[HN Gopher] Boston public schools suspend advanced learning classes
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Boston public schools suspend advanced learning classes
Author : undefined1
Score : 129 points
Date : 2021-02-28 16:02 UTC (6 hours ago)
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| tehwebguy wrote:
| I'm on HN today because I learned some basic Logowriter & HTML at
| 8 & 9 years old in 1994 at an a program connected to private &
| public schools called Academic Resource Center in Tallahassee, FL
| (it's no longer around).
|
| 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.
| charlesu wrote:
| Getting rid of advanced classes does nothing to solve the real
| problem: different kids have wildly different resources/home
| lives and those differences often cut across racial lines. Want
| to fix large difference in racial makeup between regular and
| advanced classes? Implement universal pre-K. Give all children
| free breakfast, lunch, and dinner that's healthy. Give parents
| $700 per child. Mandate that all homes have safe drinking water
| free of lead. Put social workers, psychologists, and nurses in
| schools. Tackle the material circumstances that tend to stifle a
| child's development and the rest will follow. Canceling classes
| doesn't do anything for anyone.
| dragonwriter wrote:
| > Getting rid of advanced classes does nothing to solve the
| real problem
|
| 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.
| hpcjoe wrote:
| Give the parents choice of schools so that they can adapt the
| education to correctly suit their child. Absolutely stop making
| educational decisions and policy based upon political choices.
| Just ... stop it. It is hurting all kids when this is done.
|
| 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.
| dragonwriter wrote:
| >>Give the parents choice of schools so that they can adapt
| the education to correctly suit their child.
|
| 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.
| charlesu wrote:
| Exactly. Not only should we "Give the parents choice of
| schools" we should make every school a good choice.
| ntsplnkv2 wrote:
| Choice of schools will just lead to more centralization and
| it won't be any different than it is now. It doesn't really
| solve the underlying problem.
| autoditype wrote:
| > different kids have wildly different resources/home lives and
| those differences cut across racial.
|
| 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.
| rayiner wrote:
| Married two-parent households is also the biggest advantage
| Asian kids have, even compared to whites, at every income
| level. Social liberals sold America a bill of goods by
| normalizing divorce and single parent households (not just at
| the individual level, but at scale). And the impact has been
| the worst in disadvantaged groups that already have so many
| other things stacked against them:
| https://www.aei.org/articles/the-power-of-the-two-parent-
| hom...
| charlesu wrote:
| Add ending the drug war and socialized medicine that provides
| for mental health services to the list.
|
| 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.
| leereeves wrote:
| Worse than that, getting rid of advanced classes in public
| schools increases the divide between rich and poor, because the
| private schools attended by wealthy children will still have
| advanced classes.
| ntsplnkv2 wrote:
| I don't buy this. Rich people already have better schools and
| will do better anyway. The divide is growing not because of
| schooling but because of the centralization of wealth.
| fc373745 wrote:
| to play the devil's advocate -
|
| 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?
| charlesu wrote:
| I actually discussed this very topic elsewhere in this
| thread: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26296242
|
| 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.
| _dps wrote:
| re: cognitive vs physical development, I think at the level
| of star athlete most of the difference in performance is,
| for lack of a better word, mental
|
| 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 :)
| mgamache wrote:
| "It is the year 2081. Because of Amendments 211, 212, and 213 to
| the Constitution, every American is fully equal, meaning that no
| one is stupider, uglier, weaker, or slower than anyone else. The
| Handicapper General and a team of agents ensure that the laws of
| equality are enforced."
|
| -HARRISON BERGERON
| (http://www.tnellen.com/cybereng/harrison.html)
| mcguire wrote:
| That's a very strange story for Kurt Vonnegut
| (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kurt_Vonnegut) to have written.
|
| https://www.reddit.com/r/literature/comments/12huv9/is_harri...
| LatteLazy wrote:
| Wait "nearly 80 percent of all Boston public school students are
| Hispanic and Black."? Boston was >50% white last time I visited
| (admittedly 20 years ago). What's happening here?
| superflit wrote:
| Growth in diversity.
| jurassic wrote:
| Boston is still very white. But white families with children
| move to the suburbs with better schools. Or pay for private
| school.
| babesh wrote:
| They are effectively going to resegregate the school system. The
| parents of high performing kids that can afford it will move to
| school systems with advanced learning classes whether public or
| private.
| jdkee wrote:
| In contrast, here is what Chicago Public Schools are doing:
|
| https://www.cps.edu/press-releases/cps-to-increase-access-fo...
| superflit wrote:
| Now that their schools pupils are majority Black and the asians
| and White have moved to private schools.
| indymike wrote:
| Given the choice to expand an opportunity to more diverse
| children, the decision was made to bar access to all children?
| This is really dystopian.
| andrewclunn wrote:
| Racial IQ differences are the elephant in the room. Can't make
| dumber students equal to smart ones. Can't admit to racial
| patterns in who tends to be which kind if student. Solution? None
| because the lie of equality must be preserved at all costs.
| mcguire wrote:
| Ya know, 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. Because we
| gaddamn knew our places.
| fasteddie31003 wrote:
| I'm all for equality but I'm not for enforcing equity of outcome.
| If there are any structural inequalities, tear them down.
| Everyone should have an equal shot a life. But this unfortunate
| does not mean everyone is going to have an equal outcome in
| abilities. Some people are just better at things than others.
| molbioguy wrote:
| In addition to "Harrison Bergeron" by Kurt Vonnegut, "The Trees"
| by Rush comes to mind:
|
| _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_
| sul_tasto wrote:
| Democrats focus on race because they think it's the key to
| holding onto power. Black voters turned Georgia blue. They won't
| stop until something changes that calculus.
| A12-B wrote:
| This headline will receive a lot of backlash from the anti-woke
| crowd, but it's a pretty fair assessment in substance. They
| identified a glaring issue, that most kids in the advanced
| classes are white and asian, despite the district being mostly
| black and hispanic, and are trying to find solutions to that.
|
| 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.
| tinyhouse wrote:
| But it doesn't solve anything. Parents will send their kids
| somewhere else. They might move to a suburb or go to a private
| school.
| sodality2 wrote:
| And the poor parents will have their kids stay there, not
| getting the advanced education they need.
| loveistheanswer wrote:
| >Of course, traditionally the solution has been to claim that
| blacks are just inferior to whites and nothing should be done
|
| 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.
| tinyhouse wrote:
| I live in the Boston suburbs. Not a single person at my work or
| social circle have kids in the Boston public schools. In fact no
| one even lives in Boston (because of schools of course). This
| would actually have the opposite effect on the Boston public
| schools if you ask me.
|
| Private schools in the Boston area are booming because of Corona.
| Actions like this will continue the trend unfortunately.
| hshshs2 wrote:
| right boston's segregation has moved from inner city to metro
| area
| [deleted]
| swalsh wrote:
| I have a son enrolled in boston public schools. I live in a
| gentrifying part of town. When I go to the prarent meetings the
| principal (who is an absoutely AMAZING women easily putting in 80
| hour weeks) had to fight tooth and nail for funds to add a social
| worker to the school. The range of incomes between students is
| HUGE. There are a lot of parents struggling to pay rent, and
| definatley don't have the ability to invest in their childs
| education outside school the way I've been fortunate enough to.
|
| 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.
| losvedir wrote:
| When my wife and I got our foster care license I was astounded
| by how many resources our state puts towards foster kids after
| they're put into the foster system: hundreds of dollars a month
| to the foster parent, life coaches, psychologists, tutors,
| birthday and Christmas allowances, great medical care. And the
| main goal is reunification with their family.
|
| 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.
| crispyambulance wrote:
| The intention is kind, but there's no better way to force _every_
| remaining parent who can afford it to send their kids to private
| schools (or move to the 'burbs) and increase the inequality even
| more.
|
| 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.
