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Boston public schools suspend advanced learning classes

• jbm 6y ago
  > A district analysis of the program found that more than 70 percent of students enrolled in the program were white and Asian, even though nearly 80 percent of all Boston public school students are Hispanic and Black. I'm having a hard time trying to understand what the acceptable outcome they want is. Proportional enrollment based on race? This possibility bothers me, since I never identified myself by race. So would I be lumped into a generic "Asian" category in their statistics based on my skin colour? Why is this the correct form of human categorization?
  • polishdude20 6y ago
    It's not. They're embarrassed that this happened and rather than trying to fix it, they'd rather just quit the program so nobody gets ahead.
    • bob33212 6y ago
      It is a common trick of managers to only measure things that make them look good. Is the number of regressions going up? Remove the isRegression checkbox from your bug tracking system.
    • Zelphyr 6y ago
      Kurt Vonnegut, it seems, saw this coming 60 years ago.
      • lr1970 6y ago
        For those who never read it, here is the link to the archive.org version of the short story HARRISON BERGERON by Kurt Vonnegut [1]. [1] https://archive.org/stream/HarrisonBergeron/Harrison%20Bergeron_djvu.txt https://archive.org/stream/HarrisonBergeron/Harrison%20Berge... EDIT: This is the opening paragraph. It says it all: THE YEAR WAS 2081, and everybody was finally equal. They weren't only equal before God and the law. They were equal every which way. Nobody was smarter than anybody else. Nobody was better looking than anybody else. Nobody was stronger or quicker than anybody else. All this equality was due to the 211th, 212th, and 213th Amendments to the Constitution, and to the unceasing vigilance of agents of the United States Handicapper General.
        • grawprog 6y ago
          Harrison Bergeron's one of those few cases where i actually preferred the movie version to the original story https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harrison_Bergeron_(film) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harrison_Bergeron_(film) I thought the original was a bit over the top a bit ridiculous almost. Bergeron's some kind of god being almost. The movie kept it a little more realistic and was darker i felt.
        • csb6 6y ago
          Every time people talk about the real problem of so-called "gifted" classes containing disproportionately large numbers of white students, this story gets trotted out as an ominous warning of "where this could go". This is the slippery slope fallacy; who is suggesting that we attach bags of lead weights to people who are stronger than average or play loud noises to disrupt the thinking of people smarter than average? No such measures, or anything like them, is proposed in the article. Actually, no measures are proposed at all because the school hasn't decided what to do yet (beyond temporarily suspending gifted classes). So how is this story at all relevant or illuminating to the article, beyond as an exercise in fearmongering?
          • Zelphyr 6y ago
            You can't apply a literal interpretation of the story when no such interpretation was intended by Vonnegut. Of course he never expected actual lead weights would be strapped to people by legal decree. That's not the point. How it relates to the article is the "lead weight" of removing the availability of AP classes from White and Asian students is a severely misguided attempt at making Black and Hispanic students equal, as if they weren't already. It's actually a terribly wrong message to the Black and Hispanic students. It seems to me that a better approach is try to understand the reasons why more Black and Hispanic students aren't enrolling while continuing to provide these classes to any student who qualifies, regardless of race.
  • AnHonestComment 6y ago
    > Proportional enrollment based on race? Yes. “Antiracist” doesn’t mean “not racist”; it’s a Marxist ideology focusing on racial identities and purposeful systemic racism to “balance” the power between racial tribes. It’s extremely racist. Anti-Asian racism will become normalized as long as “antiracism” is part of the Democratic agenda. They’re literally fighting to overturn civil rights laws in CA and WA so the government can discriminate based on race again.
    • sodality2 6y ago
      >They’re literally fighting to overturn civil rights laws in CA and WA so the government can discriminate based on race again. Source? From a reputable location, the only ones I'm finding are sites with headlines like: “If I wanted America to fail” Capitalism Explained George Soros Honest News How Do You Kill 11 Million People? Joe Biden in Five Minutes Lara Logan’s Warning to America Make Mine Freedom Obama Admin Caught Sending Guns to Drug Cartels Rules for Radicals SCOTUS: Government Can Force You to Buy Anything The Iron Lady The Socialist’s Camoflage Trump Admin Accomplishments Vote Fraud What is a Constitutional Moderate? and even Breitbart says Prop 209 prevents race-based affirmative action in state contracts, government jobs, and university admissions
      • bopbeepboop 6y ago
        CA prop 16 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2020_California_Proposition_16 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2020_California_Proposition_16 WA prop 1000 https://www.washingtonpolicy.org/publications/detail/initiative-1000-to-repeal-the-washington-civil-rights-act https://www.washingtonpolicy.org/publications/detail/initiat...
        • sodality2 6y ago
          That second link has a spare "d" after "publications" that broke it, by the way. Thanks for the links
          • 6y ago
  • Kim_Bruning 6y ago
    If you take a random sample from a population, then you'd expect the sample to be representative of the population. All else being equal: if you categorize a population in some arbitrary way, and there's a particular distribution of those categories in that population; you should expect the same distribution in your sample. In this case the distribution in the population was not identical to the distribution in the sample. Clearly something isn't right.
    • deleted 6y ago
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    • deleted 6y ago
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    • rhino369 6y ago
      Why would you expect the sample of gifted children to be representative of the population. By almost every measure Hispanic and Black students fall behind other students. The achievement gap is very well studied. The challenge is fixing the problem, not pretending it doesn’t exit by making white and Asian students educations worse. This is like the Boston PD issuing orders to shoot more unarmed Asians since black and Hispanics are shot more disproportionately.
      • Kim_Bruning 6y ago
        In this case the skew is pretty extreme though. In combination with other indicators, a strong gender/racial skew relative to the underlying population can be a predictor that your program or organization will be in trouble soon. Indeed, it seems to be in trouble at this time: The article states: "Cassellius says interest in the program had declined over several years[...]". So there are clearly more issues. My understanding of the article is that they're going on a one year hiatus to figure out the issues and fix them.
        • rayiner 6y ago
          The populations in these urban school districts are very skewed due to middle class Black and Latino populations migrating to the suburbs: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_flight https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_flight. So the district comprises rich white yuppies, and lower income people of color, often recent immigrants, with little in-between. The school district addressed in Nice White Parents (great podcast) exemplifies this dynamic: https://www.nytimes.com/2020/07/23/podcasts/nice-white-parents-serial.html https://www.nytimes.com/2020/07/23/podcasts/nice-white-paren....
  • kyrieeschaton 6y ago
    Diversity substantively means fewer whites and asians. The goal is a 100% diverse school system.
    • loveistheanswer 6y ago
      So essentially backdoor segregation?
      • ttt0 6y ago
        Yes, in CHAZ they had separate areas for only black people, so they can isolate themselves from whites.
        • grawprog 6y ago
          How in the space of seventy years or so did equal rights go from 'Stop Segregation' to 'Everybody Should be Segregated Based On Race or Other Physical Factors'?
          • colpabar 6y ago
            If the 99% stopped dividing themselves, they'd be unified against the 1%, and the 1% does not want that.
