Desegregation/Integration Argued Before The Supreme Court Today

More than 50 years after Brown v. Board of Education ended racial segregation in our public schools, the Supreme Court today heard arguments from two school districts (in Seattle and Louisville) that want to assign students to schools based on race. On her own blog, Joanne (see blogroll at left) has a pithy comment for people who try to use Brown to justify such race-based assignments, which often include busing students to schools far from their homes in order to achieve some predetermined racial mix:

I thought Brown was about assigning black kids to their all-white neighborhood school instead of sending them across town because of their race. Silly me.

Hard to argue with that. She even gives an example of a school that works because of its homogenous student body:

My book, Our School, is about a San Jose charter school, Downtown College Prep, that’s 90 percent Mexican-American. The school recruits students who earned D’s and F’s in middle school — ninth graders average fifth-grade reading and math skills — and focuses intently on teaching them the basic and advanced skills they’ll need to succeed in college. The school works because it’s not diverse. Most students share a set of educational challenges, such as a limited English vocabulary. They buy into a single mission: Prepare for college.

Where are the diversityphiles screaming for more "diversity" at DCP? I wonder why they don't. No, actually I don't wonder; I already know why they don't. Think about it for a moment, and you'll know why, too.

And don't think I'm for changing the student body at DCP. I'm not. Joanne's correct that the school works because it's not diverse. I just want to point out that the lefties aren't crying to integrate this particular school, and the reason is telling. I wonder what would happen to a DCP-like school in Seattle or Louisville....

Joanne's on a roll in the post linked above:

In a court-ordered desegregation scheme starting in 1985, Kansas City schools received $2 billion over 12 years to create programs that would lure suburban whites into inner-city schools. Some of the money created a massive and hugely inefficient district bureaucracy, Miller writes. The rest paid for lavish physical facilities, thousands of computers and magnet programs designed with no regard for the interests or needs of urban black students. Teachers weren’t trained to develop courses for the special programs to which they were assigned. When the court ended the plan in 1997, the schools were more segregated than ever and test scores were just as low.

That’s what happens when getting the ideal racial mix becomes a higher priority than educating the students you’ve got.

We've really got to get back to that silly notion from the 60s, that phrase that recurs in the Civil Rights Act and the Voting Rights Act--a phrase that was a central tenet of Dr. King's philosophy--"without regard to race". That would lead to a "colorblind society", one where people are judged not by the color of their skin, but by the content of their character.

I'll sit back and let the lefties try to demonize me for believing what Dr. King actually said, for believing what the laws actually say, and not what the the lefties want Dr. King and the laws to have said.

Update: John at Discriminations (see blogroll at left) has the expected in-depth essay on this topic.

Teachers and 403(b) Plans

First the LA Times informs us that the unions were pushing bad retirement plans on teachers. Now we find out it's not just the unions.

Teachers, do your homework.

Weapons of Math Destruction

This site has great comics:
http://weaponsofmathdestruction.com/thumbnails.cfm

I like this one:
http://weaponsofmathdestruction.com/wmd.cfm?comicID=39

Army Takes High School Drop-outs, With Interesting Results

Via Joanne Jacobs (see blogroll at left) comes this info from Strategypage:

The screening process included having the candidates take, and pass, the GED (high school equivalency test). Last year, the army took in 5,900 screened drop outs, and they had a six-month attrition rate of 6.2 percent. This meant that, for a variety of reasons, 6.2 percent of these recruits left the army within six months. Compare this to 10.3 percent for unscreened dropouts, and 5.6 percent for high school grads.

Interesting. Do those data support the contention that many students drop out just because they have the misfortune of attending bad schools?

Navy Cancels Plans To Commission Ship In San Francisco

Personally, in light of the anti-military attitude on the part of that city and its elected officials, I'd cancel Fleet Week, too.

We'll see if this change of plans survives the politics it's sure to arouse.

Liberals

From a 2000 essay by John Derbyshire, via Right Wing Nation (see blogroll at left):

Wherever there is a jackboot stomping on a human face there will be a well-heeled Western liberal to explain that the face does, after all, enjoy free health care and 100 percent literacy. Won’t they ever learn? No, their stupidity is impenetrable. They will never learn.

It's as true today as it was in 2000. Go read the whole thing.

