November 28, 2023 - 4:00pm
A Chicago area school has recently implemented an unusual tactic to reduce racial achievement gaps among its students: encouraging black and Latino students to opt into racially-segregated classes. Evanston Township High School officials believe these single-race classes offer underperforming minority students greater access to advanced instruction. Though their initial proposal received significant media backlash, Evanston officials remain committed to their race-conscious approach.
Evanston’s approach falls under a category of educational initiatives called “affinity groups,” where students are deliberately separated based on a shared identity category, such as race. Non-profit group Parents Defending Education has documented more than 70 instances of K-12 schools (kindergarten through to the end of high school) using affinity groups since 2021. Evanston’s approach is nevertheless unique because their affinity groups apply to core courses such as Algebra 2 and English 2, rather than extracurricular activities. This is a much more legally risky option. But by making the scheme voluntary, they have so far managed to skirt US anti-discrimination law.
Affinity groups are not a new idea. The concept has a long history in academia, particularly among followers of critical race theory. However, their implementation at scale in public education is a recent phenomenon that reflects the increasing politicisation of colleges of education. These colleges train the next generation of teachers and administrators, so their emphasis on race-conscious practices has significant practical implications.
Today, colleges of education hyper-focus on racial disparities. For instance, educators who take Harvard’s Leading for Equity & Excellence course will learn how to “commit your system to racial equity,” examine “blind spots related to race and privilege,” and learn to end school practices that “perpetuate inequity”. Racial equity, in this context, primarily refers to levelling outcomes across races and so racial disparities become enemy number one.
And if racial disparities are solely caused by racial factors, race-conscious practices must be the solution. So says the University of Wisconsin, which enlightens future education leaders on “alternative approaches to schooling and society that can foster equity and justice” since white supremacy and the US education system “often work to reinforce one another.” Education experts encourage school districts to hire more minority teachers to reflect student demographics, even though these practices do not make a difference in academic outcomes of minority students. Instead, these equity-based initiatives lower academic standards, penalise high-achieving students, or contribute to racial divisions.
Equity-based education research fails to consider various other factors that could hinder student success and contribute to racial disparities — from cultural problems at home to differences in baseline academic preparation. And if such non-racial factors end up accounting for much of the racial disparities, it implies that much of the equity-based policies are a waste of time and money.
There are alternatives that could help all students achieve their best without resorting to racially discriminatory policies. Alabama’s Piedmont City Schools, which has a large population of economically disadvantaged students, increased maths scores during the coronavirus pandemic — an anomaly compared to many other schools in the US. Their secret? Teachers used students’ test scores to determine areas of weaknesses and targeted instruction accordingly.
The way to help struggling students does not need to be complicated or novel, and it does not need to depend on their skin colour. Going back to the basics might just be enough.
Neetu Arnold is a Research Fellow at the National Association of Scholars and a Young Voices contributor.
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SubscribeThey do say that if you wait long enough everything comes back into fashion.
Even, it seems, apartheid.
In this case a return to the Democratic Party of Alabama’s popular Governor George Wallace the third longest serving US state governor in history in his segregationist period.
And if racial disparities are solely caused by racial factors, race-conscious practices must be the solution.
If they’re caused by racial factors, then genetic engineering must be the solution. What the University of Wisconsin means is they must be caused by environmental factors. It’s probably too much to expect a bunch of academics to understand the difference between something caused by race, and therefore innate, and something caused by the environment, and therefore alterable.
One weird, but unfortunately not surprising, thing about race and education is that in the UK we have an example of a school in an urban, very ethnically diverse catchment which routinely sends 80%+ of its pupils to Russell Group universities.
You might naively imagine that all these progressive education professionals who profess to care about the education and future prospects of minority ethnic children would be queueing round the block to find out how this is achieved, so that they can apply it to their own schools and raise the prospects of their own pupils. But oh how wrong you would be.
What they actually do is launch ad hominem attacks on the leadership of that school and denigrate their methods because they include things like high expectations, discipline, respect for others, and personal responsibility. All of which are taken as a matter of faith among progressive educators to be bad things. A dogma which even the evidence of large numbers of minority ethnic children achieving exceptional results is apparently unable to change.
The same thing happens here in the USA. Some of these schools’ standards have been forcibly changed to make sure more minority students can attend.
Insanity. And racist to boot.
It’s amounts to indoctrination of low achievement in children from the outset.
Children should be entitled to high expectations, a safe, orderly, rules-based school environment, and adult staff who model hard work and responsibility.
Instead so many of them get a culture of excuses, learned victimhood and complete chaos every time they set foot in the building.
