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The war on merit takes a bizarre turn

city-journal.org

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Re: The war on merit takes a bizarre turn

#91

Post by UncleMeat »

rayiner wrote: post #46
ffssffss wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This 22 second youtube video is the supporting evidence linked by the article for that "equal outcomes for every student" line: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ujpcvIsMZBU So, your guess is as good as mine, because that video certainly is not some kind of school policy position, as the article implies. I'm pretty suspect of the rest of it, since as someone else pointed out, the school actually did notify the students…

I went to TJ and grew up in northern VA. When I was there the announcement was made publicly and distributed to everyone. I’m not sure if we had a school district email account back then but that’s not how it was communicated, nor was it communicated by private letter. Yes this is part of the culture war, but that’s not a reason to dismiss it out of hand. Everyone in this story was a democrat until 2015. Around then…

[flagged]

Re: The war on merit takes a bizarre turn

#92

Post by UncleMeat »

vjulian wrote: post #2

Interesting this school had or has a controversial admissions policy. I also recognize that Harvard’s at the Supreme Court. I genuinely do not understand the logic behind what is essentially skin-color diversity. ( https://www.scotusblog.com/2022/04/court-allows-elite-virgin... )

There is a huge difference between the Harvard policy and the TJ policy. Harvard explicitly considers race. TJ does not. TJ removed some elements of the admissions process and seeks to have students from every school in fcps but does not allocate any admissions points based on race.

Re: The war on merit takes a bizarre turn

#93

Post by UncleMeat »

crystalmeph wrote: post #20
hungryhungryhun wrote: post #16

[flagged]

Is the article wrong on the facts? That is the only thing that matters. Many Hacker News readers are in the same demographic that would be in contention for National Merit honors, so it seems pretty “on brand” for HN.

The conclusions drawn from the facts are the horseshit part.

Re: The war on merit takes a bizarre turn

#94

Post by barry-cotter »

trilbyglens wrote: post #84
rayiner wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That summary ignores all the relevant context. Since the 1980s, TJ has been a highly selective public high school. The average test scores there are comparable to several Ivy League colleges. As is common all over the world, TJ’s admissions process was based on standardized testing and grades. This was completely uncontroversial for decades. The National Merit Scholarship is based on a standardized test called the PS…

You're definitely right, but this conversation gets utterly muddled by the approaches that the right uses. Just click into the home page of that site, and see how every single article is something shitting "wokeness" or diversity. This is the texture of the debate right now in the US. The far right have colonized all theae reasonable positions as sort of gateways into more extreme ideology. What you say is reasonable…

> The far right have colonized all theae reasonable positions as sort of gateways into more extreme ideology.

Gee, what a pity there’s no opposition of note to these positions on the left. Surely there would be many leftists open to loudly condemning these positions and mocking those who hold them mercilessly, publicly.

Re: The war on merit takes a bizarre turn

#95

Post by 1letterunixname »

City Journal is a conservative outlet, and possibly neocon.

I'm wondering if NMSC or College Board (conducts PSAT/NMSQT) notified students directly, would school admins kick NMSC out? I doubt they would be able to resist the leverage if parents went political.

There have already been explicitly racist tests including the NASP from 1964 until 2015.

More racism, cheating, and lying doesn't cure racism, it diminishes faith in public school system and gives ammunition to the pro-private school libertarian types who scapegoat "big gubberment" and don't want to pay any taxes. For what it's worth, California played cute with curricula, race-based admissions, and forced bussing in the 80's and 90's and most of the top students (the rich ones) left for private schools.

I'd be interested to know the demographics of children of that county and of the surrounding areas because I don't think they're 72% Asian or 60% male. Gender is not necessarily a problem given how the current education system fails boys and men. Are the students mostly future lawyers, doctors, and software engineers?

