Alison Collins, the Vice President of the San Francisco Board of Education, has declared meritocracy to be racist even in the selection of students at advanced or gifted programs. As we have previously discussed, this has been a building campaign in academia as educators and others denounce selection based on academic performance through testing. At issue in San Francisco is Lowell High School where top students were selected through testing and grades. Most cities have such gifted programs or institutions, though we have discussed calls for the elimination of all gifted and talented programs in cities like New York. Lowell had a majority of white and Asian students and only two percent of its student body were African-Americans. Collins and other board members want to abolish the merit-based selection in favor of a blind lottery system.
Collins’ remarks from a San Francisco Board of Education public meeting in October 13, 2020 were only recently posted by Sophie Bearman of San Francisco’s online publication Here/Say Media. In the meeting, she declared “When we talk about merit, meritocracy and especially meritocracy based on standardized testing…those are racist systems.… You can’t talk about social justice, and then say you want to have a selective school that keeps certain kids out from the neighborhoods that you think are dangerous.”
Collins made the statement in support of a resolution, entitled “In Response to Ongoing, Pervasive Systemic Racism at Lowell High School,” authored by Collins, Board President Gabriela Lopez, Commissioner Matt Alexander, and Student Delegates Shavonne Hines-Foster and Kathya Correa Almanza.
Newsweek quotes at least one Lowell teacher who objects to the elimination of the school as a place for top performing students and said that the system is blind on race and designed to reward “the hardest working kids in terms of academics.”
Gifted programs and elite academic schools are designed to allow students to reach their full academic potential with other students performing at the highest level of math and other disciplines. It is often difficult for such students to reach that potential in conventional settings. Teachers have to keep their classes as a whole moving forward in subject areas. That often means that academically gifted children are held back by conventional curricula or lesson plans. Those students can actually underperform due to boredom or the lack of challenging material. Many simply leave the public school system. Moreover, students tend to perform better with students progressing at their similar level. Teachers can then focus on a lesson plan and discussions that are tailored to students at a similar performance level.
Moving to a lottery system at Lowell would obviously convert the school into a conventional academic program. We can debate the value of having such schools to cater to the most advanced students. I believe such schools are important components to public education. We not only reward students for their considerable academic achievement but guarantee all students that they can progress as far as their interests and capabilities will take them. These schools are the source of pride in many cities in showing the full potential of high school students in science and other fields.
I do not agree that meritocracy is inherently racist. Students of all races benefit from such schools. While there is clearly less diversity at Lowell, the best solution is not to eliminate such programs but to work harder in the earlier grades to allow minority students to excel (and ultimately gain admission to such programs).
There is a need for meritocracy in academia and society at large. Indeed, such scores offer race-neutral systems for advancement. While subjects like math have been declared racist (and a University of Rhode Island professor recently declared all of science, statistics, and technology to be “inherently racist”), these are fields that allowed many intellectuals of color to advance.
We have to have systems of objective comparison in the ability and performance of students in academia. We use such tests and scores for the selection of students admissions to college and society uses such systems for business and professional advancement. The world is becoming a far more competitive place. Other countries are not abandoning meritocracy. They are pushing their most most talented students to achieve even more in specialized programs and advanced courses. We need to do the same if we are going to remain competitive as a nation. Eliminating elite programs like Lowell removes an opportunity not just for these students but our society as a whole. These are some of the best developing minds in our country and they should be allowed to reach their full potential through special schools and programs.
I have been a huge supporter of public schools my whole life. While my parents could afford private schools, they helped form a group to keep white families in the public school system in Chicago in the 1960s and 1970s. They wanted their kids to be part of a diverse school environment. I also sent my kids to public schools for the same reason. I view our public schools as important parts of our society as we shape future citizens.
This efforts in San Francisco and New York will only encourage more families to leave our public school systems and potentially increase rather than reduce problems of diversity in our student bodies. The need to achieve greater diversity in top public high schools is real and needs to be addressed. However, the solution is to create better educational opportunities for younger students to lift them up rather than lower (or eliminate) entry standards at these schools. That is certainly harder than just imposing a lottery system for all schools but it preserves the opportunity for high advancement for students of all races.
