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?
Let's come at this a different way, Luciom. There is something that you want to say that you believe is against forum rules. You don't want to get a ban. Fair enough. Why don't you start by telling us which forum rule you believe you would violate if you expressed your actual option in plain words.
You obviously will not be banned for explaining which rule you believe your prospective response would violate.
The "you can't judge groups" thing we literally talked about in the mod thread with you ending up claiming according to your interpretation of forum rules I can't discuss a purported inferiority of any group.
It wouldn't be ethnical in the generic sense but it would be ethnical anyway at least in part, because a non-random sample of an ethnic group can have selected for inheritable characteristics that depend on the selection process.
Same as indians in America aren't representative of the average talents of indians in India.
People in colder climates developed fermentation as a method of food preservation and accordingly developed a tolerance for alcohol. In the modern age when alcohol can be exported around the world, people whose ancestors are from colder climates have the advantage. Nothing to do with innate intelligence.
I am not sure where you read this, afaik the oldest proof of alcohol consumption comes from Egypt.
Maybe what you had in mind is lactose digestion in adults
Same as indians in America aren't representative of the average talents of indians in India.
I think you're onto something here!!! It's because skin color has nothing to do with intelligence. It's nurture, not nature -- just like all science demonstrates.
You pointed it out yourself. Now stop bending over backwards to justify being racist.
I think you're onto something here!!! It's because skin color has nothing to do with intelligence. It's nurture, not nature -- just like all science demonstrates.
You pointed it out yourself. Now stop bending over backwards to justify being racist.
I think the suggestion is self selection, not nurture. Those who emigrate and their children are more likely to be successful people than those who don't.
I think you're onto something here!!! It's because skin color has nothing to do with intelligence. It's nurture, not nature -- just like all science demonstrates.
You pointed it out yourself. Now stop bending over backwards to justify being racist.
It's selection among nature variability.
If you take the fastest horses of a very very very large group of horses, the average speed of the original horses won't matter much, the selected horses will still be very fast, purely for genetic reasons, you just took the best specimen (for that trait).
And it's inheritable so their offsprings will be faster on average than the offsprings of the other horses, although there is mean reversion so on average the offspring will be slower than the originally selected super -quick horses.
If you understand why it works for speed in horses, then you can understand it works for any inheritable trait of any living species when you select non random samples of a group.
And all behavioural traits are at least partially inheritable in all mammals.
Notice how this works even if you start with two identical groups (wrt genetical makeup), you end up with different genetical groups after selection sorting over time.
Tldr: the brain drain does create a different, unique, new population with different median traits and different genetical pool than the original population.
And the same is true for immigration predicated on different selection methods
I think the suggestion is self selection, not nurture. Those who emigrate and their children are more likely to be successful people than those who don't.
Sure. That's possible. Might have something to do with it, but it's nonsense. Skin color has zero to do with intelligence. It's your upbringing, not your race.
@Luciom - I suspect you didn't see my post before you made yours, but now that they are juxtaposed, perhaps you could use this opportunity to contemplate the art of brevity.
Sure. That's possible. Might have something to do with it, but it's nonsense. Skin color has zero to do with intelligence. It's your upbringing, not your race.
Intelligence, as any other trait, can be inherited. Smarter parents tend to have smarter kids. Are you suggesting that intelligence is 100% nurture and 0% nature?
And if you are not self selected, rather deported according to different characteristics? Could it work in the reverse?
What are you asking? Yes, trivially, if you deport all short (below some cutoff) people, you will have only tall (above that cutoff) people left. If you deport all dumb people, you will have only smart people left. What's your point? If you're trying to build some sort of society of "supermen", I think you'll find that's been tried already and didn't end too well for a multitude of reasons.
@Luciom - I suspect you didn't see my post before you made yours, but now that they are juxtaposed, perhaps you could use this opportunity to contemplate the art of brevity.
no because otherwise they don't understand the mechanism and it's corollaries.
And the fact that we know , provenly beyond any reasonable doubt, that it works for mammals we farm, for any trait (including all behavioral traits), should suggest it works identically for the specific primate we care about more than others, us.
What are you asking? Yes, trivially, if you deport all short people, you will have only tall people left. If you deport all dumb people, you will have only smart people left. What's your point?
If you deport people who have to survive months of horrific condition travel and incredibly heavy farming labour will they be a random sample of the original population, or will they have as a group very specific genetical distributions linked to the traits they are selected for? are you getting it yet?
If you deport people they have to be caught before, is it random who gets caught? or is it a selection mechanism as well? do you get it?
Intelligence, as any other trait, can be inherited. Smarter parents tend to have smarter kids. Are you suggesting that intelligence is 100% nurture and 0% nature?
I didn't say that at all. I said it has nothing to do with skin color or race of any group in general. All the science I've seen indicates intelligence has nothing to do with race, the racist guy kinda said that, I thought it was ironic.
