Since the advent of NO Child Left Behind (NCLB), education in general has become more data-driven. Now students in the Washington, DC area will be able to select a more specific racial destinction. The Washington Post today reports that a new way of classifying students will give parents more options and will give educators and bureacrats at the Dept. of Education more detailed information.
For decades, students have been counted in one of five racial and ethnic groups: American Indian or Alaska native; Asian or Pacific Islander; Hispanic; non-Hispanic black; or non-Hispanic white. The categories date to the 1960s and were standardized in 1977 to promote affirmative action and monitor discrimination in housing, employment, voting rights and education.
Starting in 2010, under Education Department rules approved two years ago to comply with a government-wide policy shift, parents will be able to check all boxes that apply in a two-step questionnaire with reshaped categories. First, they will indicate whether a student is of Hispanic or Latino origin, or not. (The two terms will encompass one group.) Then they will identify a student as one or more of the following: American Indian or Alaska native; Asian; black or African American; native Hawaiian or other Pacific Islander; or white.
The new rules will allow students and parents to recognize bi-racial students and not force students to disregard part of their culture. Since so many components of NCLB involve data, it will supposedly be more difficult for certain groups of kids fall between the cracks.
During the 2000 census, approximately 6.8 people were identified as multi-racial. Civil Rights groups feel that reclassifying is needed.
Many civil rights advocates agree that it’s necessary to document the growing number of multiracial students, but they say these categories will mask valuable information about race that could be used to analyze educational challenges some groups face. They say it would be more accurate to report the data in detail, with racial and ethnic combinations.
“If we don’t know that some multiracial, Hispanic and black students are doing worse,” said Melissa Herman, a sociologist at Dartmouth College, “we can conveniently ignore that they are doing worse.”
Not all schools will be using the new categories right away. For now, 15 states plan to use the new system of categorizing.
Does NCLB invade privacy? Should we know if a child is economically deprived? Do we need to track race so closely? When is too much information too much?
The schools already track who is on free or reduced lunch. In fact, federal and state money is given more to those schools who have a certain percentage of their students on free or reduced lunch.
And parents can always decline to answer the race question if they choose to do so.
Saw a promo for a “Spring Festival of Races” on the Manassas Park
City website and, at first, thought it was a multi-cultural event,
but turns out to be, well, races – 10K, 5K, 1 mile run/walk, etc.
on March 28th.
(Rumor is that BVBL, who is a real supporter of the MP government,
plans to join with HSM, inspired by a Borat movie, to also hold a
“Running of the Hispanics” through the streets of the city –
starting at the 7-11. Greg reminds his fellow runners to wear the
traditional camo and be in shape – ranting while running takes
stamina.)
So the reason the schools want to track races is so GL and his nut-crew can run after anyone with a last name that sounds “foreign”? Is that it?
I probably shouldn’t have said that. The fingers are working faster than the forethought this morning.
Posting, your remark wasn’t nearly as biting as Richard’s. I haven’t seen the Borat movie, can someone explain that? Anyway, I agree that wearing camouflage while running while ranting would be an execleent way to display HSM pride!
For those who are new readers, Gospel Greg Letiecq has been known to dress up in camouflage and harass Day Laborers, and even got pulled over by the police for doing that.
This article sites immigration and interracial marriage as the cause of why we have so many “brown faces at the bus stop” in Virginia.
Virginia and other states tried legislating against interracial marriage, and that got struck down by the Supreme Court. Then, Prince William County tried legislating against driving while Latino, and that got struck down by the good people of PWC.
Brown faces at bus stops are not a bad thing. But even if they were, there ARE no laws could be passed that would stop the browning of America without destroying what America was destined to be: a nation of immigrations, where all persons are created equal and should be treated as such.
Once you strip out the hysteria over the browning of America, there just isn’t enough of a reason for the whole country to fight about this.
If we come to realize that fact, then we’ll be ready to look at practical solutions. But Congress will have to be brave, and not get frightened by a lot of emails.
–nyway, I agree that wearing camouflage while running while ranting would be an execleent way to display HSM pride!–
I’m so stupid. I thought someone seriously posted that idea on Greg’s blog! LOL! Where is my brain this morning?