Here’s my question for Collins: If whites constructed standardized tests as a means of keeping racial sdvantages for whites above all else, explain why Asian students are surpassing whites on these exams? Why didn’t whites modify the exams to exclude Asians?
What is your definition of systemic racism? If it’s based on the first 180 years of the nation, then Asians would have to be classified as an oppressed group. Explain how Asians were able to overcome that. If Asians can do that, why not black Americans? I don’t think CRT has a chance in hell of explaining how Asians are surpassing whites academically.
Yes, the Ivy Leagues are still practicing pro-white admissions bias over Asians, and pro-black over Asians and whites, but with no particular “help” from standardized tests. If anything, the standardized tests are an open system, race-blind, and are being used to buid the case against Ivy League white supremacy.
Asian people learn very fast that in America, they are second in line for racial discrimination by the government right after whites
The question is, how long does it take for them to wise up and exit the corrupt Democrat party
We will see if the corrupt Democrat party can keep their viselike hold on them for long
Saloth Sar
My kids are both asian. I have learned alot about racism from them.
They experience alot. Much of it from blacks.
Lowell had a majority of white and Asian students and only two percent of its student body were African-Americans.
The school-age population of San Francisco is 4.7% black. If the school’s population is 2% black, the ratio of blacks to non-blacks is just north of 60% below what you would have if the ratio matched the general population. Again, given normally distributed scores on screening examinations, and given an assumption that blacks and non-blacks were equally likely to sit for the examinations, that suggests that blacks scored about 1/2 standard deviation lower than non-blacks on the examinations. That is quite unremarkable and you see that sort of gap (and larger) in all manner of standardized tests.
Two notes:
1. The main objection to the merit system is that the tests used are racist, and there is plenty of research that backs that up.
2. My biggest issue with this is that these systems put an artificial limit on the number of seats in these gifted programs. We should strive for a school system that allows every student an opportunity to get the best possible education that they can. I do not like at all the notion that we will say that only a small percentage of the students in a given district will have access to the best programs. All students who meet the academic standards should get in, even if that means making far more seats available.
1. The main objection to the merit system is that the tests used are racist, and there is plenty of research that backs that up.
Other than being redundant, you should have no problem explaining how the tests are racist, given that no race is excluded from entry.
2. My biggest issue with this is that these systems put an artificial limit on the number of seats in these gifted programs.
Artificial? We already have an education system to accommodate every student desiring entry; the output of which we have mountains of data proving a one size fits all system reduces the quality of education.
A program for gifted students that is required to include non-gifted students, will inevitably devolve into a more costly version of the one size fits all program.
My point is that ALL gifted students should have access to the gifted programs, not just some. If 1000 are academically qualified, then the school district should make the gifted program large enough to accommodate all 1000. What we see is that districts will create a program for say 400 students per year, no matter how many would qualify, and that number could have been set decades ago and not kept up with an increase in population growth.
So not racist, simply the supply doesn’t meet the demand.
If only the bay area had a supply of entrepreneurs to present this challenge to.
The school district could meet the demand if they wanted to.
No it cannot. All it can do is reclassify students. In reclassifying students, you move them from an optimal pace to a suboptimal pace. No benefit in that.
Molly children learn different things at different speeds. Some children are not cut out for advanced math and some are. If you don’t recognize these things you must not have had any children or even dealt with children.
We don’t need to be inclusive of everyone. We need to provide specific types of teaching. We need vocational high schools.
Amen to the vocational high schools. One need only look to ETH in Zurich as an example. We are sinking fast and the teachers unions are the weight pulling down our educational system…and our country.
As we speak, about 2% of the manpower in primary and secondary schooling is devoted to VoTech. I vote for 15%. In a better state of the world, about 1/4 of each cohort would follow a voTech program when they reached high school, and another 55% would have the option to acquire some voTech credits. Half-assed liberal education is a waste.
Art, I don’t know the answer but why only 15% in vocational schooling?
It’s appropriate for secondary education. Primary schooling is the locus of learning to read, write and sum, as well as the fundamentals of your countries history, geography, and civic life.
No! No! No!
Primary education is where you must learn about gender and priviledge and how humans are destroying the world
Math and science and reading a racist.
So what ? That is an issue for the local school board and the voters.
