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Why Asian-Americans feel powerless in New York’s elite high schools

newyorker.com

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Re: Why Asian-Americans feel powerless in New York’s elite high schools

#71

Post by squiggleblaz »

swsieber wrote: post #31
confiscate wrote: post #24

Test scores are race-blind and fair. Test instructors do not give more scores to a test because they see it was completed by an Asian test-taker. It's great that schools are looking for a better "mix" of ethnicities in the incoming class, but they should encourage the underrepresented ethnicities to do better, in tests or other race-blind admission standards. They should not put an admission "cap" based on the color…

This. The end of the pipeline is not the correct place to change pipeline demographics, and in cases like this, is actually harmful.

But where is the right place to change pipeline demographics? The problem is that certain groups are intergenerationally poor. One mechanism that is available to us to fix that is education. So this isn't the end of the pipeline, it's just the start of the next pipe. Where do you propose we intervene? Should we give a cushy job to the parents of every disadvantaged minority person as soon as they're born? Maybe we should give an education to the parents of every disadvantaged minority person before they're even the apple in the eye of said parents?

Re: Why Asian-Americans feel powerless in New York’s elite high schools

#72

Post by zeth___ »

justinpombrio wrote: post #22
zeth___ wrote: post #5

This is an very good example of why 'people of color' is red herring no one believes. Asians, both yellow and brown, are out performing whites. Blacks are under performing everyone and 'latinos' are doing either ok or pretty badly, depending on if you split them according to skin color. The issue in America has been and still is why are blacks doing so poorly? Dressing it up as anything else does no one any favors.

> The issue in America has been and still is why are blacks doing so poorly? If nothing else, enormous income differences? See the top graph here: https://www.financialsamurai.com/income-by-race-why-is-asian... It's hard to educate yourself well if your family is poor, I hear.

>It's hard to educate yourself well if your family is poor, I hear.

Have a look at the incomes of immigrants to the US: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_ethnic_groups_in_the_U...

The top 20: Ethnic Group Income in US Home country GDP PPP Ratio

Indian American $110026 $7,174.00 15.3367716754948

Taiwanese American $90221 $49,827.00 1.81068496999619

Filipino American $88745 $8,229.00 10.7844209502977

Australian American $81452 $49,882.00 1.63289362896436

Israeli American $79736 $36,250.00 2.19961379310345

Russian American $77349 $27,890.00 2.77335962710649

Greek American $77342 $27,776.00 2.78449020737327

Lebanese American $74757 $19,486.00 3.83644667966745

Sri Lankan American $73856 $13,001.00 5.68079378509346

Croatian American $73196 $24,095.00 3.03780867399875

Latvian American $72690 $27,291.00 2.66351544465208

Lithuanian American $72605 $31,935.00 2.27352434632848

Austrian American $72478 $49,247.00 1.47172416593904

Iranian American $72345 $20,030.00 3.61183225162257

Slovene American $72272 $34,063.00 2.121715644541

Swiss American $71418 $61,360.00 1.16391786179922

Bulgarian American $71331 $21,578.00 3.30572805635369

Romanian American $71230 $23,991.00 2.96903005293652

Scandinavian American $71190 $70,590.00 1.00849978750531

Italian American $70726 $37,970.00 1.86268106399789

How do you explain the differences in income when you have some groups earning 15 and 10 times (!!!) what they did before emigrating and others between 2 to 5? These people were poor, not just "I can't afford an iphone poor", "I can't afford antibiotics for my children" poor, yet are now the richest ethnic groups in the US, out earning local Americans by 40-100%.

Re: Why Asian-Americans feel powerless in New York’s elite high schools

#73

Post by dqpb »

Reactionary_ wrote: post #26

1. I believe black and hispanic students could do just as well as asian students if their cultures were similar to that of the asian students. Let's not kid ourselves. The asian students doing well on these tests are born into cultures that value academic achievement more than the average black or hispanic family. There's nothing inherently different about the different groups aside from their cultures. Keep the test…

Best comment in this thread!

Re: Why Asian-Americans feel powerless in New York’s elite high schools

#74

Post by httpz »

We can argue what is "fair" all we want but what policy makers really care about is votes not "fairness". "fairness" is a moving definition that is associated with the political climate.

Not that we should completely give up on fairness and let political power decide everything but I feel a bit exhausted reading these arguments going in circles for years..

