Boston public schools suspend advanced learning classes
wgbh.org
wgbh.org
However, one of the main positive motivations behind gifted/advanced education is that if you put those kids in a class with 30 randomly selected children and force them to move at the pace of the slowest kid in the class, they become so bored they either disengage from education or become problem students.
At the same time, if you took the median student and constantly compared them to one of two of the advanced kids, who will look like they "just know everything (since prior work is invisible to the class), that's just disheartening.
A priori, I'd say the goal of an idealized education system is to continuously provide learning challenges at the optimal difficulty for each student. Since that's far from possible right now, the very least we can do is bracket kids in 3 categories so they don't drive each other insane.
Not having an gifted program is like having wrestling matches without weight classes. It's no fun and no good (for anyone).
Or let them explain it to the slower kids.
Having some students help instruct others can work, and when it works, I think there's a lot of positives. But, it can also be socially akward, and lead to a lot of negatives (especially outside the classroom).
I think there are real issues with equal access to advanced classes, but making it equal by ending the program seems like the wrong thing to do.
It's silly to expect for the average teacher to be able to teach every kind of student. Some teachers are better at challenging gifted students. Some teachers are better at teaching large groups of "average" students. Some teachers are better at teaching basic concepts to students that the educational system has failed.
Sure, you could pick the smartest kid in each class and put them in a gifted program, und give extra help to the slowest learners. But that wont help the rest of the class that still spans a huge range.
That's why I think that education should move away from the "everyone does the same thing" type.
I took some extra physics classes in high school. And guess what, in those extra classes every student got their own exercises. Because we were all at different levels and had different interests.
Why don't they do that in normal classes?
I was a poor kid that attended a gifted program in first grade, the majority of the parents were upper middle class doctors and lawyers. It was lord of the flies classist bs. I clearly wasn't supposed to have been let in and went back to normie classes. It wasn't again until 6th grade that I was back into a one class a day advanced program.
I don't think there should be separate classes for advanced or gifted students. Many of the aspects of gifted programs are just better funded less shitty versions of regular classes. Just like the startup within a corp trope, the gifted programs are often just cover for a private school within a public school.
Does that mean some are finishing in 2 years and others in 6. In some places you have a cutoff of 21 years where you need to go to adult school at that age.
Who said we had to have grades at all? And why there needs to be a split and a set progression? I think some might leave at 16 and some at 28, both could be fine and ideal.
It's a good idea, except... It would defeat the main purpose of education, which is to teach obedience to authority and that knowledge and subsistence comes only from authority figures, not ones' peers.
also the victims of teacher unions that are keeping schools closed, despite the lack of scientific evidence supporting that position.
All sane people agree with you. However, those who prioritize "equity of outcome" disagree.
If you want to improve the outcomes of the lower performers, you have to address the environmental factors.
You do not take away the challenges for the high performers. That solves no problems, and creates more.
Most importantly, you cannot, and should not, ever, let ideology dictate what is best for the kids. Doing so does a grave disservice to all kids.
Some kids need far more challenge. Give it to them. Some kids need extra help. Give it to them.
Thomas Sowell puts an even finer point on this:
"If there is not equality of outcomes among people born to the same parents and raised under the same roof, why should equality of outcomes be expected — or assumed — when conditions are not nearly so comparable?"
Second, the ism may be classism. Poor students with less access to education might perform worse. Classifying classism as racism and solving it that may be wrong.
Third, the ism may be cultural too. If asian parents drive their kids harder by their parenting technique, that's not racism either.
It does not help to call all differences as only racism. The truth is differences are caused by a variety of reasons, of which racism is one.
> It does not help to call all differences as only racism. The truth is differences are caused by a variety of reasons, of which racism is one.
This is where the neo-liberals fall down. They like to blame, or over-blame, racism for all the world's ills as it has the convenient side effect of allowing them to sides-kirt any / most of the blame.
You also have to ask, statistically, who is educating the children? Mainly white women. Who does the worst in school? Black boys. The 2 groups with the least amount of things in common. Being able to effectively communicate with someone who doesn't come from your culture seems to be important when it comes to education, right? You click on the article and you are looking at a big picture of a white lady. I didn't have a single male teacher (besides for gym) until my sophomore year (I think AP Trigonometry?). At the very least, we need a 50/50 mix of male and female teachers.
Trust me, though. I don't agree with them getting rid of gifted programs. I don't think you can deal with racism with feel good platitudes and policies. The issue is the wealth gap; that's it. If African-Americans had similar wealth prospects as other groups besides latinos, most of these issues would disappear. African Americans built the country and weren't paid for any of it. We are talking about a group who has been financially shackled for hundreds of years via federal laws; and now we are living in a hyper-capitalistic society. How can you "move out" the hood without money? Heck, can blacks from the hood even get jobs picking fruit on farms like "illegal" workers. Fighting racism against blacks is about a debt that is owed and has never been paid; not about reliving Jim Crow or throwing racists in jail or making white people feel bad about themselves. You can't legislate a man's heart (1st amendment and all).
I was replying to someone who was arguing that everything was solely racism. That doesn't make sense to me. In fact, you argue that white women have not been doing a fair job teaching black men. But why are Asian americans excelling in school then? I don't think it's just racism to blame.
> Fighting racism against blacks is about a debt that is owed and has never been paid
And that's one bad argument. Reparations? Look, I'm from India and india was for a long time ruled by the british, and an even longer time ruled by muslim rulers who became the elite in india. So, if one tells me that britain needs to return the stolen 45 trillion (yup somebody estimated this bullshit number), or that muslims need to pay reparations, I'm pretty sure they would be called racist nationalists.
The law should only make sure that the people right now have equal opportunities for them, regardless of their history, skin color, ethnicity, and even wealth. Everything else is a illiberal idea that can only make things worse
https://www.nationalgeographic.com/pages/article/indias-unto...
And the real issue is, you can't have a fair society if we have different castes of people. This is not about class; because if it were you would see different results in the wealths of even first generation immigrants to America compared to African Americans. People who have been in America for 200 years or more have as much wealth as people immigrate illegally. You forget, that people who are able to LEGALLY immigrate to America are people who have the money to do it. Even Africans (NOT African Americans) come to American with more money than African Americans. And Africans don't see themselves as "black". Another reason it's not about skin color, many people from India can be much darker than your average African American. We are talking about a specific group of people that has been caste on the bottom. This is about lineage.
People aren't living in the hoods because they statistically fall on the part of a bell curve that makes them dumber than most; which is why they can't succeed. You can't draw a direct line between IQ tests and how much money someone makes; so that point doesn't matter.
Also, I don't think it's about blaming white women or saying they are doing a "bad" job; especially when you see that many of the black boys are coming from single mother households. This starts to get into uncomfortable territory; but let's just say this isn't about putting the blame on "white people" or "women" or any particular group of people. This is about shame on the American Government for not finding the will to make this right. This is an investment into a large portion of untapped potential in America.
In terms of Asians being able to learn from white teachers; anecdotally many of the Asian Americans I grew up with were forced to learn English very well and were very respectable. Furthermore, they had parents that made sure they excelled in school. It wasn't about them being smarter; it was about them having a disciplined environment. I think cultural, specifically Chinese and Japanese cultures, fitting in is more favored. African American culture is based on attention and being unique. Not understanding the culture will make it hard to understand the person.
If you won't listen to me, listen to Christopher Hitchins: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3MNu2GNx-kQ
Finally, as a side note, I respect where you are from and all; but your country has literally very little rule of law. I'm not saying every single place, but we aren't going to use India as any measuring stick for democracy or restorative justice. Most people I know from India would concur. America has so many flaws, but I wouldn't want to be anywhere else. Having been to many countries, I love them all, but there is a reason the world is being "westernized"; for good or for bad. Cheers mate!
For example, you started with saying that white women are racist for not teaching black men properly. But then changed it to say that it is cultural because black men are in single households. Said the same thing for asian americans, and pretend to say that i said that asian americans do better because they are genetically smarter. No i didn't mean that. The strictAsian american parent is a stereotype for a reason.
In the end, reparations are a bad and illiberal idea. I can probably never give any example of how it can go bad because you'll just dismiss it like you did.