            • loveistheanswer 6y ago
              "Now, what does all of this mean in this great period of history? It means that we've got to stay together. We've got to stay together and maintain unity. You know, whenever Pharaoh wanted to prolong the period of slavery in Egypt, he had a favorite, favorite formula for doing it. What was that? He kept the slaves fighting among themselves. But whenever the slaves get together, something happens in Pharaoh's court, and he cannot hold the slaves in slavery. When the slaves get together, that's the beginning of getting out of slavery. Now let us maintain unity." -MLK, I've Been To The Mountaintop, last speech given the night before assasination https://www.americanrhetoric.com/speeches/mlkivebeentothemountaintop.htm https://www.americanrhetoric.com/speeches/mlkivebeentothemou...
• AnHonestComment 6y ago
  > "There's been a lot of inequities that have been brought to the light in the pandemic that we have to address," Cassellius told GBH News. "There's a lot of work we have to do in the district to be antiracist and have policies where all of our students have a fair shot at an equitable and excellent education." This is how Marxist ideas always go: some groups work harder and succeed more, so we have to suspend the programs that upset central planning statistics. Working to improve the pipeline by rebuilding community and raising education as a family value is verboten because it requires we address uncomfortable truths. It must be racism; it can’t be the fault of the people involved.
• rayiner 6y ago
  > School Committee member Lorna Rivera said at a January meeting that she was disturbed by the findings, noting that nearly 60 percent of fourth graders in the program at the Ohrenberger school in West Roxbury are white even though most third graders enrolled at the school are Black and Hispanic. > "This is just not acceptable," Rivera said at a recent school committee meeting. "I've never heard these statistics before, and I'm very very disturbed by them." I’m not sold on gifted education to begin with. It’s a complicated issue for sure, with pluses and minuses. But suspending gifted education programs expressly based on the racial makeup of the kids in the program is illegal discrimination, plain and simple.
  • threatofrain 6y ago
    > But suspending gifted education programs expressly based on the racial makeup of the kids in the program is illegal discrimination, plain and simple. Just running the program is a legal risk.
    • loveistheanswer 6y ago
      Were the students selected for the advanced program selected based on the color of their skin, or their academic ability?
      • superflit 6y ago
        You can't ask it in 2021. It is wrong think and hate speech. Please go back to re-education camp.
        • snicksnak 6y ago
          No that's essentially the core of the issue. If they were selected based on their race, it's racial discrimination. If the classes were suspended based on the student's race, it's racial discrimination, plain and simple.
          • 6y ago
• dfadsadsf 6y ago
  The biggest fallacy is that gifted students would attend regular public school classes if gifted program is unavailable. In reality students with wealthy parents will transfer to private school, middle class will move to suburbs and few students with poor parents (disproportionally people of color) will stay in shitty regular school. Only last group prospects and education will be damaged long term and overall numbers involved is not really enough to have material positive influence on overall level of students in Boston public school. “My kids are dumb. I do not want other parents kids to get ahead only because they are smart”
  • akhilcacharya 6y ago
    I’m skeptical that many people care to do a drastic intervention like this. I was in AG but if I wasn’t I would have gone to the same school. (If it matters, I grew up Asian.)
  • bob33212 6y ago
    What do you tell a poor black gifted student? "Sorry friend, no gifted classes for you the gifted classes were making the administration look bad. That is more important than your accademic career."
    • A12-B 6y ago
      Why do you assume this is about making the school look bad, and not that there might be some serious issue if black/hispanic people are not performing as well as others. They are launching an investigation into the matter, not removing the advanced classes. Did you misread the word 'suspend'?
  • burnthrow 6y ago
    > few students with poor parents (disproportionally people of color) will stay in shitty regular school. I'm white and this was me. If it weren't for these programs, I'd either be in jail or working retail/fast food. Congratulations on provoking me, I'm going to take a long hiatus from HN now and go build something. I've changed my password to a randomly generated (ephemeral) string on this and my main account; I won't be back to contribute.
• loveistheanswer 6y ago
  Is this not simply an attempt to cover up their own failure?
• dabbledash 6y ago
  I guess enrollment in public schools will continue to drop after 2020, which will not be great for equity.
• asdfasgasdgasdg 6y ago
  As a parent of white and asian children, this type of thing does cause visceral concern for me. Are public programs that benefit my children going to be cancelled because they tend to include disproportionately more children from our group than other groups? Will I be forced to go private to get the teaching I need for my children? At the same time, I also recognize that there is scant evidence that gifted and advanced learning programs are beneficial. Selection bias is extremely hard to control and is the driving factor behind most deltas in education statistics. Are the kids coming out of the program better equipped because of the program? Or were the better equipped kids selected into the program? I'm inclined to guess that typically it's more of the former than the latter. So for now I'm delaying judgment on these moves. We will be watching carefully to see whether the quality of the teaching slips when our gifted programs are cancelled. If that happens, and if I believe we can get better teaching elsewhere, we will go private and it will be fine. But my guess is that the gifted program is really not that important and we will be fine continuing without it.
  • ttt0 6y ago
    > Are public programs that benefit my children going to be cancelled because they tend to include disproportionately more children from our group than other groups? Will I be forced to go private to get the teaching I need for my children? Well yes, this is what they mean when they talk about "combating privilege".
    • turbohz 6y ago
      And it's totally fine and fair
    • asdfasgasdgasdg 6y ago
      I think the most efficient and ethical way to combat privilege is to spend more resources to bring underprivileged people up, rather than taking away resources to bring privileged people down. In many respects that is the only viable option. For example, kids who have been abused are going to need more support to reach the level of achievement of kids who live in homes free of abuse. You can't solve this by taking away the advantages of the more privileged group (i.e. abusing the children who haven't been). You can only address this issue by providing more support for victims of abuse.
• mgamache 6y ago
  "It is the year 2081. Because of Amendments 211, 212, and 213 to the Constitution, every American is fully equal, meaning that no one is stupider, uglier, weaker, or slower than anyone else. The Handicapper General and a team of agents ensure that the laws of equality are enforced." -HARRISON BERGERON (http://www.tnellen.com/cybereng/harrison.html http://www.tnellen.com/cybereng/harrison.html)
  • mcguire 6y ago
    That's a very strange story for Kurt Vonnegut (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kurt_Vonnegut https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kurt_Vonnegut) to have written. https://www.reddit.com/r/literature/comments/12huv9/is_harrison_bergeron_by_kurt_vonnegut_jr_a_direct/c6vkyro https://www.reddit.com/r/literature/comments/12huv9/is_harri...
• mcguire 6y ago
  Ya know, I miss the days when the schools in the wealthier part of town had things like advanced classes and air conditioning, and the rest of us just sucked it up and didn't whine. Because we gaddamn knew our places.
• fasteddie31003 6y ago
  I'm all for equality but I'm not for enforcing equity of outcome. If there are any structural inequalities, tear them down. Everyone should have an equal shot a life. But this unfortunate does not mean everyone is going to have an equal outcome in abilities. Some people are just better at things than others.
• A12-B 6y ago
  This headline will receive a lot of backlash from the anti-woke crowd, but it's a pretty fair assessment in substance. They identified a glaring issue, that most kids in the advanced classes are white and asian, despite the district being mostly black and hispanic, and are trying to find solutions to that. Of course, traditionally the solution has been to claim that blacks are just inferior to whites and nothing should be done, and then flail your arms about while crying that the school has been taken over by the woke. I prefer the former.