Suspended For A Drug Message OFF-Campus But At A School-Sponsored Event

Ken Starr, of Whitewater fame, is representing the school board that suspended a student for unfurling a "Bong Hits 4 Jesus" banner on a public sidewalk near his school as the 2002 Olympic Torch was run by. The catch is, students were let out of class, accompanied by their teachers, to go watch the torch--so it was a school-sponsored event.

Starr, who is now dean of the law school at Pepperdine University in Malibu, California, urged the high court in his appeal brief to clear up the "doctrinal fog infecting student speech jurisprudence."

Well wouldn't it be nice if they could finally do that.

The appeal will likely be argued in late February, with a ruling expected by late June.

I'm with the school board on this one. School-sponsored event, school rules apply. No way would I have a student cuss me out on a field trip just because we weren't at school. Same situation, to me. Now, if the Supremes rule that drug references do not impact the learning environment, and hence cannot be regulated at school, I'd consider changing my mind. He would have no right to disrupt a class with his free speech, but if the Supremes say that this type of speech is ok, then it's ok.

Hat tip to the EducationWonks (see blogroll at left).

Critical Thinking in Schools

The problem with the critical thinking approach in practice is that too many of the teachers who employ it don't set aside their biases. We're all the product of our respective experiences, perspectives, perceptions, values, beliefs, ideologies and personal interests. Schoolteachers aren't some kind of detached philosopher-kings. The ones who dominate K-12 (and higher) education are inordinately Democrats, collectivists, liberals, union members, government employees, nannyists, politically correct social engineers, etc. With too few exceptions, I don't trust them to impartially referee exercises in critical thinking for idealistic, impressionable young minds. I believe in the power of ideas. So do activist liberal teachers. I'd just like equal treatment. I wonder if students are ever challenged with questions from the right, not just the left, such as:

• Name fives ways teachers' unions might be obstacles to improving the quality of public education.

• Critique Howard Zinn's A People's History of the United States and theorize about what motivates American leftists who obsess about their country's shortcomings while downplaying its greatness.

• Explain why the ideology of socialism is in direct conflict with human nature and, consequently, perpetually doomed to failure.

• Read Ayn Rand's Atlas Shrugged and give five examples of violations of individual rights in the name of "the common good."

• The mainstream media largely ignore qualified global-warming skeptics. Name five scientists who dispute global-warming theory and explain their arguments.

I invite students, teachers and administrators to contact me with such classroom examples.

Don't hold your breath waiting, Mike. You'll die.

Bad Apples and Public Schools

To make sense of this commentary, you have to read the Townhall.com essay about two page-clicks from the top of the page first, and then read the commentary at the top.

Thoughts? (note to anonymous: the question implies serious, thought-provoking comments, not bile and snippiness that apparently pass for thoughts on left-wing blogs)

School Calendar

Notice anything interesting about this school calendar?



If not, take a look at December 16th and December 25th. Not only is one religious holiday identified and not the other, there's a religious symbol used for one and not the other. I wonder why that is.

Two Recent Stories About Airline Security

To the horror of some lefties, the US government has assigned international travelers--even Americans!--a terrorism risk score.

Virtually every person entering and leaving the United States by air, sea or land is scored by the Homeland Security Department's Automated Targeting System, or ATS. The scores are based on ATS' analysis of their travel records and other data, including items such as where they are from, how they paid for tickets, their motor vehicle records, past one-way travel, seating preference and what kind of meal they ordered...

Government officials could not say whether ATS has apprehended any terrorists. Based on all the information available to them, federal agents turn back about 45 foreign criminals a day at U.S. borders, according to Homeland Security's Customs and Border Protection spokesman Bill Anthony. He could not say how many were spotted by ATS.

Of course this is just another one of George Bush's attacks on civil liberties, right? Not quite.

ATS was first used to rate the risk posed by travelers in the late 1990s, using personal information about them voluntarily supplied by air and cruise lines. (emphasis mine--Darren)

A post-9/11 law vastly expanded the program, he said. It required airline and cruise companies to begin in 2002 sending the government electronic data in advance on all passengers and crew bound into or out of the country. All these names are put through ATS analysis, Ahern said. In addition, at land border crossings, agents enter license plates and the names of vehicle drivers and passengers, and Amtrak voluntarily supplies passenger data on its trains to and from Canada, he said.

