3 ms·

A Progressive Assault on Selective High Schools

13 points by georgecmu 6y ago

ajsnigrutin 6y ago
The paywall hid the second part of the article... but, if the exams are the same for all, and graded the same, and top X students get accepted, just by looking at exam scores, any demographic irregularities are to be blamed on previous education of students with bad scores, and not the selective school, which only accepts the best students.
nobody9999 6y ago
As someone who attended one of the schools mentioned (in the non-paywalled portion of the article), it's absolutely true that there were (when I attended, and as I understand it, continues to be) few black and hispanic students. Which is certainly not representative of the locality. That said, it seems to me that the problem isn't that the schools are selective (via a standardized test). In fact, that's kind of the point of such schools. Do we just put everyone in honors classes at every school? No. Why not? Obviously that's discriminatory right? Of course not. There are a variety of reasons why fewer black and hispanic kids end up in these schools. They include, but are not limited to: 1. Schools in poorer areas have fewer resources; 2. Schools in poorer areas are less likely to groom kids for more selective high schools; 3. Schools in poorer areas tend to be dumping grounds for less effective teachers; 4. Poorer families have fewer resources to spend on expensive prep courses/tutoring; 5. Schools in poorer areas tend to have less parental involvement and less pressure to improve teaching and the level of expectation for students -- leading to a fewer kids in those schools being encouraged to even attempt to go to more selective high schools; There are many other reasons as well. The solution, to my mind, is to improve the quality of education, level of expectation, resources to prepare for the entry examinations and encouragement from teachers and school staff to strive for such outcomes. Better teachers would be a good idea as well. Improving the performance of all students should be the goal, with a side benefit of more students being accepted to to more selective schools. IMHO, there is absolutely an ethnic/socioeconomic bias issue here. However, that issue lies in the quality of elementary and middle school education, not the selectivity of selective high schools.
- wahern 6y ago
  > Do we just put everyone in honors classes at every school? No. Why not? Obviously that's discriminatory right? Of course not. At least in San Francisco there is a movement to remove options like honors classes, and it stems from the same basic, ill-conceived premises. And regarding your list of reasons for poor performance, at least in San Francisco none of them really apply. They don't apply because they've each been systematically addressed, and addressed quite well, yet the huge performance gap remains. At the end of the day, the most significant factors by a huge margin involve home environment, particularly parental involvement and expectations, and you can't address those very well with school policies. And while clearly a major issue there is economic, it's not just economics. I remember visiting Singapore and seeing young, elementary school-age children from families in public housing hanging out in groups at McDonald's doing homework at 8PM. No parental supervision at all, and doubtless some of their parents--both of them--were working 12+ hour days, anyhow. American kids of any ethnicity, rich or poor, aren't going to do that, but it goes to show that there's also a significant cultural component as well. And simply mixing socioeconomic classes in school won't fix that because in American culture the middle- and upper-classes hide their educational norms. They hide them because studying isn't cool. So all poor kids see are the results, not the process. As someone who grew up without those norms it was very confusing to me. I never understood why kids who never seemed to study got such great grades, but as an adult I know why--it's because they were more-or-less studying secretly. (Some of them were trading notes secretly, and even cheating secretly, but it's the same basic point--it's an invisible system that poor kids can't adopt by osmosis and modeling, which is the basic premise behind these movements.)
  - esyir 6y ago
    It seems to me that the fundamental issue here is that Americans as a whole don't value education. The upper and middle classes might, but the lower classes and the younger segments of the population
    - wahern 6y ago
      Absolutely. Conservative objections to many of these programs are almost like a self-fulfilling prophecy--they fail precisely because as a society Americans don't value education. This is more true today than ever as poor and working-class American culture has become, at least superficially, the dominate culture. That culture values immediacy, not only in pleasure but far more consequentially in the fruits of labor.
7174n6 6y ago
Admitting students that are not prepared for the coursework and academic rigor of these schools is only setting them up for more failure. Forcing schools to admit students based purely on the color of their skin is not the answer. Providing these students a better base education - pre K through 8th grade - is the answer.
- wahern 6y ago
  The fundamental aim isn't to thrust low performing kids into high performing classes and schools. It's to keep the high performing kids from self-sorting and segregating themselves from the other kids on the theory that 1) high performing kids will model better habits for lower performing kids and 2) minimize concentration of at-risk kids. #1 is fundamentally misguided, for reasons I explain elsethread. There's alot of truth to #2, but these movements are occurring in school districts where social policy has done about all it can to prevent concentration of at-risk kids, and short of marching high performing kids (poor and rich) at gun point into underperforming schools, there's not much more that can realistically be done. Families can and will send their kids to private school, even poor families. Parochial schools in these cities are brimming with students, including students from poor families.
fuzzfactor 6y ago
Can't read the whole article, but I could say a lot about this from many perspectives. This is a regressive assault on top scholars, attempting to nip them in the bud. For a young teenager who has ambition and progressive achievement which could carry them through graduate school, there should be one high school in each major district which is selective plainly on academics. That's how much of a head start it really takes. The vast majority of mainstream students are not going to be going to graduate school or any equivalent level, and do not need as much concentration on the most competitive academic approach. If a brilliant student does not pass admission at that young age because of lingering disadvantage, this is exactly what needs to be overcome but a more traditional way still seems more sensible to me. If accelerated learning or tutoring over following semesters can bring them up to speed, that is what is needed so the high academic achievement can be met without a doubt. Then they can transfer to an opening at the most challenging school and pick up the track toward post-graduate efforts themself, and graduate from that recognized high school at the same age as if they got in the first semester. If the recognition from that school is so strong, it would even be impressive to come from behind and graduate a year older than your middle school classmates, if that's all it took to come from badly disadvantaged to recognized young scholar. Something like they used to do before they invented public school. It's real life, and some places are outstanding because they don't let just anybody in. And these are the kind of colleges these kids need to be prepared for. It's only fair.

