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Comment by xienze | Hacker News Reader

It's amazing that there's such a thing as remedial classes in a university, but hey, how else are we going to get an adequately diverse student body?

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Eh, numbers seem to match up with national numbers, and there's not a huge difference between ethnicities https://nces.ed.gov/programs/digest/d12/tables/dt12_270.asp

The scary one to me is "field of study: education" : 41.1.

41% of future teachers need remedial education? Wonder how that stacks up to other countries.

Education, psych, business, english, journalism, etc are buckets that catch a lot of people who don't know what they want to major in but go to college because "that's what you do"

Go to community college like I did. I took a bunch of remedial classes that helped me prepare for university. I wasn't prepared for a real university education out of high school. But after 3 years of community college (2 major switches) I transferred to UCSD for CS and got by BS and am currently doing my masters.

I don't think lowering the standards is a good idea. I think we should fill the gap's in education left by high schools failing at their jobs.

Are you insinuating white people don't need remedial classes?

From a different article about this same subject[1]:

> The policy announcement “aims to address inequities in college readiness head-on in order to close gaps in degree attainment and afford all students the opportunity to succeed,”

When a policy like this is couched in that sort of language, it's pretty obvious that the changes aren't being made because white kids are having trouble graduating.

[1]: https://edsource.org/2017/cal-state-adopts-new-policies-to-h...

Of course all kinds of people can land in these remedial classes if they are not prepared.

Now, I ask you, which schools do a better job of preparing students for college level work, the schools white kids get to go to or the schools black kids have to go to? If you are wondering, look at the AP classes offered at say Palo Alto high school vs Crenshaw high school:

http://schools.latimes.com/school/los-angeles/crenshaw-senio...

http://schools.latimes.com/school/palo-alto/palo-alto-high/

Highlights:

Proficient in Math: PA: 76% Crenshaw: 2.5% (not a typo)

Proficient in English: PA: 84% Crenshaw: 18%

Now, are you saying we shouldn't let bright kids from bad schools get into college?

Palo Alto Avg. Income: $126,771

Inglewood Avg. Income: $43,394

Wouldn't it make sense to compare like-to-like, and choose two schools in areas with similar incomes?

Just btw. but in Germany ~43,000$ would be considered a not too bad income, certainly not an income where one would expect people to have ~2.5% math proficiency.

An average 1 bedroom in Inglewood ranges from $1350 to $1600 a month. An average 2 bedroom ranges from $1650 to $2000 a month.

Someone making $43k a year would end up with $2,667.51 a month as take home pay. This would not include health insurance, which could run anywhere from $100 to $400 a month (and potentially much, much higher).

Sure, but a drink in Germany isn't going to run me $7 to $12, it would be less than half that usually. In a major city in the US, your living standards on $43k a year will be much lower than in Germany.

>Now, are you saying we shouldn't let bright kids from bad schools get into college?

Show me where I implied that.

I was just using your technique of putting words in someone else's mouth, with a question mark at the end. See GP post.

There's an entire department of the federal government whose first, or perhaps even only, priority is to deal with the fact that OP indelicately mentioned.

which department? i seem to be missing the implication

Most directly, Ed. But now that you mention it, Justice is a close second.

jeff sessions justice department?

I'm commenting on trends that have persisted over administrations, and certainly accelerated under the last one. I don't pretend to know what's going on with this one, except to note that the career staff of many agencies are in semi-open revolt.

Are you insinuating that white people can't be diverse?

They can't be racially diverse if they are white. If you mean educationally diverse, you're just trolling.

So White people are all one race, now?

Germans and Slavs and Scandinavians and Italians are all the same?

When did that happen?

> So White people are all one race, now?

Always have been, pretty much since the classic idea of defined “races” was formed, in early race models—whether in two-race (Caucadoid/Mongoloid), three race (adding Negroid), or five-race (white, yellow, brown, black, and red) models—whites were, alone or with some others, one race.

Yes, it's Caucasian. There is a difference between race and country of origin. I mean wow.

Huh. Hasn't always been. Look up the history of race sometime.

Race is politics and not biology. I mean wow.

Are you saying Germans and Slavs and Italians aren't the same race, i.e. Caucasian? That's what you were stating. I understand the origins of race, but you implied they weren't the same race.

Maybe they're the same race now, but historically it hasn't been that simple.

Hell, Italians and Irish haven't always been considered White.

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