The NAACP has gotten into the act:
The NAACP filed a federal complaint seeking to stop use of the Florida Comprehensive Assessment Test, or FCAT, to determine graduation and student retention until the achievement gap between minority and white students is eliminated.
Wow. That's quite a requirement. Equality of opportunity is no longer sufficient; now minority and white students must have completely equal distributions of ability for the test to be considered "fair" by the NAACP.
...Education Secretary Jim Horne said that the gap between white and minority achievement is closing. He had not seen the complaint, but said the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People has a history of agitation.
The NAACP claims that Florida is violating its constitutional duty to provide a quality education to all students, saying schools that are mostly minority are not receiving the same resources and have inferior facilities.
It's not that they don't have a point with this. It's just that, if you remove objective measures such as the FCAT that show minority youngsters are not gaining the skills they need, then you lose critical evidence that some schools are shortchanging their students and do need to change. Why does the NAACP want to get rid of evidence that minority students aren't learning what they need to learn?
Note to NAACP: Quit attacking the test, and go after schools that have the lowest FCAT performances. Demand to know why these schools can't help their kids learn. If the teachers or administrators claim that they cannot overcome the home lives and backgrounds of their students, then you have the cause of the score gap right there - teachers who have abdicated their responsibility to teach, and schools that have abdicated their responsibility to help kids overcome a poor home environment. Fix that, and you'll see the score gap close. Eliminate the FCAT, and nothing will happen to improve education for minority youth.
Posted by kswygert at August 28, 2003 11:35 AM