The Public Policy/Biased Against Everyone
Jr, Chester E. Finn
Biased Against Everyone by Chester E. Finn, Jr. T he recent report "How Schools Shortchange Girls"—compiled by Wellesley College's Center for Research on Women and published by the American...
...But the outrage industry doesn't care...
...This worsens the fissiparous tendencies that are nowhere more evident than in the U.S...
...Boys score lower than girls in reading and writing at every age level tested, and have done so for two decades, according to the National Assessment of Educational Progress...
...Boys are'more often sent to "special education" classes—designed for learning-disabled children but often used as a means of removing troublesome students from classrooms...
...education generally, to view it as marred only by the failure of certain sub-populations to get their fair share...
...those who do are less likely to earn degrees...
...For another, they let us wriggle off the hook regarding our own behavior and that of our children, by suggesting that whatever is awry in American education is the fault of "the system" rather than the work of individuals...
...When we do, we find—mirabile visu—that, if weak performance is evidence of prejudice, then American education is biased against everybody...
...Of course not...
...The report claims that the current school reform debate pays scant attention to this injustice and urges some forty different actions to right that wrong...
...T he recent report "How Schools Shortchange Girls"—compiled by Wellesley College's Center for Research on Women and published by the American Association of University Women (AAUW)—drew front-page notice in the major dailies, under such headlines as the New York Times's blast that "Bias Against Girls Is Found Rife in Schools, With Lasting Damage...
...The data are compelling: •Boys are more likely to be held back in school...
...By calling attention to how poorly girls are doing in school, it invites us to re-examine the performance of boys...
...In 1989, females accounted for 55 percent of post-secondary students, 57 percent of BAs, and 51 percent of MAs...
...Is this due to prejudice...
...Yet reports such as the AAUW's are damaging in several ways...
...Show that an approved minority—or, in the case of females, majority—has been oppressed by some policy, practice, or institution, and you get doting attention in the press, orations on the floor of Congress, and the near-certainty of financial support for furtherstudies and press conferences...
...Is this due to prejudice...
...educational system, with its multicultural obsessions...
...Is prejudice at work here, too...
...Still—do discrepant results always reveal discrimination...
...But Asian pupils don't fare as well as whites in reading or writing...
...of kids in Alabama, Oregon, and Ohio...
...T o be sure, it's unlikely that any- one would issue a report on bias against males...
...In math, Hispanics do better at ages 9 and 13, blacks at age 17...
...Does the educational system favor Asians in some subjects and stymie them in others...
...But if unequal results per se signal discrimination, a thousand reports like the AAUW's could be written...
...consistently show lower scores on nearly every subject than their contemporaries to the north and west...
...But what is one to make of the fact that sometimes blacks do better than Hispanics and sometimes vice versa...
...How about geographic bias...
...Plenty have already been written on racial minorities, and it's easy to show that many education outcomes are lower for blacks and Hispanics than for whites...
...And how helpful is it to dwell on differences between groups when no group is doing well enough to be proud of...
...We're familiar with the pattern...
...Among 1988 eighth graders, 21 percent of males but only 14 percent of females had repeated a grade...
...Mischievous as it is, however, the AAUW report may unwittingly perform a public service...
...This denies the larger reality—that practically nobody is learning enough today—and encourages incremental rather than wholesale change...
...Students from the southeastern U.S...
...Finally, such reports encourage social fragmentation by rewarding victimization, brazenly displaying the benefits that shower down on groups and organizations that know how to press the bias button...
...Obviously we can save time by looking at all of them together...
...If the system is fundamentally sound, why demand higher standards, press for better tests, insist on choice for parents and children, or enlist colleges and employers in "raising the stakes" by requiring more skills and knowledge...
...Asian eighth-grade girls actually do better in science than white boys...
...More than two-thirds of the secondary special education population is male...
...And also of whites, blacks, Asians, and Hispanics...
...El The American Spectator June 1992 37...
...For what's most interesting about the AAUW report is that an equally damning document could be written to demonstrate that U.S...
...education shortchanges boys...
...in reading blacks excel at 13, while Hispanics lead at 9 and 17...
...Boys are less likely to enroll in colChester E. Finn, Jr., professor of education and public policy at Vanderbilt University, is the author of We Must Take Charge: Our Schools and Our Future (The Free Press...
...For one, they invite us to overrate the quality of U.S...
...of public and private schoolchildren...
...Using AAUW logic, one can even make the case that the current education system is biased against whites, at least in math and science, where Asian-Americans consistently score higher...
Vol. 25 • June 1992 • No. 6