Agree.
My company had a Diversity and Inclusion series, and the one thing that resonated most with me was the concept of Equity vs. Equality. It was accompanied by a picture of two kids trying to watch a ballgame over a fence, where one kid could not quite see over the fence and the other was far too short.
In the part labelled "Equality", each kid has a 6" tall box to stand on. They get the same things, but the result is that the too-short kid still can't see the game, and the taller kid simply gets a better view. For the part labled "Equity", the tall kid gets a 2" box and the short kid gets an 8" box, resulting in each having an equal view.
Now, that's a pretty simplistic presentation, but does highlight that simply giving every person the same thing is not a solution. Needs will vary across the population, and that's what we should be targeting.
The less able players should get 4 strikes, the better players maybe 2.
Correct?
I’m familiar with the illustration you referred to. It’s sad how so few miss the fact that the kids are trying to watch a Competition! And, if the rules were as set forth above, the game wouldn’t be worth watching in the first place.
* In your class are 30 kids, one of which screams and interrupts the the teacher. Do you kick the bad actor out so the other 29 kids can learn, or do you keep the bad actor in so that no one can learn?
* In your class are 10 slow kids and 10 fast kids. Does the teacher go at a slow pace so that everyone learns the same amount or does the teacher go at a pace so that the fast kids learn the most and the slow kids are frustrated by things being over their heads?
The problem is that we have too many blank slate utopians who believe it is the respnsibility of teachers to ensure that everyone leaves school with the same knowledge, and simply don't recognize that different students have different abilities and tempers and different suitability for learning.
This fanatical belief, to which they cling despite all evidence, is absolutely devastating for our educational system and causes it to be grossly inefficient:
* We do not have a trade school system in the US because we hate "tracking", or the idea that some kids should go into a more academically focused track and others should go into a less academic/more hands on track. Thus everyone goes to a school that is chartered as college prep which just means that there are no good college prep schools and there are no good vocational schools. It sucks at both tasks, but at least everyone gets to pretend that they have the same possibilities at college as everyone else. Thus we have a shortage of skilled craftsmen and vocational work, which then forces businesses to import these even as more of the native population slides into poverty while immigrants, who were spared the US secondary educational system, do well.
* Given that there are wide and persistent academic differences between groups, yet the teachers have convinced themselves that differences can only be the result of lack of funding or racism, accelerated classes are being cancelled all across the country and testing regimes that show differences are being cancelled as well, which leads to more misallocation of resources as students are not routed to the education appropriate to them and then universities lack reliable information to make admissions decisions. Thus university education in the US is extremely inefficient as they must do remedial courses to catch up what students should have learned in high school. This inefficiency creates a shortage of high skilled workers, which again forces the businesses to import them as more of the native population slides into poverty while immigrants who attended more rational tertiary regimes do well.
* the idea that "everyone can be X if they just try hard enough" leads to enormous self-loathing on the part of students who are being lied to and forced to participate in classes not suited to them, all so teachers and administrators can cling to these utopian delusions. At the same time the notion that "everyone can be X if they try hard enough" is a mockery to gifted students who are intentionally denied the chance to maximize their potential because educators don't approve of their race or would rather eliminate gifted programs entirely than have their illusions of equity shattered.
This sounds like a personal attack. Next time, talk about the merits of the idea, and leave the out judgement of the people who hold the idea. The phrasing is excessively aggressive. "We have too many X" sounds like you want to get rid of some X. People have a right to participate in society and influence the structure of society through democratic processes. If you think the problem is that too many people hold idea Y, then say that.
Categorization of people based on their beliefs around the topic at hand is not a "personal attack", much like how in a discussion about the merits of condiments, calling someone a "ketchup fan" ain't a personal attack.
> If you think the problem is that too many people hold idea Y, then say that.
That's precisely what the GP did. How you misconstrued it so badly is beyond me.
https://gspp.berkeley.edu/research/featured/the-class-size-d...
That may be a regional/state thing, then. My high school was adjacent to the vocational school for the region, where high school kids on a trade track would learn trades like carpentry, plumbing, electrical, culinary, etc.
> the idea that "everyone can be X if they just try hard enough Agree on this as well, and the goal shouldn't be that everyone gets X on the state math test, it should be that every kid has the opportunity to achieve their maximum potential. That's really what it should be, but as you note, nowhere is setup for that and people abhor things that can't be directly measured.
The more I think about this the more absurd it seems. The situations are so entirely different that conflating them this way is just strange.
In reality, everyone won't get to the same place unless you raise the bottom and lower the top.
What we should be aiming for is removing barriers. Let people reach their own potential - which won't be the same across everyone.
(And then there's the satirical "capitalist" "solution" where the stadium owner builds a taller fence and scolds the kids as freeloaders)
Is the solution to hold back those who are advantaged and just toss them into unaltered "normal" classrooms? That doesn't really seem correct. It's difficult to understand how it might help anybody.
However, maybe there's something we haven't figured out yet. Something that isn't the de facto racial segregation we currently accept, that also isn't so painful and counterproductive for the advantaged students.
This problem seems to require a creative solution that we are unable or unwilling to identify. Addressing wealth inequality would be an obvious start, but this is out of the purview of educators.
Sadly, dismantling one system that has known defects (but also obvious benefits for the advantaged students) without having any idea how to address the underlying problem seems to be putting the cart before the horse.
This shows that society knows how to educate children equitably and at scale. Unfortunately, it doesn't do it.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mastery_learning
Unfortunately, the American genius is for replacing labor with machinery. When we encounter a field in which that simply doesn't work, we are thrown for a loss.
Well put ..
> "This is just not acceptable," Rivera said at a recent school committee meeting. "I've never heard these statistics before, and I'm very very disturbed by them."
I’m not sold on gifted education to begin with. It’s a complicated issue for sure, with pluses and minuses. But suspending gifted education programs expressly based on the racial makeup of the kids in the program is illegal discrimination, plain and simple.
Just running the program is a legal risk.
There is a perfectly logical (and non-racist) reason for blacks and Hispanics to not make it into the gifted program as frequently as their white and Asian peers and that is they, in average, have lower grades.
People see the outcome is disproportionate and assume racism. Instead of looking at the evidence to see why it happened they look at the outcome and try to fit their preferred narrative into it.
If there is racism which causes students to have a difficult life which then causes them to do worse in school and doing worse in school means the student won't be accepted into the gifted program then I do not consider the gifted program admission to be racist. The solution should be to help those in a bad situation (regardless if it was caused by racism or something else) so anybody who is disadvantaged can be on an equal playing field and meet the requirements.
There are a lot of poor white students. They likely struggle in school because of that. I don't think the solution would be to make it easier for those poor whites to make it into the gifted program just because they are poor. And yet many people would make that argument for blacks and Hispanics.
Removing the gifted program because you don't like the races who make it in is racist.
Helping people in a bad situation is a different issue and should be treated as such. Even if there were no poor people, uneducated parents, single parent homes, etc we still don't know that blacks and Hispanics would make it into gifted classes at a higher rate then they are now. Whites and Asians also have those issues and they would likely do better if they didn't have to deal with them.
I’m heavily biased toward meeting the needs of the individual students. If you don’t, affluent parents will nope out of your school anyway (and possibly out of the neighborhood altogether), as they reasonably should.
We are heavily pro-public schooling, attending and volunteering often at the elementary school and intending to attend the high school, but grades 6-8 schools are a mess in our town, so we’re going to private schools for those years. It’s not worth sacrificing our kids’ academic outcome at the altar of fairness and equality pulled down to the lowest common denominator.
It’s true that economic disparities can be caused by historical racism. But that’s not a basis for distinguishing Latinos from Asians, or really Latinos and Asians from Italians, Polish people, etc., who are similarly situated to each other.
Let me expand a bit on the two factors I mentioned above, redlining and taxes. In the US, schools are generally funded by local taxes. On its own, that wouldn't seem to cause racial education disparities. But the neighborhoods in which people congregate are affected by the legacy of redlining, in which Black people were segregated into neighborhoods with lower property values. As a result, children in those neighborhoods receive worse educations, which makes them appear less "gifted" when combined with other students in higher grades.
Those are of course not the only factors in play. But hopefully they illuminate how a seemingly benign program can entrench disparities created elsewhere.
In relation to taxes: I don't think you read tne article. It says the standards are determined at the school level. That means how well students do at a school in a wealthier area is irrelevant to how they do in a school in a poorer area.
As for redlining, it is illegal. Even if you want to say there are historical issues that are still around today because of redlining, it wouldn't matter since the standards are school based not district widd based.
If it was district wide or statewide I would generally agree with you that there could be issues related to that. I do think that funds should be distributed based on number of students (and perhaps a bit of a difference due to cost of living for teachers) rather than based on property tax rates in that area. I don't know how Massachusetts (or Boston specifically) handles this so it could already be done how I described.
That’s not true. Only half of school funding comes from local taxes. The other half comes from state and federal sources, and are targeted to level the differences in local funding. Including state funding, many school districts have progressive funding (with poor districts getting more per student than rich ones). https://apps.urban.org/features/school-funding-do-poor-kids-...
That still leaves a lot of wiggle room for school revenues, and a lot of influence on those revenues (and, correspondingly, student education) by residents' economic class.
And further, just because the state/federal spending is "targeted to level the differences" doesn't mean it actually does so.
Money goes less far in the city and they have more issues to deal with, but the $/student is not "inequitable" to borrow a word.
Addressing economic inequality along class lines would go a long way, since it's the economic system that has the strongest (or at least most tangible) impact right now. That doesn't do much to address lingering cultural issues, however.
You mean other than ICE crackdowns just so happening to target Latinos? Or the exact same "they're stealing our jobs" rhetoric once used against Chinese immigrants now being applied to Latino immigrants? Do we wait until after Latino work crews are executed and buried in mass graves before we acknowledge there are some problems? Or maybe we wait until Latino neighborhoods get torched by populist mobs?
It can at least sound like a statement the school will invest more in some kids than others. At least that what it can sound like outside the gifted bubble.
Probably the solution is to have high standards for all students and classes they all can participate in.
Which side of the bell curve do you think gets more investment dollars? Left or right?
Schools already do this ever since No Child Left Behind. It's just in the opposite direction. Kids below the average get far far more money than the median student. Why not have gifted classes as well to support those who excel?
It also mitigates the way which this has gotten worse since NCLB and it's successor policies because schools strongly prefer not to advance students (pre-NCLB, this was an issue because of somewhat legitimate developmental/emotional concerns, but since NCLB and ratings based on the distribution of performance vs. grade level on standardized tests, preventing advancement is now also a way of juicing metrics.)
Of course both forms of special ed are blunt instruments to deal with not doing better by-student calibration across the board to students, incliding those in the wide middle of performance.
Well, one could propose that "AP Calculus" should be the high standard for a high-school diploma for _all_ students but neither the parents nor teachers would support that.
EDIT to reply: the "AP Calculus" was just a placeholder that people are familiar with and not intended as a tangent into any hidden self-serving agenda of The College Board revenue generation. We can just call it "Calculus 101" for purposes of this discussion. The parents would not universally support passing "Calculus 101" as a mandatory requirement for their child to get a high-school diploma.
They have annual revenue >$1B with over $100 million in “excess revenue” (you can’t call it profit because they are a non-profit). The CEO earns over $1 million per year, sold his education consulting company to a huge education textbook publisher, claims that he “had” to get a job at McKinsey because he couldn’t find work as a high school English teacher, etc.
You think this would be an improvement?
I think my life would be very different if I was challenged more in school.
I support the necessity of those programs, but the idea that money is flowing upwards on the achievement curve is probably contradicted by the data, given the intense needs of special education programming.
But, often, it may just be the appearance of extra things; if the gifted class does more 'enrichment' activities, it's often because they've got more time left after doing the required curriculum. Or, in my district, the gifted program had busing (which costs money) to get enough kids together to run one class per grade.
If the issue is money though; maybe it could be addressed through demonstrably worse conditions in the gifted program. Maybe a cap of 35 students per class in gifted, and 25 in mainstream. Then there's a tradeoff. My district had bussing as a negative characteristic for the gifted program as well (although my neighborhood school was the bus destination for four out of six years, so it wasn't bad for me)
For the vast majority of "gifted" children, the reason they were gifted at all has a ton to do with the amount of time their parents spent with them outside of the classroom. Usually, "giftedness" is about a parent's ability to focus their child in a way that the child would likely not focus on their own.
Just look at the science fair projects that get national recognition. It takes no effort at all to determine the difference between a project produced by a kid and a project created by a parent who guided the kid through the steps necessary to produce a scientifically valid conclusion.
I'm all for high schools pairing with universities to let high school students knock out college classes and get high school credit for them, though. English III and English IV are particularly useless classes which do nothing for most kids. Replace them with college classes.
None of them became medical or PhD doctors. One became a lawyer. Two have Master's degrees.
Their classmates? 7 PhDs. 4 MDs. About 10 MBAs (that I am aware of), 8 lawyers, 2 psychologists, 3 SLPs, at least 5 with MEs, and several self-made millionaires.
Gifted doesn't mean genius. For most, it simply means they have a head start. Head starts don't last once your peers have a reason to compete.
This is why I don't care whether gifted programs live or die. Place the child in the system where he needs to be, but stop pretending that little Bobby with the parents who have been trying to teach him to read since he was crapping his diaper is a genius simply because people spent time forcing him to learn something. For many kids, telling them they're gifted compared to their peers simply inflates their egos past their talent.
I don't believe you are gifted or not. If I did, I wouldn't be as successful as I am, because I didn't start out as "gifted."
Oftentimes these disparities arise from communities being economically mixed along racial lines. It’s not even the case that these economic disparities arise from what’s called “systemic racism.” In urban school districts many kids are immigrants or children of immigrants, and have lesser economic circumstances because of recent migration. Treating them differently based on skin color doesn’t help erase some historical injustice. For example, Bangladeshi Americans, a group I belong to, have a household income in New York City much lower than whites. Indian Americans, by contrast, have incomes much higher than whites. These disparities aren’t due to differing effects of “racism” but recency of immigration and characteristics of the immigrants. This is true for Latinos as well. They have lower incomes now because a large number are recent economic migrants. But their incomes are converging with those of white people over time: https://academic.oup.com/qje/article/135/2/711/5687353. (In fact, after three generations, half of Latinos don’t even identify as such.)
The data shows that, apart from Black and Native American people, other ethnic groups in the US are similarly situated to how Polish people, Italians, etc., were during the early 20th century. Or how Cubans or Vietnamese were in the later 20th century. They’re in the process of economic integration. It’s not a situation where government discrimination is required now to erase the effects of past government discrimination.
For similar reasons, it makes no sense to discriminate between kids based on race to address present (rather than systemic) economic disparities. For purposes of dismantling gifted programs and test-based admissions, whites and Asians are typically lumped together. But in NYC, for example, most Asian kids in the gifted programs are actually fairly poor, because they’re the children of recent immigrants. It’s irrational to lump them together with whites in the “advantaged” group.
That will end the narrative of systemic racism and then all the "diversity" officers and quote will be blown away.
Call what you want but America is the least racist country.
Why?
The “advantaged” here isn't about transitory economic status but systematic racism, and the durable effects of historical racism.
The material you are citing, taken at face value, justifies lumping not only Asians, but everyone but Blacks and Native Americans, into the “advantaged” group with Whites, rather than providing an argument against lumping recent Asian immigrants into that group.
I address systemic racism in the second to last paragraph above, and I agree that in that context, everyone but Blacks and native Americans should be in the advantaged group.
That's a pretty wide exception, and it's worth addressing why they remain an exception. Why are these groups so slow to economically integrate?
The simplest (and therefore most Occam's-razor-friendly) explanation for the black population is that they can't usually pass as "white" as easily as other demographics. But this doesn't really explain much for Native Americans, who could pass as "white" about as easily as Latinos and/or Asians.
This is generally not what advanced students get. They are usually taught different, more advanced curricula. Not all kids are capable of learning quickly, so the whole point of a separate program is to provide quick learners with advanced curricula and others with the support they need.
This assumption rests on the false supposition that all children have the same intelligence and learn at the same rate, and the only difference is environmental factors. While environmental factors are certainly important, they aren't everything, despite how wonderful that would be towards realizing the fantasy of a "fair and just" world. The fact is that people are different - innately. Just as a proper schooling system allocates resources for students that learn at a slower rate, so should a proper schooling system allocate resources for students who learn at an advanced rate.
Segregating students who would fail to be engaged by mainstream coursework unless disproportionate effort and attention was focussed on them is “offering a better quality of education for the entire school.”
Without advanced learning, I'd have learned at a much slower pace and felt held back and bored. I started in regular classes, and the amount of disruptors and time teachers spent babysitting was absolutely absurd. Luckily I was able to be placed in advanced classes, and all that disappeared. As for curriculum, we were doing calc 2 while the standard classes ended at about an intro to trig, for example.
I don't know how to fix the disparity, and unfairness, if it exists. But please don't throw out the whole program.
Heather Mac Donald wrote about behavioral contributors to disparities and other issues stemming from a societal overfocus on diversity in The Diversity Delusion (https://us.macmillan.com/thediversitydelusion/heathermacdona...). You can read a brief contribution from her regarding behavioral drivers of socioeconomic disparities (like crime rates) at https://www.newsweek.com/if-systemic-racism-real-why-does-bi....
It really is the worse outcome here.
I'm having a hard time trying to understand what the acceptable outcome they want is. Proportional enrollment based on race?
This possibility bothers me, since I never identified myself by race. So would I be lumped into a generic "Asian" category in their statistics based on my skin colour? Why is this the correct form of human categorization?
[1] https://archive.org/stream/HarrisonBergeron/Harrison%20Berge...
EDIT: This is the opening paragraph. It says it all:
THE YEAR WAS 2081, and everybody was finally equal. They weren't only equal before God and the law. They were equal every which way. Nobody was smarter than anybody else. Nobody was better looking than anybody else. Nobody was stronger or quicker than anybody else. All this equality was due to the 211th, 212th, and 213th Amendments to the Constitution, and to the unceasing vigilance of agents of the United States Handicapper General.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harrison_Bergeron_(film)
I thought the original was a bit over the top a bit ridiculous almost. Bergeron's some kind of god being almost. The movie kept it a little more realistic and was darker i felt.
So how is this story at all relevant or illuminating to the article, beyond as an exercise in fearmongering?
How it relates to the article is the "lead weight" of removing the availability of AP classes from White and Asian students is a severely misguided attempt at making Black and Hispanic students equal, as if they weren't already. It's actually a terribly wrong message to the Black and Hispanic students.
It seems to me that a better approach is try to understand the reasons why more Black and Hispanic students aren't enrolling while continuing to provide these classes to any student who qualifies, regardless of race.
Yes.
“Antiracist” doesn’t mean “not racist”; it’s a Marxist ideology focusing on racial identities and purposeful systemic racism to “balance” the power between racial tribes.
It’s extremely racist.
Anti-Asian racism will become normalized as long as “antiracism” is part of the Democratic agenda. They’re literally fighting to overturn civil rights laws in CA and WA so the government can discriminate based on race again.
Source? From a reputable location, the only ones I'm finding are sites with headlines like:
“If I wanted America to fail”
Capitalism Explained
George Soros
Honest News
How Do You Kill 11 Million People?
Joe Biden in Five Minutes
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Prop 209 prevents race-based affirmative action in state contracts, government jobs, and university admissionsThanks for the links
Why do you say this is "Marxist ideology"? What makes it Marxist, precisely?
This is true, antiracism is active in the presence of racism, “not racist” may or may not be.
> it’s a Marxist ideology
No, it's not. I suppose if you met “Marxist” metaphorically in that, like Marxism, it posits the existence of a status quo struggle, and calls for consciousness of that struggle and activity within it rather than indifference to it or denial of it, it would be accurate, but that's kind of a weak basis for such an emotionally-loaded metaphor.
> purposeful systemic racism to “balance” the power between racial tribes.
Antiracism does not call for “purposeful systemic racism” for any purpose.
In this case the distribution in the population was not identical to the distribution in the sample.
Clearly something isn't right.
The challenge is fixing the problem, not pretending it doesn’t exit by making white and Asian students educations worse.
This is like the Boston PD issuing orders to shoot more unarmed Asians since black and Hispanics are shot more disproportionately.
In combination with other indicators, a strong gender/racial skew relative to the underlying population can be a predictor that your program or organization will be in trouble soon.
Indeed, it seems to be in trouble at this time: The article states: "Cassellius says interest in the program had declined over several years[...]". So there are clearly more issues.
My understanding of the article is that they're going on a one year hiatus to figure out the issues and fix them.
The school district addressed in Nice White Parents (great podcast) exemplifies this dynamic: https://www.nytimes.com/2020/07/23/podcasts/nice-white-paren....
That does seem rather hopeful for the future.
Thank you for taking the time to explain.
Are you predicting that schools will have a rough time for the next generation or so, until the current generation (or the one after) become parents themselves?
Is there a racial issue here?
In my elementary school, I was lucky enough to not miss the one day they were testing for advanced learning (if you missed it, tough luck: that was the only onboarding year) and it changed my school experience forever. I don't think I would be the person I am today, at all, if I had been sick that one day. If there are similar restrictions or barriers for entry that are not related to intelligence, they need to be looked into.
Your experience sounds very interesting. Would you care to share some more? Were you in the Boston program, or elsewhere?
It was a program that started in elementary school (https://ycsd.yorkcountyschools.org/EXTENDCenter). In second grade they tested us for it, I don't remember a whole lot about it. I do remember it was logic-based and math-based. Every Wednesday from 2nd grade to 5th grade (then in middle school on a different schedule) we would spend in the extended learning program's building (a very small wing). We learned French (though looking back it was more preparing us to learn other languages than actually learning French), did science projects, wrote stuff about a random topic selected out of an encyclopedia, etc. It really is my most fond memory of school and I still keep in contact with the teacher.
Over in the middle school side, we did more advanced topics. We studied the Ebola virus and how it affects the body, we wrote papers about an unknown John Doe in Yorktown in 1770's (then we literally walked to it, separate tangent below), we had a "socratic seminar" where we debated topics, we built a Rube Goldberg machine, all sorts of stuff.
It actually changed my life. Anyone who says advanced education doesn't help simply doesn't see the changes a well-designed, thought out program has. And this was all in a public school. I checked their site recently and they are still running it even through the pandemic, which warms my heart.
I mentioned the one-day, one-time onboarding process. They have since remedied it, instead scheduling tests with students chosen. This is a good solution and I'm glad they implemented it.
Tangent: I lived in Yorktown Virginia, which is probably my second favorite thing about my childhood. The pre-school I went to was a 30 second walk down a hill to Yorktown Beach. In middle school, we read about the Revolutionary War, then took a field trip consisting of walking outside the doors, through the forest and 5 minutes of walking, and just like that we were where it actually took place, with monuments, statues, historical signs, etc.
That does sound like a lot of fun. And I'm glad to hear you had such a great time.
I can’t even really “blame” the families for whom they need to have all adults working outside the home and often more than one job. How can you do that and expect to give the kids a level of attention that a family with a full-time adult in the house (whether a parent or nanny)? Kids are exhausting; so is working multiple jobs and worrying about money all the time.
I don’t know what the answer is, but I think it’s terrible to kneecap the successful and promising students just because not everyone is one or because you find a socio-economic discrepancy in the makeup. If you do that, you accelerate the flight of better students out to better public districts, to private schools, or supplemental experiences, which does nothing to lift the majority of the student body. (I suppose private schooling means you get some money from the parents who didn’t leave your town without having to bother to serve them. But you also lose all that role modeling.)
-MLK, I've Been To The Mountaintop, last speech given the night before assasination
https://www.americanrhetoric.com/speeches/mlkivebeentothemou...
So I went to a bottom of the barrel districts for school, but still aced it. I got admitted in a great US school, and a semester later I had proved my worth enough to get a full scholarship. What if you had put me in a better system? I would have only excelled more!
The problem is not the school environment, but the families. From what I have seen, only military-style schools, with the students living in, can provide better chances for disadvantaged students. The best school environment will do nothing against a toxic family and toxic friends that use racist monikers to attack those that have a chance to succeed ("crab mentality").
And BTW the comment below "I miss the days when the schools in the wealthier part of town had things like advanced classes and air conditioning, and the rest of us just sucked it up and didn't whine" makes no sense. I went to school in a tropical country, with no AC. Yes I did sweat a lot in class and I took 2 showers per day minimum, but I didn't die.
Since the lack of amenities like AC or computers will do nothing to prevent people that are pushed up by their family, I think they will likewise do nothing to help people succeed when they are held back by their social group. Amenities are just a highly visible distraction, correlated, but not causal.
What does 100% diverse means in this context ?
So here's what I fail to understand: why punish Asians? They (or perhaps I should say we) had nothing to do with the history of white vs black oppression in the United States. Many of us weren't even here until well after the civil rights movement of the '60s and '70s. This sort of "diversity" is basically progressives being willing to be racist to Asians to compensate blacks for the past injustices perpetrated by whites, which is basically robbing Peter to pay Paul any way you look at it.
The goal of any diversity program - ignoring whether or not that goal is good - is to increase representation among historically under-represented groups. At least as far as academics and education are concerned, Asians are objectively not under-represented. If you're looking at diversity programs in the urban United States, this translated pretty directly into "more black and brown kids."
It's hard to ride that line between equality of opportunity and equality of outcome. But it seems to be that just saying "wow there's not enough black and brown kids in these classes, so we better cancel them rather than see what went wrong (or if anything actually went wrong)" is a pretty ass-backwards way to handle things.
If you have a rock in place of a brain there's always some program to keep you in the education system but at the other side of the spectrum if you reach the top 10% of students "that's it you won the game" and you're doomed to utter boredome until university. This is enormously demotivating.
I was in this situation all the way until university (consistantly achieving the best grade without putting any effort into it) and the lack of mental stimulation took a massive toll on my mental health, especially during high school but also middle school to a lesser extend. Looking back at my scholarity I think it was mostly fine until age ~12 because until then school is mostly a fun daycare to meet friends so it's no big deal if the educational content is low or trivial, but then the next 7 years (which corresponds to middle and high school in my country) could have easily been compressed into 4 as far as I'm concerned. But the possibility to do it simply doesn't exist.
Ridiculous policies like this are why we sold our house in the city and left for a $2 million house in the suburbs, where the price of admission means that every kid has lots of support at home, depleting the city schools of one more kid and dragging them down even further.
Arguably the overall societal gains are higher from turning a future accountant into a future scientist than improving the 25th percentile student’s outcome anyways.
It wasn't even tried, really - not in the educational context, at least. You can't talk about these educational disparities without noticing the real elephant in the room - the stark differences between mainstream and minority culture, and the obvious problems with the lack of enduring social capital in these undeprivileged minority communities. But somehow, the whole subject of culture has become a dirty word among equality advocates. For some reason, people seem to have fixated on the idea that it all boils down to race and diversity in some way, even though it's hard to see how these could make a difference.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Affinity_fraud
The current cult of meritocracy tends to make things even worse.
This is a strawman. Please point me to the place in this article where the superintendent states this. As far as I can tell, the officials quoted are concerned about the lack of diversity in their advanced classes, which are disproportionately white. This is not the same as "white is bad".
> I can totally see how universities will implement soon the curve fitting so popular in the corporate world: when asian students will be given a "GPA budget" that they can distribute among themselves, and that budget will be "3.0 for everyone or 4.0 for some and 2.5 for others."
This is pure fanciful speculation and has no relevance to this article. The school district has not proposed any such scheme. What evidence supports the claim that such a program will be implemented "soon"?
The relevance is very direct. The next thing those "concerned officials" will notice is that asians and whites get much higher grades on math and other stem subjects.
There is too much salt in this food. Therefore, salt is bad.
There is too much water flooding my house. Therefore, I hate water.
This does not make sense. Wanting a different composition of something is different than hating one of the parts.
Whether intentional or not, one reason/consequence for gifted programs is they help public schools compete to keep upper income people in public schools and away from private options. However, within those schools it can create a very two tracked environment. One group of kids is invested in heavily, the other effectively warehoused.
I went to a math and science magnet school. It was placed in a lower performing school. The magnet school had the effect of improving the average performance of the school while actually investing little in the communities that needed the most support. In a way it was a kind of school bussing and I got an exposure to more diversity in high school. OTOH it was clear there were two tracks at the school for the haves and the have nots.
Still, what is the alternative? For upper income people public schools exist in a marketplace competing with private schools. It also seems suboptimal to have them abandon the public schools (already happening due to Covid) and segregate themselves further into private schools.
In our school system they basically have kept gifted programs but let anyone opt into them. Maybe that’s a good option? I dunno.
Any thoughts about making the Magnet school program 'the standard' for every kid? As an alternate policy to ending it, as the article describes.
I live in a mid sized city in the Midwest, and the same concept would translate into 25000 minivans hitting the road every day at the same time in the morning and afternoon. Granted, a lot of parents already drive their kids even just a few blocks to school, but it could be made a lot worse.
The day when both of our kids were out of day care and could just walk themselves to school was a huge liberation for my family.
My takeaway was that the kids getting into gifted programs are overwhelmingly the kids whose parents know how to get them into gifted programs, through combination of knowing the system and/or squeaking loud enough that their kids get placed. "Knowing the system" includes knowing that you have to start on applications to multiple schools perhaps a year or more in advance, for example. Kids are slotted into the gifted programs from a very young age, and then tend to accumulate early advantages which carry forward, again with strong advocacy from parents who know the system.
As a result, these programs have a lot more to do with extending class privilege than anything else, and class in the US has strong correlations with race.
Nope, much more rewarding to go bash the upper-middle class for wanting a better future for their kids than a ghetto and a minimum wage.
Mind you, nobody dares to go bash the top 1% "Ivy-league-by-donation" class. Their kids will inherit wealth, networks and power anyway. You are just helping them clear out the next 20% of the income spectrum, that would actually have a shot at competing with them. So feudalism and hereditary rule incoming.
My parents literally didn't speak English and was only in the country for less than a decade after coming to the USA with a backpack and 20 dollars, and still figured out how to push me into gifted programs at a mediocre city school. It was study, do well on exams and read whatever was handed to me. I didn't even speak english w/ fluency until I was in the 3rd grade and I still did fine.
Why do we force parents to educate children in some manner? All kids should figure it out right?
Set up a world simulation with two nations. In one nation parents are rewarded a great deal for investing in making their kids maximally educated/capable/productive, through the better opportunities and status they win for their children. In another, just turn that dial down and reward parents who do that a little less. The simulated nations are in all other respects equal.
Nation one will always outcompete nation two. Because of compounding effects, eventually the difference between the two nations will be very large. Nation one will ultimately subsume nation two and set its policy equal to nation one’s. So that’s why.
In a third nation, there's a government program that identifies high-achievers without parental input. They have a larger, less biased, field of kids to choose from, and therefore end up identifying and raising up kids that would have been passed over in the system that depends on the parents doing the right things. Since this leads to a larger pool to pick high achievers from, they end up outcompeting the country picking over achievers only from those with additional class advantages.
My point is that it's ultimately best to widen the mouth of the funnel to increase the chance of picking up high performers. I tend to think it's better to do this at an institutional level, for a variety of reasons.
As a point of reference, I think the California university system has done an excellent job historically of facilitating this kind of thing. The community colleges are cheap and widely accessible, and provide a solid, attainable path into R-1 and R-2 research universities for students who do well. This (and similar efforts to widen access to higher education) had a lot to do with the easy availability knowledge labor in the 70's and 80's throughout California, powering an economic boom and improving class mobility at the same time.
Also the word MOST is doing some pretty goddamn heavy lifting here. DO you have something to back up the claim?
Gifted programs are largely NOT tailored to the students because they are still pegged to the grade level. They are mostly pricey busy-work masquerading as education.
For some 85-90% of Black Americans, the comparison would be: “My family has been here for centuries. My great-great grandparents were slaves. My great grandparents and grandparents were physically, violently terrorized in the face of social, economic and political pursuit. It’s only been 65 years that anyone in my family has had their Constitutional rights legally guaranteed. Nonetheless having no cultural origins outside of the U.S. and no apparent choices for fleeing this persecution, my parents figured out how to push me into gifted programs at a mediocre school district.”
How the immigrant experience and descendant-of-slave experience compares in terms of hardship doesn’t matter. But I think it’s important to call out that your parents were seeking a better place to build a life, whereas most Black Americans are seeking to build a something better in a society that has shunned them the majority of its existence. That has an effect... not in making Black parents dumb, but wary and highly cynical.
I’m guessing this will get downvoted, but it’s for context, not whataboutism.
Both of these podcasts explore the issues that inspire changes like these. If you've already made up your mind, you may not be convinced that abolishing gifted programs is the way to go, but at the very least both of these programs are entertaining and present a perspective that many people don't have. Especially for people on a forum like HN which includes many people who graduated from such programs and don't know what regular schools are like.
I attended a form of magnet school, funded by a dozen or so school districts in the county. It was able to offer classes that none of the districts could have afforded by themselves. Even there you had implicit tracking - you could do lots of calculus or lots of chemistry or lots of physics, but not all of them. Dismantling it might have improved funding a bit at the home schools, but at the cost of shutting down all the advanced courses entirely.
Letting people opt in to gifted programs is a wonderful idea! A great many children only wait for the chance to succeed. That said, it might be worth considering carefully the resources requires and consequences. There will inevitably be children who are not up to the task. Opting them in to programs they are not ready for is setting them up for emotionally devastating failure as you grow class sizes.
I am uncomfortably reminded of how many colleges use lower division courses as weeders. They let anyone opt in to 101 and 102, but 301 is dependent on making it past those.
I love the idea of public schools. Education can, should, must be for everyone. However, this belief often sits awkwardly with the reality. Ultimately, if you want to keep higher income families in public schools you have to offer them something compelling. Dismantling gifted programs for anti-racist reasons may not always make the grade.
At the same time, I also recognize that there is scant evidence that gifted and advanced learning programs are beneficial. Selection bias is extremely hard to control and is the driving factor behind most deltas in education statistics. Are the kids coming out of the program better equipped because of the program? Or were the better equipped kids selected into the program? I'm inclined to guess that typically it's more of the former than the latter.
So for now I'm delaying judgment on these moves. We will be watching carefully to see whether the quality of the teaching slips when our gifted programs are cancelled. If that happens, and if I believe we can get better teaching elsewhere, we will go private and it will be fine. But my guess is that the gifted program is really not that important and we will be fine continuing without it.
Well yes, this is what they mean when they talk about "combating privilege".
In the context of primary education, and I mean this in the most sincere way possible, what if they don't want to? You're ignoring the agency of the students. A lot of children, occasionally my younger self included, see it as their duty to rebel against the educational system. So how can you improve someone's educational attainment against their will?
Likewise, there is nothing the occupying US army can spend money on to solve extremism in Iraq.
They would have to entirely reinvent their organization to be something that it’s not. This is the NAACP unwisely putting pressure where it’s not needed (schools) instead of where it is needed (legislators). Blame the NAACP for failing at the governmental level and trying to backdoor into the schooling level.
But the gifted program here wasn’t eliminated because of cost-benefit reasons. It was eliminated because administrators felt that too many kids in the program looked like our kids. They’ve taken a page out of the Old South playbook and there is no reason to reserve judgment on that.
Standardized testing has been a huge equalizer for Asian Americans vis-a-vis whites. My family came to America from Bangladesh—we were fortunate to be solidly middle class, but we lacked the social connections and cultural capital of even the average middle class whites around us. Standardized testing allowed my brother and I to stand out and break into professions that just a generation ago were reserved for the children of elite white families. Getting rid of those opportunities strikes me as ill-advised at best and motivated by anti-Asian sentiment at worst.
“My kids are dumb. I do not want other parents kids to get ahead only because they are smart”
(If it matters, I grew up Asian.)
I'm white and this was me. If it weren't for these programs, I'd either be in jail or working retail/fast food. Congratulations on provoking me, I'm going to take a long hiatus from HN now and go build something. I've changed my password to a randomly generated (ephemeral) string on this and my main account; I won't be back to contribute.
The people doing it aren't interested in solving the real problem, they are interested in not having to expend effort dealing with political fallout of one particular symptom of the problem, and they are willing to exacerbate the problem if it achieves that goal.
One of the largest impacts on a child's outcome is if they have two parents that are involved in their lives, and even more if they are involved in their education. The classroom has little to do with parenting. There's other reasons why kids dont have two parents though.
Having two parents at home is important, but having a social worker and psychologist can do wonders too.
We can't fix everything but we should do all we can to give ever child a fair shot and a fair shot is more than free primary education.
these differences across racial lines are not an inhibitor for Black Americans to compete at high levels in sports.
Lord knows how much more staggering the difference could be if all Black Americans actually grew up with good nutrition, education, and training. I mean, the NBA is already 75% African American.
What if it is the case, that all of things you mentioned, and more were provided to lessen the disparity, and yet it still came out as predominately one or two races?
I won't repeat my claims here, but I'll add that at this point, at least part of that overrepresentation is self-perpetuating. Many people expect the next Michael Jordan to look like Michael Jordan. That's why Armon Johnson was almost a first round draft pick in 2010 while Jeremy Lin got passed over completely despite the fact that Jeremy Lin is clearly talented by any objective measure.
I'm also uncertain that: 1) cognitive and physical development have the same inhibitors and 2) those inhibitors affect cognition and physical development to the same extent. I wouldn't be surprised to learn that lead hurts the brain more than the rest of the body.
If you look at Michael Jordan, Tom Brady, Jeremy Lin, Tiger Woods ... they're very physically gifted, moreso than a typical pro player ... but it's not like they win by being drastically more physically gifted than their competition.
The thing that helps them to win may not be exactly conscious thought, but I think it's effectively a mental/behavioral advantage — certainly to me it seems like a better fit than attributing their success to their physical build (compared to competitors). Michael Phelps on the other hand ... well, some people are just born with the bodies to play certain sports :)
Take American Football - the running back and wide receiver position will ask for almost exclusively physical traits. Players like DK Metcalf fits his position so well almost solely based on his physical performance and players in these positions are predominately Black. However, the Quarterback asks less of the physical and more on decision making, and players in these positions are predominately White.
I believe it to be a mixture of both, although physicality and athleticism takes a lion share of what factors are needed to be successful in sports, whereas intelligence is required in selected sports.
As you mentioned, Michael Phelps has an physical anomaly where he has the legs of someone with a height of 5'10 and the torso of someone who is 6'7, which is what propelled him to become to greatest - but to your point, swimming does not ask much for the mental. Maybe reaction time for starts, and strategies for 400im and anything longer than 400m freestyle, but doesn't ask for much compared to other sports out there.
Give the parents free home internet if they cannot afford it. The boss tells me that this is a major problem even for the college prep high school where she teaches.
Provide support for parents and families who might need the extra support (homework checkins, tutoring, etc.) that parents may or may not provide. Boss tells me that some of the parents just don't care. Kids shouldn't suffer because of that.
This mostly benefits parents of means, as getting kids too and from a more distant school is not without costs, and neither is researching and evaluating alternative schools (which also dependent on parental abilities which are directly related to education, which is already the strongest predictor of children's educational outcomes.)
That one “reform” is the one fo the best way to cement existing inequities, despite it superficially looking like empowerment.
> Absolutely stop making educational decisions and policy based upon political choices.
That's logically incoherent: educational policy choices are a subset of political choices.
But how do you do that?
There is some thinking that if we don't have ALL categories/jobs/promotions with the same population proportion it is because "systemic racism".
I am still waiting for at least 53% of NBA be white.
And 50% of nurse school be male.
Please have to desire and aptitude to do different things.
You can see it on your own family with siblings. Same "genetics" but very different aptitudes and skills.
Feels like a dictatorship where we should have quotas for each profession and team.
No it is not. See the most progressive countries and still the difference is large.
“lets do nothing, it must be natural this is way”
Sometimes it is. and that is ok. I don't want to be Quantum Physics or in a Medical Profession. That is ok.
>I am still waiting for at least 53% of NBA be white.
People are in fact different and have different aptitudes, but there's no reason to believe that those differences cut across racial lines. When you see wildly different racial/socioeconomic/gender representation in a field, you should look at it more closely.
Consider basketball. It's predominantly black today, but it wasn't always so. Basketball was at one point more closely associated with Jewish people than blacks people. In fact, not long ago, people called basketball a Jewish sport [1]. And here's a fun fact: the first non-white NBA player was Asian [2]. There was a point in history where Jews and Asians were better represented in basketball than black people.
So why is the NBA 80%+ black today? Let's look at outside factors. During the Great Migration, blacks moved to from southern towns to northern cities and transitioned from a largely rural population to a largely urban one. In a city, basketball is the perfect sport for a poor/working class kid. It doesn't require a field. It doesn't require a lot of equipment. It can be played on pavement. It's easy to pick up but has a high talent ceiling. So if you're a kid in the city who's interested in a sport and you don't have a ton of resources, you're probably going to end up playing basketball for reasons that may have less to do with your natural interests and aptitudes than your situation, environment, and (eventually) societal expectations.
This dynamic cuts both ways. Jeremy Lin was one of the best high school players in the country in 2005 but wasn't nearly as a heavily recruited as he should have been based purely on his stats. UCLA wanted him to be a walk on. If he were black, he would have gotten an athletic scholarship and been on magazine covers. I wonder how many other Asian basketball players are underrecruited simply because they're Asian. Whether it's 1 or 1,000, the sport is poorer for it.
Sometimes what appears to be the consequence of "different aptitudes" can suggest something systemic instead. That doesn't mean that we should enforce a quota, but it does mean that we shouldn't take differences in representation to be the result of differences in aptitude.
>You can see it on your own family with siblings. Same "genetics" but very different aptitudes and skills.
I'm not sure that siblings have the "same genetics" or that it's fair to compare differences in populations to differences in individuals. It's obvious that individuals are different due to genetics. It's not obvious that the distribution of those individual differences should differ across racial lines.
[1] https://www.jewishbookcouncil.org/book/when-basketball-was-j...
This feels like solving a CI failure by just deleting the failing test.
If the entrance criteria are bad or biased, then by all means fix them. For example, Stuyvesant, perhaps the best high school in New York, offers free study materials and tutoring sessions, offers entrance exams on the weekends and after hours on weekdays, offers free shuttling to the test sites, and in general tries to make its entrance exam as fair as possible. And indeed, the majority of students there are poor and qualify for free lunch.
But then, if the concrete issues that you can identify with the entrance criteria are resolved, but outcomes still aren't what you're looking for, guess what: now you have a great "unit test"! If you're red-green-refactoring your public policy to achieve equity, then surely a fair entrance exam for your advanced schooling is a good failing test. You can now implement other policies to try to see it go green. Maybe you can have free public pre-school, or pregnancy care packages with vitamins and other resources, or who knows what else. And then you can monitor your entrance exams a few years later and see if things are improving.
-HARRISON BERGERON (http://www.tnellen.com/cybereng/harrison.html)
https://www.reddit.com/r/literature/comments/12huv9/is_harri...
There was an interesting podcast series that took on the disparity issue in some detail when a neighborhood public school in NYC got effectively taken over by parents who could no longer find slots for their kids in the "good" schools: "Nice White Parents" [https://www.nytimes.com/2020/07/23/podcasts/nice-white-paren...].
It's an uncomfortable thing to approach no matter how you look at it. But the solution, if there even is one, is for parents to take a much deeper role in how schools are operated and funded. For the wealthy, that will simply mean private school, period. For those that can't do that but who still care about their kids education, it going to mean A LOT MORE involvement in public schools.
Intelligence appears to be mostly genetic (see the Wikipedia page “heritability of IQ”). There are many maps online showing average IQ in different countries, which hints at races having different intelligence.
This hints at ideas of equality of outcome between people of different ethnicity being a thing this world will not see.
In nature, I don’t believe there are any examples of equality between entities, except on the level of physics or maybe chemistry. No two entities are equal.
This would imply that to get equality, the only way is to push down the groups that most often reach top achievements - to design a society that is anti-white, anti-Asian, and anti-male. I once met a girl with a poignant tattoo: “free men are not equal - equal men are not free”.
I look forward to the intelligent HN community enlightening me on this subject
The article below, while technically not wrong, go as far as to undermine the most robust abstraction we've ever came up with, math itself, to deny the IQ.
https://www.popularmechanics.com/science/math/a33547137/why-...
Instead, through low interest rate, overinflated stock market and lack of antitrust oversight, most of our economy is controlled by the corporations. And they don't want an ambitious well-raised kid to get a good education and disrupt their business. They want to import talented and well-educated people from other cultures, so they will fulfill their corporate roles, but will have a poor shot at building enough network locally to start competing for their own market share. And the racial card is played as an argument to keep their kids' ambitions down.
As a first-generation immigrant, I find it very disturbing. I worked hard throughout most of my life and it has brought me happiness, and I don't think it's unethical for me to want to help my kids walk the same path. Moreover, I wish more and more parents, regardless of their race, would adopt my approach. But instead of creating additional opportunities for others, the recent activism is all about destroying the opportunities for those who may threaten the corporate hegemony. As for myself, I find it more and more lucrative to move back to Eastern Europe, now that I know how to run a business and don't depend on anyone. I hear a lot of similar sentiment among the Chinese community. I wonder what long-term effect will it have on the U.S. economy.
With modern wealth and info tech we can abandon that for most academic subjects, and let each child learn at their own pace, on their own laptop, touchpad, etc. Not an assembly line but a collection of artisans. It doesn't matter if a genius is sitting next to a plodder if the whole class isn't expected to be on the same page.
Part of the problem is that the teacher is expected to be knowledgeable on the subject, which is fine. But now we can geographically separate the subject expert from the classroom manager. Teacher can't teach a fourth grader calculus? No problem, here are a list of online teachers who can give personal help, along with canned videos, etc.
We'll get closer to equal protection under the law by treating every child as unequal in the classroom. If you teach to the mean you poorly serve the long tails on either end.
The single greatest skill you can learn in class is autodidactics. Learning that should be at the center of the school experience. Self-paced learning of a predefined curriculum is a large step toward that. And a return toward the standard practice of pre-industrial one-room schools.
We put about $8k into a fund to help these parents... but it's not even close to enough. Honestly, if you want to improve outcomes, maybe we should look into helping struggling families pay rent, and become more stable.
Meanwhile, before being put in foster care they and their families get no support!
I often think about how broken of a system that is. I feel like if half the foster resources went to the families to begin with, then we could avoid a lot of foster care (parental abuse notwithstanding) in the first place! And it's so traumatic taking kids from their moms.
Private schools in the Boston area are booming because of Corona. Actions like this will continue the trend unfortunately.
Also, a pet peeve of mine is when race issues are made out of economic issues. It can be hard for a school system to face the reality that they cannot change the economic situations of the students by feeding them 2 (awful) meals per day and penalizing students that are well off.
That said, it may be reasonable to use race as a proxy but it comes with a lot of baggage and some of that baggage is that you are failing a race. I would love to see that they have done some studies and will be using the money from the advanced learning classes to move the needle on a larger group but the article is written as if they are taking punitive measures in an attempt to close the gap.
I believe that black and hispanic students are not being served well by the way this school system appears to be approaching the situation. I hope they eventually face some facts. We spent a long time focusing resources on hopeless students and just about as long on students who will succeed regardless of attention. Lets spend some time on those who are reachable and I think we will see blacks and hispanics better represented as a side effect.
I believe there are black and hispanic students who are not doing well in school that may develop great ideas and plans for the future due to their education. I want to live in a world shaped by those ideas. The first step is grabbing the low hanging fruit and not casting this as a fight between races. Its so easy to make this a reason to get along that I am suspicious of people who make it a reason to divide people further.
I remember when they instituted a policy in our city some years ago for physical education class. The policy was that you were not allowed to lap anyone during running.
You can imagine how that looked.
So, in summary, about ~25% of invited students enroll in the program, i.e. parents aren't interested in their kids taking this program, it's dying out anyway, undoubtedly costs money, and those that are interested in the program are vastly, disproportionately white and asian. I think bringing up racism might be a bit inflammatory. I think it's safer to say, though, that the program isn't desirable to anyone, and particularly undesirable to minorities. And yes, they should have an enrichment program that people find worth taking.
Do we propose mixing all groups of people to perfect ratios of societal values? Is it racist to not have proportional representation in any subgroup? For instance, is it racist that Asian Americans are overrepresented in elite schools relative to black or hispanic students?
I think the label racist is so overused, that we now have a new term antiracist which basically means "us" vs the "them" of racists. And yet is it truly racism we always are seeing, or is it class, economics, genetics, opportunity, health, stability, and many other things that cause disparity?
Now there's no more oak oppression. For they passed a noble law. And the trees are all kept equal. By hatchet, axe, and saw
By now already it is nowhere to be found in the first eight pages!
Can someone explain?
Can't have non normative narratives as in:
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26074044
Feels like similar.
Private schools have been open to varying degrees, and the kids have not been left behind. Meanwhile, public school kids are permanently scarred many with mental health issues and their educational and developmental growth stunted. It doesn't take a genius parent to look at this and the trajectory and do literally everything possible to prevent their children from entering this system while it implodes.
[0]: https://apps.urban.org/features/school-funding-do-poor-kids-...
>School Committee member Lorna Rivera said at a January meeting that she was disturbed by the findings, noting that nearly 60 percent of fourth graders in the program at the Ohrenberger school in West Roxbury are white even though most third graders enrolled at the school are Black and Hispanic.
>"This is just not acceptable," Rivera said
What the item the article doesn't spell out explicitly is that many (most?) "gifted" or "enhanced learning programs" participation is based on IQ test scores.[1][2]
To be clear, "gifted program" is often a different concept from "magnet school" with extra specialization courses such as music.
So not sure what Rivera is saying is unacceptable. Either:
a) advanced programs should continue but should not be using IQ tests as the bar for inclusion because intelligence tests underrepresent black students
b) misunderstand the gifted programs and doesn't know that IQ tests are involved and thinks the programs are just based on parent requests and teacher recommendations so some human beings are deliberately discriminating black children
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gifted_education
[2] https://www.nber.org/digest/nov15/who-gets-gifted-and-talent...
In the Florida public schools I was exposed to, a typical way a child would get into a gifted program would be:
1) teacher notices that child is a fast learner or not being challenged enough
2) the teacher and/or guidance counselor asks the parent if they would like the child to be tested for the gifted program
3) a psychologist comes to the school to administer an IQ test
4) the psychologist meets with the parent about the findings and recommends the gifted program
Example from Georgia public school webpage mentions the IQ tests that are acceptable: https://www.gadoe.org/Curriculum-Instruction-and-Assessment/...
Also googling several Massachusetts public schools, I found that several used aptitude (e.g. Weschler aka "IQ test"). Example: https://www.eastlongmeadowma.gov/598/Assessments
I think the "AWC Advanced Work Class" of this thread's article uses Terra Nova 3 Survey (pdf warning): https://www.bostonpublicschools.org/cms/lib07/ma01906464/cen...
I suppose it’s possible that that could have changed since I was in school, but it wasn’t that long ago either.
"Pull yourself up by your bootstraps" they said. "Reach out and grab that American dream" they also said. So many of us listened and found a tiny slice of success in the academia despite being systematically opposed and ridiculed... and now what? We're somehow treated in the same vein as the 'oppressor' who have been enjoying their undue systematic advantage and our success must now be supressed?
We're still heavily underrepresented in Hollywood, most major sports leagues, the government, and practically most forms of leadership - yet we're finding ourselves constantly lumped in there as "whites and asians" when it's convenient for the narrative of racial inequality to construct a heart-wrenching story. Do people not see how backwards it all feels?
https://www.wsj.com/articles/white-nationalism-isnt-american...
U.S. is now as much "a land of opportunity" as Democratic Republic of Congo is "democratic" or People's Republic of Korea "people's".
[0] https://tradingeconomics.com/united-states/money-supply-m0, switch to the 25Y view
Unfortunately the ideologues who recognize the threat posed by educational choice to a public education system are already gearing up to fight against choice. Elizabeth Bartholet of Harvard for example, has been trying to build academic activist momentum against home schooling, which she describes as “authoritarian” (https://nypost.com/2020/04/23/harvard-professor-wants-to-ban...). Of course, those against homeschooling don’t see any authoritarianism in schools being weaponized into propaganda machines when activist progressive politics are injected into the curriculums.
I just think that the one size fits all, isn't optimal.
One size fits all seems to be a product of the early 1960s, when a large number of schools had to be built quickly to accommodate the boom of new kids born the previous decade. Large, modern, new, schools with good gyms and science labs were viewed as better than one room school houses.
I think 60 years latter we are ready to try something new. A diversity of schools. Some large, some small, some very specialized, some retain the current model.
Some where a student focuses on one topic throughout their studies, refining their knowledge every year. For example the same science fair project but get better every year, every iteration.
Some schools where a student tries as many different things as they want.
I believe that there is nothing more motivating than taking an intrinsic interest a student shows and getting the student to spend all their time on it.
I also believe that all specialized paths lead to the same general knowledge in math, history, music., etc.
https://www.economist.com/united-states/2021/02/27/time-to-r...
The correct answer IMO is to give every parent a voucher, and then let the schools compete for students. Would quickly show which public schools are good, and allow poor people to afford private schools. But this opinion apparently makes me some sort of evil person, so what do I know.
It was once every week or two and my time there was made up of 2 electives. There were all kinds of science, art & drama classes as well.
It was GREAT and it meant that I had access to a computer a few years before we had one in the house and had instructors who could actually guide me many years before I otherwise would have.
All of that said, the ticket in was being in the advanced math class. I can see a handful of ways this would be a bad way to gatekeep it. The reason it was so great was that it gave kids an opportunity to find a subject they are interested and then double down with much less strict guidance. No grades, much less serious “school” feel.
I would guess that almost everyone needs this, not just kids that can get the hang of / care about math a little quicker.
https://www.cps.edu/press-releases/cps-to-increase-access-fo...
The gift program, boiling to the bottom, is selecting elites for the interest of the country, or entire human being.
The mindset of these educators is that education is a benefit, not a journey, granted to some people.
But instead of kneecapping the advanced students, why not dedicate more resources to those who are socio-economically disadvantaged, and start fixing the problems that cause them to be underrepresented in the entrance exam?
¹though it'd be nice if the article had researched this, since I can think of socio-economic circumstances that would cause one demographic to accept at higher rates than others.
This might be anecdotal evidence, but a large number of Asians that I know of are first generation or second generation Asians whose parents ran Asian restaurants or worked in those nail saloons. How are they counted as more privileged as compared to Blacks and Hispanics is beyond me.
In fact, as much as I disliked the Trump administration, it was sensible of them to sue to universities in an attempt to shed more light on the admissions criteria and how Asian students with the same scores were not admitted as compared to Black and Hispanic students. Too bad, the Biden administration dropped that lawsuit.
Anyone know why? I find it hard to consider the present controversy without having a more complete picture.
Should you spend your resources to nurture your best and brightest, or spend it to bring everyone up.
Given its public money, I suppose the latter is more desirable?
But we still had the same bad teacher:student ratio, the same ancient textbooks, a building in a terrible location, the bare minimum for athletics, etc.
Of course, traditionally the solution has been to claim that blacks are just inferior to whites and nothing should be done, and then flail your arms about while crying that the school has been taken over by the woke.
I prefer the former.
Isn't that the implication of such a move?
An elementary school is abdicating their responsibility to effectively educate black and hispanic students to advanced levels. Why would they do that unless they thought they were inferior and beyond educating?
These "educators" would do well to study the life works of Booker T. Washington and Frederick Douglass.