  • tinyhouse 6y ago
    But it doesn't solve anything. Parents will send their kids somewhere else. They might move to a suburb or go to a private school.
    • sodality2 6y ago
      And the poor parents will have their kids stay there, not getting the advanced education they need.
  • loveistheanswer 6y ago
    >Of course, traditionally the solution has been to claim that blacks are just inferior to whites and nothing should be done Isn't that the implication of such a move? An elementary school is abdicating their responsibility to effectively educate black and hispanic students to advanced levels. Why would they do that unless they thought they were inferior and beyond educating? These "educators" would do well to study the life works of Booker T. Washington and Frederick Douglass.
• tinyhouse 6y ago
  I live in the Boston suburbs. Not a single person at my work or social circle have kids in the Boston public schools. In fact no one even lives in Boston (because of schools of course). This would actually have the opposite effect on the Boston public schools if you ask me. Private schools in the Boston area are booming because of Corona. Actions like this will continue the trend unfortunately.
  • hshshs2 6y ago
    right boston’s segregation has moved from inner city to metro area
• crispyambulance 6y ago
  The intention is kind, but there's no better way to force _every_ remaining parent who can afford it to send their kids to private schools (or move to the 'burbs) and increase the inequality even more. There was an interesting podcast series that took on the disparity issue in some detail when a neighborhood public school in NYC got effectively taken over by parents who could no longer find slots for their kids in the "good" schools: "Nice White Parents" [https://www.nytimes.com/2020/07/23/podcasts/nice-white-parents-serial.html https://www.nytimes.com/2020/07/23/podcasts/nice-white-paren...]. It's an uncomfortable thing to approach no matter how you look at it. But the solution, if there even is one, is for parents to take a much deeper role in how schools are operated and funded. For the wealthy, that will simply mean private school, period. For those that can't do that but who still care about their kids education, it going to mean A LOT MORE involvement in public schools.
• wobblyasp 6y ago
  I suppose its a question of resource distribution. Should you spend your resources to nurture your best and brightest, or spend it to bring everyone up. Given its public money, I suppose the latter is more desirable?
  • deathanatos 6y ago
    I attended an advanced school as a student. We really didn't have any more resources than the non-advanced schools. It was simply a different, more advanced curriculum taught to those who both qualified (via test score) and were lucky (it was rationed via lottery). But we still had the same bad teacher:student ratio, the same ancient textbooks, a building in a terrible location, the bare minimum for athletics, etc.
• superflit 6y ago
  People are different and they have different aptitudes. There is some thinking that if we don't have ALL categories/jobs/promotions with the same population proportion it is because "systemic racism". I am still waiting for at least 53% of NBA be white. And 50% of nurse school be male. Please have to desire and aptitude to do different things. You can see it on your own family with siblings. Same "genetics" but very different aptitudes and skills. Feels like a dictatorship where we should have quotas for each profession and team.
  • lotu 6y ago
    I think nurses are an excellent example of systemic racism/sexism. Being a nurse used to be seen as an exclusively male profession. Given that it is pretty clear it is a cultural rather than innate association. How we handle this is really complicated and requires a lot more thought than “lets do nothing, it must be natural this is way”.
    • superflit 6y ago
      "Given that it is pretty clear it is a cultural rather than innate association" No it is not. See the most progressive countries and still the difference is large. “lets do nothing, it must be natural this is way” Sometimes it is. and that is ok. I don't want to be Quantum Physics or in a Medical Profession. That is ok.
  • the_only_law 6y ago
    I’ve seen scholarships/tuition discounts to men who go into nursing programs.
  • charlesu 6y ago
    >People are different and they have different aptitudes. There is some thinking that if we don't have ALL categories/jobs/promotions with the same population proportion it is because "systemic racism". >I am still waiting for at least 53% of NBA be white. People are in fact different and have different aptitudes, but there's no reason to believe that those differences cut across racial lines. When you see wildly different racial/socioeconomic/gender representation in a field, you should look at it more closely. Consider basketball. It's predominantly black today, but it wasn't always so. Basketball was at one point more closely associated with Jewish people than blacks people. In fact, not long ago, people called basketball a Jewish sport [1]. And here's a fun fact: the first non-white NBA player was Asian [2]. There was a point in history where Jews and Asians were better represented in basketball than black people. So why is the NBA 80%+ black today? Let's look at outside factors. During the Great Migration, blacks moved to from southern towns to northern cities and transitioned from a largely rural population to a largely urban one. In a city, basketball is the perfect sport for a poor/working class kid. It doesn't require a field. It doesn't require a lot of equipment. It can be played on pavement. It's easy to pick up but has a high talent ceiling. So if you're a kid in the city who's interested in a sport and you don't have a ton of resources, you're probably going to end up playing basketball for reasons that may have less to do with your natural interests and aptitudes than your situation, environment, and (eventually) societal expectations. This dynamic cuts both ways. Jeremy Lin was one of the best high school players in the country in 2005 but wasn't nearly as a heavily recruited as he should have been based purely on his stats. UCLA wanted him to be a walk on. If he were black, he would have gotten an athletic scholarship and been on magazine covers. I wonder how many other Asian basketball players are underrecruited simply because they're Asian. Whether it's 1 or 1,000, the sport is poorer for it. Sometimes what appears to be the consequence of "different aptitudes" can suggest something systemic instead. That doesn't mean that we should enforce a quota, but it does mean that we shouldn't take differences in representation to be the result of differences in aptitude. >You can see it on your own family with siblings. Same "genetics" but very different aptitudes and skills. I'm not sure that siblings have the "same genetics" or that it's fair to compare differences in populations to differences in individuals. It's obvious that individuals are different due to genetics. It's not obvious that the distribution of those individual differences should differ across racial lines. [1] https://www.jewishbookcouncil.org/book/when-basketball-was-jewish https://www.jewishbookcouncil.org/book/when-basketball-was-j... [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wataru_Misaka https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wataru_Misaka
• spoonjim 6y ago
  Clearly black children are not achieving at the rate that white children are, but that’s no reason to suspend the gifted program. Yes, the white kids are getting more academic and overall support at home, and this can only be fixed by getting all of the kids this kind of support, not by kneecapping the white children (who are not super privileged or they wouldn’t be in Boston Public Schools to begin with). Ridiculous policies like this are why we sold our house in the city and left for a $2 million house in the suburbs, where the price of admission means that every kid has lots of support at home, depleting the city schools of one more kid and dragging them down even further. Arguably the overall societal gains are higher from turning a future accountant into a future scientist than improving the 25th percentile student’s outcome anyways.
  • mcguire 6y ago
    Is it that "black children are not achieving at the rate that white children are", or is it that black and hispanic children are not being placed in the program in the numbers they should be? Did you in fact move because you didn't like to be reminded of your inferiors? Are you conflating wealth and whiteness with intelligence and worth?
  • jurassic 6y ago
    This is the first comment I’ve seen that is in touch with the reality of Boston Public Schools. The Boston public system was destroyed by forced integration that caused people with financial means to withdraw and move to the suburbs and/or put their children into private school. The racist motives for the initial split may have faded, but the legacy of that public/private split continues in a way that is self-reinforcing. No matter how woke you are now, nobody who can afford to do otherwise wants to send their kid to a public school that is failing based on every available measure.