Re: Why Asian-Americans feel powerless in New York’s elite high schools

#75

Post by lostdog »

swsieber wrote: post #31
confiscate wrote: post #24

Test scores are race-blind and fair. Test instructors do not give more scores to a test because they see it was completed by an Asian test-taker. It's great that schools are looking for a better "mix" of ethnicities in the incoming class, but they should encourage the underrepresented ethnicities to do better, in tests or other race-blind admission standards. They should not put an admission "cap" based on the color…

This. The end of the pipeline is not the correct place to change pipeline demographics, and in cases like this, is actually harmful.

Stuyvesant is a high school, so it's in the middle of the pipeline and not at the end.

Re: Why Asian-Americans feel powerless in New York’s elite high schools

#76

Post by dmurray »

mindvirus wrote: post #3

I wonder how de Blasio's proposal would lead to different patterns of where people live in the city - it seems that to play this game (and it sounds like many parents are very motivated to), it makes sense to send your kids to an underperforming school.

Yes. I expect the author's mother would seek out school districts with the lowest test scores (perhaps the lowest population of Asian-Americans) and send her daughter there instead. So if what the policy makers really want is to equally distribute Asian immigrants among the city's middle schools, perhaps they've hit on the policy that will do that.

Re: Why Asian-Americans feel powerless in New York’s elite high schools

#77

Post by desu_ »

wb36 wrote: post #10

Instead of debating the criteria for entrance into these elite schools, why not look at what makes them such great schools and replicate that elsewhere? Sure, in so far as being surrounded by top students who study all the time improves the environment, the current elite is likely to remain the elite and the admissions criteria should still be discussed. But if the gap between the quality of those schools and the oth…

The value of a good education lies in its signalling power too.

There are plenty of good professors in non-elite schools, many undergrad classes are approachable enough that a self-motivated student could absorb a lot of content with little supervision, and a lot of schools make their material available through online platforms. All these are great for learning but replicating the signaling part is more difficult.

Re: Why Asian-Americans feel powerless in New York’s elite high schools

#78

Post by zeth___ »

keepper wrote: post #65

So lets say you have a really big balancing scale[1].... And there's a chute that's been feeding twice as much sand to one side, for hundreds of years.... What do you do to balance it? a) Distribute sand equally to each side b) Distribute substantially more sand to one side c) Make like the imbalance did not happen and ignore it. If the answer is obvious to the above, then why is leveling the field for historically d…

Yes, we should punish children for the sins of their fathers.

Especially the immigrants, who had nothing to do with any of it.

Re: Why Asian-Americans feel powerless in New York’s elite high schools

#79

Post by whiddershins »

wb36 wrote: post #10

Instead of debating the criteria for entrance into these elite schools, why not look at what makes them such great schools and replicate that elsewhere? Sure, in so far as being surrounded by top students who study all the time improves the environment, the current elite is likely to remain the elite and the admissions criteria should still be discussed. But if the gap between the quality of those schools and the oth…

Nyc is full of amazing public high schools, as I mentioned in another comment. Moreover you can apply to virtually any public high school in NYC and be admitted based on whatever criteria they set up, meaning you aren’t forced in that case to go to your zoned (regional) school.

These articles misrepresent the situation. There are only three schools that use this test, and they often get the “I studied really hard but I was bad at homework and class participation” student. Luckily there is a mechanism (for now) to catch some of the potential of these students.

Re: Why Asian-Americans feel powerless in New York’s elite high schools

#80

Post by guard0g »

zeth___ wrote: post #72
justinpombrio wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The issue in America has been and still is why are blacks doing so poorly? If nothing else, enormous income differences? See the top graph here: https://www.financialsamurai.com/income-by-race-why-is-asian... It's hard to educate yourself well if your family is poor, I hear.

>It's hard to educate yourself well if your family is poor, I hear. Have a look at the incomes of immigrants to the US: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_ethnic_groups_in_the_U... The top 20: Ethnic Group Income in US Home country GDP PPP Ratio Indian American $110026 $7,174.00 15.3367716754948 Taiwanese American $90221 $49,827.00 1.81068496999619 Filipino American $88745 $8,229.00 10.7844209502977 Australian Ame…

It's called hard work, persistence, and grit. It's called postponing video game or stick ball time to focus on studies, not hanging out at the mall or Friday night football games. You don't have to be wealthy to wait for marshmellows.
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