13 points by georgecmu 6y ago

The paywall hid the second part of the article... but, if the exams are the same for all, and graded the same, and top X students get accepted, just by looking at exam scores, any demographic irregularities are to be blamed on previous education of students with bad scores, and not the selective school, which only accepts the best students.

nobody9999 6y ago

As someone who attended one of the schools mentioned (in the non-paywalled portion of the article), it's absolutely true that there were (when I attended, and as I understand it, continues to be) few black and hispanic students. Which is certainly not representative of the locality. That said, it seems to me that the problem isn't that the schools are selective (via a standardized test). In fact, that's kind of the point of such schools. Do we just put everyone in honors classes at every school? No. Why not? Obviously that's discriminatory right? Of course not. There are a variety of reasons why fewer black and hispanic kids end up in these schools. They include, but are not limited to: 1. Schools in poorer areas have fewer resources; 2. Schools in poorer areas are less likely to groom kids for more selective high schools; 3. Schools in poorer areas tend to be dumping grounds for less effective teachers; 4. Poorer families have fewer resources to spend on expensive prep courses/tutoring; 5. Schools in poorer areas tend to have less parental involvement and less pressure to improve teaching and the level of expectation for students -- leading to a fewer kids in those schools being encouraged to even attempt to go to more selective high schools; There are many other reasons as well. The solution, to my mind, is to improve the quality of education, level of expectation, resources to prepare for the entry examinations and encouragement from teachers and school staff to strive for such outcomes. Better teachers would be a good idea as well. Improving the performance of all students should be the goal, with a side benefit of more students being accepted to to more selective schools. IMHO, there is absolutely an ethnic/socioeconomic bias issue here. However, that issue lies in the quality of elementary and middle school education, not the selectivity of selective high schools.

