Education in the United States
We have a thread devoted to academic freedom at universities, and we have a thread devoted to whether higher education should be subsidized. This thread is a landing spot for discussion of other issues related to education -- issues like school integration, pedagogy, the influence of politics on education (and vice versa), charter schools, public v. private schools, achievement gaps, and gerrymandering of school districts.
I'll start the discussion with two articles. The first deals with a major changes in the public school system in NYC.
NYC's public schools are highly segregated for such a diverse city. Last Friday, Bill DeBlasio announced the following:
Middle schools will see the most significant policy revisions. The city will eliminate all admissions screening for the schools for at least one year, the mayor said. About 200 middle schools — 40 percent of the total — use metrics like grades, attendance and test scores to determine which students should be admitted. Now those schools will use a random lottery to admit students.
In doing this, Mr. de Blasio is essentially piloting an experiment that, if deemed successful, could permanently end the city’s academically selective middle schools, which tend to be much whiter than the district overall.
DeBlasio also announced that:
New York will also eliminate a policy that allowed some high schools to give students who live nearby first dibs at spots — even though all seats are supposed to be available to all students, regardless of where they reside.
The system of citywide choice was implemented by former Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg in 2004 as part of an attempt to democratize high school admissions. But Mr. Bloomberg exempted some schools, and even entire districts, from the policy, and Mr. de Blasio did not end those carve outs.
The most conspicuous example is Manhattan’s District 2, one of the whitest and wealthiest of the city’s 32 local school districts. Students who live in that district, which includes the Upper East Side and the West Village, get priority for seats in some of the district’s high schools, which are among the highest-performing schools in the city.
No other district in the city has as many high schools — six — set aside for local, high-performing students.
Many of those high schools fill nearly all of their seats with students from District 2 neighborhoods before even considering qualified students from elsewhere. As a result, some schools, like Eleanor Roosevelt High School on the Upper East Side, are among the whitest high schools in all of New York City.
Here is the New York Times article that describes the changes:
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/12/18/nyreg...
Obvious questions for discussion include:
- How large a priority should cities place on ensuring that city schools are representative of the city as a whole?
- Are measures like the ones that DeBlasio is implementing likely to be effective in making schools more representative?
- Will these measures have unintended (or intended) consequences that extend far beyond changing the representativeness of city schools?
I think this is an interesting point. The people making the SAT have been dumbing it down to try to increase racial equity of results; but of course the outcomes have actually been the opposite. By dumbing it down, it is actually making it easier to game the test by studying.
For example they got rid of analogies because Asians, and a lesser extent whites, were doing better than everyone else. But analogies were actually one of the harder things to game, as it often involves making intuitive deductions of words you aren't familiar with. And as soon as they got rid of analogies the equity gap grew more pronounced, as the test became more focused on subjects you could more effectively study for.
As the comments of Matt Bruenig and Tyler Austin Harper indicate, I think there is an interesting discussion to be had about whether changes to the SAT, and the reduction in reliance on standardized testing, are serving their intended purposes. The answer very well may be "no."
But the post from the last-person, Steve Sailer, seemed weirdly focused on race, so I looked him up. Sure enough, he's a regular contributor to VDARE. He founded the Human Biodiversity Discussion Group, which Wikipedia describes as focused on "neo-eugenics."
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steve_Sail...
I sometime wonder if you write about these topics solely because they provide a pretext for you to link to articles and social media posts from people like Sailer.
Your social media feed must be truly revolting, since I assume that you avoid linking to the worst of it for fear that it would get you banned outright.
As the comments of Matt Bruenig and Tyler Austin Harper indicate, I think there is an interesting discussion to be had about whether changes to the SAT, and the reduction in reliance on standardized testing, are serving their intended purposes. The answer very well may be "no."
But the post from the last-person, Steve Sailer, seemed weirdly focused on race, so I looked him up. Sure enough, he's a regular contributor to VDARE. He founded the Human Biodiversity Discussion Group, which Wikipedi
If you had asked me the name of the person making the Tweet I couldn't have told you. I never even looked**. I dont worry about the messenger or their motives, and prefer to focus on the argument and data. Maybe this is something I should be more cognizant of, maybe not. I certainly am not going to research the history of the person making every Tweet that pops on my timeline. Do you think the data is made up?
I find a lot of people, especially leftists, dont like dealing with arguments or data (because data often doesn't support their position), so they focus solely on attacking the character of the messenger, and don't address the argument or data at all.
Leftists especially do this censorship trick where they say "if you talk about this you are exiled from polite society," and most reasonable people dont want to be exiled from polite society so they just dont talk about it. So then the only people who will talk about it at all are already outside polite society, and then the censors say "See, look at that racist showing data and making that argument. Told you so."
