, but that doesn't make it true. Not to say that there can't be individual teacher or school practices that are inequitable or downright racist, because of course there are. Lots of them. But whether you are looking at a gap nationwide or just in a school (in a classroom is impossible for many reasons and I have never heard of any school district that targets that), nothing anyone has ever done has consistently (keyword consistently) eliminated that gap. To focus on teachers as the solvers of the problem is to target them as the cause, and for all the that they are part of the same system, they are not the cause, nor can they be the solution. It is misdirection.
But in any given local context some teachers are consistently more successful than others with some subgroups than others. And the teachers who aren't can learn from those who are. It's not the whole solution, not even the primary solution, but it incrementally helpful. I don't see why there has to be this magic bullet consistent strategy that works across contexts for it to not be true. If loads of school practices are inequitable than loads of school practices can be made more equitable.
Um, no. No, they aren't. That's complete nonsense, and would be impossible to measure to say anything "consistently." Not sure where you are getting this idea from.
So you're saying it's nonsense that Teacher A in a school could consistently have kids across sub-groups who perform better on a measure of reading skills than Teacher B?? That happens all the time. And Teacher A coaches Teacher B on his or her methods .Some sub-groups need more contextual reading supports, more practice with phonics etc. than others and sometimes those differences intersect with race/SES. And Teacher's A's strategies for teaching reading might be more effective for all groups, while Teacher B's only works with kids who have a lot of pre-literacy skills developed already (thus consistently producing gaps).
So, actually I don't think it's nonsense that this situation exists. In fact, it almost certainly does. What I meant was nonsense was the idea that there is a cohesive body of research (and not case studies, either) that shows, with consistency, this exact situation in a school. It's the proving it part that doesn't exist, and the reality of the classroom makes it fairly difficult to prove, or even to figure out which teachers it would be in either case. There are just too many variables - like, how do we measure success, and how can you compare one class to another and not do apples to oranges given the way classes are created in most schools, and how do you account for all the other variables that affect a subgroup (including kids in multiple subgroups), and also the impossibility of studying such things across the number of classrooms in the number of places required in order to actually produce a defined set of behaviors that can either be avoided or copied - on the teacher level, I mean, not the school level. On the school level such things exist, as well as for curriculums, and whole districts, and whole populations, so on. I mean one teacher vs another at the same school with the same policies.
Anonymous wrote:[
So you're saying it's nonsense that Teacher A in a school could consistently have kids across sub-groups who perform better on a measure of reading skills than Teacher B?? That happens all the time. And Teacher A coaches Teacher B on his or her methods .Some sub-groups need more contextual reading supports, more practice with phonics etc. than others and sometimes those differences intersect with race/SES. And Teacher's A's strategies for teaching reading might be more effective for all groups, while Teacher B's only works with kids who have a lot of pre-literacy skills developed already (thus consistently producing gaps).
I wish all educational equity discussions were this close. You two seem to be arguing about the minutae. I agree with a lot of what you are both saying. Meanwhile, our son's principal is pushing the racist Kendi on his students and believes that a test is racist if black kids don't score as well as white kids. There's an ES teacher who said he will not assign books written by white men. And an admin who defined whiteness as a system of oppression. These people are mentally ill and should not be allowed near children.
Racist Kendi? Are you someone who believes in reverse racism?
Anonymous wrote:[
So you're saying it's nonsense that Teacher A in a school could consistently have kids across sub-groups who perform better on a measure of reading skills than Teacher B?? That happens all the time. And Teacher A coaches Teacher B on his or her methods .Some sub-groups need more contextual reading supports, more practice with phonics etc. than others and sometimes those differences intersect with race/SES. And Teacher's A's strategies for teaching reading might be more effective for all groups, while Teacher B's only works with kids who have a lot of pre-literacy skills developed already (thus consistently producing gaps).
I wish all educational equity discussions were this close. You two seem to be arguing about the minutae. I agree with a lot of what you are both saying. Meanwhile, our son's principal is pushing the racist Kendi on his students and believes that a test is racist if black kids don't score as well as white kids. There's an ES teacher who said he will not assign books written by white men. And an admin who defined whiteness as a system of oppression. These people are mentally ill and should not be allowed near children.