    • spoonjim 6y ago
      Almost every major American city has the same story of a stripped city core where even as young professionals gentrify the real estate in the area they don’t do the same to the schools by sending their kids to private school. A family will live in a neighborhood with a gang reputation (eg San Francisco’s Mission or Viz Valley) before they send their kids to a bad school.
• aphextron 6y ago
  This is a really hard subject. I can remember growing up as the only black kid in an all white class of kids in elementary school, and all of my friends made it into the "advanced" cohort. I knew I was just as bright as any of them, and that given a chance I would thrive there too. But for whatever reason I didn't make the cut, and this removed me from my peer group for the rest of my school years. They grew apart and I ended up mostly friendless. I don't think race really had a lot to do with it. But if you're going to separate kids, at least have a whole other school to send them to, rather than creating a distinct hierarchy among the classes. I think that really messes with kids' self esteem.
  • sodality2 6y ago
    In my advanced program, they would ship us to a nearby elementary school, and the advanced students there would be sent to our school (same district, same grade level, just 10 minutes down the road), I can only assume it's for the same reason you mentioned...
  • hycaria 6y ago
    How was admission determined ?
    • deleted 6y ago
      [deleted]
    • TheAdamAndChe 6y ago
      My gifted program was determined by GPA, reading level, and the desire to be put in a gifted program. All three were needed for placement.
• jeofken 6y ago
  If you believe knowledge of this world can be gained from evidence, and that when evidence shows something, that should be believed over ideology or dogma, what should you then believe about race and intelligence, and about equality? Intelligence appears to be mostly genetic (see the Wikipedia page “heritability of IQ”). There are many maps online showing average IQ in different countries, which hints at races having different intelligence. This hints at ideas of equality of outcome between people of different ethnicity being a thing this world will not see. In nature, I don’t believe there are any examples of equality between entities, except on the level of physics or maybe chemistry. No two entities are equal. This would imply that to get equality, the only way is to push down the groups that most often reach top achievements - to design a society that is anti-white, anti-Asian, and anti-male. I once met a girl with a poignant tattoo: “free men are not equal - equal men are not free”. I look forward to the intelligent HN community enlightening me on this subject
  • ttt0 6y ago
    The oppression and equality narrative seems to be like the Christian Gospel - the absolute truth. Everything that contradicts it, even science, must be false. The article below, while technically not wrong, go as far as to undermine the most robust abstraction we've ever came up with, math itself, to deny the IQ. https://www.popularmechanics.com/science/math/a33547137/why-some-people-think-2-plus-2-equals-5/ https://www.popularmechanics.com/science/math/a33547137/why-...
• jl2718 6y ago
  Tracking started because struggling students need more help, and the best thing for them is to get the advanced students out of the classroom. So fine, don’t have advanced classes, send those kids to play outside, whatever. But this is pure ideological self-harm.
• snicksnak 6y ago
  Let's just keep everybody equally uneducated.
• deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
• salamanderman 6y ago
  "A district analysis of the program found that more than 70 percent of students enrolled in the program were white and Asian, even though nearly 80 percent of all Boston public school students are Hispanic and Black." "The program was open to all students in the Boston Public Schools who took a test known as Terra Nova in the third grade and received a high score." "Last fall, 453 students received invitations, 143 students applied and 116 enrolled this year, officials said." "Cassellius says interest in the program had declined over several years and only five schools currently offered the program" So, in summary, about ~25% of invited students enroll in the program, i.e. parents aren't interested in their kids taking this program, it's dying out anyway, undoubtedly costs money, and those that are interested in the program are vastly, disproportionately white and asian. I think bringing up racism might be a bit inflammatory. I think it's safer to say, though, that the program isn't desirable to anyone, and particularly undesirable to minorities. And yes, they should have an enrichment program that people find worth taking.
• hirundo 6y ago
  This issue is an artifact of a factory assembly line system that educates pupils on each subject in lock step. Their solution to different needs and paces is to split into a slow, normal and fast track. We can do a lot better. With modern wealth and info tech we can abandon that for most academic subjects, and let each child learn at their own pace, on their own laptop, touchpad, etc. Not an assembly line but a collection of artisans. It doesn't matter if a genius is sitting next to a plodder if the whole class isn't expected to be on the same page. Part of the problem is that the teacher is expected to be knowledgeable on the subject, which is fine. But now we can geographically separate the subject expert from the classroom manager. Teacher can't teach a fourth grader calculus? No problem, here are a list of online teachers who can give personal help, along with canned videos, etc. We'll get closer to equal protection under the law by treating every child as unequal in the classroom. If you teach to the mean you poorly serve the long tails on either end. The single greatest skill you can learn in class is autodidactics. Learning that should be at the center of the school experience. Self-paced learning of a predefined curriculum is a large step toward that. And a return toward the standard practice of pre-industrial one-room schools.
  • deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
• swalsh 6y ago
  I have a son enrolled in boston public schools. I live in a gentrifying part of town. When I go to the prarent meetings the principal (who is an absoutely AMAZING women easily putting in 80 hour weeks) had to fight tooth and nail for funds to add a social worker to the school. The range of incomes between students is HUGE. There are a lot of parents struggling to pay rent, and definatley don't have the ability to invest in their childs education outside school the way I've been fortunate enough to. We put about $8k into a fund to help these parents... but it's not even close to enough. Honestly, if you want to improve outcomes, maybe we should look into helping struggling families pay rent, and become more stable.
  • losvedir 6y ago
    When my wife and I got our foster care license I was astounded by how many resources our state puts towards foster kids after they're put into the foster system: hundreds of dollars a month to the foster parent, life coaches, psychologists, tutors, birthday and Christmas allowances, great medical care. And the main goal is reunification with their family. Meanwhile, before being put in foster care they and their families get no support! I often think about how broken of a system that is. I feel like if half the foster resources went to the families to begin with, then we could avoid a lot of foster care (parental abuse notwithstanding) in the first place! And it's so traumatic taking kids from their moms.
• deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
• meee 6y ago
  I worked for a county school system in an administrative role. My philosophy is that most of the time smart/students with a supportive home life will do well in most situations. I have a similar opinion about students in the opposite categories doing poorly. There is also a group that stretches across the entire student population (including all ethnicities) where you can move the needle and it is mostly comprised of smart people without a supportive home life and anyone on the bubble in those categories. Also, a pet peeve of mine is when race issues are made out of economic issues. It can be hard for a school system to face the reality that they cannot change the economic situations of the students by feeding them 2 (awful) meals per day and penalizing students that are well off. That said, it may be reasonable to use race as a proxy but it comes with a lot of baggage and some of that baggage is that you are failing a race. I would love to see that they have done some studies and will be using the money from the advanced learning classes to move the needle on a larger group but the article is written as if they are taking punitive measures in an attempt to close the gap. I believe that black and hispanic students are not being served well by the way this school system appears to be approaching the situation. I hope they eventually face some facts. We spent a long time focusing resources on hopeless students and just about as long on students who will succeed regardless of attention. Lets spend some time on those who are reachable and I think we will see blacks and hispanics better represented as a side effect. I believe there are black and hispanic students who are not doing well in school that may develop great ideas and plans for the future due to their education. I want to live in a world shaped by those ideas. The first step is grabbing the low hanging fruit and not casting this as a fight between races. Its so easy to make this a reason to get along that I am suspicious of people who make it a reason to divide people further.
