I apologize for the late response.

As for the idea that black students do well if the teachers like them there? Please. Teachers have next to no say as to their assignments---it's one area in which principals have a great deal of control.

I do not know where you come from, but I have personally reviewed the math placement criteria of hundreds of middle schools and high schools. Teacher recommendations are always on the list, whereas I have never seen a school which used "principal recommendations". Wake County, NC's placement criteria: http://www.wcpss.net/policy-files/series/policies/5611-bp.html Alamance County's placement criteria: http://tinyurl.com/d35dtfy I will find more if you'd like me to, but teacher recommendations are plainly listed. In my experience, principals generally back their math teachers when it comes to which students get placed where.

We live in a world where, as I write this, federal settlements are forced on schools that suspend or expel minorities at a higher rate, never mind the details, and anyone believes that schools assign classes by race? It's not just wrong. It's an outright LIE.

The schools do not outright assign math placement based on race; it is slightly more subtle than this. An example would be Wake County, in North Carolina. Wake County used a model called the "effectiveness index". A student is given a score based on: 1) Their previous test scores 2) Their income level (trinary: free lunch, reduced-price lunch, normal) 3) Their race. If two students with exactly equal grades and test scores were evaluated using the effectiveness index, with one student being a poor black, and another being a middle-class white, the former would be given a lower residual score, and therefore would be less likely to be placed into an advanced class. These scores were also used to determine how well a school is doing at teaching. If the poor black student did as well as the white student, the difference between his score and his effectiveness index residual would be larger than the white student's, and so the school would be rewarded for overcoming the "risk factors" of being poor and black and managing to instruct him anyway. Wake county is currently doing away with the effectiveness index, replacing it with EVAAS, a system which takes into account nothing but test scores. Source: http://content.news14.com/pdf/sas_report.pdf

Can you point me to a federal settlement forced on a school that suspends or expels minorities at a higher rate? I ask because in all of the school districts I have worked with, the schools did suspend minorities at a higher rate, and I have yet to see any consequences for this.

Principals are at risk for losing AP classes if they don't put enough URMs in them.

This, as well, I would like to see a citation for.

This post is almost entirely nonsense. I give it "almost" simply because in certain all-URM school districts the corruption level is high. It's within the realm of possibility that "fake grants" to "fake grant programs" that are nothing more than chump change doled out by large employers who can wave the program in front of Jesse Jackson and his ilk--look! We're providing gravy!--so I won't call it an outright lie. But it's certainly not the norm. Did you notice that this guy acts like the education world is comprised solely of blacks and whites? If any element of his story is true, it's because he lives or works in an all black school district that is, indeed, corrupt. Detroit, New Jersey somewhere, or the like. And that's a generous interpretation.

The school districts I have worked with have varied from being 90% black to 3% black. You are right in that I should have said "minority" rather than "black", for hispanics, native americans, and other minorities are at a similar disadvantage. However, I've seen enough districts in enough states that I, at least, believe the traits I ascribed to the education system to be nearly universal.