131–140 of 162 posts
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But is skin color an effective, useful, or correct overlay or proxy? What are the downsides? What are the alternatives? Skin color differences in a group = diversity is perplexing to many and offensive to others, nor does it seem to logically stand up to scrutiny.
There are a few ways to look at why schools value diversity. As the other child comment points out, Lebron clearly is more privileged than most white people, but that doesn't mean he hasn't experienced things that no white person has. Certainly some of the diversity push is about giving disadvantaged students an equalizing advantage, but a large part of the push is because schools legitimately believe having differen…
I’m not arguing against diversity nor skin-color prejudice in America, I’m raising the question of how we best define diversity and associated ramifications.
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There are a few ways to look at why schools value diversity. As the other child comment points out, Lebron clearly is more privileged than most white people, but that doesn't mean he hasn't experienced things that no white person has. Certainly some of the diversity push is about giving disadvantaged students an equalizing advantage, but a large part of the push is because schools legitimately believe having differen…
The view that “cultural groups have largely coalesced around race in this country, but that's the reality” is precisely the question. Is that the best and most effective proxy for population segmentation and policy-making? Many would argue that it isn’t. Regardless, what we can say with certainty is that it isn’t evaluated. I’m not arguing against diversity nor skin-color prejudice in America, I’m raising the questio…
In the end it's tough for me to see any good diversity metrics beyond income and race, and it seems to me they are both valid and not necessarily related. If you value diversity you should probably aim to have both economic and racial diversity.
I've also noticed that many of the people claiming that race is a bad diversity metric have minimal experience interacting with different racial groups which leads me to believe it is largely from a place of ignorance or even bad faith.
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Is that what caused you to ignore facts and logic while you increasingly get more emotional? You were hurt when the original commenter said those school have less wokeness. You strongly believe in social justice and concern yourself woke. You don't defend your social wokeness by putting someone else down. If social wokeness is all you think it is then let it standup on its own merits and present discussion around why…
Oh I’m sorry I thought we were having a grown up conversation. Have a nice day.
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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.
This isn’t about deprioritizing excellence. Agreed, it's about giving fifty percent reward for zero percent effort. I think HN readers remember perhaps better than most how much the "peanut gallery" in the back of the class interfered with our ability to learn. I find the idea those assholes are going to get at least half credit for doing nothing absutely repugnant.
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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.
This story has fuck all to do with testing or test scores. The same test was administered. The same rankings were applied.
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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 tes…
And the adopted system does still deeply consider grades, which you claim are being discounted.
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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…
> and never once cared about this crap By any chance, are you privileged enough that you never have to care about such "crap"? Because believe me, what you call "crap" might be a big ladder for someone less privileged to climb out of their actual crappy situations. Such "crap" labels often help getting admission to a good college, or embellishing your resume if you want and need a good job.
“This crap” refers to the publishing of merit scholars on a list, not actual achievement. That’s just achievement porn.
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There is a concrete policy proposal from the right and center: stick with the admissions process TJ has used for decades, based on grades and standardized tests. The same factors used all over the world for this sort of thing. You can call it part of the “culture war,” but so what? Culture matters. Since the 1920s, we have relied on race-blind, objective metrics like standardized testing. It has worked really well, a…