wahern 6y ago
> Do we just put everyone in honors classes at every school? No. Why not? Obviously that's discriminatory right? Of course not. At least in San Francisco there is a movement to remove options like honors classes, and it stems from the same basic, ill-conceived premises. And regarding your list of reasons for poor performance, at least in San Francisco none of them really apply. They don't apply because they've each been systematically addressed, and addressed quite well, yet the huge performance gap remains. At the end of the day, the most significant factors by a huge margin involve home environment, particularly parental involvement and expectations, and you can't address those very well with school policies. And while clearly a major issue there is economic, it's not just economics. I remember visiting Singapore and seeing young, elementary school-age children from families in public housing hanging out in groups at McDonald's doing homework at 8PM. No parental supervision at all, and doubtless some of their parents--both of them--were working 12+ hour days, anyhow. American kids of any ethnicity, rich or poor, aren't going to do that, but it goes to show that there's also a significant cultural component as well. And simply mixing socioeconomic classes in school won't fix that because in American culture the middle- and upper-classes hide their educational norms. They hide them because studying isn't cool. So all poor kids see are the results, not the process. As someone who grew up without those norms it was very confusing to me. I never understood why kids who never seemed to study got such great grades, but as an adult I know why--it's because they were more-or-less studying secretly. (Some of them were trading notes secretly, and even cheating secretly, but it's the same basic point--it's an invisible system that poor kids can't adopt by osmosis and modeling, which is the basic premise behind these movements.)
- esyir 6y ago
  It seems to me that the fundamental issue here is that Americans as a whole don't value education. The upper and middle classes might, but the lower classes and the younger segments of the population
  - wahern 6y ago
    Absolutely. Conservative objections to many of these programs are almost like a self-fulfilling prophecy--they fail precisely because as a society Americans don't value education. This is more true today than ever as poor and working-class American culture has become, at least superficially, the dominate culture. That culture values immediacy, not only in pleasure but far more consequentially in the fruits of labor.

7174n6 6y ago

Admitting students that are not prepared for the coursework and academic rigor of these schools is only setting them up for more failure. Forcing schools to admit students based purely on the color of their skin is not the answer. Providing these students a better base education - pre K through 8th grade - is the answer.

wahern 6y ago
The fundamental aim isn't to thrust low performing kids into high performing classes and schools. It's to keep the high performing kids from self-sorting and segregating themselves from the other kids on the theory that 1) high performing kids will model better habits for lower performing kids and 2) minimize concentration of at-risk kids. #1 is fundamentally misguided, for reasons I explain elsethread. There's alot of truth to #2, but these movements are occurring in school districts where social policy has done about all it can to prevent concentration of at-risk kids, and short of marching high performing kids (poor and rich) at gun point into underperforming schools, there's not much more that can realistically be done. Families can and will send their kids to private school, even poor families. Parochial schools in these cities are brimming with students, including students from poor families.

fuzzfactor 6y ago

Can't read the whole article, but I could say a lot about this from many perspectives. This is a regressive assault on top scholars, attempting to nip them in the bud. For a young teenager who has ambition and progressive achievement which could carry them through graduate school, there should be one high school in each major district which is selective plainly on academics. That's how much of a head start it really takes. The vast majority of mainstream students are not going to be going to graduate school or any equivalent level, and do not need as much concentration on the most competitive academic approach. If a brilliant student does not pass admission at that young age because of lingering disadvantage, this is exactly what needs to be overcome but a more traditional way still seems more sensible to me. If accelerated learning or tutoring over following semesters can bring them up to speed, that is what is needed so the high academic achievement can be met without a doubt. Then they can transfer to an opening at the most challenging school and pick up the track toward post-graduate efforts themself, and graduate from that recognized high school at the same age as if they got in the first semester. If the recognition from that school is so strong, it would even be impressive to come from behind and graduate a year older than your middle school classmates, if that's all it took to come from badly disadvantaged to recognized young scholar. Something like they used to do before they invented public school. It's real life, and some places are outstanding because they don't let just anybody in. And these are the kind of colleges these kids need to be prepared for. It's only fair.