Southern Poverty Law Center files complaint about Florida’s race-based student achievement plans
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MIAMI (Reuters) – Florida was hit with a complaint filed with the U.S. Department of Justice on Friday accusing it of race-based education goals that violate civil rights law by setting “severely lower expectations” for black and Hispanic students.
The Southern Poverty Law Center and Legal Aid Society of Florida’s Palm Beach County jointly filed the complaint on behalf of public school children.
The complaint said the Florida Department of Education’s recently adopted student achievement goals, under which Asians are expected to perform best and blacks the worst, “violate fundamental civil rights.”
Under a plan drafted in October 2012 and due to take effect in the 2013-2014 school year, Florida set reading goals for public school students under which 90 percent of Asian-Americans were expected to read at grade level by 2018 compared with 88 percent of white students.
At the same time, 81 percent of Hispanic students were to be reading at grade level by 2018 versus just 74 percent of black students.
Similar disparities were predicted in the goals for math.
“Rather than promote equal educational achievement for all, Florida set alarmingly different goals
Yet for too long, self-appointed “reformers” have deceptively wrapped themselves in the language of children, choice and change in order to inflict dubious education policies upon the public, most frequently on our most vulnerable communities and children.