Where did you get anything about “brown faces at the bus stop” out of that article? Something is seriously wrong with you and Pinko – are either of you in public education? The article states that racial tracking is done to see if there are gaps in the education of children of different races – something the article CLEARLY POINTED OUT. This isn’t a PWC or Virginia thing – it’s national.
Did you even read the article? Good lord – this is ridiculous. The article also said NOTHING about tracking income of students.
What a bunch of idiots on this blog.
Happy, I already said I misunderstood. Sheesh.
It just looks like you all didn’t even read the article and have an axe to grind with this Greg guy.
Heard the right wing of Virginia’s GOP and Prince Jeffie are
rethinking the children’s free lunch program based on
Jonathan Swift’s “modest proposal” for Ireland during
the potato famine of the mid-1800’s.
“For Preventing the Children of Poor People in Ireland From
Being A Burden to Their Parents or Country, and For Making
Them Beneficial to the Public.”
Certainly puts “lunch” and “children” in a different light.
(Swift, like Borat today, was a master of cutting political satire)
Well, as residents familiar with Greg’s “civic” activities and blog, some of us disagree with his activities. But that really has nothing to do with this post.
That said, I read the article on the schools last night. My own comments were just juxtapositions between what you wrote, Harry, and the schools documenting interracial students. Obviously, I misunderstood your entry.
How could you read the article last night? It wasn’t even published until today!
Monday, March 23, 2009; Page A01
Hmm – an hour later, and no response.
Harry, some people have more to do in life than sit here and answer hecklers. ShellyB is referring to something that was said on the blogs and is a recurring theme here–someone complaining about too many brown faces at the bus stop. You are obviously new here and aren’t aware of some of our past history.
Please challenge people’s ideas but let’s not get off on the wrong foot by nit-picking or regulars here to death.
Hmm, I’m only 38, and when I went to school students were just students. I hope my kids are just students.
It’s okay, MH. Happy obviously has no idea how productive some of us are. Indeed, we lose track of when we do things and how much we do!
Slow, in some ways, I agree with you. It would be nice to be what they call “color blind” but sadly, we haven’t been that way since the settlers dissed the Native Americans. When you found a country on those traditions, how do you break them centuries later?
There is something very important missing here: they are still making the huge mistake of calling Hispanics to us the peoples of the Americas! This is the Education Department we are talking about? How can you teach our children a fake version of our own human history and culture?
We are not Hispanic! We are actually people of mostly Native or Indigenous heritage and mixed with African, European, and Asian, and other ethnicities. One third of Latin American population is Afro descendant for example. Even if we had some European ancestors, they weren’t necessarily Spanish people because in the last five centuries there were immigrants from other nationalities coming to our continent too.
I think if you look at history through those lenses, Pinko, you just make yourself unhappy. I don’t think the settlers necessarily dissed the Native Americans. Some had good relations, others did not. I love Indian Culture, jewelry, history. I realize that many decisions really screwed Indians and that way of life. The only way to not have permanently impacted their lives would have been to have never come here inm the first place. And if ‘we’ hadn’t, someone else would have.
That’s why I don’t beat myself up. About schools though, NCLB has been the great classifier. If you can’t classify kids, how can you tell if you are leaving them behind? Something like that…..(groooan)
Slowpoke, I didn’t realize people 38 used to watch looney tunes. When did the gross cartoons start?
Pinko – you didn’t answer the question –
MH – I’m 35 and remember watching Looney Tunes. I don’t know when the gross cartoons started – but there are a lot of cartoons that I don’t let my kids watch now.
Pinky, the only way this society will change is by changing in each family. It can’t be legislated and it can’t be ordered by judges, etc. It takes parents to teach the young that there is no reason to base judgements on people’s appearances. This is from my daughter’s blog entry–“My first best friend lived next door to me and was an african american. I say this not to be like’ look at me’ but more of my parents didn’t teach me to notice people’s race. I didn’t start to see races until we moved and society started telling me to.”
So it can be done and done in a generation. I think much has been accomplished over the years but it didn’t take the Civil Rights Act or national guards to change attitudes–they may have facilitated and highlighted the issues but they wouldn’t change anything but institutional conditions.
And, M-H, thank goodness they are 35 and 38 and can still remember Looney Tunes. I am too much older and don’t remember much of them.