Intelligence, as any other trait, can be inherited. Smarter parents tend to have smarter kids. Are you suggesting that intelligence is 100% nurture and 0% nature?
yes they all deny the inheritability of desirable traits otherwise they can't deny the possibility different groups with different ancenstors might have different desirable traits distributions.
Do you realize their whole ideology is predicated on the idea that different groups have identical genetical trait distributions right?
I didn't say that at all. I said it has nothing to do with skin color or race of any group in general. All the science I've seen indicates intelligence has nothing to do with race, the racist guy kinda said that, I thought it was ironic.
I said indians in the USA are not the same indians that are left in india. Because they aren't a random sample of indians.
Even if indians and (say) "whites" originally had the same identical median intelligence as a group, AFTER YOU START SORTING that isn't true any more. And it isn't about race per se, it's about sorting among variability in a group. Except it then becomes about race when you measure it in the different countries.
Do you realize it for tallness like d2 gave you as an example? if the tallest people go away from a country (which doesn't reward tallness enough), the remaining people will be shorter on average, and their children will be as well, while the tall people will be taller than average in their destination country, and their children will be as well.
If you deport people who have to survive months of horrific condition travel and incredibly heavy farming labour will they be a random sample of the original population, or will they have as a group very specific genetical distributions linked to the traits they are selected for? are you getting it yet?
If you deport people they have to be caught before, is it random who gets caught? or is it a selection mechanism as well? do you get it?
No, I have no idea what you're talking about now. Where are we deporting them from, India? As in, the people that are left are dumber? Is that what we're driving at here? If so, I have no idea what the numbers are, and whether the emigration makes a material difference. It's possible, I suppose.
You have a habit of trying to explain stuff to me like I'm 5, and it keeps being stuff I either didn't disagree with in the first place, or I'm not getting because you're not explaining it properly.
No, I have no idea what you're talking about now. Where are we deporting them from, India? As in, the people that are left are dumber? Is that what we're driving at here? If so, I have no idea what the numbers are, and whether the emigration makes a material difference. It's possible, I suppose.
You have a habit of trying to explain stuff to me like I'm 5, and it keeps being stuff I either didn't disagree with in the first place, or I'm not getting because you're not explaining it properly.
DM for this because from here on i think i am breaking forum rules if i keep going (waiting for rococo to confirm/deny)
yes they all deny the inheritability of desirable traits otherwise they can't deny the possibility different groups with different ancenstors might have different desirable traits distributions.
Do you realize their whole ideology is predicated on the idea that different groups have identical genetical trait distributions right?
I get what you're saying from the point of view of statistical distributions etc. I'm not going to comment beyond that because I don't know that quantifying the characteristics of large groups of people is necessarily as simplistic or reductionist as you make it out to be, given all sorts of confounding variables, nor do I agree with the implied suggestion that individual members of a group should be pre-judged based on such group characteristics.
I get what you're saying from the point of view of statistical distributions etc. I'm not going to comment beyond that because I don't know that quantifying the characteristics of large groups of people is necessarily as simplistic or reductionist as you make it out to be, given all sorts of confounding variables, nor do I agree with the implied suggestion that individual members of a group should be pre-judged based on such group characteristics.
no here we aren't at that stage , we are in the education in the USA thread, we are trying to assess why educational outcomes are worse in some areas even with the same policies, same (or higher) financing, same party governing everything related to education.
Do you realize given what we said about indians, that the children of very smart immigrant indians will perform very well in school even if schools are very mediocre?
Maybe you consider it love? It seems like you dislike people who are from certain places or have certain skin colors and are bending yourself into a pretzel to justify it.
The Indians who succeed in America do so because of selection in part, sure. But mostly because they grew up with access to decent education and has loving parents. You could substitute any human and the results would be identical.
When you try yo bring hair color or whatever into discussion of intelligence -- it just shows your bias. You literally make everything more complicated to justify racism.
Maybe you consider it love? It seems like you dislike people who are from certain places or have certain skin colors and are bending yourself into a pretzel to justify it.
The Indians who succeed in America do so because of selection in part, sure. But mostly because they grew up with access to decent education and has loving parents. You could substitute any human and the results would be identical.
When you try yo bring hair color or whatever into discussion of intelligence -- it just shows you
I am not sure why you think i dislike indians in the USA i really don't lol.
As for the parents, do you realize that's inheritable traits as well right? all behavioural propensities are inheritable, including the very crucial one (for education) about the father staying with the kids
Do you realize given what we said about indians, that the children of very smart immigrant indians will perform very well in school even if schools are very mediocre?
I realise it quite well, I was one of those children (not Indian, though). My family brought me to the UK when I was 8 and couldn't speak any English, and ended up doing OK in what were by all accounts pretty mediocre schools.