| gfodor wrote:
| Public schools are basically just going to become a lower class
| school system. It didn't have to be this way, and I wish it
| wasn't (I went to public schools with a year stint in a private
| one and I highly attribute my time in public schools as shaping
| the better parts of my character) but the pandemic has made the
| "school choice" advocates the ultimate winners of the debate
| given how we set things up with public schools. It turns out, by
| investing so heavily in a system with centralized power
| structures and highly correlated disincentives against our
| children, we ultimately would pay profound costs when those
| cross-cutting incentives broke against our kids.
|
| 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.
| istjohn wrote:
| Public schools have been a driver of class inequality for
| decades. With neighborhoods segregated by wealth and schools
| funded by property taxes, public schools have long only
| amplified class disparities.
| wobblyasp wrote:
| I suppose its a question of resource distribution.
|
| 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?
| deathanatos wrote:
| I attended an advanced school as a student. We really didn't
| have any more resources than the non-advanced schools. It was
| simply a different, more advanced curriculum taught to those
| who both qualified (via test score) and were lucky (it was
| rationed via lottery).
|
| 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.
| Animats wrote:
| How is the US going to catch up with China if it's unwilling to
| educate its brightest students? China already has an edge.
| Average East Asian IQ, 105.
| danieltillett wrote:
| It is not. One side is winning the long war and it is not the
| USA.
| losvedir wrote:
| This is Hacker News, so let's talk about this from a software
| development perspective.
|
| 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.
| superflit wrote:
| People are different and they have different aptitudes.
|
| 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.
| charlesu wrote:
| >People are different and they have different aptitudes. 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.
|
| 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...
|
| [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wataru_Misaka
| [deleted]
| lotu wrote:
| I think nurses are an excellent example of systemic
| racism/sexism. Being a nurse used to be seen as an
| _exclusively_ male profession. Given that it is pretty clear it
| is a cultural rather than innate association. How we handle
| this is really complicated and requires a lot more thought than
| "lets do nothing, it must be natural this is way".
| superflit wrote:
| "Given that it is pretty clear it is a cultural rather than
| innate association"
|
| 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.
| the_only_law wrote:
| I've seen scholarships/tuition discounts to men who go into
| nursing programs.
| spoonjim wrote:
| Clearly black children are not achieving at the rate that white
| children are, but that's no reason to suspend the gifted program.
| Yes, the white kids are getting more academic and overall support
| at home, and this can only be fixed by getting all of the kids
| this kind of support, not by kneecapping the white children (who
| are not super privileged or they wouldn't be in Boston Public
| Schools to begin with).
|
| 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.
| mcguire wrote:
| Is it that "black children are not achieving at the rate that
| white children are", or is it that black and hispanic children
| are not being placed in the program in the numbers they should
| be? Did you in fact move because you didn't like to be reminded
| of your inferiors? Are you conflating wealth and whiteness with
| intelligence and worth?
| jurassic wrote:
| This is the first comment I've seen that is in touch with the
| reality of Boston Public Schools. The Boston public system was
| destroyed by forced integration that caused people with
| financial means to withdraw and move to the suburbs and/or put
| their children into private school. The racist motives for the
| initial split may have faded, but the legacy of that
| public/private split continues in a way that is self-
| reinforcing. No matter how woke you are now, nobody who can
| afford to do otherwise wants to send their kid to a public
| school that is failing based on every available measure.
| spoonjim wrote:
| Almost every major American city has the same story of a
| stripped city core where even as young professionals gentrify
| the real estate in the area they don't do the same to the
| schools by sending their kids to private school. A family
| will live in a neighborhood with a gang reputation (eg San
| Francisco's Mission or Viz Valley) before they send their
| kids to a bad school.
| aphextron wrote:
| This is a really hard subject. I can remember growing up as the
| only black kid in an all white class of kids in elementary
| school, and all of my friends made it into the "advanced" cohort.
| I knew I was just as bright as any of them, and that given a
| chance I would thrive there too. But for whatever reason I didn't
| make the cut, and this removed me from my peer group for the rest
| of my school years. They grew apart and I ended up mostly
| friendless. I don't think race really had a lot to do with it.
| But if you're going to separate kids, at least have a whole other
| school to send them to, rather than creating a distinct hierarchy
| among the classes. I think that really messes with kids' self
| esteem.
| sodality2 wrote:
| In my advanced program, they would ship us to a nearby
| elementary school, and the advanced students there would be
| sent to _our_ school (same district, same grade level, just 10
| minutes down the road), I can only assume it 's for the same
| reason you mentioned...
| hycaria wrote:
| How was admission determined ?
| TheAdamAndChe wrote:
| My gifted program was determined by GPA, reading level, and
| the desire to be put in a gifted program. All three were
| needed for placement.
| [deleted]
| ab_testing wrote:
| Does anybody note that all schools and even universities do not
| count Asians and even South East Asians as minorities. Even
| though they have a lower percentage of the population as compared
| to Blacks and Hispanics.
|
| 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.
| deathanatos wrote:
| Presumably, the lottery is unbiased in its selections1. Which
| means that the same mismatched demographics are occurring in the
| set of students passing the entrance exam. So it seems to me that
| the real problem is that the non-advanced classes aren't able to
| adequately achieve good outcomes for students who aren't
| white/Asian. Presumably, due to socio-economic disparities that
| cut across racial lines due to history.
|
| 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.
| [deleted]
| spicymaki wrote:
| I initially had a knee jerk 'sky is falling' reaction to this
| article, but I believe the problem is less these
| "underrepresented minority children can't cut it so we shut the
| program down" and more COVID-19 has devastated underrepresented
| minority families and children cannot even hope to enroll in the
| program. Resources are stretched within these public school
| systems and perhaps we need to address that for the year.
| martincmartin wrote:
| "The elected worthies who sit on its powerful school boards do
| not pursue objectives [such as learning] so much as balance
| competing local interests. This is a recipe for risk aversion and
| inertia or, as MCPS's wry superintendent, Jack Smith, puts it
| "not decision-making but mush"."
|
| https://www.economist.com/united-states/2021/02/27/time-to-r...
| simoneau wrote:
| My oldest child is about to enter the Boston Public school
| system. Many of my peers think I'm crazy to want to send my kids
| to public school, but we really value community and equity. I
| don't yet know what level of academic achievement my kids will
| achieve. But my choice what will I have, if the public schools
| cannot serve their needs. I'll be forced to join growing trend of
| abandoning public schools for private and charter schools.
| seibelj wrote:
| Also parent of Boston kids. We will start in BPS but if it's
| bad we will go private school. What choice do we have as
| parents? Thank god we have money!
|
| 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.
| mensetmanusman wrote:
| It's a truism that the fastest way to achieve equality is by
| holding everyone back.
|
| 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.
| undefined1 wrote:
| crab bucket mentality
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crab_mentality
| jeofken wrote:
| If you believe knowledge of this world can be gained from
| evidence, and that when evidence shows something, that should be
| believed over ideology or dogma, what should you then believe
| about race and intelligence, and about equality?
|
| 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
| ttt0 wrote:
| The oppression and equality narrative seems to be like the
| Christian Gospel - the absolute truth. Everything that
| contradicts it, even science, must be false.
|
| 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-...
| jl2718 wrote:
| Tracking started because struggling students need more help, and
| the best thing for them is to get the advanced students out of
| the classroom. So fine, don't have advanced classes, send those
| kids to play outside, whatever. But this is pure ideological
| self-harm.
| [deleted]
| snicksnak wrote:
| Let's just keep everybody equally uneducated.
| fireeyed wrote:
| I was waiting to see how far the bone headed wokeness will
| destroy families. This is not the first and wont be the last.
| seankimdesign wrote:
| Another day, another Asian gets the raw end of the stick.
|
| "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?
| tomp wrote:
| Just like you buy the propaganda that whites are "oppressors
| enjoying systemic advantages", so do other people buy in the
| same propaganda but lump in Asians as well (i.e. "people doing
| better than me").
