EDUCATION

"Defense Department schools offer valuable lessons, particularly in educating low-income, minority students. Their successful strategies deserve wider application... Each year, for instance, about 35% of the student population turns over. Half the students qualify for free and reduced lunches. And only 20% of the students' parents have more than a high school education. In spite of these challenges, the black and Hispanic students in Defense Department schools lead the nation in minority test scores. The successes aren't limited to minority students, either. On federal writing tests, eighth-graders rank second nationally. Studies by researchers at Vanderbilt University reveal that such success comes by holding students to high expectations. All students - not just top achievers - are required to take demanding courses. Other reasons for success include focused teacher training. About 25 years ago, Defense curriculum experts selected an effective writing program and stuck with it. Each teacher receives elaborate training in teaching that program".

Sowell: The idea of providing black students with "role models" is counterproductive because it insinuates the notion that you can be inspired only by people who look like you. How in the world did the Nisei generation of Japanese American children ever learn, when their fathers were mostly farmers and these children seldom, if ever, saw a Japanese American teacher, much less Japanese American engineers, scientists or other professionals in fields in which these children went on to excel?

Education and class stratification: "True, under market education, the wealthy would spend more money on their children's education. News flash: that's already the case. Today, however, both the poor and the rich are taxed to subsidize grossly inefficient, bureaucrat-heavy, and less-than-optimal schools, and today mostly the rich are able to pay double for private schools. (The rich are also better able to put pressure on their government schools to perform.) So the poor are forced to pay for schools that serve them poorly."

Daniel Pipes looked at the latest list of books published by the University of California Press. Every conceivable Leftist cause was covered but out of the 140 titles, not one was conservative. The UC is the new USSR.

Affirmative action advocates assume all ethnic groups can produce equal outcomes given equal opportunities, but they can't prove it. Thomas Sowell wades through the empirical evidence. "The reality...is very different. In fact, for a host of reasons, some of which we know and some of which we do not know, some of which spring from malign oppression and many of which do not, ethnic and racial groups behave differently, perform differently, learn differently, and exhibit greatly different talents and temperaments. That is not crude stereotyping; it is plain fact. Justice will not be done if this fact is denied or goes unrecognized. "

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