Wednesday, December 23, 2009

Office of Hispanic Education, a feel good boondoggle.

You have an "at risk" student in front of you. You and s/he
are separated by a curtain.

You ask the student to describe all of the barriers that put
them at risk of failing to be educated.

In the end, you will not know the ethnicity of the student.

In the absence of overt racism, race doesn't play.
In the face of overt racism, the solution lies in ending the
racism, not in trying to teach in spite of it.

In the end, every child is an individual. If every child were
treated as an individual, we would find ourselves far ahead
of our current situation.

The real problem is the relentless insistence that 30 kids,
who have nothing in common beyond the year of their birth,
can be moved together at the same speed for 12 years,
even against their will.

The real correlation in the likelihood educational success,
is between SES (socio-economic status) and achievement.

Although there is a correlation between race and SES,
the correlation does not extend through SES to educational
success. Because A affects B, and B affects C, it doesn't
necessarily follow that A affects C; there are to many
examples of success in C, despite A.

Any Office that groups kids according to the year of their birth
(and their ethnicity), will not solve the problem, it will simply
perpetuate a failing model.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

This "Hispanic Education" is a useless cluster of claptrap.
#1: "Hispanic" refers to people from Spain, Mexico, Central America, South America, Mexico, Chicanos, Tejanos, some Carribbean islands, and mixtures of any other race and these.
#2: Most Chicanos, Spaniards, Mexican-Americans and Tejanos aren't enrolled in TESOL [English as a Second Language] program. In fact, many of them don't even know Spanish!
#3: NM's Spaniards and South Americans tend to do well in school, and not have high truancy rates, compared to other Hispanic groups.
#4: There are poor Hispanics, just as there are poor whites and Asians. As you pionted out, there is a greater correlation between poverty and eacademic success. So where are poor Whites and Asians going to get assistance while their Hisapanic classmates are offered such? Where is the fairness?
#5: Such a policy assumes most Hispanics are poor, and/or can't impart academic success to their kids, and/or they are possibly "poor parents". This is an INSULT to the HISPANIC COMMUNITY!
****This is piss-poor propoganda to try to persuade Hispanics to appreciate the democratic party through Richardson/Garcia! *****