Black, Hispanic school teachers fail NY literacy test

First the facts. In academic year 2013-14, New York State introduced four assessments meant to raise the level of elementary and secondary school teaching in the state. One of them was the Academic Literacy Skills Test (ALST), which evaluates the reading and writing skills of people trying to become teachers. The idea is to weed out aspiring teachers who aren't strong students. Sounds sensible, doesn't it?

Now the problem. A December 2016 study by the National Council on Teacher Quality found that 44% of the teacher preparation programs it surveyed accepted students from the bottom half of their high school classes. The literacy test raised alarms from the beginning because just 46% per cent of Hispanic test takers and 41% of black test takers passed it on the first try, compared with 64% of white candidates. If this comes as a surprise to you, read "Educational achievement: race makes a difference", WWW 12/1/17.

Cue the usual suspects -- "anti-racists", SJWs, "progressive thinkers" and (of course) teachers unions -- who protest that the Academic Literacy Skills Test is redundant and a poor predictor of who will succeed as a teacher. Leslie Soodak is a professor education at Pace University, who served on the task force that examined New York's teacher certification tests. "We want high standards, without a doubt," says Prof Soodak, but "not every given test is going to get us there." Besides, "Having a white workforce really doesn't match our student body anymore."

On cue and on message, Kate Walsh, President of the National Council on Teacher Quality [sic], which claims to be promoting higher standards for teachers, said that blacks and Latinos don't score as well as whites on the literacy test because of factors like poverty and the "legacy of racism". Says Ms Walsh, "There’s not a test in the country that doesn't have disproportionate performance on the part of blacks and Latinos."

Since there's no difference between the intellectual capacity of the races, that means there's something wrong with the tests. Right? [Left? Ed.] As surely as the sun rises in the east, the solution proposed by the liberals is... wait for it... scrap the test! The New York Board of Regents is expected to adopt tomorrow the recommendation of the task force on which Prof Soodak served to eliminate the Academic Literacy Skills Test altogether.

The ALST consists of multiple-choice questions about a series of reading selections plus a written section. A practice test available for $20 on the New York State Education Department website features John F. Kennedy’s inaugural address as one of the reading passages and asks questions like: 'In which excerpt from the passage do Kennedy's word choices most clearly establish a tone of resolve?"

Ian Rosenblum, the executive director of the New York office of the Education Trust, a non-profit that advocates for high achievement for all students, called the literacy test "a 12th grade-level assessment", something a high school senior should be able to pass. But Pace University student Tabitha Colon took the test last year and failed to get a passing score. She likened it to the English portion of the SAT and said it was "pretty difficult". And, she added, she was thrown off by the fact that the test was given online, rather than on paper. "The format on the computer was a bit confusing."

Before you shed too many tears for Ms Colon, consider that she was still able to pass the ALST, thanks to a "safety net" provision that lets students demonstrate proficiency by submitting grades from a class -- grades given by teachers who may not themselves have passed the test. She is now working as a student teacher in Ossining NY -- not in the prison but in a middle school.

Worth viewing: "Latest Research on Race", video lecture by Professor Philippe Rushton, WWW 12/1/17.

Vast majority of US young people unfit for military service

Some interesting statistics about the US military appear in this week's Economist. You've heard the old slogan "Our people are our greatest asset"? Turns out finding good "assets" is a big problem for the American services.

In an article headed "Who will fight the next war?", the newsmagazine reveals "a growing disconnect between American society and the armed forces that claim to represent it." No-one wants to join the navy and see the world, or join the army or the air force or the marines.

Even worse, if every young American (aged 17 to 24) were willing to enlist, chances are that less than 30% of them would be found able. Which means that 70% or more would be rejected as ineligible.

Ineligibility varies by state, according to Mission: Readiness, a nonprofit, non-partisan organization led by senior retired military leaders. If your state has an "unfitness rate" -- that's what I'd call it -- of 70% or less, you're not in bad shape... or at least, things could be worse. Unfortunately, only 13 of the Paranoid States of America have a "UR" that low. That leaves, errr, 37 states of whose young people 71% to 78% would be deemed ineligible.

What makes a person ineligible for military service? Here's the Economist's checklist, which Walt presents as a public service, not as a handy guide to staying out of the army (etc).

* Inadequate education - the result of  ever-declining educational standards. Nearly half of those who would otherwise be eligible are disqualified because they dropped out of high school, or, typically (the Economist says) because most young Americans cannot do tricky sums without a calculator.