I will say the people tweaking the test, and more generally trying to social engineer racial equity in higher education, are absolutely motivated mainly by race. So it would seem fair game to critique whether they are even achieving this end, and it is pretty obvious they weren't, which is why colleges made a move to get rid of standardized testing.
And now they are slowly reinstating standardized testing because results are so poor. But they are still going back to an arguably imperfect standardized testing apparatus which can be gamed, which might not be much better.
**FWIW the reason this came on my timeline is because Matt Yglesias responded to it, and I follow him. But I went to the original tweet to post it here to make it easer to see. But I am sure the algorithm can independently figure out this is a topic that might interest me, so I am guessing some version of this tweet would invariably pop up eventually on my timeline without Yglesias responding.
the idea that the SAT is the "privilege-proof" part is hilarious.
Leftists especially do this censorship trick where they say "if you talk about this you are exiled from polite society," and most reasonable people dont want to be exiled from polite society so they just dont talk about it. So then the only people who will talk about it at all are already outside polite society, and then the censors say "See, look at that racist showing data and making that argument. Told you so."
This, more than any other single thing, is the most obnoxious part of arguing politics on the internet.
At best, blame will be shifted to some vague societal concept like opportunity or privilege and the data is hand-waved. At worst, you're branded as a member of some extremist wing of whatever club of villains is pertinent to the topic at hand and people will feel smug in their choice to not engage on the data.
There's nothing more racist than statistics, as we all know.
Removing SATs is a failed experiment.
As it turned out, it's a lot cheaper to get higher SAT scores than to get interesting life experiences (sports, volunteering, startups, etc.)
And privileges manifest in a whole lot of ways that legitimately make the benefiaries better students/more well rounded people
It seems odd to focus on ways to trick college admissions into accepting more minorities instead of studying why minorities don't do better in college admission qualifications and try to fix those things.
I assume two of the bigger differences of why white and Asian-Americans tend to perform better are because parents tend to take a more active role in education and a higher % of those races go to private schools, but I assume there are 100 other variables and I'm not sure how much of the differing results come down to my 2 variables.
If you had asked me the name of the person making the Tweet I couldn't have told you. I never even looked**. I dont worry about the messenger or their motives, and prefer to focus on the argument and data. Maybe this is something I should be more cognizant of, maybe not. I certainly am not going to research the history of the person making every Tweet that pops on my timeline. Do you think the data is made up?
I absolutely would look up a person before I reposted something that person posted on social media. But I guess you operate more like the people who control Trump's social media. Just repost, and if it turns out that you are promoting the work of white supremacists or whatever, then just say you didn't know, can't be bothered, and move on.
I find a lot of people, especially leftists, dont like dealing with arguments or data (because data often doesn't support their position), so they focus solely on attacking the character of the messenger, and don't address the argument or data at all.
This hardly applies to me with respect to this issue. I explicitly acknowledged that current policy w/r/t standardized testing very well may not be achieving its stated objectives.
**FWIW the reason this came on my timeline is because Matt Yglesias responded to it, and I follow him. But I went to the original tweet to post it here to make it easer to see. But I am sure the algorithm can independently figure out this is a topic that might interest me, so I am guessing some version of this tweet would invariably pop up eventually on my timeline without Yglesias responding.
Yeah, yeah. I know. It's just like that old Onion article. It's just a coincidence or an unfortunate accident that your social media feed apparently is full of guys like Hanania and Sailer. If I had access to your social media, there is a near 100% chance that I would stumble across the predictable stuff from Jared Taylor, American Renaissance, and other popular sources of bigotry, eugenics, and scientific racism. I am not saying that you believe everything that those guys believe, but you are definitely interested in reading what they have to say.
If you had asked me the name of the person making the Tweet I couldn't have told you. I never even looked**. I dont worry about the messenger or their motives, and prefer to focus on the argument and data. Maybe this is something I should be more cognizant of, maybe not. I certainly am not going to research the history of the person making every Tweet that pops on my timeline. Do you think the data is made up?
I find a lot of people,
Lol perfect way to get stuck in an echo Chamber .
The second paragraph is obv horse$h!t.
Conspiracy theory , anti science narrative is not a left thing ….
It’s Maga thing thing mostly and a common weapon used by their prophet trump !
Go check covid or climate change thread for example ….
I absolutely would look up a person before I reposted something that person posted on social media. But I guess you operate more like the people who control Trump's social media. Just repost, and if it turns out that you are promoting the work of white supremacists or whatever, then just say you didn't know, can't be bothered, and move on.