Re: The war on merit takes a bizarre turn

#96

Post by sofixa »

johnnyo wrote: post #55
julianeon wrote: post #14

I'll tell you what my takeaway is: It is incredibly stupid for the National Merit program to leave the decision to notify students up to the schools. In such a situation it is entirely 100% certain that a situation like the one at Thomas Jefferson High School will eventually happen. In fact it's probably happened multiple times already, due to incompetence, which is why it should scrapped. From the article: > On Sept…

You missed the even dumber part > National Merit hadn’t included enough stamps on the package, but nevertheless it got to Bonitatibus by mid-October The parent is basically complaining that the school didn’t drop everything and make handing out certificates to 240 students their top priority. They were handed out to student a few weeks later

You missed the even dumber part:

> One former student said he learned he had won the award through a random email from the school to a school-district email account that students rarely check; the principal neither told his parents nor made a public announcement

So the students were notified by email, which they don't bother checking, and it's only the regular old mail that was slow to get to them (for regular old mail and physical constraints reasons, nothing extraordinary).

Re: The war on merit takes a bizarre turn

#97

Post by UncleMeat »

rayiner wrote: post #49
defrost wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> and I mean, it's from a Federalist byline... Good point. I'm not from or in the US (although I frequently work in or with USAians) and it's just astonishing how much of the US Federalist | Conservative pieces lack any kind of policy substance -- the media from that side of the aisle seems almost entirely focused on raising dust in the air over trite matters of near zero import. I like fiscal responsibility and a lo…

This article concerns the metrics we use to decide how to advance kids into advanced educational opportunities. How is that a “trite matter of near zero import?” I think your view of the conservative reaction may be colored by the fact that you don’t have the other side of this culture war wherever you are in Europe or Asia. To my knowledge, elite high schools in Germany or China aren’t abandoning objective metrics l…

TJ isn’t abandoning objective measures either. The system proposed by the proponents of change (and decried as racist by people like Asra) was a merit lottery where GPA and advanced math enrollment were the only application metrics.

The adopted system, although removing the standardized test, still incorporates grades as an absolutely essential metric.

Re: The war on merit takes a bizarre turn

#98

Post by UncleMeat »

phil21 wrote: post #78
defrost wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> That summary ignores all the relevant context. All that you added was not in the article and therefore not in the summary of the thrust of the article. > The story is thus about a deliberate decision by the administration to downplay a certain kind of educational metric It's about results arriving late and then filtering through what is pretty much a universal hand to hand to students that all school suffer through…

> The fault lies with the National Merit Scholarship Corporation .. who seem to expect others to do their work for them. So why was it not a problem previous years, or with other schools? Sounds like the school decided to "randomly" start playing the whole malicious compliance card to me. I seriously do not understand anyone who supports this stuff. It's mind boggling and will be the end of US dominance, if not the e…

And yet, the right wing consistently attacks academics of nearly every stripe.

TJ kids are already ridiculously high achievers. They don’t need structural systems pushing them that way. Changes like gutting 8th period and further subjugating curricula to the College Board have weakened the school, not strengthened it.

Re: The war on merit takes a bizarre turn

#99

Post by UncleMeat »

rayiner wrote: post #3

As a TJ C/O 2002 graduate, this is pretty wild to hear. The national merit scholar announcements were a big deal when I was there. There was a school wide announcement and the list of what everyone got was distributed by the school. Actually, it looks like the Washington Post used to publish the lists at least as late as 2014. I don’t see anything from WaPo after that though.

I graduated around the same time and never once cared about this crap. TJ didn’t have a valedictorian because it created unnecessary competition and pressure. If the decision to remove the valedictorian was made today you’d see breathless complaining from Asra in the Washington Times about how this was sending the school down the toilet.

In what way is it critical to loudly publish awards handed out to students based on a test they took in 9th grade?

Re: The war on merit takes a bizarre turn

#100

Post by UncleMeat »

causality0 wrote: post #22

Rewarding bad behavior, regardless of its origin, does nothing but encourage more. My best friend growing up was Asian and worked his ass off every single day. I had a lot more fun than he did but he got into a better school and makes better money now because he fucking deserved to .

Bad behavior? The same kids still get the award. TJ isn’t deciding who gets the national merit scholarship.

I personally think that my time hanging out with people watching classic rock concert footage during 8th period was rather valuable for my life and happiness and many of the personal skills I learned are valuable for my career.

This isn’t about deprioritizing excellence.

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