• radiator 6y ago
  This article was posted one hour ago and was in the top page of HN. By now already it is nowhere to be found in the first eight pages! Can someone explain?
  • dang 6y ago
    https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&query=flamewar%20detector&sort=byDate&type=story&type=comment https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...
  • TheAdamAndChe 6y ago
    The number of comments exceeds the number of upvotes. That tends to indicate a flamebait topic. Racial issues and issues involving identity have an above-average likelihood of triggering a flamewar.
  • ttt0 6y ago
    You've probably missed it, it's on the 24. place for me
    • radiator 6y ago
      I had not missed it, but it really is back now.
  • superflit 6y ago
    When the narrative is broken it is flagged to go down. Can't have non normative narratives as in: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26074044 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26074044 Feels like similar.
• clircle 6y ago
  > Cassellius says interest in the program had declined over several years and only five schools currently offered the program... Anyone know why? I find it hard to consider the present controversy without having a more complete picture.
• jdkee 6y ago
  In contrast, here is what Chicago Public Schools are doing: https://www.cps.edu/press-releases/cps-to-increase-access-for-diverse-learners-at-selective-enrollment-high-schools-as-part-of-long-term-high-school-strategy/ https://www.cps.edu/press-releases/cps-to-increase-access-fo...
  • superflit 6y ago
    Now that their schools pupils are majority Black and the asians and White have moved to private schools.
• softwaredoug 6y ago
  This is a complicated issue. Whether intentional or not, one reason/consequence for gifted programs is they help public schools compete to keep upper income people in public schools and away from private options. However, within those schools it can create a very two tracked environment. One group of kids is invested in heavily, the other effectively warehoused. I went to a math and science magnet school. It was placed in a lower performing school. The magnet school had the effect of improving the average performance of the school while actually investing little in the communities that needed the most support. In a way it was a kind of school bussing and I got an exposure to more diversity in high school. OTOH it was clear there were two tracks at the school for the haves and the have nots. Still, what is the alternative? For upper income people public schools exist in a marketplace competing with private schools. It also seems suboptimal to have them abandon the public schools (already happening due to Covid) and segregate themselves further into private schools. In our school system they basically have kept gifted programs but let anyone opt into them. Maybe that’s a good option? I dunno.
  • mrDmrTmrJ 6y ago
    Appreciate your comment. Any thoughts about making the Magnet school program 'the standard' for every kid? As an alternate policy to ending it, as the article describes.
    • analog31 6y ago
      Logistics seems like a potential issue. It might work in a place like NYC where everybody can live within a few minutes of multiple schools, and just ride the subway to school every morning like my mom did in 1940. I live in a mid sized city in the Midwest, and the same concept would translate into 25000 minivans hitting the road every day at the same time in the morning and afternoon. Granted, a lot of parents already drive their kids even just a few blocks to school, but it could be made a lot worse. The day when both of our kids were out of day care and could just walk themselves to school was a huge liberation for my family.
  • sdenton4 6y ago
    The 'Nice White Parents' podcast is a deep dive on exactly these problems, which I thought was excellent. https://www.nytimes.com/2020/07/23/podcasts/nice-white-parents-serial.html https://www.nytimes.com/2020/07/23/podcasts/nice-white-paren... My takeaway was that the kids getting into gifted programs are overwhelmingly the kids whose parents know how to get them into gifted programs, through combination of knowing the system and/or squeaking loud enough that their kids get placed. "Knowing the system" includes knowing that you have to start on applications to multiple schools perhaps a year or more in advance, for example. Kids are slotted into the gifted programs from a very young age, and then tend to accumulate early advantages which carry forward, again with strong advocacy from parents who know the system. As a result, these programs have a lot more to do with extending class privilege than anything else, and class in the US has strong correlations with race.
• jasode 6y ago
  >A district analysis of the program found that more than 70 percent of students enrolled in the program were white and Asian, even though nearly 80 percent of all Boston public school students are Hispanic and Black. >School Committee member Lorna Rivera said at a January meeting that she was disturbed by the findings, noting that nearly 60 percent of fourth graders in the program at the Ohrenberger school in West Roxbury are white even though most third graders enrolled at the school are Black and Hispanic. >"This is just not acceptable," Rivera said What the item the article doesn't spell out explicitly is that many (most?) "gifted" or "enhanced learning programs" participation is based on IQ test scores.[1][2] To be clear, "gifted program" is often a different concept from "magnet school" with extra specialization courses such as music. So not sure what Rivera is saying is unacceptable. Either: a) advanced programs should continue but should not be using IQ tests as the bar for inclusion because intelligence tests underrepresent black students b) misunderstand the gifted programs and doesn't know that IQ tests are involved and thinks the programs are just based on parent requests and teacher recommendations so some human beings are deliberately discriminating black children [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gifted_education https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gifted_education [2] https://www.nber.org/digest/nov15/who-gets-gifted-and-talented-education-programs https://www.nber.org/digest/nov15/who-gets-gifted-and-talent...
  • the_only_law 6y ago
    I can't speak to Boston particularly, but I have never seen a gifted program based any art of IQ test or proxy. In fact, I am almost sure that a vast number of people I knew in gifted programs, including myself wouldn't have scored particularity high on an IQ test. In fact I distinctly recall one gifted student asking me if their ASVAB score (commonly claimed by HN users and other to be correlated with IQ) of 20 was good.
    • jasode 6y ago
      >I can't speak to Boston particularly, but I have never seen a gifted program based any art of IQ test or proxy. In the Florida public schools I was exposed to, a typical way a child would get into a gifted program would be: 1) teacher notices that child is a fast learner or not being challenged enough 2) the teacher and/or guidance counselor asks the parent if they would like the child to be tested for the gifted program 3) a psychologist comes to the school to administer an IQ test 4) the psychologist meets with the parent about the findings and recommends the gifted program Example from Georgia public school webpage mentions the IQ tests that are acceptable: https://www.gadoe.org/Curriculum-Instruction-and-Assessment/Curriculum-and-Instruction/Pages/Gifted-FAQ.aspx https://www.gadoe.org/Curriculum-Instruction-and-Assessment/... Also googling several Massachusetts public schools, I found that several used aptitude (e.g. Weschler aka "IQ test"). Example: https://www.eastlongmeadowma.gov/598/Assessments https://www.eastlongmeadowma.gov/598/Assessments I think the "AWC Advanced Work Class" of this thread's article uses Terra Nova 3 Survey (pdf warning): https://www.bostonpublicschools.org/cms/lib07/ma01906464/centricity/domain/216/awc_sy14_pamphlet_eng.pdf https://www.bostonpublicschools.org/cms/lib07/ma01906464/cen...
• tehwebguy 6y ago
  I’m on HN today because I learned some basic Logowriter & HTML at 8 & 9 years old in 1994 at an a program connected to private & public schools called Academic Resource Center in Tallahassee, FL (it’s no longer around). It was once every week or two and my time there was made up of 2 electives. There were all kinds of science, art & drama classes as well. It was GREAT and it meant that I had access to a computer a few years before we had one in the house and had instructors who could actually guide me many years before I otherwise would have. All of that said, the ticket in was being in the advanced math class. I can see a handful of ways this would be a bad way to gatekeep it. The reason it was so great was that it gave kids an opportunity to find a subject they are interested and then double down with much less strict guidance. No grades, much less serious “school” feel. I would guess that almost everyone needs this, not just kids that can get the hang of / care about math a little quicker.
