President George W. Bush coined that phrase in 2004, although others have probably used it at other times. He, of course, was roundly criticized for another dumb statement. Typical dumb Shrub comment. Only it turns out, it’s true.
Are Educators Showing a ‘Positive Bias’ to Minority Students?
A major study, led by Rutgers-Newark psychology professor Kent D. Harber, indicates that public school teachers under-challenge minority students by providing them more positive feedback than they give to white students, for work of equal merit. The study, which is currently available online in the Journal of Educational Psychology (JEP), involved 113 white middle school and high school teachers in two public school districts located in the New York/New Jersey/Connecticut tri-state area, one middle class and white, and the other more working class and racially mixed.
Teachers read and commented on a poorly written essay which they believed was composed by a student in a writing class. Some teachers thought the student was black, some thought the student was Latino, and some thought that the student was white. Teachers believed that their feedback would be sent directly to the student, in order to see how the student would benefit from their comments and advice.
In fact, there was no actual student, and the poorly written essay was developed by Harber and his team. The real purpose was to see how teachers would respond to subpar work due to the race of the student who composed it. As Harber and his team predicted, the teachers displayed a “positive feedback bias,” providing more praise and less criticism if they thought the essay was written by a minority student than by a white student.
The article is longer than this, and of course the study is even more detailed.
Teachers were less critical when they believed that the poorly written paper was produced by a Black or Latino student. There can be many reasons for this, none of them speak well of modern education. Or liberalism for that matter.
One reason can be that teachers are afraid that giving a minority student a poor grade might result in a charge or racism. Another is that maybe the minority students were poorly taught in the past. Another, one which should disturb us all, is that minority students just can’t achieve and so need to have their grades inflated to make up for past bias.
I’d like to think that this would start an earnest discussion among academics about how to address this problem and how to develop ways to help minority students do better in school. I don’t think grade inflation is the way to do that if there is a widespread achievement gap among the races. Sadly, I think that the only discussion will be how to get more federal money into the public schools to fix this problem.
Wouldn’t this in a way be a self-fullfilling bigotry? If held to a lower standard, they adhere to a lower standard, which then feedback loops into causing more bigotry because people see them adhering to a lower standard. (Of course there are always people, regardless of ethnicity that strive to excell, and will adhere to higher standards than expected of them).
Check out my latest blog post. It speaks to this issue.
End of semester drama is always a bitch.
Is this really any surprise? It’s not to me…
It’s not a surprise, but it’s depressing none the less. Not to mention that it will harm progress by minorities of all back grounds. It weakens our society because there will always be the suspicion that the doctor, lawyer, accountant or other professional got his or her credentials and position because of such stupid concepts as “social justice”.
I’ve a friend teaching psych at a university in PA. It’s standard practice there to assign each student a number that they use instead of a name when submitting papers. More of this please!
In WA, we are required to give a Multicultural Awareness class as a part of initial EMT courses. The course is designed to educate EMS professionals about the disparities that occur in healthcare due to multicultural factors. Since there is enough data to support the need for education to address this healthcare gap, and apparently, growing data to show the trend above, wouldn’t it be easy to add the educational component and target educators? Perhaps a topic at an upcoming conference?
That’s if you believe in that particular theory. There are a lot of reasons that different groups seek out different types or levels of health care. The solution isn’t to educate providers, but to educate the patients and get them to seek out appropriate medical care. The change the provider mentality is ass backwards.
I’m not sure what cultural effect you’re referencing in education. It seems that educators are less likely to critique and more likely to give an unearned grade if they believe the student is minority. What they need is to be blind to the ethnic background of the student and more rigorous in making sure that all students meet the same educational standard.