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your support. Charlotte Observer reports that North Carolina is among
a handful of states to see a bump in middle
school math scores on a recent national assessments so called
Nations Report Card. Experts say it is thanks to a
state policy, state policy that places students into advanced math
courses who might otherwise be overlooked.
Speaker 1: So a policy does that.
Speaker 2: There's a state policy that identifies kids who are being
overlooked that are good at math. But the policy is like, no,
you're actually good at math. We're going to put you
in an advanced course. Thank goodness for the policy. What
is this policy? This is a great question, glad you asked.
Let's keep reading. The state is one of five to
see an uptick in eighth grade math scores on the
latest NAPE an AEP, the National Assessment of Educational Progress,
I believe is what that stands for, sometimes called the
nation's report card. On the assessment, North Carolina ranked first
in math in Southeast States. It was one good outcome
in an otherwise bleak NAPE report.
Speaker 1: So everything else stunk, but this.
Speaker 2: One category because they you know NAPE does, So this
is what the eighth grade, uh said, Yeah, eighth grade
math scores they do. I want to say it's third,
fifth and eighth grade. I think that's what they do
in the third grade reading scores. That's the when you
hear people talk about the schools to prison pipeline, like
you like you can see you can track kids who
are not at reading level by third grade. They end
up with all sorts of problems in their adulthood. They
make less money, they're in jail more often.
Speaker 1: Like just it's you.
Speaker 2: You are not on a path to success if you
are not at grade level in third grade reading. So
I guess we didn't do very well in that, but
we did see improvement in the eighth grade math. Because
they do reading and math, they do two different tests
in all these grades, and eighth grade is the only
category that we're talking about, not third grade math or reading,
fifth grade math, the reading, eighth grade reading, just eighth
grade math.
Speaker 1: Okay.
Speaker 2: Education activists or sorry, education advocates, advocates education, So that's
public education, that's government schooling proponents. Okay, that's usually what
that means. That's the term they give themselves because it
makes them sound like they're doing good work and for
the right reasons and all that.
Speaker 1: I'm sure these.
Speaker 2: Education advocates are also all anti school choice, but whatever,
that's a sidebark. So these advocates say that the jump
in North Carolina math performance may be due to a
policy in state law that automatically places the top twenty
five percent of scorers on a sixth grade math assessment
into advanced math classes. Moving forward, this eventually gives them
ath access to math classes with college credit, such as
AP International baccal Art or IB and dual enrollment courses. Okay,
so it's not just a policy there. From what I'm
reading here in the Observer piece by Rebecca Noel, it
says the state it's a policy in state law, but
it is taking kids who what who score well on
a test, a test which I thought we weren't supposed
to be doing. We're in removing away. I'm old enough
to remember. I am old enough to remember when testing
was bad. And okay, I remember that. They go, oh,
they just don't test well. We can't rely on testing.
Remember we hear all of this stuff anti testing. Can't
use testing well, come to think of it, that's usually
about tying it to teacher pay. So maybe testing does
have some benefits. Who would have thought, I mean, besides,
like everybody with a look of common sense, Yes, you
test the kids and in sixth grade, if they're in
the top twenty five percent of the top scoreres right,
then you put them into the advanced math classes. In
other words, merit merit outcome based Right, you obviously do
well at math, You've learned your math lessons. You're doing
a good job with math. We gave you this test.
You finished in the top coretile, so you get to
move on to advanced stuff. And then look at that,
you get you get on a track to learn more
advanced math after that. Again, this should be this should
be fairly common sensical. No, the fact that and by
the way, this poe they put in place in twenty eighteen.
So I think that that might be due to Republican lawmakers.
Speaker 1: Who I thought.
Speaker 2: Hated education, which is so weird. That's for people who
hate education. They really stink at hating education. I got
to tell you, why would you do that? Like, why
would you get more kids into advanced math? Why would
you want their scores going up if you so hate education.
They have a quote here in the paper from Lindsay Henderson,
who is a math policy director for excel in Ed
that is a national education advocacy organization, and she says
that they have shown oh yeah, this is going to
get this.
Speaker 1: This my floor. You too. She says they have shown.
Speaker 2: That they are diversifying the advanced math classes in terms
of socioeconomic status and ethnicity and race. All three categories
have now become more represented. There is a diversification of
the student population in the advanced math classes when you
simply give them a test on how much they know,
and the kids it doesn't matter what they race, their gender,
or anything else. They test well, they get into the
advanced courses and lo and behold, you have more diversity.
Well that's amazing. It's almost like these immutable characteristics of
race and gender and socioeconomic status or whatever.
Speaker 1: Like it's almost like these things don't matter because it's
freaking math. You know.
