The National Assessment of Educational Progress, as the tests are formally known, ranked fourth graders in only five states, plus Washington, D.C., at as low a level of math proficiency as California’s.

The latest round of nationwide fourth and eighth grade math and reading tests yielded disappointing results. Stacked up against other states, California hovered at the lower end of the scale. “Across California, scores stagnated since 2013 at all levels — there were some small dips, which were not statistically significant,” the Los Angeles Times reported.

Laying blame

Although national and state officials alike cautioned that the trouble was hard to pinpoint, project, or trace back to root causes, some pointed the finger at the changes in testing brought on by this year’s shift toward compliance with the new Common Core Standards. “The NAEP tests aren’t completely aligned with the Common Core State Standards,” however, as state Department of Education spokesman Bill Ainsworth informed the Mercury News via email. “Consequently, we do not believe they are a good measure of California students’ progress.”

But the test results did also reveal significant racial and ethnic divergences. This year, added the Times, “between a quarter and a third of the state’s students performed at or above proficiency on the various tests; in fourth-grade reading, 4 out of 10 students were deemed to be below basic. And, fewer than 1 in 5 students of color or low-income students met or exceeded proficiency on any test.” What’s more, the paper noted, over the past three years, “California’s Latino students’ scores decreased slightly, but were flat in fourth-grade reading.”

For analysts focused on comparative racial test performance, the results turned back the clock. According to Education Week, “performance gaps between black, Hispanic and white students, in reading remained as wide in 2015 as they were in 1998. In math,” however, “the gap between black and white fourth-grade students has narrowed by about 10 points since 2000.”

Some analysts shied away from drawing too strong an inference even along lines of race. Brookings Institution senior fellow Tom Loveless told Education Week that “California’s demographics — including nearly 1.4 million students classified as English language learners — make it difficult to pinpoint the impact of the state’s school system versus other social and economic factors on results. In three of the state’s largest school districts — Fresno, Los Angeles and San Diego — achievement gaps between black, Hispanic, and white students have remained largely unchanged or even widened.”

Racial controversy

The intersection of race and education has recently occupied central, contested ground in California. In the wake of the Vergara case, which alleged civil rights violations against minority students as a consequence of protective teachers’ union policies, the political stakes have been raised in the debate over which disparities matter most and how they are to be corrected.

The controversy has magnified the significance of studies plowing similar ground. As Inside Higher Ed reported, a long-term analysis of SAT scores, released by the UC Berkeley Center for Studies in Higher Education, showed that “race and ethnicity have become stronger predictors of SAT scores than family income and parental education levels,” at least “among applicants to the University of California’s campuses.” The study’s author, Saul Geiser, concluded that admissions committees should offset the impact of the SAT by taking affirmative action criteria into account.

By Katy Grimes

SACRAMENTO–If you thought that affirmative action was dead in California, think again. In fact, California Democrats behave as if it was never outlawed, and continue to pass laws mandating racial preferences.

The Assembly passed a bill Thursday which would require school districts to dumb down the successful Gifted And Talented Education program in public schools, in order to allow “children of color” into the program.

Assemblyman Bob Blumenfield, D-Los Angeles, the author of this bill, said Thursday that “children of color” are not fairly represented in GATE programs across the state.

Blumenfield and supporters must assume that “children of color” are not capable of testing into the GATE program, and need the assistance of another affirmative action program.

But the GATE program is a meritocratic program, in which students participate entirely on the basis of merit, rather than by birth or privilege, or because of skin color or socioeconomic status. There are obviously many children of all races and genders in the GATE program.

The GATE program identifies student participation in the areas of “intellectual, creative, specific academic, or leadership ability; high achievement; performing and visual arts talent.” And GATE is open to all students who attend public school. No one is keeping them out, other than the deteriorating public education system and union teachers, who incessantly whine about the poor quality of the kids they have to teach, and the lousy parents.

“GATE programs are operated in approximately 800 school districts located in all 58 counties,” the bill analysis states. “There are over 480,000 public school students that have been identified as gifted and talented in the state.”

According to Blumenfield,  AB 2491 is needed because, “[I]t is crucial that we provide an appropriate education for gifted children living in disadvantaged situations. While many parents can afford to provide extracurricular enrichment for their gifted children, low-income parents lack the resources to provide these opportunities.”

Blumenfield provided a chart for the bill analysis which supposedly illustrates a suspicious gap of demographic differences between the general student population in California and the student population identified for GATE. “The chart shows an over-identification of White, Asian and  Filipino students and an under-identification of Hispanic and African American students in the GATE program state-wide,” the analysis states.

(Source: California Department of Education 2010-11 Data)

However, Proposition 209, passed in 1996 by the voters of California, amended the California Constitution to prohibit public institutions from discriminating on the basis of race, sex or ethnicity.

“The people behind the bill don’t want to have to raise the performance of kids, and instead, want to do the easy thing of reducing requirements,” said Lance Izumi, director of education at the Pacific Research Institute, CalWatchDog.com’s parent think tank. “And the reason they don’t want to do the heavy lifting is because the successful methods go against liberal orthodoxy–more choice for parents, and more individualized delivery of education.”

