The Myth of Filipino Inferiority
By: Arthur Hu, Oct 30, 2008
I thank Rodel Rodis for bringing up the sub-par performance of Filipino students. It is unfortunate that it is politically correct to dramatize disadvantaged losers rather than celebrate positive achievement.
Standardized tests like the Washington state Assessment of Student Learning show the fraud of either passing all students to prove that spending money works or flunking above-average students to justify spending even more money.
I ran my own reports on the California Education Departments STAR testing website and found the statewide Filipino average of 320 for basic math at grade 9 was about equal to the Asian average. They joined the disadvantaged Hawaiians, Guamanians, Tahitians, and Vietnamese in actually outscoring whites at 315. They didnt perform as high as 334 for Chinese, but then neither did whites. The bottom line is that the Koreans put everybody else to shame at 330, but is that a crisis?
Samoans and Cambodians were the lowest-scoring Asian groups, but 33% of Samoans scored far below basic, just as poor a showing as the traditionally highlighted African Americans. For all the awards won by Asian Indian students, on this test they barely kept up with whites, scoring far below basic at 18 percent.
Im the guy who filed a complaint that the University of California gave Filipinos affirmative admission rates in the 1980s when they were never underrepresented in UC admissions. Likewise, no one else told the story that Filipinos were later quietly removed from preferences and subjected to lower admission rates than other groups.
Tax the Rich, Give To the Working Class
Inequality should never justify massive spending to promise a more equitable distribution of wealth or high test scores. Joe the Plumber was told by Obama Hood that its good to spread the wealth around. What kind of a tax cut nakedly promises to raise business taxes to hand out checks to people who may not even owe taxes? In a 2001 radio interview, Obama explained the redistributive change that we are now supposed to believe in.
Glenn Beck thinks McCain is what Democrats used to be and Obama is what we used to call socialist. Sarah Palin may well be the one candidate pure enough to have faith in. The pundits condemn firings, expense accounts, religious beliefs, answers to questions with no correct answers, and opposition to abortion. But Palin and McCain never called America a force of evil at Saddleback Church, nor wrote college theses concluding that America hates black Americans, nor had to deny the religious heritage of their fathers. They dont have to distance themselves from retired building bombers or appointing the very Fannie Mae former executives he claimed to blow the whistle on. Obama has clearly succeeded in making a scapegoat of Bush, and perhaps has won the political beauty contest among Asians. But it is not too late to vote based on integrity and figure out whose character is the one lacking in content.
2008 California STAR Test reports, Math 6-7 taken in Grade 9:
