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Your assumption is wrong. Even if there is no legacy based admissions, even if every school district in America received proper funding for everything, Black st

Your assumption is wrong. Even if there is no legacy based admissions, even if every school district in America received proper funding for everything, Black students will still have significantly low educational attainment and achievement. It is because the extremely high percentage of Black kids living under single parenthood family [1], and there is no educational / societal intervention can reverse its impact on Black kids' education and many many other aspects in their lifes. [1] https://nces.ed.gov/programs/digest/d16/tables/dt16_102.20.asp https://nces.ed.gov/programs/digest/d16/tables/dt16_102.20.a...

ejstronge 8y ago
> Your assumption is wrong Perhaps... > It is because the extremely high percentage of Black kids living under single parenthood family [1] This is wildly unsourced - what data do you have (ideally across nations/racial categories) for this?
- thatswrong0 8y ago
  Wildly unsourced? The person you're responding has a link right there in their comment with a government source.
  - ejstronge 8y ago
    Where in that link does the case for single-parenting causing poor outcomes get made? Why is pointing to a spreadsheet sufficient evidence for a complex outcome? This and the other sibling comments seem focused on single-parenting and not the rest of the GP argument (which I still maintain is unsupported).
- fipple 8y ago
  This is such a well known fact that calling it unsourced is like calling a claim that the sun rises in the east unsourced. https://datacenter.kidscount.org/data/tables/107-children-in-single-parent-families-by#detailed/1/any/false/870,573,869,36,868,867,133,38,35,18/10,11,9,12,1,185,13/432,431 https://datacenter.kidscount.org/data/tables/107-children-in...
  - monetus 8y ago
    And to make things even worse, they don't have the same electoral potential. Stripping voting rights from felons is incredibly immoral, IMO. http://www.ncsl.org/research/elections-and-campaigns/felon-voting-rights.aspx http://www.ncsl.org/research/elections-and-campaigns/felon-v...
    - fipple 8y ago
      Unequal enforcement of the law is certainly a major problem, but I have no objections to excluding from governance oversight those people who refuse to comply with that governance.
  - dominotw 8y ago
    I know couple of people who are unwed couples but they claim to be single mom and work partime so they get daycare assistance. Not sure how widespread this because that might be inflating the single mother numbers.
  - ejstronge 8y ago
    Nowhere in that link does single-parenting affects educational outcomes.
- deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]
- octopoc 8y ago
  According to the link, 65.3% of black kids live in single parent families vs 34.8% of all kids living in single parent families. This is for America only, which is the context of this story and this thread.
  - sanitizer 8y ago
    Even so, I want this to be a country where single parents can thrive and get the help they need. I think all children are entitled to health care, food, and school. I would add shelter, but that is a tougher nut to crack, and that free food (at school) and free health care for kids are themselves low-hanging fruits when it comes to supporting the children and making an environment where they can thrive.
    - castlecrasher2 8y ago
      > Even so, I want this to be a country where single parents can thrive and get the help they need. Why do you think single parenthood is rising, or that adoption opportunities are drying up? I doubt there has been a time in the history of mankind that is more accepting of single parenthood, or where it's been more possible to raise a child on your own. Women by and large aren't financially obligated to give up their children in this day and age, and with society becoming more secular it's socially more acceptable to be a single parent. Further, what makes you think any institutional policy, or anything at all, can fix single-parent households having worse outcomes than two-parent ones? It's just simple logic: two parents tend to meet children's needs better than one because there are two of them.
      - jessaustin 8y ago
        One suspects that the rise of single parenthood has more to do with the accommodations society is making for single parents (and their lawyers) than with those it makes for their children...
  - BadassFractal 8y ago
    And, interestingly enough, AAs only have 17% of kids in single parent homes, the lowest out of every race.
40acres 8y ago
Great point and I'm glad you brought this up. Like I mentioned, America has many gaping wounds which I believe can be traced back to institutional racism. When talking about the prevalence of black kids raised under single family homes we have to take into account why these kids may be raised that way. Is it a character flaw of black families? I don't think so. I'm black and familial ties run DEEP in almost every family I know: especially those with Southern roots where most of black America still resides. I think the answer to this question can be found in looking at incarnation rates. Right now there are about 1.5 million black men who are "off the grid" because they are locked up in prison[0]. How many of them have kids? How many men who were previously locked up were incarnated while their child was of elementary school age, and could not be there to provide the stability that is so crucial in the first five years of a kids life for them to succeed? Even if they came back into their kids life at 7 or 8 years old they missed out on kindergarten, which many study have shown that kindergarten performances correlates to school performance later in life. 0: https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2015/04/20/upshot/missing-black-men.html https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2015/04/20/upshot/missin...
- themgt 8y ago
  This article/issue is about non-white applicants (Asian Americans) who are being discriminated against in the admissions process. And not just at Harvard but other elite schools, med schools, etc. It's bizarre how many comments here are focusing on traditional white vs. black issues when this is entirely about a non-white group who is being discriminated against under affirmative action because their superior test scores would otherwise leave them hugely overrepresented vs. other groups. Are we supposed to trace back how Asian overperformance is due to a history of institutional racism against whites in the USA? Or is the fact of a non-white group outperforming whites and then being discriminated against so counter to the narrative people want about race and affirmative action that they just go back to talking about Jim Crow? What are these Asian applicants supposed to do, just accept that they are held to higher standards than any other group? If Asians would just stop doing so well on the SAT we wouldn't have to discriminate against them ... Asian incarceration rates are also lower than that of whites, another fact difficult to explain through the prism of institutional white supremacy.
mirajshah 8y ago
I think you need to source the claim "There is no educational / societal intervention that can reverse its impact on Black kids' education" Consider, just as one example, the paper "Are High-Quality Schools Enough to Increase Achievement Among the Poor? Evidence from the Harlem Children’s Zone" (Dobbie and Fryer 2011) https://scholar.harvard.edu/fryer/publications/are-high-quality-schools-enough-increase-achievement-among-poor-evidence-harlem-c https://scholar.harvard.edu/fryer/publications/are-high-qual... Here is the abstract: "Harlem Children’s Zone (HCZ), an ambitious social experiment, combines community programs with charter schools. We provide the first empirical test of the causal impact of HCZ charters on educational outcomes. Both lottery and instrumental variable identification strategies suggest that the effects of attending an HCZ middle school are enough to close the black-white achievement gap in mathematics. The effects in elementary school are large enough to close the racial achievement gap in both mathematics and ELA. We conclude with evidence that suggests high-quality schools are enough to significantly increase academic achievement among the poor. Community programs appear neither necessary nor sufficient."
- educationdata 8y ago
  When I made that claim, I meant at the national /societal level. Of course I didn't mean there is no single successful education experiment. On the contrary, if you search through education literature, you will see countless successful programs, but why don't we see their effects at the societal level? Because it almost never scale. Education program is not something you can duplicate easily, it is almost always extremely localized. In education, it is very difficult for a successful experiment / program to scale vertically (expand to all grade levels) or horizontally (expand to other schools, districts). Also treatment effects are difficult to retain after students left the program, or after the experiment ended. Interestingly, Taleb just made a twitter this morning: "What works on a small scale almost NEVER expands to large scale." https://twitter.com/nntaleb/status/1035121052886728704 https://twitter.com/nntaleb/status/1035121052886728704
scarface74 8y ago
It is because the extremely high percentage of Black kids living under single parenthood family [1], and there is no educational / societal intervention can reverse its impact on Black kids' education and many many other aspects in their lifes. Yes there are two criminal justice and police reform.

ejstronge 8y ago

> Your assumption is wrong Perhaps... > It is because the extremely high percentage of Black kids living under single parenthood family [1] This is wildly unsourced - what data do you have (ideally across nations/racial categories) for this?

thatswrong0 8y ago
Wildly unsourced? The person you're responding has a link right there in their comment with a government source.
- ejstronge 8y ago
  Where in that link does the case for single-parenting causing poor outcomes get made? Why is pointing to a spreadsheet sufficient evidence for a complex outcome? This and the other sibling comments seem focused on single-parenting and not the rest of the GP argument (which I still maintain is unsupported).
fipple 8y ago
This is such a well known fact that calling it unsourced is like calling a claim that the sun rises in the east unsourced. https://datacenter.kidscount.org/data/tables/107-children-in-single-parent-families-by#detailed/1/any/false/870,573,869,36,868,867,133,38,35,18/10,11,9,12,1,185,13/432,431 https://datacenter.kidscount.org/data/tables/107-children-in...
- monetus 8y ago
  And to make things even worse, they don't have the same electoral potential. Stripping voting rights from felons is incredibly immoral, IMO. http://www.ncsl.org/research/elections-and-campaigns/felon-voting-rights.aspx http://www.ncsl.org/research/elections-and-campaigns/felon-v...
  - fipple 8y ago
    Unequal enforcement of the law is certainly a major problem, but I have no objections to excluding from governance oversight those people who refuse to comply with that governance.
- dominotw 8y ago
  I know couple of people who are unwed couples but they claim to be single mom and work partime so they get daycare assistance. Not sure how widespread this because that might be inflating the single mother numbers.
- ejstronge 8y ago
  Nowhere in that link does single-parenting affects educational outcomes.
deleted 8y ago
[deleted]
octopoc 8y ago
According to the link, 65.3% of black kids live in single parent families vs 34.8% of all kids living in single parent families. This is for America only, which is the context of this story and this thread.
- sanitizer 8y ago
  Even so, I want this to be a country where single parents can thrive and get the help they need. I think all children are entitled to health care, food, and school. I would add shelter, but that is a tougher nut to crack, and that free food (at school) and free health care for kids are themselves low-hanging fruits when it comes to supporting the children and making an environment where they can thrive.
  - castlecrasher2 8y ago
    > Even so, I want this to be a country where single parents can thrive and get the help they need. Why do you think single parenthood is rising, or that adoption opportunities are drying up? I doubt there has been a time in the history of mankind that is more accepting of single parenthood, or where it's been more possible to raise a child on your own. Women by and large aren't financially obligated to give up their children in this day and age, and with society becoming more secular it's socially more acceptable to be a single parent. Further, what makes you think any institutional policy, or anything at all, can fix single-parent households having worse outcomes than two-parent ones? It's just simple logic: two parents tend to meet children's needs better than one because there are two of them.
    - jessaustin 8y ago
      One suspects that the rise of single parenthood has more to do with the accommodations society is making for single parents (and their lawyers) than with those it makes for their children...
- BadassFractal 8y ago
  And, interestingly enough, AAs only have 17% of kids in single parent homes, the lowest out of every race.