Or better still get government out of education. The best means we have ever found of making supply meet demand is free markets.
Regardless, you are substituting a preference for a fact.
Julliard is more sellective than my local state college – even though that state college has an excellent music program.
There is no correct number of seats in a Gifted program.
You are idelogically hard wired for offense and outrage.
You started assuming that this was racism. Now you have jumped to a presumption that there is a knowable correct number of students, and that deviation from that is evidenace of malfeasance.
All you have demonstrated is that you find everything an outrage.
I do not care how this gets worked out locally. But it is not an issue that the entire country needs to weigh in on.
It is at most a disagreement over how schools should allocate resources where there is not an objectively right answer.
My point is that ALL gifted students should have access to the gifted programs, not just some.
There is no essential category marked ‘gifted’. There is a performance spectrum.
“My point is that ALL gifted students should have access to the gifted programs, not just some”
That doesn’t sound too smart. Do you wish to make kids that can’t do basic math learn calculus?
Calculus isn’t limited to gifted students in the first place. Maybe you’d know that if you’d taken calculus in high school.
No, but even in optimal environments, maybe 1/3 of the high school seniors will enroll in calculus. It’s really for a single-digit population.
There are not many HS’s today that teach Calculus or even pre-calc.
About half of US HS’s offer calculus and more offer precalculus, so you’re wrong about that.
Because you say so ?
My region of the country has excellent schools.
Further my kids were cyber chartered – which meant they had more opportunities that local public schools.
My son had a course that called itself precalculus. It was not. And he is struggling a bit in Freshman Calculus.
Conversely my 1976 half year course that did not even call itself precalc, allowed my to skip Calc I and go directly to Calc II in college.
Your going to have to provide data to demonstrate that current HS’s are even close to the Math/Science education I received.
There is plenty of data on the decline of public education and the increase in its cost.
No, I’m not “going to have to provide data to demonstrate that current HS’s are even close to the Math/Science education I received,” not least because I said nothing about science. You’re going to have to provide data to support your claim that “There are not many HS’s today that teach Calculus or even pre-calc.”
See p. 7 for evidence to support my claim that about half of US HS’s offer calculus –
https://www2.ed.gov/about/offices/list/ocr/docs/crdc-college-and-career-readiness-snapshot.pdf
No you do not have to document your claims.
Nor are you entitled to be beleived.
As to your “data” – I did not read your source – but DOE sources claim 40% have had Calc or Pre-Calc.
My son was in an excellent Cyber Charter. He purpotedly took pre calc and calc. He got A’s in an excellent school.
Yet he is struggling with Calc I.
While I attended a small rural HS that by all evidence should have been inferior to his Cyber Charter. Neither Calc, nor Precalc were offered. But my college pushed me past Calc I and into Calc II. Nor was I unique – most of the students in my math program 40+ years ago had little difficulty with College Calculus.
Labels do not change facts – I know that those of you on the left do not understand this.
Since 1970 SAT scores have been in a steep decline. Even the performance of the best students has declined overall.
There is substantial evidence of the failure of public schools.
I don’t have to document what YOU demand, John, if I didn’t claim it.
I didn’t ask you to believe me. I gave you a link to evidence, and you didn’t read. OK. Your personal experience is totally irrelevant to your false claim that “There are not many HS’s today that teach Calculus or even pre-calc.”
You still haven’t documented YOUR claim. Maybe you fail to understand that your personal convenience sample of 1 is not evidence for the claim “There are not many HS’s today that teach Calculus or even pre-calc.”
“I don’t have to document what YOU demand”
Correct
“I didn’t ask you to believe me.”
You just offered it for the he11 of it ?
“I gave you a link to evidence”
No you gave me an old long tedious report that had no evidence and few actual claims.
“and you didn’t read.”
I read most of it. It was mostly fluff.
“Your personal experience is totally irrelevant to your false claim that “There are not many HS’s today that teach Calculus or even pre-calc.””
False. My experience is evidence. It is just not conclusive.
The first report you linked had no evidence.
“You still haven’t documented YOUR claim.”
Which claim ?
Regardless, I am not the one trying to change the world.
What I want – what we are required to do, is stick to what is know to work until we have something proveably better.