| seankimdesign wrote:
| The person "buying into the propaganda" in this instance is
| not myself, but you unfortunately. Like it or not, racism in
| the U.S. is real and it exists. As the majority in power,
| white people have and will continue to make decisions that
| favor those who look like themselves. I'm not saying you are
| racist or that you should atone for the sins of your white
| peers, but you pretending that racism doesn't exist doesn't
| mean that people of color don't experience racism on a
| regular basis.
| [deleted]
| hntrader wrote:
| "you pretending that racism doesn't exist"
|
| They didn't say that racism doesn't exist, those are words
| you've put into their mouth.
|
| They said that you're buying into the same identity
| politics narrative that you're decrying, where groups of
| people are put into a basket based on their ethnicity and
| assigned the label "oppressor" without regard for
| individual variation.
| Judgmentality wrote:
| > The person "buying into the propaganda" in this instance
| is not myself, but you unfortunately.
|
| I wish I knew how to say this in a constructive manner, but
| your lack of self-awareness is sad. You are guilty of the
| very thing you are decrying, just changing the race to what
| fits your narrative.
|
| Yes, I am saying you are racist and don't realize it.
| ttt0 wrote:
| > As the majority in power, white people have and will
| continue to make decisions that favor those who look like
| themselves.
|
| Like suspending classes because they were too white?
|
| > I'm not saying you are racist or that you should atone
| for the sins of your white peers
|
| It's even worse, we're talking about _innocent children_
| and referring to them as "oppressors".
| seankimdesign wrote:
| In case it wasn't absolutely clear to you, I'm in full
| agreement with you on how ridiculous the decision to
| suspend the gifted program is.
|
| Speaking of racism in the U.S., however, nothing you say
| will change the dozens of firsthand experiences that I
| endured as a minority immigrant growing up in this land.
| I say this not from a place of bitterness, but from a
| place of sadness: I too wish racism wasn't real or as
| heavily perpetuated as it actually is. Working in SV
| almost makes me forget the shit I had to endure because
| it's much less visible from the ivory towers of the west
| coast. But my friend, racism is very real, and it is very
| alive. I'm not here to say whites are evil and we are
| noble - it's simply that being in the place of power
| gives you many more avenues with which to abuse.
|
| Let me say this one last time: shutting down a gifted
| class due to its racial make up is the wrong way to go.
| It's the lazy way to "establish social justice". I say
| this not because I believe racism isn't real - I say this
| because this is reverse racism. If what we want to build
| is a world that is accepting of all individuals
| regardless of their race, we should accept that racism
| exists and devise reasonable solutions to combat it.
| Punishing white kids is not the way to go, nor is denying
| that racism is alive.
| lobotryas wrote:
| So basically: "I'm not calling you racist, just your entire
| peer group".
|
| Cool, thanks.
|
| You do realize plenty of white people live around the world
| outside the US too, right?
| ttt0 wrote:
| So it's unjust when it happens to asian kids, but it's fair
| game when it happens to white kids? _That_ feels backwards, if
| you ask me.
| [deleted]
| john_moscow wrote:
| Think deeper. The American dream died in 2008. We could have
| let the inefficient corrupt behemoths crash under their own
| weight and free the market for the next wave of companies. But
| instead we printed more money and bailed them out. Ans we keep
| doing it ever since [0]. It's not about Asian, Black, Russian,
| Jewish or whatever. It's that if you haven't bitten a large
| enough chunk of the pie before 2008, you are second class and
| are bound to working for those who had. And when people across
| the society get frustrated with their lives, the racial
| differences is the easiest thing to spot, so it metastasizes
| first.
|
| 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
| undefined1 wrote:
| I'm genuinely curious why you're still pushing the oppressor
| narrative, given that you see how it's being used as a weapon
| to enforce equality of outcome? instead of equality of
| opportunity.
| ttt0 wrote:
| People blamed white supremacy for the recent unprovoked
| attacks on asians by black perpetrators. Cognitive dissonance
| became really common on that side of the political spectrum.
|
| https://www.wsj.com/articles/white-nationalism-isnt-
| american...
|
| https://archive.md/sa3fA
| pc86 wrote:
| Correction: Cognitive dissonance becomes really common at
| any political extreme.
| recallgavin wrote:
| and yet they still vote Democrat
| fireeyed wrote:
| Obama wanted class warfare and he got it.
| softwaredoug wrote:
| This is a complicated issue.
|
| 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.
| Kalium wrote:
| I'm skeptical that there's any amount of investing in children
| that can make up the gap between those with engaged and
| invested parents and those without. Adding in raw ability does
| not make closing any gaps easier. And, _obviously_ , how much
| money a family has has a strong influence on whose parents are
| engaged and invested.
|
| 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.
| mrDmrTmrJ wrote:
| Appreciate your comment.
|
| Any thoughts about making the Magnet school program 'the
| standard' for every kid? As an alternate policy to ending it,
| as the article describes.
| analog31 wrote:
| Logistics seems like a potential issue. It might work in a
| place like NYC where everybody can live within a few minutes
| of multiple schools, and just ride the subway to school every
| morning like my mom did in 1940.
|
| 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.
| sdenton4 wrote:
| The 'Nice White Parents' podcast is a deep dive on exactly
| these problems, which I thought was excellent.
| https://www.nytimes.com/2020/07/23/podcasts/nice-white-paren...
|
| 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.
| john_moscow wrote:
| Well, it can be solved very nicely by teaching everyone else
| how to "know the system". So where are the activists going
| door-to-door in black neighborhoods convincing the parents to
| submit applications to multiple schools and coach their kids
| through math problems so that they could get a better chance
| at admission?
|
| 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.
| NikolaeVarius wrote:
| Its so weird how its okay to just say that parents are just
| too dumb to figure out how to get kids into gifted programs.
|
| 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.
| sdenton4 wrote:
| Why should placement in gifted programs have /anything/ to
| do with the parents? Aren't they supposed to be about the
| kid's talent?
| NikolaeVarius wrote:
| Because parents teaching their kids how to get ahead in
| life with tools presented to them is a core part of the
| human experience?
|
| Why do we force parents to educate children in some
| manner? All kids should figure it out right?
| ghgdynb1 wrote:
| Might be fun to answer this question very literally.
|
| 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.
| sdenton4 wrote:
| It's a false dichotomy.
|
| 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.
| NikolaeVarius wrote:
| So logical conclusion, all children are put in isolation
| from their parents, since we cannot their parents tarnish
| the children in any way
| sdenton4 wrote:
| That's a straw-man, and I think you know it. I said
| nothing about isolating children from their parents. I
| also didn't call parents 'dumb' for not knowing how to
| manipulate the system on their children's behalf, as you
| said in your other comment. Parents want the best for
| their children across the board, but have different ideas
| of what 'the best' might be, and different access to
| information and resources for getting there. That doesn't
| make them 'dumb,' and dismissing them as such means
| you're not asking questions about what other priorities
| and/or limitations might be in place. You're applying a
| label and deciding not to understand what might be behind
| it.
|
| 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.
| mensetmanusman wrote:
| To help answer your question, imagine asking a five year
| old to fill out paperwork without the help of adults.
| alach11 wrote:
| Why should any paperwork be required? If the student has
| good scores, put them in the G&T program. You can send
| the student home with a piece of paper informing the
| parent, but there's no need to make it opt-in.
| pc86 wrote:
| If the parents don't prioritize education, the kids
| won't, and whether they're naturally gifted/intelligent
| or not, they won't do the points listed above, and they
| won't end up in the programs.
| MisterBastahrd wrote:
| Most parents _DO NOT WANT_ their kids to be in gifted
| programs. It requires more time investment for both the
| parents and the kids.
| NikolaeVarius wrote:
| So which is it, parents are too dumb to figure out how to
| get their kids into gifted programs which is why the
| school wants to change the rules, or parents are
| deliberately sacrificing their kids education.