* Criminal record - a particular problem for young black men, about a third of whom will have been convicted of something or other by the time they're 24.  That accounts, at least in part, for the high numbers in DC and the deep south.

* Obesity - a greater problem for women (especially BBWs) than for men, thus a headache [bellyache? Ed.] for the military as it strives for "gender parity". If you have any doubt about the fattening of America, take a look at Judge Judy sometime.

* Visible tattoos - on hands or faces, that is. Why this should be a problem, I don't know, but Harry-with-the-snake-on-his-face [John Candy character on SCTV. Ed.] will never get to wear a uniform.

If you're 17 to 24 and don't have any of the problems mentioned, Walt suggests you hie yourself off to the local mall, where a recruiter will be lurking [near the donut shop? Ed.] to pounce on you. Because it's so difficult to get anyone to join (the Economist points out), the military offers a seriously fine array of signing bonuses, training programmes and other perqs. Of course you may get killed for no good reason somewhere in the Middle East, but what the hell.

Bad English - Who cares?

In reviewing Michael Savage's Stop the Coming Civil War, Walt complained that the book is poorly written. I called it "not so much a piece of writing as a collage of transcriptions of Mr. Savage's radio rants." That doesn't mean it's hard to read. Quite the opposite. It's written and edited (?) to a level which is comfortable for a reader of the New York Post or National Enquirer. You know. The ones whose lips move as they read.

If I were to calculate Stop the Coming Civil War 's Fog Index, I'd bet that the book would prove to have been edited to a reading ease level of Grade 7. That, sadly, is about right for your average American or Canadian. (It's hard to tell about the Brits. The gap between the educated and uneducated in the UK is much wider than that of English-speaking North America.)

Thoughtful people like Dr. Rudolf Flesch have been bemoaning the decline of educational standards in general, and reading in particular, for decades. Dr. Flesch's seminal work Why Johnny Can't Read appeared in 1955. He argued for a return to the phonetic (as opposed to ideographic) method of learning to read. But instead of teaching people to read better, our "educators" are now teaching people to write worse!

This thesis is put forward -- with qualified approval -- by Dr. John H. McWhorter, of UC Berkeley (where else?) in Doing Our Own Thing: The Degradation of Language and Music and Why We Should, Like, Care (Gotham Books, 2003) -- winner of the Walt Whiteman Prize for Longest Book Title of that year.

Dr. John (as I'm sure he'd like to be known) is a musician cum linguist, or linguist cum musician, take your pick. He makes a good case that, in the hippy-dippy 60s, American English changed from being a written language to an oral language, written down the way it's spoken.

An extreme example -- Walt's, not Dr. John's -- would be the comparison of Theodore White's The Making of the President, 1960 with Hunter Thompson's Fear and Loathing on the Campaign Trail `72. Just the style used to denote the year in the two titles makes the point. Since 1965 -- Dr. McWhorter is very precise about the year -- authors have started to write the way Americans talk... for better or worse.

Dr. McWhorter pinpoints 1965, the year following the passing of the Civil Rights Act. That landmark legislation made it suddenly not just OK, but cool to be black. "African-Americans" (a term which would only come years later) no longer had to "act white" or "talk white" to be successful, particularly in the field of popular music. Nat King Cole was out; Aretha Franklin was in. "Black English" or "ebonics" (as progressives like Dr. John would have it) became not just acceptable but emulated by the white majority.

The result? People stopped trying to write stylish, grammatical English and started writing as they talk. This is particularly so with popular music. Try writing down the lyrics of hit songs of the last two decades, and comparing them with the words turned out by even the poorer Tin Pan Alley hacks of yesteryear.

Dr. McWhorter flirts with the notion (if not the word) of the degradation of American English. Walt would say "blackification", but of course that's not politically correct. The fact remains that even educated people, like the Prez, have adopted a less grammatical, more folksy style of speech -- "We's all jes folks heah in Nawlins!" -- and that style is reflected in much American writing, including that of Michael Savage, Ph.D.

Dr. McWhorter does not condemn the degradation of American English. He merely identifies the trend and predicts that it will continue. He's all, like, wassup wit dat? He's OK with it, y'know? Walt is not. Walt doesn't speak (or write) WalMart.

Footnote: Like Michael Savage (Ph.D.), John McWhorter (Ph.D.) could do with the services of an editor and fact-checker. "Dr. Suess" should be "Dr. Seuss", but then, "Suess" sounds more like the way the name is pronounced. Dr. McWhorter doesn't write very well either, but he would probably say that just proves his point.

Further reading: "Book Review: John McWhorter’s Doing Our Own Thing", Wordorigins, June 2004.