It apparently didn't work too well pre-9/11, and I'm glad the expanded program's being used now. For all those people who were complaining that the pre-9/11 government didn't "connect the dots"--well, these are some of the dots they need to connect.

Then there's this story, about a backscatter x-ray machine that does what we were all promised in those little ads in the back of the comic books as kids: x-ray vision allowing you to see through clothes!

Yep, they're gonna be checking me out, all right. Some privacy specialists are concerned that this will provide fodder for YouTube for years to come. Here are the key points:

But the TSA said the X-rays will be set up so that the image can be viewed only by a security officer in a remote location. Other passengers, and even the agent at the checkpoint, will not have access to the picture.

I'm not sure that's good, for the YouTube reason mentioned above. And then:

In addition, the system will be configured so that the X-ray will be deleted as soon as the individual steps away from the machine. It will not be stored or available for printing or transmitting, agency spokesman Nico Melendez said.

We'll see what happens.

Update, 2/23/07: The X-Ray machine has arrived.

(AP) -- The Phoenix airport on Friday became the first in the United States to test new X-ray technology that can see through people's clothes and show the body's contours with blush-inducing clarity.

Critics have said the high-resolution images created by the "backscatter" technology are too invasive. But the Transportation Security Administration adjusted the equipment so the pictures can be blurred in certain areas while still detecting concealed weapons.

During the testing, the machine will be used only as a back-up screening measure. Passengers who fail the standard screening with a metal detector will be able to choose between the new device or a pat-down search...

Passengers selected for screening by the device are asked to stand in front of the closet-size X-ray unit with the palms of their hands facing out. Then they must turn around for a second screening from behind. The procedure takes about a minute...

The security officer who works with the passenger going through the screening will never see the images the machine produces. The pictures will be viewed by another officer about 50 feet away who will not see the passenger, the TSA said.

The machine cannot store the images or transmit them.

A full minute? Even if only a half a minute per passenger, that's too much time. They've got to fix that.

Aggrieved Native Americans Pitch a Fit At Dartmouth

*sigh*

The Dartmouth Review, an independent conservative student newspaper, is not affiliated with the Ivy League college and has had a sometimes adversarial relationship with minority students.

Students said the paper's latest issue, ridiculing Native American students' complaints about a string of incidents seen as racist, was the trigger for the demonstration, held on the last day of classes before exams.

Honestly, I sometimes think that college students go to these stupid protests because that's what they think college students are supposed to do.

[E]arlier this month, the crew team held a party with a "Cowboys and Indians" theme. Team captains later apologized.

Gads! Not a "Cowboys and Indians" theme! I hope there was no Village People music being played. And the apology? Pathetic. I hope they didn't mean it.

Honestly, is such a party truly "insensitive"? Or is it something that someone with a chip on his/her shoulder says is insensitive, and to prove our sensitivity, we have to support the so-called aggrieved party? What crap. You don't like the theme of a party? Don't go.

The college also apologized for scheduling a December 29 hockey game against the University of North Dakota, whose mascot is the "Fighting Sioux." The university is one of several schools whose use of American Indian imagery has been labeled "hostile and abusive" by the National Collegiate Athletic Association.

So the Dartmouth Indians don't like UND's "Fighting Sioux" mascot. Who gives a damn what the Dartmouth Indians think? I'd be slightly more concerned, but not much, about what the Sioux themselves think.

So anyway, here's what one of the bigoted right-wing white racist yadda yadda yadda conservative editorialists said in the dreaded "independent conservative student newspaper":

In an editorial, Linsalata wrote: "While the onus may fall partly on the student body to facilitate an environment more hospitable to Indians, nothing can be done until the Indians themselves lay out measurable goals and steps for how this harmony can be achieved. Patronizing advertisements and excessive use of the race card are antithetical to this goal."

And here's the response it got:

At the rally, Kohn, a member of both the Crow tribe and of the student group Native Americans at Dartmouth, urged administrators to pursue disciplinary action against offenders.

I know Dartmouth isn't a public school and isn't held to 1st Amendment standards, but I'd like to think that as a university, the free and open exchange of ideas would be tolerated. But apparently, speech at Dartmouth is tolerated only if it conforms to certain rigid ideological standards.

