4 ms·

> Activists have no problems openly discriminating against Asians because whites, blacks and Latinos think of "Americans" as whites, blacks and Latinos. Asians

by seneca 5y ago

> Activists have no problems openly discriminating against Asians because whites, blacks and Latinos think of "Americans" as whites, blacks and Latinos. Asians are considered foreigners. I don't think this is true. Asians are being punished because they're successful, and their existence bucks the narrative the blank-slate activists want to push. Sure, as a group they're being punished, but it's not because anyone sees them as exceptionally foreign. It's just because the top has to be brought down in order to achieve equality of outcomes and the fanatics pushing these things don't care who they harm to achieve their goals.

nobody9999 5y ago
>I don't think this is true. Asians are being punished because they're successful, and their existence bucks the narrative the blank-slate activists want to push. No. Everyone is being punished, not just Asians. Ditching G/T programs is going about this completely backwards, and hurts all students regardless of ethnicity or melanin content. The problem is that schools in poor and minority neighborhoods suck. Let's fix that problem and the rest will take care of itself.
- toomuchtodo 5y ago
  Part of the problem is, as you mention, the schools. But the other, much harder part of the problem, is the homes. If your parents aren’t engaged in parenting and you come from poverty, you are at a disadvantage that in no way can be fixed by the time you spend at your school each day. You’re treading water at best. If you want poor kids to do better, you have to improve their home life. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2528798/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2528798/
  - nobody9999 5y ago
    >Part of the problem is, as you mention, the schools. But the other, much harder part of the problem, is the homes. If your parents aren’t engaged in parenting and you come from poverty, you are at a disadvantage that in no way can be fixed by the time you spend at your school each day. You’re treading water at best. A fair point. Although I came to the conclusion when I was in school that while the impact of your home life is important, providing a positive initial experience with school and having high expectations for scholastic performance can do a lot to improve educational outcomes. Perhaps even enough impact to counteract the lack of parental involvement/motivation for education for some.
  - savanaly 5y ago
    I think even more important than home is peer groups. Research I read about in The Nurture Assumption [0] convinced me that much more important than home life (home life being called "shared environment" I believe because in a twin study it's the thing most shared by two non-biologically related siblings) is peer environment. If your friends all think that learning isn't cool and tend to do drugs or whatever, children will follow in that path, and parenting affects that very little despite our intuitions. How to solve the peer group problem? As far as I know it's extremely difficult, even more than reforming home life. You can split up peer groups and distribute their members into peer groups with different mindsets and they will generally conform, but the ratio has to be quite steep towards the peer group you're integrating into. I don't know what the number but I would guess something like 15 to 1. There's definitely not enough middle and upper class classrooms to go around to house all kids from more troubled areas under my stated assumptions. But perhaps the process could be incremental? [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Nurture_Assumption https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Nurture_Assumption
- dragonwriter 5y ago
  > Everyone is being punished, not just Asians. No, everyone is being helped, not just Blacks and Hispanics. Even most White and Asian students who would benefit from accelerated study in one or more areas are excluded by NYC’s current program. > Ditching G/T programs is going about this completely backwards No, its not. Ditching accelerated student-specific programs would be, but this plan vastly expands such programs, putting them in every kindergarten classroom, available to every student, rather than less than 10% of schools, available based on all-or-nothing test to four year olds. > and hurts all students regardless of ethnicity or melanin content How does making student-specific accelerated content with teachers trained in delivering it in every kindergarten classroom, and added experienced teachers in disadvantaged communities, rather than accelerated material made available to a small minority hurt everyone? > The problem is that schools in poor and minority neighborhoods suck. > Let's fix that problem That’s...exactly the idea.
  - darthvoldemort 5y ago
    You know nothing about teaching and education if you think this is going to help. It's going to hurt even more. The reason why you group children with similar learning abilities together is so that they can progress together. If you stick advanced kids with less advanced kids, both sets of kids will suffer because the advanced kids will be extremely bored and the less advanced kids will get discouraged because the advanced kids are so much better than them. It goes against the fundamentals of education.
    - dragonwriter 5y ago
      > You know nothing about teaching and education That is incorrect. > The reason why you group children with similar learning abilities together is so that they can progress together. Yes, that's the thinking that justified tracking. Among the problems with segregated G&T programs, however, is that G&T-identified and non-G&T students are not, within each group, “of similar learning abilities”; Both have wide variation within groups, and individuals very often aren’t in the same relative position within their group in different specific subject areas. As much as tracking would make (simple, binary) varying ability fit into the industrial assembly-line model of education, it doesn't work well with real people in the real world (it works very slightly better than the industrial assembly-line model without tracking, and when that was the norm, it was an improvement.) But what works significantly better (though it takes more work) is to provide baseline curriculum with supplementation to individuals (in small groups of similar ability in the subject, where possible) based on ability. Which is what this proposes training all (initially) kindergarten teachers in, and hiring additional teachers in particular areas of need, in place of a high-stakes tracking exam for four-year olds. Its what has proven better than binary tracking in many places. (And it is, incidentally, what decided my family’s choice of schools for my son, who is now in kindergarten.) It’s not the 1980s any more. Education has moved forward. Whether NYC will execute this well is, of course, up in the air. But that what it has identified is what has been widely used and proven better than binary tracking already, for the students that would be tracked into G&T, for the students that would not, for racial and socioeconomic class equity, and in basically every other conceivable manner is not up in the air.