|
| Also the word MOST is doing some pretty goddamn heavy
| lifting here. DO you have something to back up the claim?
| thelock85 wrote:
| Thanks for sharing your experience. I do think most parents
| push for what's best for their child regardless of any
| circumstance. At the same time, I feel the immigrant
| success story unintentionally hides the effects of
| structural and historical racism.
|
| 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.
| mymythisisthis wrote:
| I feel that schools should be smaller, 100 kids at most. The
| teachers should be very specialised. For example in electronics,
| or music, or biology. Kids can quickly rotate into and out of
| these specialised schools.
| throwawaysea wrote:
| Specialization is one part certainly but we need other changes
| too. We need a decomposition of schools (many different
| providers instead of a one stop school for all subjects and
| activities), greater choice (charter schools, private schools,
| to challenge public school dominance), and movement away from
| the one size fits all educational culture imposed by giant
| monolithic teachers unions like the NEA (who are proponents of
| such racial "justice" policies).
|
| 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.
| mymythisisthis wrote:
| I have nothing against teacher unions, or public schools.
|
| 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.
| ipnon wrote:
| OECD's PISA office[0] found that large, college-style lecture
| hall sized classes were optimal for teaching large numbers of
| students. They used this factor to explain South Korea's better
| educational outcomes than the United States'. South Korean high
| schools typically have large class sizes and evaluate
| performance based on regular standardized testing, whereas
| American schools typically try to always make class sizes
| smaller and use subject grading criteria.
|
| [0] https://www.oecd.org/PISA/
| frongpik wrote:
| I remember times when the equality rhetoric was about "if we just
| do blind auditions, the racial disparity in orchestra will go
| away." That didn't happen and the rhetoric has taken a more
| aggressive stance: "give all races equal opportunities by quotas
| and we'll get the desired outcome soon." That didn't work either,
| the rhetoric has dropped the pretense of justice and has resorted
| to a simple idea: "white is bad, black is good." It's
| entertaining to watch how the so called "equality justice
| seekers" attack white and asian kids because they dared to
| outperform blacks and hispanics. 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."
| zozbot234 wrote:
| > I remember times when the equality rhetoric was about "if we
| just do blind auditions, the racial disparity in orchestra will
| go away." That didn't happen and ...
|
| 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.
| Gibbon1 wrote:
| I always feel like the problem is very low grade yet
| pernicious affinity fraud.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Affinity_fraud
|
| The current cult of meritocracy tends to make things even
| worse.
| meee wrote:
| I worked for a county school system in an administrative role. My
| philosophy is that most of the time smart/students with a
| supportive home life will do well in most situations. I have a
| similar opinion about students in the opposite categories doing
| poorly. There is also a group that stretches across the entire
| student population (including all ethnicities) where you can move
| the needle and it is mostly comprised of smart people without a
| supportive home life and anyone on the bubble in those
| categories.
|
| 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.
| radiator wrote:
| This article was posted one hour ago and was in the top page of
| HN.
|
| By now already it is nowhere to be found in the first eight
| pages!
|
| Can someone explain?
| TheAdamAndChe wrote:
| The number of comments exceeds the number of upvotes. That
| tends to indicate a flamebait topic. Racial issues and issues
| involving identity have an above-average likelihood of
| triggering a flamewar.
| ttt0 wrote:
| You've probably missed it, it's on the 24. place for me
| radiator wrote:
| I had not missed it, but it really is back now.
| superflit wrote:
| When the narrative is broken it is flagged to go down.
|
| Can't have non normative narratives as in:
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26074044
|
| Feels like similar.
| dang wrote:
| https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...
| dd_roger wrote:
| The lack of offering for good students is already a major issue
| at every step of the education system as it is, closing these
| classes is a major step backward and "fuck you" to good students
| (especially with such a lame justification).
|
| 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.
| yarcob wrote:
| A program for the gifted is not very useful if it's just a
| program for white students in practice.
| endtime wrote:
| Not useful to whom?
| yarcob wrote:
| Not useful for the many gifted students who are not white.
| ALittleLight wrote:
| Just curious - would you guess Asian students were under
| or over represented among those classes? I haven't seen
| any data on it, but I know how I'd bet...
|
| Reason I bring it up is, you seem to be implying the
| classes were favoring white students, and if that were
| true presumably you expect they disadvantage Asian
| students. Is that what you think?
| iso1210 wrote:
| So isn't the problem that those gifted students aren't
| being picked up?
| briefcomment wrote:
| You don't usually get left out of gifted programs if
| you're not white and score well.
| merpnderp wrote:
| Why wouldn't black and brown kids get any use out of
| these classes? Are you saying only white and "white
| adjacent" kids can learn faster? If so you might want to
| rethink your preconceptions.
| dillondoyle wrote:
| There is a lot of research showing lower scores for tests
| for BIPOC, even from kindergarten where there isn't a
| clear education gap already established.
|
| There's also a lot of history of using these types of
| tests to discriminate - at the worst Nazi's killing
| children with low scores.
|
| https://www.brookings.edu/articles/the-black-white-test-
| scor...
|
| https://www.ted.com/talks/stefan_c_dombrowski_the_dark_hi
| sto...
| [deleted]
| jbm wrote:
| > A district analysis of the program found that more than 70
| percent of students enrolled in the program were white and Asian,
| even though nearly 80 percent of all Boston public school
| students are Hispanic and Black.
|
| 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?
| kyrieeschaton wrote:
| Diversity substantively means fewer whites and asians. The goal
| is a 100% diverse school system.
| loveistheanswer wrote:
| So essentially backdoor segregation?
| ttt0 wrote:
| Yes, in CHAZ they had separate areas for only black people,
| so they can isolate themselves from whites.
| grawprog wrote:
| How in the space of seventy years or so did equal rights
| go from 'Stop Segregation' to 'Everybody Should be
| Segregated Based On Race or Other Physical Factors'?
| colpabar wrote:
| If the 99% stopped dividing themselves, they'd be unified
| against the 1%, and the 1% does not want that.
| loveistheanswer wrote:
| "Now, what does all of this mean in this great period of
| history? It means that we've got to stay together. We've
| got to stay together and maintain unity. You know,
| whenever Pharaoh wanted to prolong the period of slavery
| in Egypt, he had a favorite, favorite formula for doing
| it. What was that? He kept the slaves fighting among
| themselves. But whenever the slaves get together,
| something happens in Pharaoh's court, and he cannot hold
| the slaves in slavery. When the slaves get together,
| that's the beginning of getting out of slavery. Now let
| us maintain unity."
|
| -MLK, I've Been To The Mountaintop, last speech given the
| night before assasination
|
| https://www.americanrhetoric.com/speeches/mlkivebeentothe
| mou...
| 1996 wrote:
| They just don't understand that Asian families work their kid
| harder? It's a different world. When I was a kid, there were
| only 3 acceptable outcomes: becoming a lawyer, a doctor, or a
| professor. Then I discovered coding - sorry mom :)
|
| 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.
| amryl wrote:
| > The goal is a 100% diverse school system.
|
| What does 100% diverse means in this context ?
| DC1350 wrote:
| Black, Hispanic, and Indigenous
| ThrowawayR2 wrote:
| > " _Diversity substantively means fewer whites and asians._
| "
|
| 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.
| kyrieeschaton wrote:
| Because Asians broadly speaking do not depend on favors
| from the ruling elite for their position, thus they are
| politically unreliable (although currently mostly aligned
| with them).
|
| https://spandrell.com/2017/11/14/biological-leninism/
| ttt0 wrote:
| Because Asians perform better and that would contradict the
| narrative that without systemic racism the outcome would
| reflect the overall demographics of the population, so 50%
| men/women, 60% whites, 18% latinos, 13% blacks, 6% asians
| etc.
| lurquer wrote:
| So here's what I fail to understand: why punish Whites? The
| students had nothing to do with the history of white vs
| black oppression in the United States. None of them were
| 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 Whites to
| compensate blacks for the past injustices, which is
| basically robbing Peter to pay Paul any way you look at it.
