201–210 of 274 posts
Hold back the smart kids because not doing so would be "segregation" and make the others feel bad about themselves. Self-esteem and diversity equality for all. Forget merit, self-confidence, and IEPs because that's racist, sexist, and ableist.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
The thing about racism is, a system can be racist without being explicitly so. Even without Jim Crow laws and segregation, even assuming everyone is perfectly colorblind, the historical context where there were slavery and Jim Crow laws for hundreds of years means that whites wield considerably greater social capital than blacks, and that means they have a significant social advantage. The amelioration for this is eq…
I'm not sure that holding people back in an attempt to boost up others will amount to anything good. If you hold white people back to give black people a chances, the white people are going to hate black people that much more. It's certain to lead to worse issues with racism.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
The real thing about the asians is: There is a whole narrative that people are equal and have same capabilities. Anyone can be a sport start if trains enough or a super scientist if study enough. Then looking at statistics it is not true. The same people with cognitive dissonance claim that because social factors, etc. Usually whites get a better treatment thus because and only because of that they have better repres…
Asians are not genetically more intelligent than other races. If this were the case, Asia would be more of a powerhouse than just the "factory workers of the world". Only a small amount of innovation is coming out of Asia compared to the US. Asians in the US are more motivated to study, it's the culture. It doesn't take a lot of dedication to studying to get a major advantage over those that don't study as hard.
This is a meaningless claim, and also the fact that you are hardly exposed to the innovation that Asia brings to the table, only US. (Note what website you are writing this on)
I am all for supportive programs for really smart kids. FWIW my kids go to NYC public schools. We did not go with gifted and talented because we didn't really like the structure of the program. If the city ends up providing REAL enrichment for gifted kids past 3rd grade it will be a net gain for everyone. It is pretty ridiculous how pervasive test prep is for pre-school age kids to get them into the G&T program.
I know lots of parents who “chose not to go with it” when their kids aren’t selected for gifted and talented. There are many flaws in gifted programs and they aren’t perfect. But they do have advantages like more child autonomy, more allowances for child-directed study, and more encouragement of curiosity. Not all children have academic curiosity and so gifted isn’t a good fit for everyone. But for parents who want t…
BTW - not all public school in NYC is tough. You have to remember the scale of NYC. Within it are insanely great schools, a lot of mediocre schools, and too many horror shows - much like the public school system in any US state.
The inconvenient truth about NYC G&T program is that it is 40% Asian. Asians have dominated the G&T program, even "stealing" spots from white kids where 43% of NYC is white, but only 35% of spots taken by white kids. And Asians are dominating the NYC G&T program NOT because of hundreds of years of systemic racism, NOT because Asians wrote the admissions tests an inbueing cultural bias, and NOT by cheating or bribing…
> in NYC, Asians are the poorest demographic by a large margin. Do you have evidence for this? Asians are by far the richest minority in the US so I was surprised by this statement. > Activists have no problems openly discriminating against Asians because whites, blacks and Latinos think of "Americans" as whites, blacks and Latinos. Asians are considered foreigners. So when a prestigious program is dominated by Asian…
Except the problem isn't with the gifted/talented programs in NYC. And it isn't with the SHSAT[0] either.
The problem is that public elementary and middle schools in majority black/hispanic neighborhoods have measurably much worse educational results.
What's more, those schools don't even consider preparing their students for G/T programs or the specialized high schools.
There are many reasons for this and fixing it is hard. As such, instead of giving minority students a better education, some activists are calling for (and succeeding) removal of gifted/talented programs and getting rid of the SHSAT.
As a product of the NYC public school system, I have no illusions that fixing these problems will be easy.
But removing the G/T programs instead of directing poorly performing schools to bring all their students up to educational levels which allow the best of them (as in every other school) to participate in G/T programs and increase their numbers in the specialized high schools.
IMHO, this is completely ass backwards.
And De Blasio is gone in January, leaving this mess to his successor.
As a NYC resident, I'm glad I don't have kids here.[1]
[0] https://www.schools.nyc.gov/learning/testing/specialized-hig...
[1] I could go on and on about how ridiculous this is, but I am so disgusted with De Blasio and the NYC Department of Education about this stuff that I'll just stop now before this becomes an all out rant.