If you have such a thing – provide it.
I do not think there is anyone that does not wish to see minorties do better in calculus.
“Maybe you fail to understand that your personal convenience sample of 1 is not evidence for the claim “There are not many HS’s today that teach Calculus or even pre-calc.””
first 1:1 is evidence, as is 2:2.
When I googled this I got government data that claimed 40% of HS offer either Pre-Calc or Calc. That is not most.
I would note that offer is not the same as students taking it. It is not even the same as ANY students taking it.
I can not comment on what is “offered”.
This is not Calculus – there was no Calc that I recall on the SAT’s when I took them. I doubt there is now.
But if you can not manage t he SAT;s you are not ready for Calc.
https://news.yahoo.com/blogs/sideshow/sat-scores-continue-decline–57-percent-of-incoming-freshmen-not-ready-for-college-001618038.html
BTW, you keep posting as anonymous.
That means you have no reputation for credibility.
Therefore YES, if you expect any weight to be given to your claims you must document them
“I didn’t ask you to believe me.”
You just offered it for the he11 of it ?
I asked you to believe the information in the document I linked to, not me personally.
“I gave you a link to evidence”
No you gave me an old long tedious report that had no evidence and few actual claims.
That’s false. I even told you what page the evidence was on. The statement “about one in two [high] schools offers calculus” and the chart underneath that statement is evidence for my claim. The source is their data collection, and they specify where they collected it from: “‘High schools’ is defined as public schools offering grades 10 or 11. Data in this chart represents 99% of high schools in the CRDC universe (25,030 high schools). SOURCE: U.S. Department of Education, Office for Civil Rights, Civil Rights Data Collection, 2011-12.”
“and you didn’t read.”
I read most of it. It was mostly fluff.
You’d previously stated “I did not read your source.”
The first report you linked had no evidence.
You’re wrong about that, as I’ve already pointed out.
“You still haven’t documented YOUR claim.”
Which claim ?
You have weak reading comprehension. I said You still haven’t documented YOUR claim. Maybe you fail to understand that your personal convenience sample of 1 is not evidence for the claim “There are not many HS’s today that teach Calculus or even pre-calc.” Do you see the sentence of yours in quotation marks? THAT is the claim you still haven’t documented.
Regardless, I am not the one trying to change the world.
That’s irrelevant to you having a burden of proof to provide valid evidence for your claim when asked for it. You have yet to present evidence for your claim “There are not many HS’s today that teach Calculus or even pre-calc.” You presented your personal experience with a single school. That experience tells us nothing about whether many HSs offer precalculus or calculus.
If you have such a thing – provide it. I do not think there is anyone that does not wish to see minorties do better in calculus.
I already provided links to information about the Emerging Scholars Program designed by Uri Treisman for college calculus, initially at UC Berkeley and since spread to many other universities and some high schools around the country and used as a model in other STEM fields. Treisman was awarded a MacArthur for that work, and there’s quite a bit of peer-reviewed research about it.
“Maybe you fail to understand that your personal convenience sample of 1 is not evidence for the claim “There are not many HS’s today that teach Calculus or even pre-calc.””
first 1:1 is evidence, as is 2:2.
We’re not talking about 1:1 or 2:2. Your personal convenience sample of 1 is 1 out of more than 25,000 public high schools in the US.
When I googled this I got government data that claimed 40% of HS offer either Pre-Calc or Calc. That is not most.
Telling me what you found isn’t evidence. Link to it, like I did for mine, so we can see the source. Your claim wasn’t about “most.” Your claim was “not many.” Even if it were 40% rather than 50%, that’s over 10,000 high schools offering calculus. Maybe you consider that “not many” but I bet most people consider over 10,000 to be “many.”
I would note that offer is not the same as students taking it. It is not even the same as ANY students taking it.
Which is irrelevant to your claim, because your claim — which you STILL haven’t provided any evidence for — is about the number of high schools that offer the courses, not about the number of students taking them. Do it. Provide evidence for your claim that “There are not many HS’s today that teach Calculus or even pre-calc.”
if you expect any weight to be given to your claims you must document them
I did. You also have to document yours for the same reason. You fancy that your personal word suffices. It does not.
“”I didn’t ask you to believe me.”