| fc373745 wrote:
| Although, in this specific case it's unfair to single out
| either White or Asian, but in general, Asians are
| punished the most in terms of Academics.
| DC1350 wrote:
| Asians are considered "white-adjacent" by some types of
| people, which is just woke for "Honorary Aryans"
| pc86 wrote:
| If I wanted to take a critical view of your comment, you're
| basically saying "Sure, punish white people.. but how dare
| you punish Asians!"
|
| 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.
| polishdude20 wrote:
| It's not. They're embarrassed that this happened and rather
| than trying to fix it, they'd rather just quit the program so
| nobody gets ahead.
| bob33212 wrote:
| It is a common trick of managers to only measure things that
| make them look good. Is the number of regressions going up?
| Remove the isRegression checkbox from your bug tracking
| system.
| Zelphyr wrote:
| Kurt Vonnegut, it seems, saw this coming 60 years ago.
| lr1970 wrote:
| For those who never read it, here is the link to the
| archive.org version of the short story HARRISON BERGERON by
| Kurt Vonnegut [1].
|
| [1] https://archive.org/stream/HarrisonBergeron/Harrison%20
| Berge...
|
| 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.
| grawprog wrote:
| Harrison Bergeron's one of those few cases where i
| actually preferred the movie version to the original
| story
|
| 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.
| AnHonestComment wrote:
| > Proportional enrollment based on 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.
| sodality2 wrote:
| >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 Lara
| Logan's Warning to America Make Mine Freedom
| Obama Admin Caught Sending Guns to Drug Cartels Rules
| for Radicals SCOTUS: Government Can Force You to Buy
| Anything The Iron Lady The Socialist's
| Camoflage Trump Admin Accomplishments Vote
| Fraud What is a Constitutional Moderate?
|
| and even Breitbart says Prop 209 prevents
| race-based affirmative action in state contracts, government
| jobs, and university admissions
| bopbeepboop wrote:
| CA prop 16 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2020_California_Pr
| oposition_16
|
| WA prop 1000 https://www.washingtonpolicy.org/publications/
| detail/initiat...
| sodality2 wrote:
| That second link has a spare "d" after "publications"
| that broke it, by the way.
|
| Thanks for the links
| bopbeepboop wrote:
| Thanks for pointing out typo.
| Kim_Bruning wrote:
| If you take a random sample from a population, then you'd
| expect the sample to be representative of the population. All
| else being equal: if you categorize a population in some
| arbitrary way, and there's a particular distribution of those
| categories in that population; you should expect the same
| distribution in your sample.
|
| In this case the distribution in the population was not
| identical to the distribution in the sample.
|
| Clearly something isn't right.
| [deleted]
| [deleted]
| rhino369 wrote:
| Why would you expect the sample of gifted children to be
| representative of the population. By almost every measure
| Hispanic and Black students fall behind other students. The
| achievement gap is very well studied.
|
| 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.
| Kim_Bruning wrote:
| In this case the skew is pretty extreme though.
|
| 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.
| NikolaeVarius wrote:
| Two other Asian kids and I were at a public school of
| several hundred kids of mostly minority groups. We three
| were consistently in the top 5 ranks and none of us were
| especially well off.
|
| Is there a racial issue here?
| rayiner wrote:
| The populations in these urban school districts are very
| skewed due to middle class Black and Latino populations
| migrating to the suburbs:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_flight. So the
| district comprises rich white yuppies, and lower income
| people of color, often recent immigrants, with little in-
| between.
|
| The school district addressed in Nice White Parents
| (great podcast) exemplifies this dynamic:
| https://www.nytimes.com/2020/07/23/podcasts/nice-white-
| paren....
| Kim_Bruning wrote:
| So according to you, it's due to demographics, where
| people are actually becoming more affluent!
|
| 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?
| rayiner wrote:
| Yes and no. Immigrants are constantly coming in, and
| cities like Boston will probably continue to be a first
| waypoint for immigrants getting their legs under them. So
| in that sense, school districts in cities will continue
| to face these disparities. Apart from that, even as the
| Black middle class grows, there is persistent multi-
| generational poverty among Black people in urban areas
| that has proven nearly impossible to improve. Schools
| will continue to deal with that as well.
| hshshs2 wrote:
| important to note that is not really a clear cut case in
| boston, most kids in the boston public school system are
| not white (largely due to white flight to the suburbs
| when the city tried to desegregate schools)... this is
| despite the fact that boston itself has recently become
| predominately white (and white kids are going to private
| schools at a higher rate since... forever)
|
| this is changing slowly as the city gentrifies and the
| traditionally black neighborhoods are becoming less
| affordable for black people (who have an average net
| worth of only $8)... which I suppose _is_ black flight,
| but the term is problematic because it's evocative if
| white flight (which was a choice to avoid integration)...
| black flight largely is the lack of choice due to racial
| inequity
| sodality2 wrote:
| Intelligence being shown in schools isn't random: it's a
| result of who can afford better education in the lower
| grades, education materials in pre-school, a baby sitter who
| can teach basic math before school begins, private school,
| pre school, etc. This makes perfect sense, and the smart
| thing to do is to implement a program below this at the
| younger grades to try to give the entire lower grade levels a
| better chance at getting that advanced learning. "Something
| isn't right" doesn't mean kill the whole damn program. Maybe
| evaluate their on-boarding process in addition.
|
| 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.
| sokoloff wrote:
| I couldn't agree more. I benefited greatly from a gifted
| track in my otherwise fairly mediocre public school system.
| Now seeing my kids and their peers, the differences in
| starting point of kindergarten and 1st graders was
| shocking. Many kids came in knowing how to read Dr Suess,
| do basic math, and take turns in games/crafts/conversation.
| Others couldn't even manage any of those basics. We're in a
| controlled choice district (where there is cross-city
| busing but some bias towards the two schools closest to you
| and to where an older sibling attends). I think I could
| watch a kindergartner for 90 minutes and predict the family
| economic status with high accuracy. (Cambridge, MA has
| plenty of affluent people of all races; this breaks down on
| economic lines much more than on any other dimension.)
|
| 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.)
| Kim_Bruning wrote:
| I agree that children should be taught to the maximum
| possible. I think that this particular program is in
| trouble though, sadly.
|
| Your experience sounds very interesting. Would you care to
| share some more? Were you in the Boston program, or
| elsewhere?
| sodality2 wrote:
| Sure. It's just my district's extended learning program
| though, I am not in the Boston program.
|
| 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.
| Kim_Bruning wrote:
| Merci de partager votre experience.
|
| That does sound like a lot of fun. And I'm glad to hear
| you had such a great time.
| sodality2 wrote:
| No problem. And I do agree with you: there is a problem
| that needs to be addressed with their system. I just
| don't think "let's not let new students in" is the
| answer.
| Kim_Bruning wrote:
| Well -according to the article- they're taking the time
| to do a review, so we can be hopeful!
| sul_tasto wrote:
| I think all this nonsense will continue until the Republicans can
| get rid of Trump and offer a legitimate conservative response.
| biren34 wrote:
| An interesting thing I see here is that no one seems to be
| discussing the needs of the kids themselves in all this. It's all
| about races, politics, ideologies.
|
| 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).
| yarcob wrote:
| I think the smarter thing to do would be to stop demanding
| everyone complete the same tasks. Let the quicker students skip
| the repetitive exercise and give them something challenging.
|
| Or let them explain it to the slower kids.
| superflit wrote:
| The "challenging" is called advanced learning.
| yarcob wrote:
| I meant without first testing them and putting them in
| separate classes.
| toast0 wrote:
| I think the challenge is it's pretty difficult to be
| customizing instruction to 30 different students at
| wildly different levels.
|
| 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.
| jonwachob91 wrote:
| A big factor is that not every teacher is capable of teaching
| gifted students. The gifted public school I went to recruited
| college professors to teach our middle school classes. I met
| a lot of HS teachers that couldn't keep up with the math the
| gifted students where doing as early as 7th grade.
|
| 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.
| yarcob wrote:
| My experience in school (and now with my kids in school)
| was that there was no such thing as a group of "average"
| students. There's a huge variation in most grades.
|
| 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?
| [deleted]
| zozbot234 wrote:
| Well, one problem is that practically every teacher wants
| to teach the easy, gifted students that already know most
| of the material anyway. No one wants to deal with the not-
| so-easy ones, where teacher quality and proper discipline
| actually makes a huge difference to quality of education.
| That's why explicit tracking is so unpopular - it exposes
| these not-so-comfortable dynamics.
| sitkack wrote:
| See also the recent discussion on same-age vs mixed-age
| classrooms. By mixing age groups, the kid who is advanced in
| history can hang with a grade or two above her own. But she
| might be a grade below in writing, and that should be 100%
| ok.
|
| 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.
