>>Les,
I meant that if we are to know why, say, the Taiwanese average is higher
than the American we should not presume that the same explanation will hold
for why Asian Americans score higher than other Americans.>>
I agree, comparing a country to a group within a second country is an invalid comparison, and Leo's point -
<<It is very hard, if not simply impossible, to meaningfully measure comparative achievement across educational systems with so many different variables in terms of curriculum, instruction and assessment.>>
- I also agree with. I was comparing the position of "discriminated minorities" in different countries, and for that comparison, I don't think it matters that the tests or curricula may be different - the point is, when a group of people is at the bottom of a hierarchy, they typically do worst on most measures - that's what a hierarchy is about. Why should we be surprised and look for over-complicated explanations? Sure, maybe in some cases teachers aren't as well-prepared - I'll give you (Jan) that small point. But that isn't the end of the discussion. Why wouldn't they, on average, be as well-prepared as teachers in richer, whiter districts? Because richer, whiter districts pay more, tend to be safer and be an easier gig. That's how a hierarchy reproduces itself.
(As an aside, my mother taught for a year in inner-city Baltimore, and according to her, there were a number of top-notch teachers in her school.)
<<I am extremely skeptical that there is a universal caste structure operative in some form in every single national society and that this structure accounts for a putatively universal standard deviation difference between the outcaste and the rest of society in each nation.>>
I didn't say this. My only mention of caste was when I said that Japan's burakumin were "a caste-like group." Nothing about universal or standard deviations. What I said was: "If this "achievement gap" exists in other places and times, in somewhat different forms, but always involved in an opposition like inferior/superior, civilized/primitive, clean/unclean (whether the basis for distinction is color, or language, or religion, or whatever) - then explanations like bad genes, bad teachers, bad home life, linguistic peculiarities - don't wash. The only constant is the opposition itself, not the genes, teachers, languages and home lives, which vary from place to place."
<<even if it ever existed in the US, caste structure has certainly weakened over the last several decades in the US, while the so called racial test score gaps have remained disturbingly constant (though of course test scores have shown an all around secular increase). But this seems to me to indicate that any explanation of variation in the US cannot be accounted for by caste, unless we are using that word so loosely that it becomes synomous with oppression of which there remains plenty in class and race forms.>>
In the US context, I talked about class, race and power, not caste. As for test scores, they haven't remained constant - the black-white and male-female differences have decreased, I believe. As for the "secular rise," are you talking about IQ scores, which have risen everywhere during this century, kind of destroying their status as a measure of some inherent, genetically fixed "intelligence," immune to environmental influences (as I mentioned in an earlier post?)
<<As for our main point, is there data on the average SAT math scores of teachers in various school districts? Yours, Jan>>
I have no idea, why don't you do a search and get back to me with your evidence?
Yours, Les