You just offered it for the he11 of it ?
I asked you to believe the information in the document I linked to, not me personally.”
1). There was very little information in the first document you linked.
2). You asked me to beleive you – why are you arguing about this ?
There is nothing wrong with asking – though you seem to think there is.
“That’s false. I even told you what page the evidence was on. The statement “about one in two [high] schools offers calculus” and the chart underneath that statement is evidence for my claim. The source is their data collection, and they specify where they collected it from: “‘High schools’ is defined as public schools offering grades 10 or 11. Data in this chart represents 99% of high schools in the CRDC universe (25,030 high schools). SOURCE: U.S. Department of Education, Office for Civil Rights, Civil Rights Data Collection, 2011-12.””
1 line in a large report, which is not evidence. According to nces.gov 16% of students passed calculus in HS.
““and you didn’t read.”
I read most of it. It was mostly fluff.
You’d previously stated “I did not read your source.””
If I actually wrote precisely what you quote which I doubt – I appologize for omitting “All of”
Mea Culpa.
“The first report you linked had no evidence.
You’re wrong about that, as I’ve already pointed out.”
I stand by that – the Claim that 1:2 HS’s offer calc is thin.
Acording to Government data 16% PASS calculus.
““You still haven’t documented YOUR claim.”
Which claim ?
You have weak reading comprehension. I said You still haven’t documented YOUR claim.”
Correct. And I asked WHICH CLAIM ? Which you still have not answered.
I have made many assertions. If you wish to challenge one, I need more than a pronoun.
I can read, you can not write. If you are going to rag on me for missing qualifiers then you should expect the same over completely unclear statements.
“Maybe you fail to understand that your personal convenience sample of 1 is not evidence for the claim”
Actually it is evidence. It is just not proof. Regardless, my Sample of “1” is not one student, But one state wide charter school, that out performs my states public schools in Math by a significant margin.
“Regardless, I am not the one trying to change the world.”
Of course you are. There is nothing wrong with that.
But if you seek to do so by FORCE the LEAST you owe the rest of us is PROOF that the benefits of that use of force outweigh the costs
“That’s irrelevant to you having a burden of proof to provide valid evidence for your claim when asked for it.”
Try writing more clearly. What does this mean ?
“You have yet to present evidence for your claim”
I made a counter claim. YOU can not prove YOUR Claim by pissing over my counter.
“I do not think there is anyone that does not wish to see minorties do better in calculus.”
Then provide evidence that something works.
“I already provided links to information about the Emerging Scholars Program designed by Uri Treisman for college calculus, initially at UC Berkeley and since spread to many other universities and some high schools around the country and used as a model in other STEM fields. Treisman was awarded a MacArthur for that work, and there’s quite a bit of peer-reviewed research about it.”
The ESP program information you provided was interesting. Did YOU actually read it ?
Regardless, it ultimately does not support any claim that we have a working signicantly effective means to improve calculus success for either minorities or any group.
Absolutely there was some small success in some programs. But even her own work documents an overall decline in participation and success in STEM among minorities over the past 40 years. I am not pissing over her. But there is an enormous difference beween what she was able to do and widespread success.
One of the huge peices she misses that is pretty well documented is that really good teachers get really good results – regardless of methods. But there are few really good teachers and no magical way to change that.
“Telling me what you found isn’t evidence.”
Actually it is.
“Link to it,”
No, you are capable of looking things up for yourself.
“like I did for mine”
Good for you.
Today blacks are 14.8% of college age population – and 3.8% of engineering graduates.
Minorities as a whole are 13.7% of all engineering graduates.
There are two likely explanations – Their K-12 Education does not enable them to compete
or few blacks have the aptitude or interest.
I assume you would prefer the former to the latter.
You sold ESP as a great success – yet clearly minorities are still extremely under represented in engineering.
And I expect you will find that carries through all math reliant curiculums
5% and declining HS blacks take caclulus before graduating.
45% of asians do.
18% of whites,
10% of hispanics.
Over 1/3 of privately educated HS students take calculus.
14% of public school students take calculus.
“Maybe you consider that “not many” but I bet most people consider over 10,000 to be “many.””