Do you ever think that maybe your school has an issue and you are mistakenly labeling that issue CRT? Several educators are telling you what equity initiatives look like at our schools and it isn’t what you describe.
It's not just our school. It's our entire district MCPS (and many other districts is the news is to be believed). The principal at Ashburton Elementary held a few zoom meetings where he explained his plan to teach kids to sort their identities into oppressor or oppressed. It's insane.
Anonymous wrote:[
So you're saying it's nonsense that Teacher A in a school could consistently have kids across sub-groups who perform better on a measure of reading skills than Teacher B?? That happens all the time. And Teacher A coaches Teacher B on his or her methods .Some sub-groups need more contextual reading supports, more practice with phonics etc. than others and sometimes those differences intersect with race/SES. And Teacher's A's strategies for teaching reading might be more effective for all groups, while Teacher B's only works with kids who have a lot of pre-literacy skills developed already (thus consistently producing gaps).
I wish all educational equity discussions were this close. You two seem to be arguing about the minutae. I agree with a lot of what you are both saying. Meanwhile, our son's principal is pushing the racist Kendi on his students and believes that a test is racist if black kids don't score as well as white kids. There's an ES teacher who said he will not assign books written by white men. And an admin who defined whiteness as a system of oppression. These people are mentally ill and should not be allowed near children.
Racist Kendi? Are you someone who believes in reverse racism?
whew. i think you might need this education
Yes. Anyone who calls for discrimination against a group of people based on their skin color as Kendi has is a racist.
Anonymous wrote:[
So you're saying it's nonsense that Teacher A in a school could consistently have kids across sub-groups who perform better on a measure of reading skills than Teacher B?? That happens all the time. And Teacher A coaches Teacher B on his or her methods .Some sub-groups need more contextual reading supports, more practice with phonics etc. than others and sometimes those differences intersect with race/SES. And Teacher's A's strategies for teaching reading might be more effective for all groups, while Teacher B's only works with kids who have a lot of pre-literacy skills developed already (thus consistently producing gaps).
I wish all educational equity discussions were this close. You two seem to be arguing about the minutae. I agree with a lot of what you are both saying. Meanwhile, our son's principal is pushing the racist Kendi on his students and believes that a test is racist if black kids don't score as well as white kids. There's an ES teacher who said he will not assign books written by white men. And an admin who defined whiteness as a system of oppression. These people are mentally ill and should not be allowed near children.
Racist Kendi? Are you someone who believes in reverse racism?
whew. i think you might need this education
Yes. Anyone who calls for discrimination against a group of people based on their skin color as Kendi has is a racist.
You are seriously misinterpreting Kendi, and likely what your admin is saying about it. Your account of Kendi makes me think your account of your admin/teachers are similarly misinterpreted.
Anonymous wrote:[
So you're saying it's nonsense that Teacher A in a school could consistently have kids across sub-groups who perform better on a measure of reading skills than Teacher B?? That happens all the time. And Teacher A coaches Teacher B on his or her methods .Some sub-groups need more contextual reading supports, more practice with phonics etc. than others and sometimes those differences intersect with race/SES. And Teacher's A's strategies for teaching reading might be more effective for all groups, while Teacher B's only works with kids who have a lot of pre-literacy skills developed already (thus consistently producing gaps).
I wish all educational equity discussions were this close. You two seem to be arguing about the minutae. I agree with a lot of what you are both saying. Meanwhile, our son's principal is pushing the racist Kendi on his students and believes that a test is racist if black kids don't score as well as white kids. There's an ES teacher who said he will not assign books written by white men. And an admin who defined whiteness as a system of oppression. These people are mentally ill and should not be allowed near children.
Racist Kendi? Are you someone who believes in reverse racism?
whew. i think you might need this education
Yes. Anyone who calls for discrimination against a group of people based on their skin color as Kendi has is a racist.
You are seriously misinterpreting Kendi, and likely what your admin is saying about it. Your account of Kendi makes me think your account of your admin/teachers are similarly misinterpreted.
How do you interpret Kendi? This is a man who once believed white people were aliens.
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