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26204386
| unanswered wrote:
| > Or let them explain it to the slower kids.
|
| 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.
| somethoughts wrote:
| I think a great strategy would be to allow students who are
| done with the daily lesson early to have the freedom to be
| let lose on Khan Academy or other sites which aren't
| necessarily focusing on getting farther ahead but instead
| they are given the freedom to explore applications of topics
| being taught (i.e. mathematics as applied to bird migration
| patterns or cryptography, etc.).
| undefined1 wrote:
| that's an important observation. the students are secondary, at
| best, to the culture war being waged by activist adults.
|
| also the victims of teacher unions that are keeping schools
| closed, despite the lack of scientific evidence supporting that
| position.
| avs733 wrote:
| If naming victims is important, than we should also name the
| students who are victims of their parents being
| systematically excluded and oppressed as well I would
| imagine?
| StanislavPetrov wrote:
| >A priori, I'd say the goal of an idealized education system
|
| All sane people agree with you. However, those who prioritize
| "equity of outcome" disagree.
| hpcjoe wrote:
| Exactly. Equal opportunities should exist. Equal outcomes won't
| likely exist, purely because of different abilities, different
| environments, etc.
|
| 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.
| undefined1 wrote:
| > Equal opportunities should exist. Equal outcomes won't
| likely exist, purely because of different abilities,
| different environments, etc.
|
| 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?"
| fatnoah wrote:
| >Not having an gifted program is like having wrestling matches
| without weight classes. It's no fun and no good (for anyone).
|
| 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.
| lurquer wrote:
| The same should apply for the baseball game they are
| watching.
|
| 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.
| alach11 wrote:
| We're talking about schools here, right? It's not a zero
| sum game like baseball.
| foerbert wrote:
| I'm somewhat confused by what the point you are trying to
| make here. Are the kids here supposed to be competing on
| height? Or ability to obtain a taller footstool?
|
| 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.
| Yoofie wrote:
| I happen to know the image you are talking about. Luckily I
| saved it when I first saw it somewhere.
|
| https://imgur.com/a/dlo0Y2k
| ntsplnkv2 wrote:
| God is that a bad image. "Helping others means cutting off
| your own leg" isn't really something I can get behind.
| AnHonestComment wrote:
| > "There's been a lot of inequities that have been brought to the
| light in the pandemic that we have to address," Cassellius told
| GBH News. "There's a lot of work we have to do in the district to
| be antiracist and have policies where all of our students have a
| fair shot at an equitable and excellent education."
|
| This is how Marxist ideas always go: some groups work harder and
| succeed more, so we have to suspend the programs that upset
| central planning statistics.
|
| Working to improve the pipeline by rebuilding community and
| raising education as a family value is verboten because it
| requires we address uncomfortable truths.
|
| It _must_ be racism; it _can't_ be the fault of the people
| involved.
| clircle wrote:
| > Cassellius says interest in the program had declined over
| several years and only five schools currently offered the
| program...
|
| Anyone know why? I find it hard to consider the present
| controversy without having a more complete picture.
| john_moscow wrote:
| It's a symptom of a bigger underlying problem. We no longer have
| a full circle of smart capable people that would achieve economic
| success independently, then raise their kids, teach them their
| ways and let the next generation achieve their own success by
| starting their own wave of companies.
|
| 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.
| [deleted]
| salamanderman wrote:
| "A district analysis of the program found that more than 70
| percent of students enrolled in the program were white and Asian,
| even though nearly 80 percent of all Boston public school
| students are Hispanic and Black." "The program was open to all
| students in the Boston Public Schools who took a test known as
| Terra Nova in the third grade and received a high score." "Last
| fall, 453 students received invitations, 143 students applied and
| 116 enrolled this year, officials said." "Cassellius says
| interest in the program had declined over several years and only
| five schools currently offered the program"
|
| 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.
| tamaharbor wrote:
| We accept that blacks are better at basketball, why can't we
| accept that asians are better at math?
| Dumblydorr wrote:
| If their goal is to be antiracist, is the most effective policy
| to stop challenging advanced students? Maybe start with how to
| get minority students to be advanced proportionally, rather than
| punish those who are already advanced, who are probably
| disproportionately Asian Americans who are facing a lot of hate
| crimes and racism this year.
|
| 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?
| [deleted]
| rayiner wrote:
| > 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 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.
| threatofrain wrote:
| > 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.
| _-david-_ wrote:
| It would only be a legal risk if they were putting kids in
| the program based on race. This does not seem to be the case.
| It just so happens to be that a disproportionate amount of
| whites and Asians made it into the program.
| jakelazaroff wrote:
| Why do you conclude that it doesn't seem to be the case?
| There are a ton of known second-order causes of education
| inequality like redlining, tax disparities, etc. It's
| highly likely that the disparities in this program happen
| because of racism, even if no one sat down and said "we
| should admit mostly white and Asian kids".
| _-david-_ wrote:
| There is no evidence that there was any racism involved.
| I wouldn't say with 100% certainty there was no racism,
| but until anyone can show any evidence of racism I will
| not jump to that conclusion.
|
| 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.
| jakelazaroff wrote:
| The problem is that the people who benefit from the
| situation are never interested in identifying and fixing
| the "bad situations" until things like this happen.
| They're fine accepting a system that privileges their own
| children at the expense of others, and only when their
| children might be affected do they become ostensible
| advocates for looking at the situation holistically.
| _-david-_ wrote:
| Most people support things that aid themself or their
| family. I don't think that has anything to do with
| racism. Supporting more objective standards like grades
| and test results are the only fair way to determine who
| goes into the gifted classes. Determining gifted class
| placement by race 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.
| [deleted]
| sokoloff wrote:
| Is your goal educating students to the best of their
| individual abilities? Or correcting for societal
| inequalities that aren't that kid's doing or fault,
| meanwhile using the kids as pawns in the pursuit of that
| goal of equal outcome?
|
| 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.
| jakelazaroff wrote:
| My point is that the status quo is _not_ educating
| students to the best of their individual abilities. It 's
| neglecting the education of some -- in ways that
| _heavily_ correlate with class and race -- and then, when
| those students unsurprisingly do worse, saying "well,
| they're not as smart, so they can't have the gifted
| education."
| threatofrain wrote:
| Why would any racially biased curriculum be favorable
| specifically for Asians? Or why would institutional
| support be biased in favor of Asians?
| _-david-_ wrote:
| If anyone (regardless of race) went into a class that was
| too difficult for them they would do worse in school.
| This will result in them not getting into as good of a
| university (or not getting into any university) and would
| result in them doing worse in life.