40acres 8y ago

Great point and I'm glad you brought this up. Like I mentioned, America has many gaping wounds which I believe can be traced back to institutional racism. When talking about the prevalence of black kids raised under single family homes we have to take into account why these kids may be raised that way. Is it a character flaw of black families? I don't think so. I'm black and familial ties run DEEP in almost every family I know: especially those with Southern roots where most of black America still resides. I think the answer to this question can be found in looking at incarnation rates. Right now there are about 1.5 million black men who are "off the grid" because they are locked up in prison[0]. How many of them have kids? How many men who were previously locked up were incarnated while their child was of elementary school age, and could not be there to provide the stability that is so crucial in the first five years of a kids life for them to succeed? Even if they came back into their kids life at 7 or 8 years old they missed out on kindergarten, which many study have shown that kindergarten performances correlates to school performance later in life. 0: https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2015/04/20/upshot/missing-black-men.html https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2015/04/20/upshot/missin...

themgt 8y ago
This article/issue is about non-white applicants (Asian Americans) who are being discriminated against in the admissions process. And not just at Harvard but other elite schools, med schools, etc. It's bizarre how many comments here are focusing on traditional white vs. black issues when this is entirely about a non-white group who is being discriminated against under affirmative action because their superior test scores would otherwise leave them hugely overrepresented vs. other groups. Are we supposed to trace back how Asian overperformance is due to a history of institutional racism against whites in the USA? Or is the fact of a non-white group outperforming whites and then being discriminated against so counter to the narrative people want about race and affirmative action that they just go back to talking about Jim Crow? What are these Asian applicants supposed to do, just accept that they are held to higher standards than any other group? If Asians would just stop doing so well on the SAT we wouldn't have to discriminate against them ... Asian incarceration rates are also lower than that of whites, another fact difficult to explain through the prism of institutional white supremacy.

mirajshah 8y ago

I think you need to source the claim "There is no educational / societal intervention that can reverse its impact on Black kids' education" Consider, just as one example, the paper "Are High-Quality Schools Enough to Increase Achievement Among the Poor? Evidence from the Harlem Children’s Zone" (Dobbie and Fryer 2011) https://scholar.harvard.edu/fryer/publications/are-high-quality-schools-enough-increase-achievement-among-poor-evidence-harlem-c https://scholar.harvard.edu/fryer/publications/are-high-qual... Here is the abstract: "Harlem Children’s Zone (HCZ), an ambitious social experiment, combines community programs with charter schools. We provide the first empirical test of the causal impact of HCZ charters on educational outcomes. Both lottery and instrumental variable identification strategies suggest that the effects of attending an HCZ middle school are enough to close the black-white achievement gap in mathematics. The effects in elementary school are large enough to close the racial achievement gap in both mathematics and ELA. We conclude with evidence that suggests high-quality schools are enough to significantly increase academic achievement among the poor. Community programs appear neither necessary nor sufficient."

educationdata 8y ago
When I made that claim, I meant at the national /societal level. Of course I didn't mean there is no single successful education experiment. On the contrary, if you search through education literature, you will see countless successful programs, but why don't we see their effects at the societal level? Because it almost never scale. Education program is not something you can duplicate easily, it is almost always extremely localized. In education, it is very difficult for a successful experiment / program to scale vertically (expand to all grade levels) or horizontally (expand to other schools, districts). Also treatment effects are difficult to retain after students left the program, or after the experiment ended. Interestingly, Taleb just made a twitter this morning: "What works on a small scale almost NEVER expands to large scale." https://twitter.com/nntaleb/status/1035121052886728704 https://twitter.com/nntaleb/status/1035121052886728704

scarface74 8y ago

It is because the extremely high percentage of Black kids living under single parenthood family [1], and there is no educational / societal intervention can reverse its impact on Black kids' education and many many other aspects in their lifes. Yes there are two criminal justice and police reform.