6 ms·

This 22 second youtube video is the supporting evidence linked by the article for that "equal outcomes for every student" line: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v

This 22 second youtube video is the supporting evidence linked by the article for that "equal outcomes for every student" line: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ujpcvIsMZBU https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ujpcvIsMZBU So, your guess is as good as mine, because that video certainly is not some kind of school policy position, as the article implies. I'm pretty suspect of the rest of it, since as someone else pointed out, the school actually did notify the students! They just didn't hold a big ceremony. The actual issue that the parents had is that the physical awards - which were delivered to students, in paper, at school, on their desks, did not arrive before early admission deadlines. The students were informed prior to the deadline by emails to their official school district accounts, which the article says they don't often check. This just overall feels like a culture war hack piece, it's full of red flags from top to bottom, and I mean, it's from a Federalist byline...

defrost 4y ago
> and I mean, it's from a Federalist byline... Good point. I'm not from or in the US (although I frequently work in or with USAians) and it's just astonishing how much of the US Federalist | Conservative pieces lack any kind of policy substance -- the media from that side of the aisle seems almost entirely focused on raising dust in the air over trite matters of near zero import. I like fiscal responsibility and a lot of principles that these groups supposedly stand for - but the culture war obsession of the US right is just performative.
- rayiner 4y ago
  This article concerns the metrics we use to decide how to advance kids into advanced educational opportunities. How is that a “trite matter of near zero import?” I think your view of the conservative reaction may be colored by the fact that you don’t have the other side of this culture war wherever you are in Europe or Asia. To my knowledge, elite high schools in Germany or China aren’t abandoning objective metrics like grades and test scores on the theory that those things are “racist.” Heck, Germany and France don’t even track outcomes by race the way Americans do obsessively.
  - deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
  - defrost 4y ago
    > This article concerns the metrics we use to decide how to advance kids into advanced educational opportunities. Not to my reading. I would summarise this as an article about the shortcomings of the National Merit Scholarship Corporation [1], their failure to put sufficient postage on notifications and their offloading of their notifications onto schools. [1] https://www.nationalmerit.org/s/1758/interior.aspx?sid=1758&gid=2&pgid=399 https://www.nationalmerit.org/s/1758/interior.aspx?sid=1758&...
    - rayiner 4y ago
      That summary ignores all the relevant context. Since the 1980s, TJ has been a highly selective public high school. The average test scores there are comparable to several Ivy League colleges. As is common all over the world, TJ’s admissions process was based on standardized testing and grades. This was completely uncontroversial for decades. The National Merit Scholarship is based on a standardized test called the PSAT. It’s not the most important thing in the world, but important enough that every year the Washington Post would publish the list of students from the DC area who were selected. This was great marketing for the school, because TJ students were like 2/3s of all the students recognized out of dozens of high schools in the area. There was no pizza party, but the school would go to some effort to publicize the result because they felt it reflected very positively on the school. Two years ago, there was a huge fight over TJ’s admissions process. The school had become 70% Asian, and had very few black students. In that fight, progressives attacked standardized testing as racist. The progressive school board then changed the admissions process to a lottery system. A federal judge found that the change was motivated by anti-Asian racism: https://www.baconsrebellion.com/wp/we-won-coalition-for-tj-won-against-racism/ https://www.baconsrebellion.com/wp/we-won-coalition-for-tj-w.... Then an appellate court overturned that decision, and now the Supreme Court is deciding whether to hear the case. In that context, what the article is about is the TJ administration downplaying the National Merit Scholarship results, which until recently they had publicized and pointed to as a source of pride. The story is thus about a deliberate decision by the administration to downplay a certain kind of educational metric, based on progressive ideas, that until very recently the school had embraced as an important metric. Frankly it’s bizarre for someone from outside the US to say conservatives are waging a frivolous “culture war” here. What the conservatives want to do is keep the system that TJ had until two years ago, which is still the system most of Europe and Asia has.
rayiner 4y ago
I went to TJ and grew up in northern VA. When I was there the announcement was made publicly and distributed to everyone. I’m not sure if we had a school district email account back then but that’s not how it was communicated, nor was it communicated by private letter. Yes this is part of the culture war, but that’s not a reason to dismiss it out of hand. Everyone in this story was a democrat until 2015. Around then a subset of mostly white Democrats discovered racism still exists and completely lost their minds about it. My parents think what’s happening at TJ is nuts and I couldn’t even get them to vote for Larry Hogan.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
- UncleMeat 4y ago
  [flagged]
  - rayiner 4y ago
    There is a concrete policy proposal from the right and center: stick with the admissions process TJ has used for decades, based on grades and standardized tests. The same factors used all over the world for this sort of thing. You can call it part of the “culture war,” but so what? Culture matters. Since the 1920s, we have relied on race-blind, objective metrics like standardized testing. It has worked really well, allowing numerous groups of outsiders (Jews, Italians, Asians) entry into the highest reaches of society. It’s working fine for Hispanics, who are assimilating economically at the same rate as previous generations of immigrants, including in states like California where affirmative action is still illegal. If you want to replace that with a system of racial gerrymandering, you don’t get to dismiss the opposition to that change as “culture war” “nonsense.”
    - UncleMeat 4y ago
      [flagged]
imgabe 4y ago
> So, your guess is as good as mine, because that video certainly is not some kind of school policy position, as the article implies. The person in the video is the superintendent of the Fairfax County Public schools who stated that "equal outcomes" are a priority for her upcoming tenure. Maybe not a policy directive, but the leader of the school system is stating that it is a priority they intend to focus on. The author has an agenda, sure, but they didn't fabricate the video or put words in the mouth of the district superintendent.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
eduction 4y ago
ad hominem adjective ad ho· mi· nem (ˈ)ad-ˈhä-mə-ˌnem -nəm 1 : appealing to feelings or prejudices rather than intellect an ad hominem argument 2 : marked by or being an attack on an opponent's character rather than by an answer to the contentions made made an ad hominem personal attack on his rival
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]