This hardly applies to me with respect to this issue. I explicitly acknowledged that current policy w/r/t standardized testing very well may not be achievi
He probably ly do not realize the distinction from social media and journalism from the point of view or credibility when u quote or copy/paste a news .
There's a second amendment argument in there somewhere.
Florida’s latest crusade is a Christian nationalist horror story.
state’s legislature passed a bill that would allow schools to bring volunteer
religious chaplains onto campus to provide students with counseling
Florida’s Republican lawmakers have argued that chaplains provide
a suitable — if not superior — alternative to trained school counselors.
right-wing lawmakers are capitalizing on a shortage of school counselors across the country and
pushing the narrative that religious guidance is the real salve to the issues that young people face
“It appears that anyone can hold themselves out as a volunteer ‘chaplain,’ as there does not
seem to be any credentialing required to become a volunteer chaplain in Florida’s public schools.”
The law appears to be designed so that random religious activists
can insert themselves into schools and influence student life.
any religion can apply but it's christian nationalism lol.
I agree churches should stay out of schools but only if we include the church of LGBT and the church of BLM (among others) in the list.
a lot of radical leftist ideas are religious for all practical purposes: completely unprovable or objectively wrong claims ardently believed by people, described religious books read as if they were the bible
any religion can apply but it's christian nationalism lol.
I agree churches should stay out of schools but only if we include the church of LGBT and the church of BLM (among others) in the list.
a lot of radical leftist ideas are religious for all practical purposes: completely unprovable or objectively wrong claims ardently believed by people, described religious books read as if they were the bible
Vigorously defend the separation of church and education, but insist on an idiosyncratic definition of religion.
That's a new twist.
Vigorously defend the separation of church and education, but insist on an idiosyncratic definition of religion.
That's a new twist.
given as a militant atheist I ended up sending my kid to catholic school (telling them I don't believe any of their religious bullshit but it's still less disastrous than public school marxism, and getting nice laughs out of it) because there is less indoctrination there, and finding many parents in the same school whom did exactly the same (including first generation Chinese atheist ones who should know what indoctrination looks like), I don't consider this new or weird tbh
given as a militant atheist I ended up sending my kid to catholic school (telling them I don't believe any of their religious bullshit but it's still less disastrous than public school marxism, and getting nice laughs out of it) because there is less indoctrination there, and finding many parents in the same school whom did exactly the same (including first generation Chinese atheist ones who should know what indoctrination looks like), I don't consider this new or weird tbh
You can defend whatever policy you want, but I'm not in favor of defenses that rely on highly idiosyncratic definitions. It's just a ridiculous form of argument that is often employed in an attempt to either have it both ways or obscure the proponent's actual beliefs.
any religion can apply but it's christian nationalism lol.
I agree churches should stay out of schools but only if we include the church of LGBT and the church of BLM (among others) in the list.
a lot of radical leftist ideas are religious for all practical purposes: completely unprovable or objectively wrong claims ardently believed by people, described religious books read as if they were the bible
How is radical leftist different to libertarianism in this regard?
It might not be which brings us to... Don't have public schools as there is no possible way to separate them from religion/structured ideology (which is the same as religion).
There is no way to avoid particular sets of values to be dominant in public schools (depending on which sets of values are dominant among teachers), so the only solution is have schools explicitly endorsing specific sets of values and parents to choose among them, with all the range of values which are legal in the country allowed.
The idea of the separation of church and state is about not allowing religions to mandate their moral preferences to people outside their flocks. That's the whole point, the whole reason for that separation to exist.
To keep public, mandated, law enforced morals as independent as possible from religious tenets.
A structured ideology with structured morals is identical in that regard.
Public as in free? You think every family can afford to pay for their kids' schooling?
Vouchers.
You don't need state farms to feed people, why do you need state schools to educate them?
The public can pay, and the supply be private, like you know for food, housing, or for healthcare for the poors and elders (or for everyone in Canada).
Vouchers.
You don't need state farms to feed people, why do you need state schools to educate them?
The public can pay, and the supply be private, like you know for food, housing, or for healthcare for the poors and elders (or for everyone in Canada).
How is that different to what we have now, other than the overhead of administering the whole voucher system?
Oh, I see what you mean, as in the schools are run for profit and they compete with one another for the vouchers? Doesn't actually seem like a terrible idea, what are the objections people have to it?
How is that different to what we have now, other than the overhead of administering the whole voucher system?
Oh, I see what you mean, as in the schools are run for profit and they compete with one another for the vouchers? Doesn't actually seem like a terrible idea, what are the objections people have to it?
Google voucher charter schools and you can see the objections from the left, I am not going to defend the indefensible tbh.
Btw schools could also be non -profit as it can happen with private hospitals.