| rayiner wrote:
| But if the rationale is compensating for things like
| redlining, then it doesn't make sense to count Latinos in
| the "disadvantaged" category while counting Asians in the
| "advantaged" category. (The majority of the kids in the
| groups that the administrator deemed underrepresented
| were Latino, not Black.) Racist policies like redlining
| in the 1950s-1970s were not applied to Latinos any more
| than to Asians, and in fact were applied less so. (There
| was never anything comparable to the Asian Exclusion Act
| applied to immigrants from Latin America.) Moreover,
| Latinos have similar income mobility to whites. Latino
| families who have been in America since the 1960s and
| 1970s would have quite small income gaps compared to
| whites by now:
| https://academic.oup.com/qje/article/135/2/711/5687353.
|
| 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.
| jakelazaroff wrote:
| I think trying to look at this through the lens of a
| single issue is doomed to fail. And frankly, the full
| scope is beyond what can be covered in a single HN
| discussion. Because there are a ton of intertwined
| issues, and many of them don't have a neat line straight
| to "underperformance in schools". It's the "systemic"
| part of "systemic racism".
| _-david-_ wrote:
| If there is systemic racism then which system is racist?
| I think 99% of people nowadays would be fine fighting
| against such a system. Is it the school system, bank
| system, the government?
| jakelazaroff wrote:
| "Which system is racist?" is the wrong way to look at
| this. The point I'm trying to make is that there are many
| intertwined factors in play, and it may not be
| immediately apparent how some of them impact the issue.
|
| 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.
| rayiner wrote:
| > 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
|
| 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-...
| _-david-_ wrote:
| I am a bit confused. You said it is systemic racism but
| can't provide a system (or systems) that are racist. I
| looked up the definition of systemic to ensure I wasn't
| missing something and it is "relating to a system,
| especially as opposed to a particular part." This clearly
| sounds to me that there needs to be a system involved.
| Perhaps systemic is not the correct word?
|
| 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.
| loveistheanswer wrote:
| Were the students selected for the advanced program selected
| based on the color of their skin, or their academic ability?
| superflit wrote:
| You can't ask it in 2021. It is wrong think and hate
| speech.
|
| Please go back to re-education camp.
| snicksnak wrote:
| No that's essentially the core of the issue.
|
| If they were selected based on their race, it's racial
| discrimination. If the classes were suspended based on
| the student's race, it's racial discrimination, plain and
| simple.
| ttt0 wrote:
| > plain and simple
|
| Unfortunately it's not in 2021.
| dang wrote:
| Please don't take HN threads further into ideological
| flamewar.
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
| throwawaysea wrote:
| These days no one is ready to talk about cultural and
| behavioral differences that lead to different outcomes, but it
| is the most obvious cause of disparities in education and
| career success between ethnicities. The reason policies like
| affirmative action or gutting gifted education are
| discrimination to me, is that students from certain backgrounds
| are being punished for their cultural and behavioral
| differences. For example, most Asian cultures emphasize a focus
| on hard work, academic success, respect for your elders, etc.
| Anyone who has spent any time in the American schooling system
| knows that Asian students have remarkably different behavioral
| patterns from white or black American students. They make
| choices that lead to their success, and now they're being
| discriminated against by those claiming there are "too many"
| successful Asians. A similar argument can be constructed for
| other groups.
|
| 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.co
| m/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....
| ipnon wrote:
| The 30% of black and Hispanic students who were already in
| Boston's gifted program by virtue of their intelligence are
| now also going to be discriminated against in order to pack
| the advanced classes with their less intelligent peers. This
| will push the black and Hispanic students already qualified
| for the program out.
| 762236 wrote:
| I'm sold on gifted education.
| softwaredoug wrote:
| I'm not sold.
|
| 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.
| stonesweep wrote:
| I was lucky to test into the gifted program in high school
| in the mid-late 80s in poor rural US nowhere, it worked
| exactly like that - kids demonstrate ability to get
| selected (not race/status), as the resources were _very_
| slim. It allowed me to use /learn the TRS-80/3 and Apple
| ][e and make a career in tech - there is absolute value in
| these programs for the kids as an anecdotal story from one
| of them decades later. ;)
| tomp wrote:
| Why would there be more investments in the "gifted"
| program? In its simplest form, it's the exact same
| classroom, exact same teacher, just different stuff being
| taught - less repetition, less simple exercises,
| progressing faster through concepts, learning harder stuff.
|
| I think my life would be very different if I was challenged
| more in school.
| gedy wrote:
| I think the trope is it "takes money away" from the other
| students.
| toast0 wrote:
| I think there may be some truth to that, I think some
| gifted programs pay the teachers a bit extra.
|
| 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)
| sokoloff wrote:
| I strongly suspect that per-student spending is heavily
| biased towards special education programs at the not
| highest-achievement end of the spectrum.
|
| 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.
| bko wrote:
| I think its more about segmenting based on aptitude and
| interest. The gifted classes consist of children that can
| move at a quicker pace with less distraction. I don't think
| its about giving more resources to that set of children,
| but be able to alter the curriculum to challenge them more.
| sgeisenh wrote:
| Different students have different needs. It doesn't make
| sense to provide the same experience to every student.
| Homogenizing the experience is a disservice to _all_
| students, not just the gifted.
| rendall wrote:
| > _" It can at least sound like a statement the school will
| invest more in some kids than others."_
|
| Which side of the bell curve do you think gets more
| investment dollars? Left or right?
| Anon1096 wrote:
| >It can at least sound like a statement the school will
| invest more in some kids than others.
|
| 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?
| dragonwriter wrote:
| Gifted class don't just "support those who excel", they
| support those _who perform poorly and disrupt the class
| because they are not engaged because the mainstream
| coursework is targeted well below their capacity_.
|
| 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.
| MisterBastahrd wrote:
| Because those kids who are below average will suck up way
| more state and federal money in the long run if left to
| their own devices than anyone will benefit because Gifted
| Greg got to take Linear Algebra in high school.
| jasode wrote:
| _> Probably the solution is to have high standards for all
| students and classes they all can participate in._
|
| 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.
| OldHand2018 wrote:
| It's no surprise that parents and teachers would not
| support "AP Calculus" as a standard, as it is run by the
| College Board with no oversight. The school has to pay
| for each child enrolled and pay again if the child
| doesn't take the exam at the end of the class, the exams
| are graded but offer zero feedback to the teacher or
| student.
|
| 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?
| ntsplnkv2 wrote:
| I'm not sold on gifted education, but I am sold on providing
| advanced classes for students who are further along.
|
| 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."
| MisterBastahrd wrote:
| I'm not. There were approximately 30ish "gifted" students in
| my graduating class. By that, I mean they were identified as
| gifted early on and attended gifted classes until middle
| school when there were other minor accelerated learning
| classes (like taking Algebra a year early).
|
| 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.
| chickenfries wrote:
| I was with you initially, but after thinking about it could be
| argued that creating classes that are overwhelmingly white in
| an overwhelmingly non white district are something approaching
| segregation. In the end, all that is being done to the
| "advanced" students is that they're being offered the same
| education that their peers are getting. Resources spent on the
| advanced learning program could have been spent on offering a
| better quality of education for the entire school. I'm
| sympathetic to both sides of this issue but I don't find it
| simple.
| dragonwriter wrote:
| > Resources spent on the advanced learning program could have
| been spent on
|
| 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."
| rayiner wrote:
| It's not segregation because the school doesn't place
| students in these classes based on their skin color.
|
| 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.
| dragonwriter wrote:
| > It's irrational to lump them together with whites in the
| "advantaged" group.
|
| 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.
| rayiner wrote:
| In the paragraph you're quoting, I'm talking about what
| you call transitory economic status above. The point is
| that if you're trying to address that, it makes no sense
| to lump poor Asian kids in NYC together with wealthy
| white kids. Or to treat poor white or Asian kids
| differently than poor Black or Latino kids.
|
| 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.
| superflit wrote:
| _" 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."_
|
| 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.
| ntsplnkv2 wrote:
| Black americans have been around longer than Italian
| Americans have been, and they're still "integrating?" I
| don't buy that at all.
| [deleted]
| vulcan01 wrote:
| > In the end, all that is being done to the "advanced"
| students is that they're being offered the same education
| that their peers are getting.