@Moon-howler
Yeah, the Bugs Bunny / Road Runner Show was on every Saturday morning. I don’t know exactly when the garbage cartoons started, but they’re mostly on the Cartoon network. Like I said, I feel like a fuddy-duddy. I’m shaking my head thinking “whatever happened to the Flintstones?”. Hey, here’s one for you…..H.R. Puffenstuff. Were those Croft dudes high or what?
Hand Rolled Puffin’ Stuff
This can only become an even more confused tangle as people move and intermarry. Then what? Are we supposed to check what percentage we are of each ethnicity? And how do you estimate that, through DNA evidence? And if you know there is the chance for free/reduced price lunches or scholarships if you have a certain percentage of something or other, can’t you just fudge it a little? This can only get more and more ridiculous as the years go by and the races intermingle.
There is a kind of racism inherent in classifying children by their race. We should be addressing the larger problem of unequal school services and varying quality in our highly segmented public school system, not trying to box our kids into an identity based on their skin color.
And I don’t quite understand where BVBL fits into this discussion. I feel like I missed something here.
H.R. Puffin’ Stuff; he’s your friend when things get rough…”
couldn’t resist–showing my age here.
YankeeForever,
Free/Reduced Lunches don’t have anything to do with race, it’s income based. Who thinks people get a free lunch based on their ethnicity?
You’re right about that, Happenings, I just carelessly threw that out there. I just don’t see the benefit of fitting kids into neat little racial boxes when it’s the school system that needs work.
I remember watching that on ch. 20 after school – with Land of Lost and all of those that went with it. That was truly weird.
Yankee – for free and reduced lunch, the parent has to provide an income level, but I see what you are getting at – that schools could “encourage” students to check one box or the other. As an educator, I wish that we would focus more on providing a quality education to ALL students, but with NCLB the chances of that are slim to none.
@YankeeForever
Not showing your age – now I have the theme song running through my head!
I don’t remember HR Puffin’ Stuff but my brother probably does. He had cooties and I wouldn’t watch his shows.
As for why BVBL is being discussed–no one ever sticks to threat topic. That’s ok. It came up much earlier.
People aren’t required to answer questions here. Blogging is voluntary. There are plenty of questions I don’t answer. Depends on my mood and the tone, I guess.
I think that racism has just become a buzz word. A friend of mine just told me that one of her students called her a racist because she wouldn’t give him answers on a test. YAWN. To me, the word has just become meaningless because it has been bantered about way too much.
This argument holds that by reacting to systematic bigotry, you are actually creating it.
This argument actually blames the victim and ignores the criminal abuser.
The solution offered is to just pretend systemic bigotry doesn’t exist.
Then what is the solution, Mackie? White imprisonment?
@YankeeForever
Self-Loathing.
Yankee,
You need some analysis. Let Paul Mooney help.
http://espanol.video.yahoo.com/watch/237359/1832112
Hi Happy Harry. I fully understand why you must have been alarmed by the “brown faces at the bus stop” reference. The original impetus for the “Immigration Resolution” introduced in July of 2007 was a deep sense of anxiety at the growing numbers of immigrants in Prince William County. Often these immigrants were assumed to be “illegal” immigrants due to increasing hysteria due to people like Lou Dobbs of CNN and “Gospel” Greg Letiecq of the formerly ferocious “BVBL” blog. During the frenzy of hate-based dialog on that blog, several people openly admitted that the real aim of the Immigration Resolution was to reduce the numbers of “brown faces at the bus stop.”
When the Immigration Resolution was neutered in April of 2008, some of the same extremists wrote things like “grab your pitch forks and shovels” because they saw ethnic people moving IN to their neighborhoods instead of moving OUT, which was their aim in writing the Immigration Resolution.
Oh yeah, I forgot to mention, the Resolution was half written by one of the men responsible for quites like the “brown faces” and the “pitchforks,” and half written by a Hate Group founded by white supremacists called “FAIR.”
Anyway, my comment was assuming knowledge of all of that. And returning to the orginal purpose of the Immigration Resolution and “Gospel” Greg’s blog, which was to reduce the numbers of “brown faces” at the bus stop (their words not mine). In reading that article, I couldn’t help but thinking that their aim was impossible to achieve. That’s all.
Nobody knows “hate groups” like Shelly!
