Yesterday in his home state of Tennessee, where he is facing a surprisingly strong challenge from George Bush, Al Gore said, according to his Web Site commentary entitled: "Overstatements on Texas Record Revealed"
"A study from the Rand Corp. released Tuesday questioned Bush's claims of educational improvement in Texas. The Rand study suggested that:· There are 'serious questions' about whether Texas' claimed educational gains are overstated;
· The evidence shows that 'the gap in average scores between whites and students of color' is not 'closing,' as Bush claims, but is actually 'very large and increasing.' Rand called claims that the gap was closing 'false;' and
· 'Large discrepancies between TAAS [the Texas test] and NAEP [the national standardized test] results raises serious question about the validity of TAAS scores'.
"Gore worked within the current administration to promote standards and accountability and reduce class sizes by hiring new teachers. Gore also fought to make higher education and lifelong learning accessible to all Americans. As part of the current administration, Gore fought to provide HOPE Scholarship tax credits to nearly 7 million students and Pell Grants to nearly 4 million students and to implement the Lifelong Learning tax credit.
It appears that the above is a debate not between George Bush's claims and the Rand Corporation claims, but between the Rand Corporation and the Rand Corporation. Gore is inaccurately paraphrasing a recently released 14 page report by Stephen P. Klein, Laura S. Hamilton, Daniel F. McCaffrey, Brian M. Stecher entitled: What Do Test Scores in Texas Tell Us? (see: http://www.rand.org/publications/IP/IP202/)
To get elected, Gore is simply lying about the remarkable educational efforts and accomplishments of black children in Texas. The 14 page report is intended to refute the 271 page in depth Rand study by David W. Grissmer, Ann Flanagan, Jennifer Kawata, Stephanie Williamson entitled: "Improving Student Achievement: What NAEP State Test Scores Tell Us" (http://www.rand.org/publications/MR/MR924/) which provides a glowing report on the accomplishments of black children in Texas.
Chapter 2 of the 271 page study, complete with charts, titled "The State NAEP Achievement Results and State Family and Educational Characteristics (http://www.rand.org/publications/MR/MR924/MR924.chap2.pdf) tell us of that national study:
Some states had estimated math gains of approximately 2 percentile points per year while some had little gain. Texas and North Carolina were among several states that made large, statistically significant gains and state-administered tests also showed large gains during this period. …Texas was in the highest group of states and California in the lowest on scores for students from similar families. The difference is about 0.34 standard deviations, indicating that similar students in the two states would emerge from K-12 education with score differences of about 11 percentile points. The variable in our model explain two-thirds of the difference in these scores. The major contributions to the higher Texas scores are lower pupil-teacher ratios, a much larger percentage of children in public pre-kindergarten, and teachers who have more resources necessary to teach.
A Rand Corporation chart on the State Achievement Results show Texas ahead of its neighboring states of Arkansas, which was the beneficiary of Bill and Hillary Clinton's "education reform", Arizona, New Mexico and Louisiana. Texas also trumps Tennessee, Al Gore's home state, and the wealthy states of California and New York. (see Page 2 of: http://www.rand.org/publications/MR/MR924/MR924.chap2.pdf)
Not only does the full report say what George W. Bush has been saying it says about Texas education, it shows, in a chart, how far ahead educationally Texas is than its border states. That's an impressive accomplishments for a state which finds itself educating many newly arrived Mexicans who do not even speak English.
In fact, it is the influx of Mexicans that the Democrats in California blame for the once educational leader being third from the bottom in State Achievements. California has a 1.8 standard deviation on the State Achievement results, compared with Texas' 4.1. Tennessee, Gore's home state, has about 3.6 standard deviation on the Achievement results.
In spite of these easily verifiable figures, the New York Times did not print a challenge to Gore's statement yesterday. They reported Gore as saying:
"Now, my opponent, Governor Bush, has a different approach because he has different priorities. He would give more in tax cuts to the wealthiest 90,000 multimillionaires than he would give in the form of all the new investments he has proposed to make in all 90,000 public schools combined. . . ."There are only two real proposals of any substance in his entire education plan: private school vouchers and what he calls accountability. His vouchers, I believe, would actually harm education. And his claims to accountability rest on half- measures and a hollow record. In fact, the governor's private school vouchers would give no choice and no chance to the millions of children he would leave behind in failing schools.
I believe we have to change and improve our public schools, not walk away from them. I believe that it is wrong to drain away public money from public schools that educate 90 percent of American children.
Under the Bush plan, states would be forced to offer vouchers and finance them out of their budgets - a brand new federal mandate - whether states and local school districts like vouchers or not. . . . Governor Bush says he doesn't want a national superintendent of schools, but his mandatory voucher plan would make Washington, D.C., a national private school headmaster."
". And his claims to accountability rest on half- measures and a hollow record.?" Just who has a totally "hollow record" on education? A search of the Congressional Record for the years when he was in the Senate did not turn up a single bill introduced by Al Gore that advanced the cause of education. Not one. Where's Al Gore's "record" on the education issue? Why are the nation's reporters and news editors allowing Gore to get away with such bald faced lies which deny black children of their accomplishments when the truth of the matter is available at no cost, on the Rand website at http://www.rand.org?