defrost 4y ago

> and I mean, it's from a Federalist byline... Good point. I'm not from or in the US (although I frequently work in or with USAians) and it's just astonishing how much of the US Federalist | Conservative pieces lack any kind of policy substance -- the media from that side of the aisle seems almost entirely focused on raising dust in the air over trite matters of near zero import. I like fiscal responsibility and a lot of principles that these groups supposedly stand for - but the culture war obsession of the US right is just performative.

rayiner 4y ago
This article concerns the metrics we use to decide how to advance kids into advanced educational opportunities. How is that a “trite matter of near zero import?” I think your view of the conservative reaction may be colored by the fact that you don’t have the other side of this culture war wherever you are in Europe or Asia. To my knowledge, elite high schools in Germany or China aren’t abandoning objective metrics like grades and test scores on the theory that those things are “racist.” Heck, Germany and France don’t even track outcomes by race the way Americans do obsessively.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
- defrost 4y ago
  > This article concerns the metrics we use to decide how to advance kids into advanced educational opportunities. Not to my reading. I would summarise this as an article about the shortcomings of the National Merit Scholarship Corporation [1], their failure to put sufficient postage on notifications and their offloading of their notifications onto schools. [1] https://www.nationalmerit.org/s/1758/interior.aspx?sid=1758&gid=2&pgid=399 https://www.nationalmerit.org/s/1758/interior.aspx?sid=1758&...
  - rayiner 4y ago
    That summary ignores all the relevant context. Since the 1980s, TJ has been a highly selective public high school. The average test scores there are comparable to several Ivy League colleges. As is common all over the world, TJ’s admissions process was based on standardized testing and grades. This was completely uncontroversial for decades. The National Merit Scholarship is based on a standardized test called the PSAT. It’s not the most important thing in the world, but important enough that every year the Washington Post would publish the list of students from the DC area who were selected. This was great marketing for the school, because TJ students were like 2/3s of all the students recognized out of dozens of high schools in the area. There was no pizza party, but the school would go to some effort to publicize the result because they felt it reflected very positively on the school. Two years ago, there was a huge fight over TJ’s admissions process. The school had become 70% Asian, and had very few black students. In that fight, progressives attacked standardized testing as racist. The progressive school board then changed the admissions process to a lottery system. A federal judge found that the change was motivated by anti-Asian racism: https://www.baconsrebellion.com/wp/we-won-coalition-for-tj-won-against-racism/ https://www.baconsrebellion.com/wp/we-won-coalition-for-tj-w.... Then an appellate court overturned that decision, and now the Supreme Court is deciding whether to hear the case. In that context, what the article is about is the TJ administration downplaying the National Merit Scholarship results, which until recently they had publicized and pointed to as a source of pride. The story is thus about a deliberate decision by the administration to downplay a certain kind of educational metric, based on progressive ideas, that until very recently the school had embraced as an important metric. Frankly it’s bizarre for someone from outside the US to say conservatives are waging a frivolous “culture war” here. What the conservatives want to do is keep the system that TJ had until two years ago, which is still the system most of Europe and Asia has.

rayiner 4y ago

I went to TJ and grew up in northern VA. When I was there the announcement was made publicly and distributed to everyone. I’m not sure if we had a school district email account back then but that’s not how it was communicated, nor was it communicated by private letter. Yes this is part of the culture war, but that’s not a reason to dismiss it out of hand. Everyone in this story was a democrat until 2015. Around then a subset of mostly white Democrats discovered racism still exists and completely lost their minds about it. My parents think what’s happening at TJ is nuts and I couldn’t even get them to vote for Larry Hogan.

deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
UncleMeat 4y ago
[flagged]
- rayiner 4y ago
  There is a concrete policy proposal from the right and center: stick with the admissions process TJ has used for decades, based on grades and standardized tests. The same factors used all over the world for this sort of thing. You can call it part of the “culture war,” but so what? Culture matters. Since the 1920s, we have relied on race-blind, objective metrics like standardized testing. It has worked really well, allowing numerous groups of outsiders (Jews, Italians, Asians) entry into the highest reaches of society. It’s working fine for Hispanics, who are assimilating economically at the same rate as previous generations of immigrants, including in states like California where affirmative action is still illegal. If you want to replace that with a system of racial gerrymandering, you don’t get to dismiss the opposition to that change as “culture war” “nonsense.”
  - UncleMeat 4y ago
    [flagged]

imgabe 4y ago

> So, your guess is as good as mine, because that video certainly is not some kind of school policy position, as the article implies. The person in the video is the superintendent of the Fairfax County Public schools who stated that "equal outcomes" are a priority for her upcoming tenure. Maybe not a policy directive, but the leader of the school system is stating that it is a priority they intend to focus on. The author has an agenda, sure, but they didn't fabricate the video or put words in the mouth of the district superintendent.

deleted 4y ago
[deleted]

eduction 4y ago

ad hominem adjective ad ho· mi· nem (ˈ)ad-ˈhä-mə-ˌnem -nəm 1 : appealing to feelings or prejudices rather than intellect an ad hominem argument 2 : marked by or being an attack on an opponent's character rather than by an answer to the contentions made made an ad hominem personal attack on his rival

deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]