What’s the name of the school? I’d like to read about it. I’m quite happy to learn from outliers. That’s how Singapore figured out so many aspects of good governance. They started in 1965, and were very willing to learn from the mistakes of other nations–and from good ideas that other nations came up with but failed to implement due to their own political biases.
It’s the Michaela School in Wembley.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michaela_Community_School
The worst idea in US history about education was busing to reduce racial differences. It was massively unpopular. It was the start of the current disdain for schools. It separated students and parents from neighborhood schools. Neighborhood schools are the best thing, and ANYTHING which damages the connection of the persons around a school to that school should be stopped.
The current worst form of racism is the racial disdain of black students for white, asian, brown, whatever. Black students are viciously racist, and this translates into vicious treatment of others in schools. That needs to be addressed, but of course, it would be called racist to even say this obvious truth.
The most likely outcome is that the white kids grades will improve and the black kids will worsen.
Rather than admit that, the ideologues behind this will find a way to fiddle the figures or hide them,
Is CRT laying the.foundations for potential genocide? Already many have witnessed how it has lent false legitimacy and impunity to anti white prejudice and hate.
Watching the Last Days, about the German occupation of Hungary and the fate of Jews there is horrifying and sobering. I used to believe that nothing like that could ever possibly happen again in Western countries. Now I’m not so sure. So much resentment and astonishing ignorance around. What I wonder is the end goal of those Critical Race ideologues? I may be ignorant of the finer points of this theory – deemed so great it is embraced by universities and even schools – but it seems to me about seeding resentment and grievance while openly sanctioning anti white racism. The Holocaust didn’t happen over night but incrementally, the warning signs were disbelieved or downplayed in the hope that it would all blow over. And then it was too late.
Seems we are determined to learn nothing from history. Who wants to live in a hyper racialised, divided society? I want to live in unity and peace with my fellow human beings. Wasn’t that the dream that was once held as the ideal? As far as I can see, CRT is imposing the very opposite.
I wonder if people will claim that white children will do better in all white schools?
Yes Marcus Leach and those who gave him a thumbs up.
If Chicago teachers really cared about student outcomes, they wouldn’t continually oppose school choice. Only this will give serious students an opportunity to attend class with other students serious about learning.
If Chicago teachers really cared about student outcomes, they’d advise them to move out of Chicago.
Ba-dum tsss….. Classic RWH
The people I have known who worked for CPS lived and raised their kids in the suburbs.
Yeah. My brother lives in the Chicago area (Forest Park/Brookfield if you’re familiar with the area) and choosing what neighborhood to live in basically came down to choosing a school district for his kids. The people who care about their kids education tend to move to better performing districts which benefit from more involved parents with supportive environments, which further increases the achievement gaps. Human behavior does not promote equality or social equity. Never has and never will. Regrettably, we live in an overly idealistic age where simply stating the obvious truth is out of fashion.
None of my white middle upper class friends and colleagues in the US, mostly all in 2 or 1 percent bracket based on assets, that espouse DEI, affirmative action, white oppressors narrative, etc. are NOT pulling their kids out of good schools or offering their job, or a job of their spouse to a person of color. Yet, they advocate for advancement of minorities and women at the expense of white men. If it’s not them, their spouse or their kids, or well off parents; who do they really expect to give up the promotion, new job, college admission? I wonder if they ever thought this through.
One of the funniest examples was Jamie Diamond, the big shot CEO, who kneeled in front of the vault during the BLM protests. I wonder how many white men didn’t get a promotion or didn’t get hired due to DEI policies that he advocates for. Yet, he never thought to give up his job.
Not a 100% on topic comment, but the nonsense described in the article is supported and pushed for by a large group of white well off people.
“There are alternatives that could help all students achieve their best without resorting to racially discriminatory policies.”
That would imply they want to help all students achieve their best. They don’t, of course, these extra classes will be taught by identitarians intent on further indoctrinating the children. Divide and conquer is working.
‘Alabama’s Piedmont City Schools, which has a large population of economically disadvantaged students, increased maths scores during the coronavirus pandemic — an anomaly compared to many other schools in the US. ‘
Obviously, Alabama must not be as racist as generally assumed.
Just when I thought the news cycle couldn’t get any more depressing, this.
With proper freedom of choice in state education, segregated schools could compete with mixed-race schools, co-ed schools with single-sex schools, denominational schools with non-denominational schools. Free us from the tyranny of bureaucratic fashion and let the parents decide.
