Florida's Race-based Proficiency Standards: bigotry, reality, or something else?

Florida just adopted academic proficiency targets that vary by race, district, and individual school:

The state, for example, wants 90 percent of its Asian students, 88 percent of its white students, 81 percent of its Hispanic students and 74 percent of its black students reading well by 2018.

It also has set goals by race for each district and each public school. So while Orange County's black youngsters aren't expected to do as well as its white students, those enrolled at Hunter's Creek Elementary are expected to do better than those at Windermere Elementary. 

It is sort of disturbing to see different expectations for different groups of students. Some are calling racism, seeing the new standards as an acceptance of lower expectations for minority students. They worry (justifiably) about the message sent to students: because you're (Asian/white/Hispanic/black) our state expects you to achieve at X level.

Others say that if Florida were to actually meet those goals, in spite of the unequal expectations they seem to justify, it would be good enough. For comparison, 71% of elementary students, 64% of middle school students, and 44% of high school students in Florida are reading at or above grade level (source). They say that expecting everyone to reach 100% in six years is foolish, and it is.

Honestly, I think the real problem is that Florida, like other states since the passage of NCLB, uses standardized tests of basic skills as a measuring stick for students at all. Whether you expect minority students to close the "achievement gap" by 2018 entirely, or only in part, you're still putting your faith in standardized tests, which are designed to sort and rank students according to their perceived proficiency levels.

Another problem is that the state can set proficiency goals wherever it wants to. Florida decides what constitutes a passing score on the test, meaning the difference between proficient and not proficient is pretty arbitrary. In fact, just last year, Florida was criticized for arbitrarily lowering the cut score on its writing exams because scores were so bad.

Imagine if Florida were to use a different set of measures to determine the quality of education in their state: things like per-pupil funding, access to early childhood education, access to books and technology, or access to healthcare and nutrition. You'd still see a gap between affluent students and poor students, and between racial groups. But it would be a gap that would place blame for inequalities squarely on the state and on districts, not on students and their teachers.