Stacy: Race based educational standards, the purview of cowards
Upon hearing that Florida has followed the lead of the District of Columbia in setting new educational goals for student achievement based on race, I’m insulted on so many levels. No matter what your complaints are with No Child Left Behind; one thing was made very clear by it’s mandates: All children are expected to perform at or above grade level. The fact that this mandate was applied with no exceptions had many educators up in arms, but look at the results!
Socioeconomically disadvantaged children, minority children, English Language Learners, children across the country were suddenly expected to perform and millions of them did. They stepped up with bright eyes and got into the business of learning. Those children didn’t need to be separated off by race into categories and given expectations based on the color of their skin, or their parent’s income bracket!! They excelled because they were expected to – some of them for the very first time in their lives!
Enter the demon of Liberal ideology: now kids can expect to be segregated by their race for their educations:
via the Daily Caller:
New education standards approved this week in Florida set goals for public school student performance based on race and ethnicity — with lower benchmarks for African-American, Native American, and Hispanic students, and higher ones for white and Asian-American students.
“We need a strong plan to support our dynamic education system,” State Board Chairman Gary Chartrand said in a statement announcing the approval of the state’s strategic plan for public schools and state colleges through 2018, which includes the new race-based benchmarks.
Can you believe this? Where is Al Sharpton to cry racism? Who is going to stand up for the children of the great state of Florida to decry the utter madness of lowering expectations for children based on their race? I find this so sickening and repugnant! If I were a parent in Florida, we would put our children in private school. For parents that don’t have that option, they should seek work outside the state and make plans to move their kids.
Jeb Bush the former governor of Florida recently decried the lowering of educational standards based on race. He now sings a different tune in support of the race based standards.
“Over the past decade, Florida has had the largest achievement gains for students with disabilities, the third-largest for low-income students and the fourth-largest in the country for African-Americans,” he wrote. “The U.S. Department of Education identified Florida as one of only three states substantially closing the achievement gap between black and white elementary students in both reading and math. Florida’s 4th grade Hispanic students now read as well as or better than the average student in 21 other states.”
My question for Gov. Bush is simple: why stop mid-course when your results prove that Florida students are clearly on the road to success? Why yield to racially insensitive stereotypes that state that intelligence is genetic? Why not continue on the path to prove that any student can learn and achieve with the proper tools and motivation?
As an elected school board member, I will fight dumbing down educational standards based on race. I’m disappointed that you don’t have the same courage Sir.