|
| 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.
| seankimdesign wrote:
| Did you miss that part of the article or have you
| intentionally excluded the presence of Asian students in your
| reply because it makes your argument stick better? I don't
| think it meets the definition of segregation when a subset of
| multiple groups are given special treatment due to their
| aptitude on topics that are inherently race-agnostic. Yes,
| those with money and power can better educate their kids
| compared to the poor, but so can those without money who
| simply value education higher (speaking as a 1.5 gen
| immigrant who grew up extremely poor). Why are we always the
| first ones to be penalized in the name of racial equality?
| StanislavPetrov wrote:
| >Resources spent on the advanced learning program could have
| been spent on offering a better quality of education for the
| entire school.
|
| 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.
| axaxs wrote:
| I can only speak for myself, and my experience as a rather low
| income kid in the public school system.
|
| 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.
| dfadsadsf wrote:
| The biggest fallacy is that gifted students would attend regular
| public school classes if gifted program is unavailable. In
| reality students with wealthy parents will transfer to private
| school, middle class will move to suburbs and few students with
| poor parents (disproportionally people of color) will stay in
| shitty regular school. Only last group prospects and education
| will be damaged long term and overall numbers involved is not
| really enough to have material positive influence on overall
| level of students in Boston public school.
|
| "My kids are dumb. I do not want other parents kids to get ahead
| only because they are smart"
| bob33212 wrote:
| What do you tell a poor black gifted student? "Sorry friend, no
| gifted classes for you the gifted classes were making the
| administration look bad. That is more important than your
| accademic career."
| A12-B wrote:
| Why do you assume this is about making the school look bad,
| and not that there might be some serious issue if
| black/hispanic people are not performing as well as others.
| They are launching an investigation into the matter, not
| removing the advanced classes. Did you misread the word
| 'suspend'?
| NikolaeVarius wrote:
| Goddamn, its weird how its so common to just insult vast swaths
| of people, under the guise of helping them. I went to one of
| those shitty city regular public schools and I managed to test
| into honor schools for Jr High
| burnthrow wrote:
| > few students with poor parents (disproportionally people of
| color) will stay in shitty regular school.
|
| 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.
| akhilcacharya wrote:
| I'm skeptical that many people care to do a drastic
| intervention like this. I was in AG but if I wasn't I would
| have gone to the same school.
|
| (If it matters, I grew up Asian.)
| loveistheanswer wrote:
| Is this not simply an attempt to cover up their own failure?
| dabbledash wrote:
| I guess enrollment in public schools will continue to drop after
| 2020, which will not be great for equity.
| asdfasgasdgasdg wrote:
| As a parent of white and asian children, this type of thing does
| cause visceral concern for me. Are public programs that benefit
| my children going to be cancelled because they tend to include
| disproportionately more children from our group than other
| groups? Will I be forced to go private to get the teaching I need
| for my children?
|
| 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.
| ttt0 wrote:
| > Are public programs that benefit my children going to be
| cancelled because they tend to include disproportionately more
| children from our group than other groups? Will I be forced to
| go private to get the teaching I need for my children?
|
| Well yes, this is what they mean when they talk about
| "combating privilege".
| turbohz wrote:
| And it's totally fine and fair
| _-david-_ wrote:
| That is exactly what combating privilege is. Instead of
| bringing people up it is about bringing people down.
| asdfasgasdgasdg wrote:
| I think the most efficient and ethical way to combat
| privilege is to spend more resources to bring underprivileged
| people up, rather than taking away resources to bring
| privileged people down. In many respects that is the only
| viable option. For example, kids who have been abused are
| going to need more support to reach the level of achievement
| of kids who live in homes free of abuse. You can't solve this
| by taking away the advantages of the more privileged group
| (i.e. abusing the children who haven't been). You can only
| address this issue by providing more support for victims of
| abuse.
| ttt0 wrote:
| You're free to believe whatever you want and it's really
| none of my business, but what you're saying is just not
| going to happen. It has been tried many times before and
| it's a Herculean task. Way too hard, if not virtually
| impossible and it always ends up like this. If you support
| combating privilege, just be prepared to lose everything.
| It's fine by me, but let's not get disillusioned about what
| it actually means.
| disposekinetics wrote:
| Privilege is like the emperors clothing. Once you reject
| the meta-narrative the hyper-realty crumbles.
| chroem- wrote:
| > I think the most efficient and ethical way to combat
| privilege is to spend more resources to bring
| underprivileged people up
|
| 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?
| asdfasgasdgasdg wrote:
| Students, even in gifted programs, push back on the
| demands that are placed on them. I did too when I was in
| school, and I was in gifted and advanced placement
| programs throughout my schooling. I'm not sure to what
| extent this is specific to privileged or underprivileged
| groups.
| jimbob45 wrote:
| There is nothing a school can spend money on to fix this
| problem.
|
| 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.
| frongpik wrote:
| The funny thing is that if they really tried to combat the
| privilege - the rich families connected to the ruling class -
| the privilege would combat them into the ground, so they
| wisely chose a weak opponent that vaguely resembles the rich
| (common skin color).
| rayiner wrote:
| As a parent of Bangladeshi-Irish children, I'm not delaying
| judgment. Whether or not gifted programs are valuable is
| besides the point. I'd welcome a concrete debate about the
| utility of gifted programs, and whether the benefits are worth
| the resources spent on them.
|
| 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.
| asdfasgasdgasdg wrote:
| I recognize that the terms of the debate might not be what I
| would choose. But I'm more concerned about the practical
| impact on my children than the ideological content of the
| debate. If the gifted programs are not actually having a
| causal positive impact on my children, I don't care so much
| if they are cancelled, no matter why they are cancelled. I am
| less interested in the ideology of the two sides of the
| debate, although I respect that other people feel differently
| and I don't wish to foreclose on other people arguing that
| aspect of things.
| rayiner wrote:
| Ideology drives policy, and this won't be the only policy
| decision made based on ideology. Virginia recently
| eliminated the admissions test in the science/tech magnet
| high school I attended because the school had too many
| Asian kids:
| https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/education/thomas-
| jeffer....
|
| 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.
| csomar wrote:
| If ideological and at the whim debates are determining
| outcomes in a school, organization or a company; it's time
| to move.
| asdfasgasdgasdg wrote:
| No place exists where this isn't happening to some extent
| or another. Where are you going to move to? No place I'd
| want to be is free from other human beings.
| hirundo wrote:
| This issue is an artifact of a factory assembly line system that
| educates pupils on each subject in lock step. Their solution to
| different needs and paces is to split into a slow, normal and
| fast track. We can do a lot better.
|
| 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.
| [deleted]
| jasode wrote:
| _> A district analysis of the program found that more than 70
| percent of students enrolled in the program were white and Asian,
| even though nearly 80 percent of all Boston public school
| students are Hispanic and Black.
|
| >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...
| the_only_law wrote:
| I can't speak to Boston particularly, but I have never seen a
| gifted program based any art of IQ test or proxy. In fact, I am
| almost sure that a vast number of people I knew in gifted
| programs, including myself wouldn't have scored particularity
| high on an IQ test. In fact I distinctly recall one gifted
| student asking me if their ASVAB score (commonly claimed by HN
| users and other to be correlated with IQ) of 20 was good.
| jasode wrote:
| _> I can't speak to Boston particularly, but I have never
| seen a gifted program based any art of IQ test or proxy._
|
| 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.b
| ostonpublicschools.org/cms/lib07/ma01906464/cen...
| the_only_law wrote:
| Interesting, I grew up in Georgia and was constantly in and
| out of gifted classes from elementary school through high
| school. The process was very similar except there were
| basically no tests involved. In high school I was bumped to
| a gifted class randomly in the middle of the year without
| any additional processes.
|
| I suppose it's possible that that could have changed since
| I was in school, but it wasn't that long ago either.
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