The inconvenient truth about NYC G&T program is that it is 40% Asian. Asians have dominated the G&T program, even "stealing" spots from white kids where 43% of NYC is white, but only 35% of spots taken by white kids. And Asians are dominating the NYC G&T program NOT because of hundreds of years of systemic racism, NOT because Asians wrote the admissions tests an inbueing cultural bias, and NOT by cheating or bribing…
> Activists have no problems openly discriminating against Asians because whites, blacks and Latinos think of "Americans" as whites, blacks and Latinos. Asians are considered foreigners. I don't think this is true. Asians are being punished because they're successful, and their existence bucks the narrative the blank-slate activists want to push. Sure, as a group they're being punished, but it's not because anyone se…
No. Everyone is being punished, not just Asians.
Ditching G/T programs is going about this completely backwards, and hurts all students regardless of ethnicity or melanin content.
The problem is that schools in poor and minority neighborhoods suck.
Let's fix that problem and the rest will take care of itself.
> But the highly selective and racially segregated program will be replaced for incoming students. Wow, using a word such as segregation, which has connotations of 'by design' sure lays bare their hand. Just to be clear, there is no segregation(of any kind) amongst the students in the program. In fact, there is no segregation at all. There's just not equal representation of the makey-uppy USA racial classifications.…
The context for the use of "racially segregated" is probably within the current anti-racist movement (see, for example, Kendi's work). This movement has moved away from labeling racist a policy that was implemented with racist intent (like segregated schools during Jim Crow) towards labeling racist a policy that has unequal outcomes based on race, regardless of policymakers' intent. If you start from that perspective…
Absolutely. I don't have any reference right now, but numerous studies have shown that schools in poor, minority neighborhoods are significantly worse than other schools.
What can make a big difference is having higher levels of expectation for student performance and backing that up with tools to increase it. But it's pretty clear that many teachers and school administrators in those poorly performing schools don't have those high expectations, nor do they make the effort to encourage those who would benefit from G/T programs and get them into those programs.
When the people who are charged with educating you don't make the effort, then why should the students?
The solution is to make the bad schools better, not destroy the programs that could benefit those students just as much as those from other schools.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Race does not exist genetically. https://sitn.hms.harvard.edu/flash/2017/science-genetics-res...
That's true... but then "racism" cannot exist. So people keep the idea on life support. Maybe culturalism is a better word.
The proper term is bigotry.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
No. They were designed from a lineage of decisions intended to exclude blacks and to include whites. That's not my perspective; that's a historical fact. That's why I referenced a Dept. of Education OCR report, which in turn references National Academies publications and similar sorts of credible references, all predating the current social justice political climate. How decisions made in the eighties and sixties imp…
> Now, I move away from fact to my perspective. I mean, the majority of your prose comes after your description of facts, and details your pet theory on how advantageous Asian culture and parenting is an adequate explanation for the effect sizes we're seeing — that a very poor demographic in NYC would come to fulfill the plurality of NYC's gifted and talented program. And something about how Asians come from 2000 yea…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I think you can , in some (many?) cases. Whether you should or not (or... how you do it) is perhaps the deeper question. My parents were pushed by others around them to get me recognized as gifted/advanced (or whatever the term in the 70s was). Other parents (and my parents' parents) all recognized something different, so my parents went to the school, right before I started kindergarten. They got a reassuring pat on…
I'm glad your school did that. My mom had to fight against my elementary school because they wanted to keep me back a year in kindergarten because I wasn't mature enough. Likely, I was just bored. I went in to school reading and could do basic arithmetic already (even knew some basic multiplication), but they wanted to keep me back. Also happened going into middle school when I tested out of prealgebra (the accelerat…
Not because of that, but... we did move - about 10 miles north, and were in a different school area. It was the same county - but there relatively extensive gifted programs, and I was slipped in in my first week there. Same county, just 'richer' (and... it wasn't 'rich' so much as where we'd been living just 10 miles to the south was on the decline).
I was bored a lot too, even after being pushed ahead. I was bored until... I was behind. Around grade 11, it all fell apart - I had no study discipline, because I'd never had to before, and school/classes became impossible overnight.