S
Sophia
Guest
16
http://www.lagriffedulion.f2s.com/discipline.htm
There are among us persons of so refined and delicate a nature that they cannot bear the guilt even of crimes they have not committed. Their shame is so great that they
turn their considerable talents to serve the demagogues of bias. In this essay we analyze their efforts to document racial discrimination in school discipline, and humbly offer advice on how to improve thei
r methods.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
The Bias Hunters
In September 1999, six black high school students were expelled
for brawling violently with other students at a Decatur, Ill. football game.
Grabbing the spotlight, the
Reverend Jesse Jackson made a house call.
His presence in Decatur propelled a local event to the nation's front pages.
Sleepy sociologists awoke to the call.
One team of investigators from the Applied Research Center of Oakland interrupted a study to rush forward with preliminary results.
They found that black students are suspended and expelled at
disproportionate rates.
"The figures are astounding," declared Rev. Jackson as he,
the Oakland group
and the press joined in mutual exploitation of the moment.
A year later, in the December 2000 issue of La Griffe du Lion, we asked:
Suppose a half-white, half-black school system <b
r>
suspends 1 percent of its students for disruptive behavior.
What is the most probable racial makeup of the suspended group?
The question began the section, "Games with Fuzzy Variables,"
but December's game is June's analytical scalpel.
With it we will peel back layers of misinformation to reveal race and school discipline in a gr
eater social context.
The year 1975 witnessed the first widely-disseminated report
on racial disparities in school discipline.
Issued by the Children's Defense Fund,
the report found that black students at all levels were suspended
at 2 to 3 times the rate of whites.
The bias hunters had arrived.
Hundreds of studies and millions of dollars later they would learn little more.
Powerful statistical techniques -
analysis of variance, c2, regression, correlation analysis and more -
have been brought to bear on school discipline and race.
Each new study adds to
the annals of redundant findings.
The essential result is now well established:
Referrals, suspensions and expulsions are distributed
asymmetrically with respect to race and ethnicity.
So what new can La Griffe bring to an area so thoroughly picked over?
Surprisingly, quite a bit.
The groundwork for our analysis was laid in December in the essay,
"Aggressiveness, Criminality and Sex Drive by Race
, Gender and Ethnicity."
There we developed the method of thresholds,
a procedure that takes rates at which different groups
cross behavioral thresholds (like committing assault),
and from them constructs yardsticks for "fuzzy" variables
that are otherwise hard to define (like aggressiveness).
the black-white aggressiveness gap was found to be invariant
to cultural shifts across continents,
compelling evidence that aggressiveness distributions
differ among races and are intrinsic to them. </span>
The threshol
d for "serious assault" falls way out on the
aggressiveness scale, 2.86 SD from the black mean.
The NCVS survey identified lower levels of assault
from simple on up. <
br>
Its threshold was much lower, 1.64 SD from the black mean.
That aside, both data sets yielded the same black-white gap.
From the standpoint of the method of thresholds,
expulsion and suspension from school are simply
new thresholds to be placed on the aggressiveness axis.
n
Discipline and Group Differences
Bias hunters who look for racial disparities usually find them.
Their papers, though sullied by subjectivity,
are valuable for the data they include.
Such is the case of a much-referenced paper
that appeared a few years ago.
The paper, "Office referrals and suspension:
Disciplinary intervention in middle schools," Skiba, R. J.,
Peterson, R. L.,
and Williams, T.,
Education and Treatment of Children,
20, 295-315, (1997), examined disciplinary records
in a large Midwestern urban school district for the 1994-95 school year.
The large-scale study included all 11,001
middle-s
chool students in the district,
98 percent of whom were either black (56%)
or white (42%).
By analysis of variance Skiba et al.
convincingly demonstrated that African American students
were suspended and expelled at rates disproportionate
to their population in the schools.
<span style=\'color:red\'>More important, the paper included raw
data
uncompromised by expectation or prejudice.
Skiba et al. found suspension rates of 17.1 percent for whites
and 27.0 percent for blacks.
We applied the method of thresholds (see Appendix) to these rates.
It revealed a black-white aggressiveness gap of 0.34 SD,
a value differing insignificantly from the assault data value of 0.37 SD.
On the aggressiveness axis, suspension fell at 0.61 SD
fro
m the black mean, much lower than assault (1.64 SD),
and lower still than "serious assault" (2.86 SD).
Figure 1 shows distributions of aggressiveness for blacks
and whites.
Drawn to scale, the curves are separated by a mean difference,
D, of 0.37 SD.
The thresholds for suspension (Skiba data), assault and
"serious assault" are marked on the aggressiveness axis.
For graphs and more facts see link:
http://www.lagriffedulion.f2s.com/discipline.htm
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
~~~~~
I can see Tyrone grinning from ear to ear
and his toof shining !