Speaker 2: It's math, and some people I'm not one of them,
but some people are good at math. It's the way
their brains operate. I have tried. That's a lie. I
actually know. I really haven't tried that hard.
Speaker 1: To be good at math. And truth be told, I'm
a bit out of practice.
Speaker 2: I mean, aside from like simple math and budgeting for
the household and that kind of thing. I don't really
like I'm not running Pythagorean theorems on stuff I don't
even know is that math?
Speaker 1: Is that still math? Okay?
Speaker 2: So like I'm not even a math brain guide, so
it okay. That's but from what I understand, there are
people that are good at math.
Speaker 1: I actually know.
Speaker 2: I know that to be true because I know people
who are good at math, and so they just they
see the numbers. It's like a beautiful mind. They start
floating all around their face and stuff, and it's it's
a sight to see. So the policy has been in
place since twenty eighteen. As the kids age, their math
skills continue to develop. On that advanced track, which could
be part of why scores have improved. One result of
the policy is more children from underrepresented backgrounds around the state,
such as students from socioeconomically disadvantaged households or is we
used to call them growing up poor poor households? Rich
and poor? Can you say rich? I think we still
say rich, but we don't say poor anymore. But kids
of all different backgrounds are getting access to the accelerated
math track, and they're also maintaining high levels of student
success in those advanced math classes. So my logical conclusion
in all of this is that teachers are apparently racist. No,
I don't know what else, Like, what other logical conclusion.
Speaker 1: Could there be?
Speaker 2: Right before, before you gave the kids all the tests
to find out that they were actually gifted in math,
and then you sent them on the math track with
the policy, you made this policy that said if they're
good at math, you got to put them on the track.
Why were they not getting put on those tracks before?
Speaker 1: Right? Hello, systemic institutional racism? Anybody? No? Does that not
exist in the gov CO K twelve monopoly? Does that?
I'm so confused?
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have a tweet. It's a p tweet from It's all
a distraction, she says. How can a student from a
poor home excel in math? I was told math was
racist two plus two equals five and all of that. Yes,
it's a it is a delim Oh. By the way,
breaking news. If you've been trying to post the dumbest
thing on North Carolina politics in the ncpol hashtag on Twitter,
just save it for tomorrow because we have the dumbest
tweet of the day.
Speaker 1: It's already.
Speaker 2: I know it's only like two twenty four here, but uh,
there's no topping this, okay, So just save your fire
for tomorrow. Kevin Coulter, Yes, husband, father of three, a
fierce advocate for students to have strong public schools. Twenty
five years in the classroom. So this is a teacher
or former teacher. Oh and he says he blocks MAGA.
So there's a bill that some Republicans sponsored that would
allow North Carolina homeschoolers and private school students to play
interscholastic athletics, and Kevin Colter said, several North Carolina Republicans
wrote a bill in support of DEI policies. I'm glad
that the Republicans finally understand the importance of DEI policies
and practices. So he thinks he thinks allowing kids from
homeschool to play sports with public school teams, he thinks
that that is DEI or something.
Speaker 1: He deleted it.
Speaker 2: But I screen captured it. So the internet is forever.
But I digress. And now he's been immortalized on a podcast.
Speaker 1: Don't worry, don't worry.
Speaker 2: He has a lot of entries into the dumbest tweet
of the day on North Carolina politics. So back to
the story here at the This is the Charlotte observers
of the McClatchy papers talking about the state policy that
they enacted in twenty eighteen that basically said, hey, take
a test, and if you do well in the test,
we'll take twenty five percent of the top performing kids
on the math test and you get put into a
track course that is for advanced math courses, and they're like,
holy smokes, our math scores went up. Who would have
thought that if you test kids and take the best
kids in the performance quartile, and you take the best
of them and you give them advanced classes, they're going
to do better in math.
Speaker 1: That's just amazing.
Speaker 2: And oh and it's actually a more diverse student population too.
Speaker 1: See.
Speaker 2: According to McClatchy, the policy helps weed out bias that
otherwise might keep kids out of advanced math. What bias?
Who's bias? How would bias play into this? Says Brenda Berg,
president and CEO of Best NC and Education Advocacy nonprofit.
Prior to the law being passed, about ten percent of
students who qualified for advanced math classes were being put
on the advanced track. Now that's down to just two percent.
So ten percent that qualified they were not getting tracked,
they were not getting put into the advanced course, and
now it's only two percent. And she says, we can't
fully identify why those ten percent were kept out, but
it could be because of notions about which kids were
capable and which kids weren't. So again, it seems like
you're saying K twelve government employees are racists, right, What
other conclusion am I to draw here otherwise, like why
like you're judging these kids or I guess they it
just could be bigotree against like poor people too, I guess,
or maybe religious bigotry or something.