I consider 14% of all HS students and 5% of blacks – “not many”
“I would note that offer is not the same as students taking it. It is not even the same as ANY students taking it.”
Correct – offer is a meaningless datum.
“You also have to document yours for the same reason.:”
False, credibility is earned.
You do not have it.
I do.
We are not equal.
You do not seem to grasp that.
Past misrepresentations matter.
BTW – though I hate people who link to prior comments.
You have misquoted me often enough that I expect that you will link to the quote,
because I do not trust you to accurately quote me.
“You fancy that your personal word suffices.”
That is correct. I have established my credibility.
Conversely you have a reputation for error and misrepresentation.
As this debate over math continues, it should be increasingly obvious – that no one has demonstrated a remedy for the
poor perfomance of minorities and particularly blacks in STEM and particularly calculus.
In fact the situation appears to be getting WORSE.
Your busy trying to argue irrevant details when the important trends are obvious and at odds with your claims about details.
I have no axe to grind with ESP. But if it were as stellar as you claim the problem would be solved, not worse.
We can fight over offer vs. take, vs pass. .
Does it matter ?
The situation for minorities is worse not better.
I do not beleive that is intrinsic to race.
Therefore the now incredibly expensive city schools run by democrats for 60 or more years have failed minorities.
Whatever is true of ESP its effect is unnoticeable.
JF – you have lost this argument badly.
And predictably.
“the Claim that 1:2 HS’s offer calc is thin.”
The evidence is not thin. As I already noted, it comes from data on 99% of public HSs, over 25,000 schools in total.
“Acording to Government data 16% PASS calculus.”
Your word is worthless. Either link to or quote your source. Regardless, it’s irrelevant to the claim of yours that we’re discussing, “There are not many HS’s today that teach Calculus or even pre-calc.” Your claim is about the # of HSs that offer calculus and precalculus, not about the # of students who pass it.
“’You still haven’t documented YOUR claim.’ Which claim ?”
The claim of yours that I quoted immediately before I said “You still haven’t documented YOUR claim,” and that I quoted again in the very next sentence, and that I’ve also quoted elsewhere, including above: “There are not many HS’s today that teach Calculus or even pre-calc.” It’s amazing that your reading comprehension is so weak.
“I asked WHICH CLAIM ? Which you still have not answered.”
I did answer. You simply didn’t comprehend.
“I have made many assertions. If you wish to challenge one, I need more than a pronoun.”
I gave you more than a pronoun.
“’Maybe you fail to understand that your personal convenience sample of 1 is not evidence for the claim.’ Actually it is evidence. It is just not proof. Regardless, my Sample of “1” is not one student, But one state wide charter school, that out performs my states public schools in Math by a significant margin.”
I know that you were presenting evidence about 1 school, not 1 students, but no, it isn’t evidence for your claim “There are not many HS’s today that teach Calculus or even pre-calc.” It doesn’t provide evidence that there are not many. All it does is provide evidence that there is 1 school that offers precalculus but not calculus.
“’Regardless, I am not the one trying to change the world.’ Of course you are. There is nothing wrong with that.”
If you paid better attention, you’d know that YOU were the one who wrote “Regardless, I am not the one trying to change the world,” not me. I quoted you (putting it in italics rather than using quotation marks, as I had in the provius quotes from your response).
But if you seek to do so by FORCE the LEAST you owe the rest of us is PROOF that the benefits of that use of force outweigh the costs
“’That’s irrelevant to you having a burden of proof to provide valid evidence for your claim when asked for it.’ Try writing more clearly. What does this mean ?”
You don’t understand what burden of proof for substantiating claims is? If person A claims X, person A has the responsibility to substantiate X with evidence if asked to do so. You claimed “There are not many HS’s today that teach Calculus or even pre-calc,” and it’s your job to substantiate it with evidence that tells us about the HSs across the country, not your convenience sample of a single school.
“’I do not think there is anyone that does not wish to see minorties do better in calculus.’ Then provide evidence that something works.”
Once again, you’re treating a quote from YOU as if it came from me. YOU are the one who said “I do not think there is anyone that does not wish to see minorties do better in calculus.”
And I already provided evidence of something that works.
“The ESP program information you provided was interesting. Did YOU actually read it ?”
Yes, and more, though not recently.