by seneca 5y ago

nobody9999 5y ago

>I don't think this is true. Asians are being punished because they're successful, and their existence bucks the narrative the blank-slate activists want to push. No. Everyone is being punished, not just Asians. Ditching G/T programs is going about this completely backwards, and hurts all students regardless of ethnicity or melanin content. The problem is that schools in poor and minority neighborhoods suck. Let's fix that problem and the rest will take care of itself.

toomuchtodo 5y ago
Part of the problem is, as you mention, the schools. But the other, much harder part of the problem, is the homes. If your parents aren’t engaged in parenting and you come from poverty, you are at a disadvantage that in no way can be fixed by the time you spend at your school each day. You’re treading water at best. If you want poor kids to do better, you have to improve their home life. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2528798/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2528798/
- nobody9999 5y ago
  >Part of the problem is, as you mention, the schools. But the other, much harder part of the problem, is the homes. If your parents aren’t engaged in parenting and you come from poverty, you are at a disadvantage that in no way can be fixed by the time you spend at your school each day. You’re treading water at best. A fair point. Although I came to the conclusion when I was in school that while the impact of your home life is important, providing a positive initial experience with school and having high expectations for scholastic performance can do a lot to improve educational outcomes. Perhaps even enough impact to counteract the lack of parental involvement/motivation for education for some.
- savanaly 5y ago
  I think even more important than home is peer groups. Research I read about in The Nurture Assumption [0] convinced me that much more important than home life (home life being called "shared environment" I believe because in a twin study it's the thing most shared by two non-biologically related siblings) is peer environment. If your friends all think that learning isn't cool and tend to do drugs or whatever, children will follow in that path, and parenting affects that very little despite our intuitions. How to solve the peer group problem? As far as I know it's extremely difficult, even more than reforming home life. You can split up peer groups and distribute their members into peer groups with different mindsets and they will generally conform, but the ratio has to be quite steep towards the peer group you're integrating into. I don't know what the number but I would guess something like 15 to 1. There's definitely not enough middle and upper class classrooms to go around to house all kids from more troubled areas under my stated assumptions. But perhaps the process could be incremental? [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Nurture_Assumption https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Nurture_Assumption
dragonwriter 5y ago
> Everyone is being punished, not just Asians. No, everyone is being helped, not just Blacks and Hispanics. Even most White and Asian students who would benefit from accelerated study in one or more areas are excluded by NYC’s current program. > Ditching G/T programs is going about this completely backwards No, its not. Ditching accelerated student-specific programs would be, but this plan vastly expands such programs, putting them in every kindergarten classroom, available to every student, rather than less than 10% of schools, available based on all-or-nothing test to four year olds. > and hurts all students regardless of ethnicity or melanin content How does making student-specific accelerated content with teachers trained in delivering it in every kindergarten classroom, and added experienced teachers in disadvantaged communities, rather than accelerated material made available to a small minority hurt everyone? > The problem is that schools in poor and minority neighborhoods suck. > Let's fix that problem That’s...exactly the idea.
- darthvoldemort 5y ago
  You know nothing about teaching and education if you think this is going to help. It's going to hurt even more. The reason why you group children with similar learning abilities together is so that they can progress together. If you stick advanced kids with less advanced kids, both sets of kids will suffer because the advanced kids will be extremely bored and the less advanced kids will get discouraged because the advanced kids are so much better than them. It goes against the fundamentals of education.
  - dragonwriter 5y ago
    > You know nothing about teaching and education That is incorrect. > The reason why you group children with similar learning abilities together is so that they can progress together. Yes, that's the thinking that justified tracking. Among the problems with segregated G&T programs, however, is that G&T-identified and non-G&T students are not, within each group, “of similar learning abilities”; Both have wide variation within groups, and individuals very often aren’t in the same relative position within their group in different specific subject areas. As much as tracking would make (simple, binary) varying ability fit into the industrial assembly-line model of education, it doesn't work well with real people in the real world (it works very slightly better than the industrial assembly-line model without tracking, and when that was the norm, it was an improvement.) But what works significantly better (though it takes more work) is to provide baseline curriculum with supplementation to individuals (in small groups of similar ability in the subject, where possible) based on ability. Which is what this proposes training all (initially) kindergarten teachers in, and hiring additional teachers in particular areas of need, in place of a high-stakes tracking exam for four-year olds. Its what has proven better than binary tracking in many places. (And it is, incidentally, what decided my family’s choice of schools for my son, who is now in kindergarten.) It’s not the 1980s any more. Education has moved forward. Whether NYC will execute this well is, of course, up in the air. But that what it has identified is what has been widely used and proven better than binary tracking already, for the students that would be tracked into G&T, for the students that would not, for racial and socioeconomic class equity, and in basically every other conceivable manner is not up in the air.