For public schools in the No Child Left Behind era, it has become routine to analyze test scores and other academic indicators by race and ethnicity. But the Fairfax County School Board, to promote character education, has discovered the pitfalls of applying the same analytical techniques to measures of student behavior, especially when the findings imply disparities in behavior among racial, ethnic and other groups.
The county School Board, which oversees one of the country’s largest and most diverse suburban school systems, is scheduled to vote tonight on whether to accept a staff report that concludes, in part, that black and Hispanic students and special education students received lower marks than white and Asian American students for demonstration of “sound moral character and ethical judgment.”
Such findings have prompted a debate on the potential bias in how teachers evaluate student behavior and how the school system analyzes and presents information about race. Board member Martina A. “Tina” Hone (At Large), who is African American, called the school system’s decision to break down data by race “potentially damaging and hurtful.”
I wonder if it is even possible to analyze things in a rational way any more. Is truth dead for the fear of offending someone or discovering something that a group may not like? Are feelings more important than attempts to discover facts?
I fear the political correctness is like a cancer eating away at truth so that we only tell people what they want to hear or what the group has already determined it wants to hear.
Amen, Br. Michael. Amen.
Way back when in grade-high school we passed or we took the subject over. A , B, C, and even a D+ ( in certain non-core classes) was considered as passing. F’s or E’s were not acceptable in any subject. After spending some time in summer school I got the message fast!
Having recently engaged in a nice conversation with an African American public school teacher who was teaching in a minority school, the stories she told of the gang influence simply curdled the hair [to mix metaphors]. It was incredible.
I suspect that the real issue is not really the issue of race, but the question for progressives of whether there is actually such a thing as an absolute standard for “sound moral character and ethical judgment” by which students could be judged.
In other words . . . if a student gang member who was African American shot and killed someone on school property would he be demonstrating NOT “sound moral character and ethical judgment” . . . or would he merely be crying out against an oppressive society in the only way he knew how and therefore demonstrating in his protest “sound moral character and ethical judgment.”
#4, But the young man should still be considered a killer. For whatever reason Billy the Kid shot and killed his first victim at the are of 12. Maybe he had a reason to but not too long after his likeness was posted on a Wanted dead or alive circular. Later in life he and his co-bandit pal Pat Garrett were offered a chance of pardon if they were willing to be US Marshals complete with authority and badges to combat a siege of growing Western lawlessness. Pat accepted but Billy did not. The rest of this story proves who made the right choice.