Speaker 1: I don't know.
Speaker 2: They can't figure it out. They don't understand, so they
don't have an explanation for why so many kids from
these with these different backgrounds weren't getting put into the
advanced math courses. But apparently when a policy gets passed
that says, if you do well top twenty five percent
on this test.
Speaker 1: You will get put in those courses.
Speaker 2: Now, all of a sudden, diversity achieved.
Speaker 1: Interesting.
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Creator of video dot com. So North Carolina in twenty
eighteen passed this policy. Adopted a policy that in sixth
grade kids take a math test and if they are
in the top twenty five percent of performers, they then
get placed on sort of an advanced math course. Right,
so they then move into advanced math classes going forward,
and that puts them on the tracks for AP and
IB and all of that not irritable bowet, but like
International Baccalaureate and so and dual enrollment courses and stuff
like that, and so what they have found since twenty eighteen,
since the policy was enacted, they have more kids going
into these classes. These scores have gone up, and they're
more diverse, the popular the student population is more diverse,
and they're like, I don't know it's going on. We
can't figure it out. It might have something to do
with this policy that maybe the policy weeds out bias
that keeps kids out of the advanced math classes. And
then that to me raises the obvious question of who's biases?
Who are the people that are making these decisions, Why
are they keeping gifted kids out of the advanced math courses.
Prior to the law being passed, there was about ten
percent of kids that qualified for the advanced classes but
were not put into the advanced classes ten percent. Now
it's down to two percent, and according to Brenda Bergh,
president and CEO of Best NC and Education Advocacy nonprofit, said,
we can't fully identify why those ten percent were kept out,
but it could be because of notions about which kids
were capable and which kids weren't. For example, someone might
have the expectation that only a kid who has two
parents at home could do it.
Speaker 1: What.
Speaker 2: I'm sorry, you don't get to be in his math class. Us,
little Elon because you're from a single mother home. What really,
why would that ever come into factor? Why would that
why would that ever be used in a K twelve
government school? Why would that be? No, that's or maybe
a kid that shows up with his hair not being
washed every day, or a kid that or only a
kid that behaves in class would get in. But if
you misbehave in class, then you don't because you're a
trouble maker whatever. Usually, by the way, the kids that
are troublemakers are oftentimes bored. They are bored, they're actually smart,
they are bored by what you are doing, or they're
just in it for the lols. That's possible to Bias
can take many forms, But this policy takes all that away. Interesting,
So a policy takes away what bias takes away what
non meritorious yes rewards, That's what it did. Right. You
either make the greater you don't, and if you score
in the top twenty five percent, you get into the
top class.
Speaker 1: That's it.
Speaker 2: Like that, It doesn't matter if you misbehave in class.
It doesn't matter if you don't wash your hair every day.
It doesn't matter if you have two parents or twelve
parents or one parent, or whatever. You get in you're
good at math. This is the class for kids who
are good at math.
Speaker 1: Welcome.
Speaker 2: North Carolina was the first state to enact an auto
enrollment policy, but Texas and Washington have since followed. Suit
Berg says one approach to raising reading scores could be
to adopt a similar approach to placement in advanced reading curriculum.
Wait a minute, you're saying this could work in other
subjects too.
Speaker 1: Wait to bury the lead there, observer.
Speaker 2: This is exactly why you do not want a US
Department of Education setting national policies. Because North Carolina experimented
with a fix. And if this policy, which is really
just testing and then rewarding merit, if this policy is
a fix and does yield better results, then every state
should be able to say, hey, what are they doing,
Let's do what they're doing, and then adopt that same thing.
These are the quote laboratories of democracy, right, that's the
whole concept, individual states setting their own course, deciding for
themselves what works, what doesn't, and then the best ideas
rise to the top. When you have a nationalized system,
you stifle innovation and even worse. One mistake, one bad
policy at the top at a national level then gets
replicated across every single state, and the damage done is universal. Right,
as almost as if that's the point. No, that wouldn't
possibly be the case. But that's the benefit of a
federalist model. Fifty states choosing their own course, and the
ones that do better, the ones that seem to fix things,
you can imitate them. You can replicate their successes, you
can avoid their failures. That's the point.
Speaker 1: Oh.
Speaker 2: In a related story, Trump is considering now an executive
order to shut down the Department of Education. Finally, by
the way the observer, in the very end of their story,
they say, what can be done to help low performing students?
Because the achievement gap is still there between racial demographics.
So while there was test improvements, there is a racial
achievement gap. So they're asking, you know, what can be
done to help low performing students? Do you want to
take a guess what their suggestion is? Take one guess.
I'll give you one guess.
