Here's Alaska's 2006-2007 NCLB report card for 10th grade reading and writing. Take a looksee:
56.9%. That's how many tenth-grade students with disabilities are not proficient in writing.
50.9% aren't proficient readers.
56.9%. That's how many tenth-grade students with disabilities are not proficient in writing.
50.9% aren't proficient readers.
13.6% is the percentage of "Child[ren] Left Left Behind" by a 62% cut in funding to special education. (Also, just visually, I'm finding the representation of students with special needs, migrant students, and students with limited English proficiency pretty odd. Every other graphic shows how much of the "whole" each "part" is. These kiddies are just, you know, hangin.)And it's not just about the money. Thowing money at students with disabilities doesn't help them learn. But good, smart, dynamic teachers do. Which means that good, dynamic people need to be recruited into the field of teaching. But a low-paying, low-prestige career like teaching isn't exactly as illustrious as six-figures on Wall Street for enough good, smart, dynamic people. And calling students and teachers failures, and then taking their money away from them, is doing nothing for the allure factor.
4 comments:
Damn. Only 0.8 percent of my people in Alaska are advanced. And over 30% of us are not proficient. That's more than double the rate for the white kids. The Alaska Natives are beating us in that regard. 36%. WHAT THE FUCK. These motherfuckers are FROM ALASKA, like it's their native home, and they're doing the poorest out of all the ethnic groups? Get the fuck out! It's really sad because all of the ethnic minority groups except for Asian/Pacific Islanders are under "proficient" not proficient at twice the rate of white students.
The low-income kids are doing better than us colored folk. I'm happy for the low-income kids, but it's kind of sad that having colored skin is more of a disadvantage than not having the money to buy school supplies, clothes, and adequate food, housing, and medical care.
And no disabled kids are advanced. 62 percent! Someone in the White House advocating for special needs children? Not Sarah Palin! She should be ashamed of herself claiming that when these records are here. I mean, I know she's not single-handedly responsible for education in the state, but honestly, what the hell man?
I hope you don't mind if I link this shit from my journal. At some point in the future, at least.
I mean this very sincerely:
There would be nothing more fun for me than sitting around and looking at/talking about NCLB data with you.
We're sick.
hey i think this post is valuable, or shall we say, provocative. i value your scholarship, ellen, especially when you pull up some statistics and point out the way in which the display of the statistics itself is problematic. way to problematize. holler. let's get together and discuss the epistemological hermeneutics of being.
-grad school Student
cassie, i'm so glad that together, we know everything. isn't it the most? to say the least.
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