I think someone needs to smokem peace pipe.

School Attendance

I had a student today come late to school because he was taking his DMV driving test. Wouldn't have happened with my parents!

I have a student in Hawaii this week. Wouldn't have happened with my parents.

This school gives away a new vehicle for good attendance. Wish it would have happened at my school! No, I probably don't. I doubt it serves as a motivator as much as it does a reward, and a reward contingent on good fortune at that.

I like the remark from the person who described his parents' rule regarding missing school:

"My mom had the three-B rule: There'd better be blood, bone or barf, or I was going to school," (Associate Principal) Stafford said.

The 3-B rule. Gotta remember that one.

Two Degrees of Separation

I have a friend whose longtime best friend (and Naval Academy roommate) will be on next week's shuttle flight. In fact, I think I met her (the astronaut) back in April of 1987, on a whirlwind weekend in Northern Virginia. I recall some dancing in a bar in a hotel in Alexandria, Billy Idol's version of Mony Mony was playing....

Godspeed.

What's Going On With Bjorn Lomborg?

I mentioned Bjorn Lomborg, author of The Skeptical Environmentalist, in at least three previous posts. Here's a short, recent conversation with Mr. Lomborg.

What Exactly Is A "Girl's Sport"?

Talk about a double standard.

MADISON, Wis. (AP) -- A state appeals court on Thursday rejected a lawsuit by a boy who wanted to compete on his high school's girls' gymnastics team.

The District 4 Court of Appeals upheld a judge's dismissal of Keith Michael Bukowski's lawsuit against the Wisconsin Interscholastic Athletic Association, which has a rule prohibiting boys from competing in girls' sports.

If we rename football "boys' football", does that mean girls can't play any longer?

Courts have previously ruled that letting boys compete on girls' teams jeopardizes opportunities for girls. But Bukowski, who had competed in gymnastics at a local YMCA, argued the case was similar to recent examples of girls who were allowed to compete on boys' teams in football and wrestling.

Like I said, a double standard.

Yet Another Case of Stifling Conservative Viewpoints on Campus

This time, in Boise, Idaho:

Senate Bill number 10, titled “Amendment to Article X ASBSU [Associated Students of Boise State University = the BSU Student Government] Senate Rules of Procedures,” was sent to the Internal Committee of Ways and Means. Sen. Cyndi Blue, Sen. Kayla Davis, Sen. Mark Getecha and Sen. Amy Ortmann sponsor it...

It states that “a senator of ASBSU may not work, intern, or be actively involved in organizations or student newspapers that create an atmosphere where students do not feel represented...”

For more context, see this Boise Weekly article. According to it, the bill's advocates seem to be particularly irate about student senator Jonathon Sawmiller, who heads the campus College Republicans chapter and writes for the Arbiter. He "first made waves in April, when he wrote an editorial ....

Why am I not surprised he's a Republican. Are there any universities left that value the free exchange of ideas?

Cool Articles Related To Science and History

Preserving the 460-year-old Mary Rose
Ancient star catalog found in plain sight
Archeologists find Brazilian Stonehenge
Greek shipwreck from 350 BC found
Parthenon not always bleached white
Scientists figure out how to operate ancient Greek astronomy machine
(click here if that last link no longer works)

Mob Rule on College Campuses

America's college campuses, once thought to be bastions of free speech, have become increasingly intolerant toward the practice. Visiting speakers whose views do not conform to the prevailing left-leaning political mind-set on most campuses are at particular risk of having their free speech rights infringed upon.

And this was published at SFGate.com, online home of the San Francisco Chronicle and SF Examiner.

Update, 12/5/06: Mr. Chanman has a post with a similar point of view.

It happens again and again: leftists talk about how mean-spirited and evil we conservatives are, yet when is the last time you heard of a liberal/leftist speaker on a college campus being pelted with pies (David Horowitz, Ann Coulter), pelted with salad dressing (Pat Buchanan), or being shouted down (Mike Adams) by conservative protestors? Having seen that throwing food doesn't produce the desired effect, these moronic student protestors who are 20 going on 12 have started pulling fire alarms.

I myself haven't heard of conservatives doing such things.

Teens Expelled For The Stupidest Reason On The Planet

Seriously.

Could any normal, reasonable person consider this a threat? I didn't think so, either.