• indymike 6y ago
  Given the choice to expand an opportunity to more diverse children, the decision was made to bar access to all children? This is really dystopian.
• molbioguy 6y ago
  In addition to "Harrison Bergeron" by Kurt Vonnegut, "The Trees" by Rush comes to mind: Now there's no more oak oppression. For they passed a noble law. And the trees are all kept equal. By hatchet, axe, and saw
• seankimdesign 6y ago
  Another day, another Asian gets the raw end of the stick. "Pull yourself up by your bootstraps" they said. "Reach out and grab that American dream" they also said. So many of us listened and found a tiny slice of success in the academia despite being systematically opposed and ridiculed... and now what? We're somehow treated in the same vein as the 'oppressor' who have been enjoying their undue systematic advantage and our success must now be supressed? We're still heavily underrepresented in Hollywood, most major sports leagues, the government, and practically most forms of leadership - yet we're finding ourselves constantly lumped in there as "whites and asians" when it's convenient for the narrative of racial inequality to construct a heart-wrenching story. Do people not see how backwards it all feels?
  • undefined1 6y ago
    I'm genuinely curious why you're still pushing the oppressor narrative, given that you see how it's being used as a weapon to enforce equality of outcome? instead of equality of opportunity.
    • ttt0 6y ago
      People blamed white supremacy for the recent unprovoked attacks on asians by black perpetrators. Cognitive dissonance became really common on that side of the political spectrum. https://www.wsj.com/articles/white-nationalism-isnt-american-minorities-biggest-problem-11614122930 https://www.wsj.com/articles/white-nationalism-isnt-american... https://archive.md/sa3fA https://archive.md/sa3fA
      • pc86 6y ago
        Correction: Cognitive dissonance becomes really common at any political extreme.
  • recallgavin 6y ago
    and yet they still vote Democrat
  • tomp 6y ago
• john_moscow 6y ago
  It's a symptom of a bigger underlying problem. We no longer have a full circle of smart capable people that would achieve economic success independently, then raise their kids, teach them their ways and let the next generation achieve their own success by starting their own wave of companies. Instead, through low interest rate, overinflated stock market and lack of antitrust oversight, most of our economy is controlled by the corporations. And they don't want an ambitious well-raised kid to get a good education and disrupt their business. They want to import talented and well-educated people from other cultures, so they will fulfill their corporate roles, but will have a poor shot at building enough network locally to start competing for their own market share. And the racial card is played as an argument to keep their kids' ambitions down. As a first-generation immigrant, I find it very disturbing. I worked hard throughout most of my life and it has brought me happiness, and I don't think it's unethical for me to want to help my kids walk the same path. Moreover, I wish more and more parents, regardless of their race, would adopt my approach. But instead of creating additional opportunities for others, the recent activism is all about destroying the opportunities for those who may threaten the corporate hegemony. As for myself, I find it more and more lucrative to move back to Eastern Europe, now that I know how to run a business and don't depend on anyone. I hear a lot of similar sentiment among the Chinese community. I wonder what long-term effect will it have on the U.S. economy.
  • frongpik 6y ago
    That's pretty much the MLK's point about slaves uniting against the pharaoh.
• losvedir 6y ago
  This is Hacker News, so let's talk about this from a software development perspective. This feels like solving a CI failure by just deleting the failing test. If the entrance criteria are bad or biased, then by all means fix them. For example, Stuyvesant, perhaps the best high school in New York, offers free study materials and tutoring sessions, offers entrance exams on the weekends and after hours on weekdays, offers free shuttling to the test sites, and in general tries to make its entrance exam as fair as possible. And indeed, the majority of students there are poor and qualify for free lunch. But then, if the concrete issues that you can identify with the entrance criteria are resolved, but outcomes still aren't what you're looking for, guess what: now you have a great "unit test"! If you're red-green-refactoring your public policy to achieve equity, then surely a fair entrance exam for your advanced schooling is a good failing test. You can now implement other policies to try to see it go green. Maybe you can have free public pre-school, or pregnancy care packages with vitamins and other resources, or who knows what else. And then you can monitor your entrance exams a few years later and see if things are improving.
  • wan23 6y ago
    I think it's useful to present a different software engineering analogy. Getting into Stuyvesant is a lot like getting a job at a FANG company. Much like Stuyvesant, these companies tell you up front that you should practice for the test and provide links to study materials. They tell you that your normal experience of doing well at work/school is not necessarily enough, even if you are very good. The purpose of this entrance filter is not actually to select the smartest people or the most deserving people, but to select the best people - where "best" is on a scale of merit that is combination of being smart, knowing how to play the game, and being willing to dedicate yourself to passing the filter. When you think about this, it's important to note that it is not the case that students who don't get into a top school are all academically worthless, the same way that is true that many good engineers cannot/will not work at FANG.
• simoneau 6y ago
  My oldest child is about to enter the Boston Public school system. Many of my peers think I’m crazy to want to send my kids to public school, but we really value community and equity. I don’t yet know what level of academic achievement my kids will achieve. But my choice what will I have, if the public schools cannot serve their needs. I’ll be forced to join growing trend of abandoning public schools for private and charter schools.
  • seibelj 6y ago
    Also parent of Boston kids. We will start in BPS but if it's bad we will go private school. What choice do we have as parents? Thank god we have money! The correct answer IMO is to give every parent a voucher, and then let the schools compete for students. Would quickly show which public schools are good, and allow poor people to afford private schools. But this opinion apparently makes me some sort of evil person, so what do I know.
• mymythisisthis 6y ago
  I feel that schools should be smaller, 100 kids at most. The teachers should be very specialised. For example in electronics, or music, or biology. Kids can quickly rotate into and out of these specialised schools.
  • throwawaysea 6y ago
    Specialization is one part certainly but we need other changes too. We need a decomposition of schools (many different providers instead of a one stop school for all subjects and activities), greater choice (charter schools, private schools, to challenge public school dominance), and movement away from the one size fits all educational culture imposed by giant monolithic teachers unions like the NEA (who are proponents of such racial “justice” policies). Unfortunately the ideologues who recognize the threat posed by educational choice to a public education system are already gearing up to fight against choice. Elizabeth Bartholet of Harvard for example, has been trying to build academic activist momentum against home schooling, which she describes as “authoritarian” (https://nypost.com/2020/04/23/harvard-professor-wants-to-ban-authoritarian-homeschooling/ https://nypost.com/2020/04/23/harvard-professor-wants-to-ban...). Of course, those against homeschooling don’t see any authoritarianism in schools being weaponized into propaganda machines when activist progressive politics are injected into the curriculums.