GATE Program

The stated purpose of the Gifted and Talented Education program is to “develop unique education opportunities for high-achieving and underachieving pupils in California public elementary and secondary schools who have been identified as gifted and talented.”

And the GATE program states, “Special efforts are made to ensure that pupils from economically disadvantaged and varying cultural backgrounds are provided with full participation in these unique opportunities.”

So why the need for the bill?

Blumenfield said that English learners may not receive recognition of high intelligence or talent. Perhaps he is correct, but reading, writing and speaking English are crucial to learning all other subjects in California schools.

AB 2491 specifically mentions the Los Angeles Unified School District.

Blumenfield, who represents Los Angeles, has obvious ties to the Los Angeles Unified School District, which has a large concentration of low-income and minority students.  And Blumenfield received very large contributions from the teachers unions and other public employee unions. LAUSD is a failing school district, and demonstrative of Izumi’s analysis of a school district which doesn’t want to have to raise the performance of the children, and instead, would rather lower the educational requirements in order to appear as if they are performing better.

“If affirmative action really worked, then why is the highest ranked school in all of California the American Indian Public Charter School in downtown Oakland?” Izumi asked. “It is made up of nearly all minority students. They didn’t need affirmative action.”

The American Indian Public Charter School serves 200 inner-city students in fifth through eighth grade, and has an average API of 988.

“The goal of this bill is to encourage better integration of those students who are not in the GATE program but would otherwise qualify,” the bill analysis states. But that statement is highly unlikely according to Ward Connerly, author of Proposition 209 and president of the American Civil Rights Institute.

Connerly said that the bill’s rationale is flawed because of the academic gap between black and Latino students, and Asian and white students. Connerly says that if you take away affirmative action, you take away the ability of schools to discriminate, and schools want to be able to to perpetuate the damaging discriminatory stereotype which presumes black and Latino students cannot compete with Asian and white students. It’s a self-fulfilling prophecy for liberals.

Connerly also said that Blumenfield’s bill is inappropriate as the U.S. Supreme Court will decide this fall the landmark affirmative action case, Fisher vs. University of Texas at Austin. The case asks the court to decide whether affirmative action in the university admissions process is a measurement toward increasing the diversity of the student body, or if it violates the civil and constitutional rights of applicants, when schools consider race and ethnicity in university admissions.

The outcome of this case will have deep implications on all school affirmative action policies.

(student photos from the American Indian Public Charter School.)

A bill claiming to “protect” the unemployed from discrimination by potential employers is making its way through the Legislature.

The government already protects racial minorities, veterans, older workers, women, pregnant women, breastfeeding women, children, the disabled, lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people, and religious individuals.

AB 1450, by Assemblyman Michael Allen, D-Santa Rosa, would prohibit employers from turning away applicants because they are unemployed, and states that employment status cannot used as consideration during the application, hiring and employment process.

There have been many attempts to add to the protected classifications including weight, and those living in areas of “general economic distress.”

Employers now face crimes of every imaginable kind because of California’s vast overreach into the workplace.  Any state agency investigator, whether from OSHA, Cal EPA, water resources, air resources, immigration, the fire marshall, parking enforcement, and all of the taxing agencies, can make an unannounced visit to employers, and demand to see documentation regarding the agency, or make a site visit to look for violations.

And on any given day, there isn’t an employer in the state who wouldn’t be cited for some random violation.

The state is now trying to look into the hearts of Human Resource managers to determine if they are discriminating against the unemployed.

When I was a HR manager, I coached my manufacturing managers to be wary of job applicants who might be government plants looking for ADA violators, discrimination cases, employment law violations, and the like. There are lawyers who also send fake applicants on job interviews, looking for employers to set up and sue.

In the manufacturing company in which I worked, a classified advertisement for a job often netted many applicants. But I was suspicious if a disabled person applied for a very physically demanding job. I was suspicious if a woman applied for a physical or dirty job historically held by strong, burley men. And, I was most suspicious of age discrimination cases – when someone nearing retirement applied for an entry-level job, or something they were grossly overqualified for.

This is what California’s ridiculous employment and discrimination laws have done to employers.

Now employers will have to be on the lookout for the unemployed – what an oxymoron.

Unfortunately, many of the habitually unemployed are unemployable. They don’t want a full-time job. But the Employment Development Department and CalWorks programs require them occasionally to prove they are actively looking for work.

If AB 1450 passes, those same people will be able to claim they were discriminated against if they are not offered the job.

Private sector employers tend to hire based on need, and do not make hiring decisions based on gender, race or other categories. It’s only the government which hires based on gender, sexual orientation, race, religion or veteran status. And it’s only the government which is always exempt from its own laws.

This bill is proof that California needs a part-time Legislature. Instead of working, California employers spend more than half of their time fending off the thousands of bad laws cooked up by a mostly irrelevant, tainted and mercenary state Legislature.

MAR. 22, 2012