Earlier quoted context omitted.
[flagged]
great, the red-scare boomers have invaded HN. The USSR hasn't existed for half a century you can put your pearls away
"By 2030, you'll own nothing, and be happy about it"
The war on merit takes a bizarre turn
51–60 of 162 posts
Re: The war on merit takes a bizarre turn
#52Earlier 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…
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Re: The war on merit takes a bizarre turn
#53Earlier 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…
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Re: The war on merit takes a bizarre turn
#54[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.
This line in particular made me do a double-take:
> with most TJ students in a protected class of “gifted” students, most of them racial minorities, many with disabilities, and most coming from immigrant families whose parents speak English as a second language.
That is, at best, incredibly misleading, if not outright wrong. The "racial minority" here is Asian, which makes up ~70% of the school population (whereas the school district as a whole is 30% Asian; the population of blacks and Latino are collectively ~4%, whereas the school district is 30%). This aren't disadvantaged poor families--at least some of the Asians come from families specifically moving to the high-cost-of-living area to try to place their kids at TJ, and I suspect a household income of $200k would put you in the bottom socioeconomic half at TJ. Note that none of the students are in ESL classes, and only ~2% are on reduced-price lunches, whereas the school district as a whole skews more like 20% and I think 30% for the latter.
So, in short, the student body at TJ largely isn't comprised of poor people who need every leg up they can get; it's comprised largely of people at the top of the socioeconomic ladder who are already walking on water.
(Disclosure: I did in fact attend this school.)
Re: The war on merit takes a bizarre turn
#55I'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
Re: The war on merit takes a bizarre turn
#56[flagged]
I'd caution you that the greatest trick the devil ever pulled was convincing the world he didn't exist.
Re: The war on merit takes a bizarre turn
#57Earlier 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…
> This article concerns the metrics we use to decide how to advance kids into advanced educational opportunities.
Not to my reading.
I would summarise this as an article about the shortcomings of the National Merit Scholarship Corporation [1], their failure to put sufficient postage on notifications and their offloading of their notifications onto schools.
[1] https://www.nationalmerit.org/s/1758/interior.aspx?sid=1758&...
Re: The war on merit takes a bizarre turn
#58I'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…
I would bet that there has literally never been a school that failed to notify the recipients before now. It is not just an honor for the student, but the school itself. Yes, now, the National Merit organization will probably come up with a direct notification procedure, but it was not a failure on their part to assume that schools would act in their own self-interest.
Except that the article says the school did notify the students. Overall I'm just confused by it.
Re: The war on merit takes a bizarre turn
#59Earlier quoted context omitted.
If that’s what’s going on then it’s a little overblown, IMO. I went to Stuy and I think they just posted the list of National Merit Scholarships on a bulletin board somewhere, and yeah we all gawked to see who got it, but then it was just back to the grind. It’s not like it was some ace-in-hole that could make or break your admission.
Yeah, if you drill down into the actual sources, that appears to be what happened. The school got a stack of certificates. They sat on the principals desk for a while, then they sat with the guidance counselor or homeroom teachers before being passed out. The parent is basically complaining because: 1. They didn’t notify the parents via email. 2. They didn’t find out in time to put in on an college early admission ap…
>1. They didn’t notify the parents via email.
"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."
Re: The war on merit takes a bizarre turn
#60Earlier quoted context omitted.
Yeah, if you drill down into the actual sources, that appears to be what happened. The school got a stack of certificates. They sat on the principals desk for a while, then they sat with the guidance counselor or homeroom teachers before being passed out. The parent is basically complaining because: 1. They didn’t notify the parents via email. 2. They didn’t find out in time to put in on an college early admission ap…
>1. They didn’t notify the parents via email. "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."
Yup, their complaint is that they wanted a separate email to *parents*. Its kind of ridiculously petty when you see what the actual complaint is here.
I have a lot of sympathy for school administrators and school board members. They deal with this sort of stuff from parents all the time.