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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

#101

Post by UncleMeat »

havetocharge wrote: post #74
johnnyo wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The argument doesn’t stand on the merits. They begin their article with the thesis that the school is “withholding awards” from Asian families. When you read what actually happened, the school gave certificates to all student in mid November. One parent is mad because the school didn’t separately notify the parent separately, and they didn’t do it “fast enough” so their kid could list it on an early college admission…

I did not think that the point of the article is to complain about award withholding from Asian students.. although the attribution of race seems misplaced. I thought the point was about the loss of meritocracy and the redefinition of what it means to fail. And grading work on a 50-100 scale.. you really don't think that's weird?

How is it about the loss of meritocracy if the PSAT didn’t change and the awards didn’t change?

Re: The war on merit takes a bizarre turn

#102

Post by UncleMeat »

throwawaysleep wrote: post #4

This has reached the point of actively disadvantaging kids who are capable…

Actively disadvantaging? Because they didn’t publicly publish the list of merit scholar winners or send emails to parents but instead sent emails to students and handed out letters in homeroom?

The same exact kids were awarded the scholarship. Absolutely nothing about the PSAT or the award changed.

Re: The war on merit takes a bizarre turn

#103

Post by UncleMeat »

renewiltord wrote: post #13

Haha yes, exceptional! Governments have made scholarships and admissions a zero sum game. Ideally, all these public schools do this and those kids get fucked. Then my kids will have a better chance at all of this stuff. You bet you'll see me voting for woke people in the public school district.

In what way did the national merit scholarship become a zero sum game? What changed about it here?

Re: The war on merit takes a bizarre turn

#104

Post by rayiner »

UncleMeat wrote: post #97
rayiner wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Not true. The new system is based on a quota for each middle school feeding into TJ. GPAs and academic standards in each school are completely different. It uses a “holistic review” that includes a “student portrait” and heavily weighs “experience factors.” https://northernvirginiamag.com/family/education/2022/03/30/....

A federal judge in the eastern district of Virginia ruled that getting rid of the admissions test and the new holistic review was expressly motivated by a desire to change the racial balance of the school. The fourth circuit stayed the district court order pending appeal in a 2-1 decision. The Supreme Court upheld the stay, over the dissent of three justices.

Re: The war on merit takes a bizarre turn

#105

Post by rayiner »

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…

> What you say is reasonable and I utterly agree, however just know that this conversation has been weaponized by the right.

That’s a roundabout way of saying “my political opponents are right about this but I’m going to refuse to acknowledge that because I disagree with them about other stuff.”

Also, the opposition to “wokeness” is not “far right.” City Journal is an urban conservative magazine, a group that skews moderate. Many of the writers, like Nomani, were Democrats back when that mainly meant you favored higher taxes and more social services. Opposition to “wokeness” helped Glenn Youngkin win Virginia, a state that voted for Biden by 10 points, and helped DeSantis win a 20 point majority in a state Obama won twice. In states like Florida and Virginia, which turned blue thanks to immigrants under Bill Clinton’s brand of economic liberalism and social conservatism, opposition to “wokeness” simply reflects the democratic party’s shift towards a more socially liberal platform.

As applied to education, “woke” ideas are far left, attacking ideas like color blindness and race neutrality that are widely held by the center, and most minorities themselves.

Re: The war on merit takes a bizarre turn

#106

Post by rayiner »

UncleMeat wrote: post #99
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…

There was always a WASP cultural undercurrent that discouraged openly acknowledging the competition. But I think even those folks agreed that test scores were the proper way to identify the smart kids. The school certainly didn’t shy away from promoting the number of merit scholars and semi finalists it had. Downplaying that is a significant change of course.

Re: The war on merit takes a bizarre turn

#108

Post by vjulian »

bruce511 wrote: post #48
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... )

The logic is straight-forward. Whether it is necessary, correct, or advantageous, depends largely on your circumstances and personal put look. A) historically a number of groups have been disadvantaged. B) this has lead to those groups "falling behind" advantaged groups from a wealth perspective. [side bar - wealth begets wealth, while poverty begets poverty, and while it is possible to rise up it is hard] C) since i…

You skipped a critical step between G and H which seems to be overlaying skin color as an approximation for current social status.

Edit: Though point taken that isn’t the case now with the high school policy. It does seem to be, however, a held sentiment.

Re: The war on merit takes a bizarre turn

#109

Post by salad-fan »

fjord788 wrote: post #83
salad-fan wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I'm making the point the public system has a worse record on the subject. Source? > The second [teacher / student relationships] is at times encouraged by popular culture when the genders are reversed (female teacher / male student) Do you have any evidence of this? I have never ever heard anyone seriously encouraging relationships between adults and minors, or between someone in a position of authority with someon…

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6026962/ > It should be noted that while childhood sexual abuse by Catholic clergy has received extensive media coverage, childhood sexual abuse by teachers and others is also a serious problem. Charol Shakeshaft, who has done extensive research on the problem of sexual abuse of students by teachers, recognizes the difficulty of collecting solid data on sexual abuse; but u…

That proves nothing - Catholic schools are still schools, after all. The point is that the Catholic Church has a systemic child abuse problem that includes, but extends beyond, its schools.

Re: The war on merit takes a bizarre turn

#110

Post by salad-fan »

fjord788 wrote: post #82
salad-fan wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What makes you think Catholic school kids don’t have parents or other relatives? And are you trying to argue that the Catholic Church does not have a history of child molestation? Because the evidence seems pretty overwhelming to me.

> What makes you think Catholic school kids don’t have parents or other relatives? > And are you trying to argue that the Catholic Church does not have a history of child molestation? Work on your reading comprehension instead of hallucinating things no one said.

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