ABC News quoted Gore as saying:
"Gore argued that despite Republicans' claims to the contrary, students in the Lone Star State have not seen a "real change" under Bush's tenure as governor, citing a new report by the Rand Corporation that disputes claims of rising performance by minority students in the state."My opponent says we can trust him to raise standards and results because he's done it in Texas," Gore said. "But … the [Rand] study reported that contrary to all that we've been told, the achievement gap for Texas students has not narrowed, it has widened."
Apparently the group within the Rand corporation wanted to help Al Gore by saying the black children in Texas DIDN'T make remarkable progress from 1994 to 1998. The 14 page report uses real sleight of hand statistics to try to deny the accomplishments of the black children of Texas. To deny the children's work and progress, the "Issue Paper" AVERAGED the results of the 42 states studied in the Rand report. That "average" does not represent ANY state in the Union. . (see the Issue Paper chart 2.1at: http://www.rand.org/publications/IP/IP202/) The standard deviation among the states studied ranged from a low of .2 for Mississippi to 8.0 for North Dakota and Maine. If all the scores of the 42 states listed are averaged, what you get is approximately the figures for Texas. However, some of those states that started ahead of Texas didn't stand still. They continued to increase their math and reading scores, too.
One of the points made in the Issue Paper, which seems to be a political hatchet job on the State of Texas and particularly on black children and their families to help Al Gore get elected, is:
"Table 1 shows that the average NAEP math scale score for white Texas fourth graders in 1992 was 229. Four years later, the mean score for white eighth graders was 285, i.e., a 56-point improvement. However, there was a 54-point improvement nationally for whites during this same period. There was a similar pattern for minority students, and these trends held for both math and reading (Table 2). In short, the score increases in Texas were almost identical to those nationwide (we could not conduct the corresponding analysis with TAAS data because TAAS does not convert scores to a common scale across grade levels).
In percentage terms, that means the white students improved their math skills on an average of 19.65%. Then the report says the following about the black students in the very next paragraph:
"In 1998, the mean fourth grade NAEP reading score for whites in Texas was one full standard deviation higher than the mean for blacks. To put this in perspective, the average black student was at roughly the 38th percentile among all Texas test takers whereas the average white student was at about the 67th percentile. This gap was slightly larger than the difference between these groups in 1994. In other words, the black-white reading gap actually increased during this four-year period. The same pattern was present in fourth and eighth grade math scores (see Figure 4a).
Note that the writers of the report did NOT mention the improvement among black children in Texas in math. For the record, the mean math record for blacks in Texas for blacks was 199 and they gained 50 points, which was exactly the same figure for the average of blacks nationwide. However, it was, as George W. Bush keeps saying, a BETTER rate of improvement for blacks than whites. It means that the black children increased t heir math skills on an average of 25.13%, compared to the white children's improvement of 19.65%.
The Issue Paper, and Al Gore, don't mention the blacks' math scores. It talks about their READING scores, but doesn't mention the Texas reading scores for whites. The white children increased t heir reading scores by 46 points from a 4th grade base of 227 which is a an improvement of 20.26% The black children increased their reading scores by 54 from a base of 191 making the Texas black children's improvement 28.27% compared with the white children's improvement of 20.26%.
Why are Al Gore and his friends at the Rand Corporation and in the media determined to deny the black children their place in the sun for their remarkable accomplishments?
The Issue Paper, to make the black children look bad, compared their remarkable improvement with a median obtained by adding all the states' bases in 1994 together and dividing by the number of states, which gave a figure which makes it appear the Texas black children were actually FALLING BEHIND.
In both reading and math the black children of Texas have had a truly remarkable improvement in their skills, compared with WHERE THEY WERE 6 YEARS AGO UNDER A DEMOCRAT GOVERNOR! To make himself look good and Governor Bush look bad, Al Gore, with the help of someone determined to get him elected, is trying to make the black children in Texas look stupid.
Every major news source in the country seems to be making this Issue Paper front page news and are using it to make it seem as if the black children in Texas just are falling further and further behind with George W. Bush as Governor. "Gore Rips Bush Over Texas Education Report" ABC News headline screams. "students in the Lone Star State have not seen a 'real change' under Bush's tenure as governor," Gore said. Why is ABC putting down the black children of Texas?
The Washington Post reports: "Gore cited a new study to argue that Bush's oft-touted education reforms in Texas were essentially a fraud that produced only 'illusory' improvements in test scores but did 'nothing to really raise standards or lift up our children.'" In the face of provable improvements, the Washington Post seems determined to deny recognition to the black children for their remarkable educational improvement.
I hope some of those black children or their parents in Texas who have done such a great job in improving their math and reading skills will speak up and set the record straight on this. It is disgraceful that Al Gore would lie about black children in Texas just to try to get people to vote for him.
This is a perfect example of the kind of damage that the Democrats have done over the last 35-40 years in their pretended concern for the "blacks" in America. Lyndon Johnson's "War on Poverty" decimated the black families in the inner city and now Al Gore wants to get into the White House so he can ridicule and deny the accomplishments of black children.
Sadly, many of the parents of those black children who are being put down by the media and Al Gore are probably going to vote for him on election day.
NOTE: If you have personal experience in Texas in seeing the math and reading improvements of black children, write Original Sources - mmostert@originalsources.com if you want to share your experiences with Original Sources readers.
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