Florida Officials Defend Racial and Ethnic Learning Goals

This article talks about prioritizing the learning goals of individual students based on their race or cultural background and upbringing, giving a different improvement goal to those of ‘different’ ethnic minorities or of minorities listed as disadvantaged. Even though this issue has accrued a lot of criticism over the years that it has been implemented, the premise of the idea of making sure everyone is at the same level of basic educational skills such as reading and writing is important, and although it may not be the most politically correct way of talking about these issues, it is ignorant to pretend as if these gaps in the education system don’t exist.
As is explained in depth by Amy Wilkins of the Education Trust; “Because these are hard conversations to have, it doesn’t mean we can avoid them,” she said. “Unless we look at the fact that blacks and Latino kids are doing dreadfully and demand progress and demand that schools do better by them, we won’t solve the problem.”

This idea of focusing on the learning of these students is not too dissimilar to other ideas and methods floating around in American schooling such as Afrocentric schooling in order to help a culture identify with a specific curriculum of learning in order for them to gain the skills necessary to fulfill the outcomes of learning at school. This idea all stems for a level of equity amongst multicultural groups in all forms of culture, most importantly educational. As the article states the implementation of this regime was all in participation with the ‘No Child Left Behind’ of the Bush Administration.

The students that identify with a certain culture will obviously be at a disadvantage and therefore require more assistance in their learning, therefore it is a good thing that Florida has had the presence of mind as a city to change their views on schooling and do something about the gaps created in cultures. This is similar to the ideas written about by Wadham & Pudsy about the integration of culture and education and is also included in the wok of Leonardo (2009) Where he speaks about the culture of politics and how they all integrate and affect education in one way or another. This case it is clear that the identification of problems within certain cultures has been addressed in order for the educational Gap to be closed.

References:

Wadham, B. Pudsey, J. & Boyd, R. (2007). Culture and education. Sydney: Pearson Education. Chapter 1: What is culture

Leonardo, Z. (2009). Affirming ambivalence: Introduction to cultural politics and education. In Z. Leonardo (Ed.), Handbook of Cultural Politics and Education (pp.1-48), Rotterdam: Sense Publishers

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/10/18/education/florida-officials-defend-racial-and-ethnic-learning-goals.html?ref=education