    • mymythisisthis 6y ago
      I have nothing against teacher unions, or public schools. I just think that the one size fits all, isn't optimal. One size fits all seems to be a product of the early 1960s, when a large number of schools had to be built quickly to accommodate the boom of new kids born the previous decade. Large, modern, new, schools with good gyms and science labs were viewed as better than one room school houses. I think 60 years latter we are ready to try something new. A diversity of schools. Some large, some small, some very specialized, some retain the current model. Some where a student focuses on one topic throughout their studies, refining their knowledge every year. For example the same science fair project but get better every year, every iteration. Some schools where a student tries as many different things as they want. I believe that there is nothing more motivating than taking an intrinsic interest a student shows and getting the student to spend all their time on it. I also believe that all specialized paths lead to the same general knowledge in math, history, music., etc.
• LatteLazy 6y ago
  Wait "nearly 80 percent of all Boston public school students are Hispanic and Black."? Boston was >50% white last time I visited (admittedly 20 years ago). What's happening here?
  • jurassic 6y ago
    Boston is still very white. But white families with children move to the suburbs with better schools. Or pay for private school.
  • superflit 6y ago
    Growth in diversity.
• deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
• mensetmanusman 6y ago
  It’s a truism that the fastest way to achieve equality is by holding everyone back. I remember when they instituted a policy in our city some years ago for physical education class. The policy was that you were not allowed to lap anyone during running. You can imagine how that looked.
  • undefined1 6y ago
    crab bucket mentality https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crab_mentality https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crab_mentality
• dd_roger 6y ago
  The lack of offering for good students is already a major issue at every step of the education system as it is, closing these classes is a major step backward and "fuck you" to good students (especially with such a lame justification). If you have a rock in place of a brain there's always some program to keep you in the education system but at the other side of the spectrum if you reach the top 10% of students "that's it you won the game" and you're doomed to utter boredome until university. This is enormously demotivating. I was in this situation all the way until university (consistantly achieving the best grade without putting any effort into it) and the lack of mental stimulation took a massive toll on my mental health, especially during high school but also middle school to a lesser extend. Looking back at my scholarity I think it was mostly fine until age ~12 because until then school is mostly a fun daycare to meet friends so it's no big deal if the educational content is low or trivial, but then the next 7 years (which corresponds to middle and high school in my country) could have easily been compressed into 4 as far as I'm concerned. But the possibility to do it simply doesn't exist.
  • yarcob 6y ago
    A program for the gifted is not very useful if it's just a program for white students in practice.
    • endtime 6y ago
      Not useful to whom?
      • yarcob 6y ago
        Not useful for the many gifted students who are not white.
        • iso1210 6y ago
          So isn't the problem that those gifted students aren't being picked up?
        • briefcomment 6y ago
• sul_tasto 6y ago
  I think all this nonsense will continue until the Republicans can get rid of Trump and offer a legitimate conservative response.
• biren34 6y ago
  An interesting thing I see here is that no one seems to be discussing the needs of the kids themselves in all this. It's all about races, politics, ideologies. However, one of the main positive motivations behind gifted/advanced education is that if you put those kids in a class with 30 randomly selected children and force them to move at the pace of the slowest kid in the class, they become so bored they either disengage from education or become problem students. At the same time, if you took the median student and constantly compared them to one of two of the advanced kids, who will look like they "just know everything (since prior work is invisible to the class), that's just disheartening. A priori, I'd say the goal of an idealized education system is to continuously provide learning challenges at the optimal difficulty for each student. Since that's far from possible right now, the very least we can do is bracket kids in 3 categories so they don't drive each other insane. Not having an gifted program is like having wrestling matches without weight classes. It's no fun and no good (for anyone).
  • yarcob 6y ago
    I think the smarter thing to do would be to stop demanding everyone complete the same tasks. Let the quicker students skip the repetitive exercise and give them something challenging. Or let them explain it to the slower kids.
    • superflit 6y ago
      The "challenging" is called advanced learning.
      • yarcob 6y ago
        I meant without first testing them and putting them in separate classes.
        • toast0 6y ago
          I think the challenge is it's pretty difficult to be customizing instruction to 30 different students at wildly different levels. Having some students help instruct others can work, and when it works, I think there's a lot of positives. But, it can also be socially akward, and lead to a lot of negatives (especially outside the classroom). I think there are real issues with equal access to advanced classes, but making it equal by ending the program seems like the wrong thing to do.
• Dumblydorr 6y ago
  If their goal is to be antiracist, is the most effective policy to stop challenging advanced students? Maybe start with how to get minority students to be advanced proportionally, rather than punish those who are already advanced, who are probably disproportionately Asian Americans who are facing a lot of hate crimes and racism this year. Do we propose mixing all groups of people to perfect ratios of societal values? Is it racist to not have proportional representation in any subgroup? For instance, is it racist that Asian Americans are overrepresented in elite schools relative to black or hispanic students? I think the label racist is so overused, that we now have a new term antiracist which basically means "us" vs the "them" of racists. And yet is it truly racism we always are seeing, or is it class, economics, genetics, opportunity, health, stability, and many other things that cause disparity?
  • deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
• charlesu 6y ago
  Getting rid of advanced classes does nothing to solve the real problem: different kids have wildly different resources/home lives and those differences often cut across racial lines. Want to fix large difference in racial makeup between regular and advanced classes? Implement universal pre-K. Give all children free breakfast, lunch, and dinner that's healthy. Give parents $700 per child. Mandate that all homes have safe drinking water free of lead. Put social workers, psychologists, and nurses in schools. Tackle the material circumstances that tend to stifle a child's development and the rest will follow. Canceling classes doesn't do anything for anyone.
  • dragonwriter 6y ago
    > Getting rid of advanced classes does nothing to solve the real problem The people doing it aren't interested in solving the real problem, they are interested in not having to expend effort dealing with political fallout of one particular symptom of the problem, and they are willing to exacerbate the problem if it achieves that goal.
  • autoditype 6y ago
    > different kids have wildly different resources/home lives and those differences cut across racial. One of the largest impacts on a child's outcome is if they have two parents that are involved in their lives, and even more if they are involved in their education. The classroom has little to do with parenting. There's other reasons why kids dont have two parents though.
    • charlesu 6y ago
      Add ending the drug war and socialized medicine that provides for mental health services to the list. Having two parents at home is important, but having a social worker and psychologist can do wonders too. We can't fix everything but we should do all we can to give ever child a fair shot and a fair shot is more than free primary education.
    • rayiner 6y ago
      Married two-parent households is also the biggest advantage Asian kids have, even compared to whites, at every income level. Social liberals sold America a bill of goods by normalizing divorce and single parent households (not just at the individual level, but at scale). And the impact has been the worst in disadvantaged groups that already have so many other things stacked against them: https://www.aei.org/articles/the-power-of-the-two-parent-home-is-not-a-myth/ https://www.aei.org/articles/the-power-of-the-two-parent-hom...
• babesh 6y ago
  They are effectively going to resegregate the school system. The parents of high performing kids that can afford it will move to school systems with advanced learning classes whether public or private.
• andrewclunn 6y ago
  Racial IQ differences are the elephant in the room. Can't make dumber students equal to smart ones. Can't admit to racial patterns in who tends to be which kind if student. Solution? None because the lie of equality must be preserved at all costs.
• sul_tasto 6y ago
  Democrats focus on race because they think it’s the key to holding onto power. Black voters turned Georgia blue. They won’t stop until something changes that calculus.