I don’t think we should beat ourselves up about what our ancestors did, but we SHOULD learn a lesson from it and avoid repeating history. Unfortunately, I don’t see that happening in this country or in others. There is always the group that wants to dominate which means there are always the dominated (serfs, if you will). This is an unfortunate aspect of human history.
Back to the original post, if we are trying to identify ethnicity (I refuse to use that word “race” especially in this case), we need to go all the way and have everyone do a mini-genealogy on every application for everything. Would that make the powers-that-be happy? Probably not. Someone mentioned a DNA test. That’s probably coming next.
“I just don’t see the benefit of fitting kids into neat little racial boxes when it’s the school system that needs work.”
I agree with you, Yankee. Minorities often get boxed into bad school systems for any number of reasons including racist (sorry MH) infrastructures. However, if we stop focusing on race and start focusing on how to get EVERYONE a viable education, then we take care of both the underlying problem and its toxic by-products.
ShellyB,
Let me educate you about what you know not. There has always been two major races in PWC. Those groups were whites and blacks. Now based on your assessment of the whites being racist there should have been all sorts of racial strife between the two. Guess what, there weren’t the problems that you profess. How do you explain that? Ill tell you, because the blacks and whites both respected the community, and so the problems that are characteristic of the recent illegal immigrants didn’t occur. THAT is why there was no racial discontent. It has nothing to do with race, and the sooner you get that through your thick head the better!
Let’s try to flip side of the argument–if you had a white mother and a black father, would you like to have to choose either black or white? There is no ‘bi-racial.’ How about if you have an anglo mother and an hispanic father? Should you have to be one or the other? Aren’t we, especially as Americans, sort of hybrids?
Until recent times, our ‘hybridness’ tended to be amongst our own race. However, contrast Americans with Europeans. Europeans don’t seem to be half this and half that or part Irish and part Italian like Americans do. Now we are branching out much more.
While I didn’t take a stand in the post, I have decided it is a good idea. People should have more options for their identity. What you start with tends to be how you see yourself.
Slow, agree on NCLB. I am not sure that the federal govt should be messing in local education.
Free lunch-federal program that has been around since 1946. It has gone through alterations for sure. It is based only on parent/guardian income and has nothing to do with race. All children are eligible regardless of status. For many kids, it is the only hot meal a kid gets. A friend of mine who teaches mid county said that they have trouble with a couple kids stealing food for younger brothers and sisters.
Second Alamo –
You know why there wasn’t any “strife” between blacks and whites?
The blacks “knew” their place. They had their own schools and the whites had their schools. Ergo – no strife. Remeber the old slogan:
Separate by equal.
I really don’t understand the importance of knowing what race a child is except for HUMAN!!!
Punchak,
Now that really sounded racist. I was referring to perhaps 20 years ago at the earliest. Long after the turmoil of the 60’s and early 70’s.
SA –
My statement was not racist. I simply stated the truth.
Do you really believe that there wasn’t any “racial discontent” 20 or so years ago? Were blacks treated as equals to whites in PWC at that time?
Are they now?
Why in’ell do we need to categorize?
The color that really matters is — GREEN — money.
(Everyone loves those pictures of old white guys)
You can be turquise or polka-dot as long as you have mucho el dinero –
that is what matters in America today.
Darn toot’n, Poor Richard! The long green is the only thing that matters. For them that have, there’s never enough. What do they do with their millions? Buy influence, I suppose.
Good night!
@Punchak
Few, if any of you, know ANYTHING about Prince William County in the 60’s and 70’s! The greatest majority of whites AND blacks in PWC got along just fine. I grew up here, graduating from BDHS in 1969, and our school was integrated when I was a sophomore with no problems whatsoever…we were all neighbors. Many were already friends. That’s the way they were able to do it here…they simply sent everyone to their neighborhood schools, without the need for “busing.” The biggest complaints we heard actually came from the blacks…they lost their AAA High School (best athletic teams, best band, highest percentage of masters degrees on staff, and the only school in the county with lighted athletic fields). They, especially the guys, were pissed…but they got over it.
Of course, you’re ALWAYS going to get one or two troublemakers, as you can see on these blogs. But they were peacefully dealt with by BOTH races…together. Keep your banal assumptions to yourself!