So you’re saying because there are differences between races and that they have different levels of achievement, different needs, different cultures, different life experiences, etc., they should have separate schools designated specifically for them so we can address their ‘unique’ needs. We need a new system, separate from the ordinary one but given equal or even greater financial support and resources to facilitate the education of the underprivileged. Gosh, that just seems so danged obvious I can’t believe nobody’s ever thought of that….oh wait.
When can we start choosing to have classes among white only pupils?
Teaching and encouraging sectarianism.
Where one generation encouraged affirmative action and black higher education, the next one now divides a class of 7 year olds into the slavers and enslaved. I fear the precedent was set earlier aside from the Maoist theory taught in universities and fostered by CCP agents online.
Very probably the white kids in those classes where the ‘under performing’ black kids were previously being housed – will now no-doubt flourish.
When American schools were racially segregated it was assumed that was why some groups did worse than others. So compensatory education was tried. It failed, and Arthur Jensen got into trouble for saying the reason was innate differences between groups. Integration, and the insane business of “busing”, would remove such disadvantages. They didn’t, so now what is advocated is – back to segregation!
The discussions about solving the academic achievement gap between black and white students — but never the one between white and Asian kids — are always torturous examples of what the writer Steve Sailer called“Occam’s Butterknife.”
When the obvious and correct answer isn’t permitted, then any crazy-ass answer must suffice.
A genuinely meritocratic education system where people achieved their potential and entered well paid interesting work, would destroy the Labour/ Democratic Parties and remove the need for vast numbers of jobs in local governemnt. Nehru, Gandi and Jinnah all became barristers and Samuel Crowther became a bishop , learnt Latin and Greek and was awarded a Doctor Divinity by Oxford University. Khttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Samuel_Ajayi_Crowther
Wiki Loves Monuments: Photograph a monument, help Wikipedia and win!
How many children of any ethnicity, in any inner city local government run school receive the education of Bishop Samuel Crowther ?
I bet GANDHI could spell his name too!
Gosh, a spelling nazi.
What might work would be “affinity groups” such as “students who want to learn the material, take the test, and get out of here asap,” and “students who want a pleasant social environment without too much work,” and “students who want to do art stuff but not math, thanks.”
People who aren’t students of any kind could be not in the school.
Chicago is trying to shut down Urban prep charter high school, serving mostly low-income minority families because 100% of graduates got accepted into colleges. Minority students succeed as soon as they escape union run public school plantations. Gotta maintain the narrative while CPS union president Stacey Davis Gates sends her kid to private high school. Meanwhile, Illinois is killing Invest in Kids scholarship program mostly utilized by minority families. It’s all about the children!
The idea doesn’t make me squirm, after all it is not that dissimilar to single sex classes.
If the goal is *equality*, and NOT equity, then I would say, trial it. If it improves standards then it would be interesting to find out why.
Clearly it must be a choice, but then, once you choose, clearly either you or your parents are invested enough to try something to get ahead, and in so doing you are skewing the result (i.e. you have “privilege”).
Yes, the Hawthorne Effect is in fact likely to skew the results to the upside in the sense that the stimulus of an active attempt to improve productivity may well result in improved educational productivity as a result of the pupils and parents being aware that something is being done to improve things ( irrespective of what it is).
In the 1924 Hawthorne factory experiment productivity went up whether the light provided was increased or lowered.
If the achievement gaps are big enough, it’s de facto streaming. Maybe easier to do it this way in the current climate, though harder on the ones it doesn’t fit.
There was a huge collapse in academic achievement amongst black students in the US when they were integrated into formerly white schools. They were placed at the back, ignored, marked down and constantly bullied. I understand from reading around on this that many people at the time were horrified at the unintended consequence of education desegregation.
Why not go the whole hog?
Sounds like our educators need some education on Brown vs Bd of Education.
Just insane.
Interesting that the school district of Evanston Illinois, an affluent Chicago suburb familiar to Bill and Hilary Clinton, just up the shore from the University of Chicago, stomping ground of Barak and Michelle Obama is promoting policies that will maintain a minority underclass. The better to control their inferiors irrespective of group identity. Surely we don’t have to keep falling into that trap.
In the last 40 years, ALL educational innovations have resulted in POORER BLACK RESULTS. EVERY INNOVATION.
The real issue is that the current “culture of victimization” has allowed black students to have the ready excuse of “racism” for failure to perform. However, when you use the “racism” claim, you do not solve the performance problem. You just allow a whole group of people to get a “passing grade” without really passing.
The entire population of black students is being damaged, FOR THEIR ENTIRE LIVES, by relying on racism as a permanent excuse for not succeeding.