Speaker 1: That's it.
Speaker 2: What do you think the education advocates say, we have
to do to improve low performing students performance? How do
we do that? What is your guest? That's right. It's
teacher pay exactly. It's always teacher pay. It's always teacher pay.
Why why not just do the policy do this thing
where you reward the merit. Hell, kid, you did a
good job on the test, We're going to put you
in this advanced course.
Speaker 1: Like, why do I do that?
Speaker 2: Wait a minute, do we pay those teachers extra money?
And that's why the math test went up? We saw
improvement in the math test. Did we give all those
teachers pay raises or something? No, that didn't happen either.
Why is the answer for these people always?
Speaker 1: I know why. The answer, I know why. The answer
is that it's for campaign contributions.
Speaker 2: All right, if you're listening to this show, you know
I try to keep up with all sorts of current events,
and I know you do too, And you've probably heard
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and it's a website and it combines news from around
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with them as an affiliate because it lets me see
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ground News as they make the media landscape more transparent.
I got a message here from Russ. He says it
sounds pretty racisty to deny a certain ten percent of
students a chance at advanced placement. Maybe like some kind
of bigotry of low expectations or assumptions that support education
advocate savior complexes. Yeah, yeah, it's always amazing to me,
like the one in the same article. In one paragraph,
you're telling me that there is a cohort of kids
that are good enough in math to have been placed
in advanced math classes, but we're not, and you don't
tell me.
Speaker 1: By whom.
Speaker 2: You don't tell me how that happens. You don't tell
me who the decision makers are there. But in the
next paragraph you tell me that in order to help
more low performing students or something, that the answer is
to pay the people more money. But wouldn't I be
paying the people that have been discriminating against kids to
keep them out of math classes. Wouldn't I be paying
them more money too? I have said this on the
teacher pay topic for gosh now, probably ten or fifteen years.
I want to pay great teachers a lot of money.
Speaker 1: I am fine to do that. You're a great teacher.
Speaker 2: I like, it's more art form to like, in my mind,
you got to be a good communicator, right, you got
to be.
Speaker 1: Entertaining and formative.
Speaker 2: It's a performance like that's being in front of a
classroom like that, getting kids motivated to learn and all
of that. Knowing all of your kids, the stuff that's
going on in their lives. It is a very difficult job.
And if you're a great teacher, you should be pulling
down six figures. Absolutely, But I'm not going to pay
the crap ones too the same amount of money. I'm sorry,
because I had them don't tell me there aren't bad teachers.
We've all had bad teachers, and so I'm not going
to be held hostage. I do not negotiate with kidnappers
or hostage takers. They're terrorists too, for that matter, but
I'm not saying. I'm not saying they're terrorists. But like
I don't, I'm not negotiating with it. I'm not gonna
pay my old teacher. I'm not going to name her,
not gonna pay her six figures because the one in
the classroom next to her is an awesome teacher and
deserves it. I'm sorry. I'm not gonna get shaken down
like that. But of course, the observer quotes this same
woman from the you know, education advocacy nonprofit, which I'm wondering, like,
who funds them? Are those government grants that are coming
into your nonprofit?
Speaker 1: The NGOs?
Speaker 2: She says, this is her name is Brenda Berg, and
she says the biggest thing is to invest in our teachers.
She said students who are not enrolled in advanced math
classes are more likely to have teacher vacancies in their classrooms.
Get this, since educators are often drawn to teaching classes
with more challenging coursework. Why are teachers drawn to classes
that have more challenging coursework? Why do you think that
might be? Why do you think teachers want to be
in a classroom that's teaching harder material, especially when the
students had to pass tests to get into these advanced classes.
Why do you think teachers want to be in those
environs better behaved kids? Yeah, the kids in those classes
generally speaking hashtag not all kids, but like, generally speaking,
those kids do not have the kinds of discipline problems
that you find in other classes. Those kids want to
be there. They like the material, they want to learn
that material, they have a gift in that subject matter,
and so teachers want to be there because the kids
want to learn, which tells you what. It's not really
about the money. The money's nice, don't get me wrong,
already made my position clear on that pay the great
teachers six figures. But teachers want to be in a
place where they feel like they're making a difference. Nobody
wants to go to work every single day and feel
like what they're doing doesn't matter, So they want to.
Speaker 1: Be in those settings.
Speaker 2: This is like this, to me, the most amazing thing
about this story is that this is being reported as
if it's new.
Speaker 1: I have known this. I've never been a teacher.
Speaker 2: I have spoken in front of classes, and I know
a lot of teachers. But I've known this for almost
twenty years. How is it possible that you guys are
just figuring this out? All right? That'll do it for
this episode. Thank you so much for listening. I could
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