Name: 'Woke' Leftists: School District Decides Asian Students Are Not Considered 'Students of Color'
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'Woke' Leftists: School District Decides Asian Students Are Not Considered 'Students of Color'

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AdvertisementAdvertisementAdvertisementAdvertisementWhen is your minority group no longer non-white? Apparently when your academic performance is just too good.In an&nbsp; from 2019 that was promptly removed after it was first reported on this week, the North Thurston Public Schools in Thurston County, Washington, measured “White/Asian Students” against “Students of Color” in order to ascertain any performance gap. The report also looked at “Students of Poverty” against “Non Poverty” students.“Students of Color compares outcomes for Asian and White students [with students] who identify as Black, Latinx, Native American, Pacific Islander, and Multi-racial students, all of whom have experienced persistent opportunity gaps in our society,” the report read.Advertisement - story continues below“Students of Poverty is a visualization of opportunity gaps for students experiencing poverty, as measured&nbsp;by qualification for free or reduced price meals.”Trending:Even with that crude attempt to play around with the data, the report didn’t find many significant gaps between white/Asian students and students of color, with only two major indicators — third-grade language arts test scores and sixth-grade — being over 10 percent.According to , the district, 55 miles south of Seattle, is responsible for 16,000 students.Advertisement - story continues belowRobby Soave drew attention to the equity report in a Monday article.“What the equity report really highlights is the absurdities that result from overreliance on semi-arbitrary race-based categories,” he wrote.Do you think the school district's report was racist?Yes: 94% (222 Votes)No: 6% (13 Votes)“The report also measured ‘students of poverty’ —those who qualify for free or reduced-cost lunches — against non-poverty students, and unsurprisingly found a much more significant achievement gap. ‘Students of poverty’ perform 28 percent worse on math tests, for instance. That socioeconomic category captures something real and meaningful in a way that the gerrymandered race category does not.”A paragraph earlier, Soave made the point a different way:“Most indicators in the report show that the achievement gap between white/Asian students and ‘students of color’ is fairly narrow and improving over time. It would probably be even narrower if Asian students were categorized as ‘students of color.’ In fact, some indicators might have even shown white students lagging behind that catch-all minority group. Perhaps Asians were included with whites in order to avoid such an outcome.”Advertisement - story continues belowThe superintendent of the school system didn’t respond to a request for comment from Reason — so we don’t know how the district might respond to Soave’s hypothesis that “some indicators might have even shown white students lagging behind that catch-all minority group” if Asians were removed.Instead of responding, the district removed the report, and issued a on its website that claims the purpose behind it was closing gaps between .Related:“For this reason, in one of our online documents from 2019, titled ‘Monitoring Student Growth,’ we&nbsp;evaluated&nbsp;the achievement data by ‘Students of Color’ and ‘Students of Poverty.’ In the document we grouped White and Asian students together.“Upon reflection and response by members of the Asian-American community, we will change how we look at achievement data and appreciate the feedback we received. We apologize for the negative impact we have caused and removed the monitoring report from our website.”Advertisement - story continues belowFirst off, the notion that this decision involved “reflection” is risible. The Reason report was published Monday. The district replaced the chart and issued its statement the same day.So a few hours, at most, of careful contemplation played an integral role in administrators coming to the carefully measured realization that a year-old report was problematic in how it dealt with .Leaving that absurdity aside, this should have been sufficient.However, the types of administrators prone to issuing that kind of equity report in the first place are also the same kind of people prone to performative self-sabotage, and the statement curdled into a non-apology apology, as the district maintained it was “important to continue the practice of disaggregating data, so we make equity-based decisions.”Advertisement - story continues below“When we reviewed our disaggregated data it showed that our district is systemically meeting the instructional needs of both our Asian and White students and not meeting the instructional needs for our Black, Indigenous, Multi-racial, Pacific Islander and Latinx students,” the statement read.“The intent was never to ignore Asian students as ‘students of color’ or ignore any systemic disadvantages they too have faced.”The last part is decidedly untrue unless you want to admit the categories in the equity report are wholly arbitrary. If this is what they meant, it’s what they should have said when this report was originally published.Instead, this feels closer to one of the more pernicious biases in modern education: The idea that Asian-Americans are successful enough academically that they’re not really a&nbsp;minority.Advertisement - story continues belowConsider Harvard, where being Asian is negatively correlated with admission and Asians aren’t considered a minority for admissions purposes, according to a 2018 report from . Documents from a 2014 lawsuit against the university for its race-based admittance practices also asserted Asian students were systematically on personality traits by admissions interviewers.And yet, the courts have thus far sided with Harvard. According to , a federal judge in Boston found October 2019 decision that “[r]ace&nbsp;is only intentionally considered as a positive attribute” in Harvard’s admission policies, while conceding that “[r]ace conscious admissions will always penalize to some extent groups that are not being advantaged by the process.”The ruling was upheld by the 1st Circuit Court of Appeals , and is likely headed to the Supreme Court.That’s at the higher end of the food chain, though. At the lower end, you have the North Thurston Public Schools, which is so concerned about equity among what they call “Students of Color” that it decided didn’t fit in that category.Submit a Correction →We are committed to truth and accuracy in all of our journalism.Tags:, , , , ,AdvertisementArizona's Republican gubernatorial candidate Kari Lake has a plan for the state, which she has outlined in detail.A Texas teacher has been fired from the high school where she taught after she was outed on social media for discussing the concept of re-labeling pedophiles as “minor-attracted persons” […]Meghan Markle recieved a cold shoulder from Britons mourning Queen Elizabeth II at Windsor Castle over the weekend.Almost half of America's governors are opposed to Biden's student debt forgiveness plan and have demanded he withdraw it.A brand new conspiracy theory has emerged thanks to photograph of Trump at his Washington, D.C.-area golf course.The Senate Judiciary Committee is holding a hearing with Twitter's whistleblower, who claimed that China may have had access to Twitter data.A reportedly healthy 18-year-old lifeguard died suddenly on Saturday. His mother is demanding authorities investigate his death.Some New York Democrats are fed up with Gov. Kathy Hochul and are now endorsing her Republican opponent Lee Zeldin.'[W]e know that the victim’s family is suffering to understand how so many mistakes could have been made nearly 30 years ago.'The West Texas Border Patrol Twitter account retweeted Stephen Miller's criticisms of Biden's policies and CPB has suspended the account.

AdvertisementAdvertisementAdvertisementAdvertisementWhen is your minority group no longer non-white? Apparently when your academic performance is just too good.In an&nbsp; from 2019 that was promptly removed after it was first reported on this week, the North Thurston Public Schools in Thurston County, Washington, measured “White/Asian Students” against “Students of Color” in order to ascertain any performance gap. The report also looked at “Students of Poverty” against “Non Poverty” students.“Students of Color compares outcomes for Asian and White students [with students] who identify as...

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'Woke' Leftists: School District Decides Asian Students Are Not Considered 'Students of Color'

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