:rotfl:
http://www.lagriffedulion.f2s.com/discipline.htm
There are among us persons of so refined and delicate a nature that they cannot bear the guilt even of crimes they have not committed. Their shame is so great that they
turn their considerable talents to serve the demagogues of bias. In this essay we analyze their efforts to document racial discrimination in school discipline, and humbly offer advice on how to improve thei
r methods.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
The Bias Hunters
In September 1999, six black high school students were expelled
for brawling violently with other students at a Decatur, Ill. football game.
Grabbing the spotlight, the
Reverend Jesse Jackson made a house call.
His presence in Decatur propelled a local event to the nation's front pages.
Sleepy sociologists awoke to the call.
One team of investigators from the Applied Research Center of Oakland interrupted a study to rush forward with preliminary results.
They found that black students are suspended and expelled at
disproportionate rates.
"The figures are astounding," declared Rev. Jackson as he,
the Oakland group
and the press joined in mutual exploitation of the moment.
A year later, in the December 2000 issue of La Griffe du Lion, we asked:
Suppose a half-white, half-black school system <b
r>
suspends 1 percent of its students for disruptive behavior.
What is the most probable racial makeup of the suspended group?
The question began the section, "Games with Fuzzy Variables,"
but December's game is June's analytical scalpel.
With it we will peel back layers of misinformation to reveal race and school discipline in a gr
eater social context.
The year 1975 witnessed the first widely-disseminated report
on racial disparities in school discipline.
Issued by the Children's Defense Fund,
the report found that black students at all levels were suspended
at 2 to 3 times the rate of whites.
The bias hunters had arrived.
Hundreds of studies and millions of dollars later they would learn little more.
Powerful statistical techniques -
analysis of variance, c2, regression, correlation analysis and more -
have been brought to bear on school discipline and race.
Each new study adds to
the annals of redundant findings.
The essential result is now well established:
Referrals, suspensions and expulsions are distributed
asymmetrically with respect to race and ethnicity.
So what new can La Griffe bring to an area so thoroughly picked over?
Surprisingly, quite a bit.
The groundwork for our analysis was laid in December in the essay,
"Aggressiveness, Criminality and Sex Drive by Race
, Gender and Ethnicity."
There we developed the method of thresholds,
a procedure that takes rates at which different groups
cross behavioral thresholds (like committing assault),
and from them constructs yardsticks for "fuzzy" variables
that are otherwise hard to define (like aggressiveness).
the black-white aggressiveness gap was found to be invariant
to cultural shifts across continents,
compelling evidence that aggressiveness distributions
differ among races and are intrinsic to them. </span>
The threshol
d for "serious assault" falls way out on the
aggressiveness scale, 2.86 SD from the black mean.
The NCVS survey identified lower levels of assault
from simple on up. <
br>
Its threshold was much lower, 1.64 SD from the black mean.
That aside, both data sets yielded the same black-white gap.
From the standpoint of the method of thresholds,
expulsion and suspension from school are simply
new thresholds to be placed on the aggressiveness axis.
n
Discipline and Group Differences
Bias hunters who look for racial disparities usually find them.
Their papers, though sullied by subjectivity,
are valuable for the data they include.
Such is the case of a much-referenced paper
that appeared a few years ago.
The paper, "Office referrals and suspension:
Disciplinary intervention in middle schools," Skiba, R. J.,
Peterson, R. L.,
and Williams, T.,
Education and Treatment of Children,
20, 295-315, (1997), examined disciplinary records
in a large Midwestern urban school district for the 1994-95 school year.
The large-scale study included all 11,001
middle-s
chool students in the district,
98 percent of whom were either black (56%)
or white (42%).
By analysis of variance Skiba et al.
convincingly demonstrated that African American students
were suspended and expelled at rates disproportionate
to their population in the schools.
<span style=\'color:red\'>More important, the paper included raw
data
uncompromised by expectation or prejudice.
Skiba et al. found suspension rates of 17.1 percent for whites
and 27.0 percent for blacks.
We applied the method of thresholds (see Appendix) to these rates.
It revealed a black-white aggressiveness gap of 0.34 SD,
a value differing insignificantly from the assault data value of 0.37 SD.
On the aggressiveness axis, suspension fell at 0.61 SD
fro
m the black mean, much lower than assault (1.64 SD),
and lower still than "serious assault" (2.86 SD).
Figure 1 shows distributions of aggressiveness for blacks
and whites.
Drawn to scale, the curves are separated by a mean difference,
D, of 0.37 SD.
The thresholds for suspension (Skiba data), assault and
"serious assault" are marked on the aggressiveness axis.
For graphs and more facts see link:
http://www.lagriffedulion.f2s.com/discipline.htm
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
~~~~~
I can see Tyrone grinning from ear to ear
and his toof shining !
:rotfl: