Hacker News Reader

Comment by poorbutdebtfree | Hacker News Reader

Impressive considering the demographics of Gainsville. They used standardized test scores to identify talented grade school kids and put them all in the same room. Can we still do that in diverse school districts in CA and MA? I think we'd have a major uproar.

View on HN

>Can we still do that in diverse school districts in CA and MA? You would be able to do that for one year, and then people would start noticing a pattern in the teams' composition, and yes you'd get your uproar and the whole thing would be canceled.

Yea, that's essentially what happened to Virginia's Thomas Jefferson High School.

TJ was humming along fine for decades under republicans and conservatives democrats. Liberal democrats won the governorship just in 2018 and within two years folks are declaring standardized tests to be “racist.”

I blame my parents. They immigrated to a red/purple state for the low taxes and good schools and turned it into a solid blue state by voting straight ticket democrat. And then they’re all surprised at how this could happen.

TJ didn't change because of the blue 2018 Virginia.

it was a concerted effort by a small group of administrators at FCPS, and an even smaller group of 'anti-racist' students at TJ themselves.

TJ is literally a “Governor’s school.” Liberal democrats put themselves in a position where they are forced to go along with whatever activists decide is “racist” regardless of the merits. They’re the ones who weaponized accusations of “isms” and handed a club for the activists to beat them with.

I was a senior at TJ in 2020/21. You’re wrong, even though your reasoning should be right.

Your first paragraph: OK.

Your second paragraph: what is the alternative to voting a straight Dem ticket if you support science and want to see women, Jews and brown people get a fair shake in life?

You might be surprised at the skin colour of the poster you are replying to. Your question is also utterly flawed - there is no "heroic political party fighting for the rights of the X", and even if such a unicorn existed, it's definitely not the modern Democrat party.

Politicians are like strippers, you fall in love with them at your own risk.

> Your second paragraph: what is the alternative to voting a straight Dem ticket if you support science and want to see women, Jews and brown people get a fair shake in life?

I'm a "brown" immigrant and grew up in Virginia when it was a red state. I got way more than a "fair shake," including the opportunity to attend TJ. Indeed, Democrats are the ones who are advocating to legalize discrimination against people like me (https://www.thecrimson.com/article/2021/12/9/biden-admin-bac...) and eliminate objective standards that enable immigrants to break into elite jobs in favor of subjective standards that require social connections and cultural capital to navigate.

You seem to have a distorted view of conservatives, maybe based on the extremes. Most conservatives want everybody to get a fair shake as well.

Isn't that what lots of European education systems do in middle/high school education anyways?

Did. Officially, some still do. But it's now become a very much fake elitism, with a major push for inclusion and the mixing of ages and backgrounds in the same classrooms. The average level is in freefall too.

You're right. I'm in the EU, my family is mostly teachers and all too often I find myself outraged at the lack of vision, the incompetence, the ineptitude of my countries' officials to address the decline. Instead they opt for implementing the fad of the day(so-called '21st-century skills', 'critical thinking', 'social skills'). 25% of 15yo can not functionally read and/or do math well enough to properly function in society. This has been growing since the 70s and it still continues.

And look at the per pupil spending compared to the national average. About half.

See https://www.schooldigger.com/go/FL/schools/0003000029/school....

correct -- see e.g. what just happened to lowell in san francisco

edit: but reversed! so maybe you could...

You're right, but they also reversed it just recently

ah my SF news is out of date (moved out about a year ago, tho i've still got family there) -- that's great to hear!

Source?

https://sfstandard.com/education/selective-admissions-are-ba...

Reply on news.ycombinator.com