• gfodor 6y ago
  Public schools are basically just going to become a lower class school system. It didn't have to be this way, and I wish it wasn't (I went to public schools with a year stint in a private one and I highly attribute my time in public schools as shaping the better parts of my character) but the pandemic has made the "school choice" advocates the ultimate winners of the debate given how we set things up with public schools. It turns out, by investing so heavily in a system with centralized power structures and highly correlated disincentives against our children, we ultimately would pay profound costs when those cross-cutting incentives broke against our kids. Private schools have been open to varying degrees, and the kids have not been left behind. Meanwhile, public school kids are permanently scarred many with mental health issues and their educational and developmental growth stunted. It doesn't take a genius parent to look at this and the trajectory and do literally everything possible to prevent their children from entering this system while it implodes.
  • istjohn 6y ago
    Public schools have been a driver of class inequality for decades. With neighborhoods segregated by wealth and schools funded by property taxes, public schools have long only amplified class disparities.
    • mrep 6y ago
      I thought that too but this article [0] with really good graphics shows how the federal and state government give out funding selectively to counteract that such that 47 states actually allocate more per-student funding to poor kids than to nonpoor kids and according to the article, it has been this way since at least 1995. [0]: https://apps.urban.org/features/school-funding-do-poor-kids-get-fair-share/ https://apps.urban.org/features/school-funding-do-poor-kids-...
• Animats 6y ago
  How is the US going to catch up with China if it's unwilling to educate its brightest students? China already has an edge. Average East Asian IQ, 105.
  • danieltillett 6y ago
    It is not. One side is winning the long war and it is not the USA.
• spicymaki 6y ago
  I initially had a knee jerk 'sky is falling' reaction to this article, but I believe the problem is less these "underrepresented minority children can't cut it so we shut the program down" and more COVID-19 has devastated underrepresented minority families and children cannot even hope to enroll in the program. Resources are stretched within these public school systems and perhaps we need to address that for the year.
• fireeyed 6y ago
  I was waiting to see how far the bone headed wokeness will destroy families. This is not the first and wont be the last.
• fireeyed 6y ago
  Obama wanted class warfare and he got it.
• martincmartin 6y ago
  "The elected worthies who sit on its powerful school boards do not pursue objectives [such as learning] so much as balance competing local interests. This is a recipe for risk aversion and inertia or, as MCPS’s wry superintendent, Jack Smith, puts it “not decision-making but mush”." https://www.economist.com/united-states/2021/02/27/time-to-reopen-the-school-gates https://www.economist.com/united-states/2021/02/27/time-to-r...
• deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
• deathanatos 6y ago
  Presumably, the lottery is unbiased in its selections¹. Which means that the same mismatched demographics are occurring in the set of students passing the entrance exam. So it seems to me that the real problem is that the non-advanced classes aren't able to adequately achieve good outcomes for students who aren't white/Asian. Presumably, due to socio-economic disparities that cut across racial lines due to history. But instead of kneecapping the advanced students, why not dedicate more resources to those who are socio-economically disadvantaged, and start fixing the problems that cause them to be underrepresented in the entrance exam? ¹though it'd be nice if the article had researched this, since I can think of socio-economic circumstances that would cause one demographic to accept at higher rates than others.
• tamaharbor 6y ago
  We accept that blacks are better at basketball, why can’t we accept that asians are better at math?
• ab_testing 6y ago
  Does anybody note that all schools and even universities do not count Asians and even South East Asians as minorities. Even though they have a lower percentage of the population as compared to Blacks and Hispanics. This might be anecdotal evidence, but a large number of Asians that I know of are first generation or second generation Asians whose parents ran Asian restaurants or worked in those nail saloons. How are they counted as more privileged as compared to Blacks and Hispanics is beyond me. In fact, as much as I disliked the Trump administration, it was sensible of them to sue to universities in an attempt to shed more light on the admissions criteria and how Asian students with the same scores were not admitted as compared to Black and Hispanic students. Too bad, the Biden administration dropped that lawsuit.
• frongpik 6y ago
  I remember times when the equality rhetoric was about "if we just do blind auditions, the racial disparity in orchestra will go away." That didn't happen and the rhetoric has taken a more aggressive stance: "give all races equal opportunities by quotas and we'll get the desired outcome soon." That didn't work either, the rhetoric has dropped the pretense of justice and has resorted to a simple idea: "white is bad, black is good." It's entertaining to watch how the so called "equality justice seekers" attack white and asian kids because they dared to outperform blacks and hispanics. I can totally see how universities will implement soon the curve fitting so popular in the corporate world: when asian students will be given a "GPA budget" that they can distribute among themselves, and that budget will be "3.0 for everyone or 4.0 for some and 2.5 for others."
  • zozbot234 6y ago
    > I remember times when the equality rhetoric was about "if we just do blind auditions, the racial disparity in orchestra will go away." That didn't happen and ... It wasn't even tried, really - not in the educational context, at least. You can't talk about these educational disparities without noticing the real elephant in the room - the stark differences between mainstream and minority culture, and the obvious problems with the lack of enduring social capital in these undeprivileged minority communities. But somehow, the whole subject of culture has become a dirty word among equality advocates. For some reason, people seem to have fixated on the idea that it all boils down to race and diversity in some way, even though it's hard to see how these could make a difference.
    • Gibbon1 6y ago
      I always feel like the problem is very low grade yet pernicious affinity fraud. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Affinity_fraud https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Affinity_fraud The current cult of meritocracy tends to make things even worse.
  • csb6 6y ago
    > "white is bad, black is good." This is a strawman. Please point me to the place in this article where the superintendent states this. As far as I can tell, the officials quoted are concerned about the lack of diversity in their advanced classes, which are disproportionately white. This is not the same as "white is bad". > I can totally see how universities will implement soon the curve fitting so popular in the corporate world: when asian students will be given a "GPA budget" that they can distribute among themselves, and that budget will be "3.0 for everyone or 4.0 for some and 2.5 for others." This is pure fanciful speculation and has no relevance to this article. The school district has not proposed any such scheme. What evidence supports the claim that such a program will be implemented "soon"?
• zephrx1111 6y ago
  傻逼
• zephrx1111 6y ago
  如果没法识别出足够的”弱势群体“天才，那就认定所有的孩子都不是天才。 我以为这种愚蠢，只可能出现在发展中国家。没想到美国近30年的洗脑教育，在各界都制造出如此多的无法正常思考的脑残官员。 悲哀！
  • Chikers1989 6y ago
    Translation - If it is not possible to identify enough "vulnerable group" geniuses, then it is assumed that all children are not geniuses. I think this kind of stupidity can only occur in developing countries. Unexpectedly, the nearly 30 years of brainwashing education in the United States has produced so many brain-disabled officials from all walks of life who cannot think normally. sorrow!
• zephrx1111 6y ago
  Correct things, no matter you claim them politically correct or not, are correct, for the entire human being, like math. The gift program, boiling to the bottom, is selecting elites for the interest of the country, or entire human being. The mindset of these educators is that education is a benefit, not a journey, granted to some people.
• CryptoPunk 6y ago
  There is a very unscientific dogma underlying this decision: that all inequalities between demographic groups are due to systemic discrimimation.
• deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
• Chikers1989 6y ago
  From the article, "Last fall, 453 students received invitations, 143 students applied and 116 enrolled this year, officials said." Does anyone know the breakdown of the 435 students who received invitations?