“there is an enormous difference beween what she was able to do and widespread success.”
Who is “she”? Are you referring to Rose Asera? She didn’t run any Emerging Scholars Programs, so I’m not sure what you mean by “what she was able to do.” More to the point, I already told you that her paper was intended as background, not as an assessment of the programs effectiveness, and I gave you other references about the program’s effectiveness and I told you how to find more if you wanted yet more.
“’Telling me what you found isn’t evidence.’ Actually it is.”
No, it isn’t. It’s only your second-hand claim.
“’Link to it,’ No, you are capable of looking things up for yourself.”
No. You have a burden of proof for your claims. It’s not my job to look them up. I look up other things that interest me, but YOUR claims are YOUR responsibility to substantiate with evidence.
Since you’re not going to, I won’t waste any more time on this, other than to respond to a couple of other things you said.
“credibility is earned. You do not have it. I do.”
No, you don’t, and everyone has a burden of proof for their claims regardless of their credibility.
“JF – you have lost this argument badly.”
I’m not JF.
This debate is over. You lost it.
I am not interested in your post mortem efforts to find some inconsequential detail that you might not be completely wrong regarding.
If we are going to snipe over tiny details – 40% is not the majority, or 1:2. Nor is “offered” a meaningful measure.
I can “offer” you $1,000,000 that is not the same as actually giving you anything.
The data on the number of students taking STEM courses in HS is readily available – you do not like my number – I do not give a $hit.
It is accurate. Regardless, instead of trying to score meaningless sniping points, you could actually become informed – which you clearly are not. You can find out not only how many students take STEM course, but the demographic breakdown.
The FACTS are the schools that educate minority students – FAIL THEM. These are very expensive city schools, in places governed entirely by democrats and often by minorities.
Either the left is racist or incompetent.
Colleges do better educating minorities – but not a lot.
Minority and particularly black success in STEM is 1/3 that of whites and almost 1/10th that of asians.
and worse in public schools.
This is a massive failure, and it can not be explained by racist Trump supporters, conservatives, republicans or libertarians.
It is inarguably a failure of the LEFT. Of Government.
And ESP – whatever merits it might have has not dented the problem. ESP has been in place broadly in Colleges accross the country for almost 40 years. If it worked there would be noticable improvements.
Regardless, you have lost this argument – not because of my brilliance – but because whether you like it
or not, and whether I have cited to your satisfaction – the FACTS are damning.
Hiding from them is just game playing.
Are you actually interested in helping minority students ?
It’s a common offering.
Anonymous the Stupid you are such a dope. If a kid has yet to grasp basic mathematics putting him in a calculus class is wrong. Can’t you get that through your thick skull. People are different at different things. We need to learn to teach to the students strengths while making sure they can read, write and reasonably manage arithmetic. We need to teach critical thinking skills and logic two things you seem to have totally missed.
Placing kids in classes they are not ready for destroys the child. You were probably one of those children destroyed at an early age. I say that no matter how well you did in school based on your behavior.
MollyG said “My point is that ALL gifted students should have access to the gifted programs, not just some,” and you responded “That doesn’t sound too smart. Do you wish to make kids that can’t do basic math learn calculus?”
You’re the one assuming that gifted students “can’t do basic math,” dope. Not only can most gifted students learn calculus, so can a lot of students who aren’t gifted. No one is suggested that you put a kid who can’t do basic math in a calculus class.
You continue to project your own weaknesses onto others. Your endless desire to denigrate is sick. Talk to a psychologist.
I would note there is a difference between what students are capable of, and what they have the education to do.
Black median IQ’s increase linearly with family income. For black families in the top quintile median IQ is above the
median white IQ. However the difference between Black median IQ’s and White Median IQ’s also increases with income.
Wealthy whites are a full std dev higher than wealthy blacks.
While poor whites are only 0.6 std dev higher than blacks
Those on left do not care about mortality.
Put him in calculus, give him a participation prize when he can not cope, and then when he screws up in the real world – well the earth is over populated anyway.
You clearly don’t care about being honest when you say “Those on left do not care about mortality.”
Support students so they can succeed in their courses instead of assuming that they cannot cope. Plenty of people on the left and right work on that.
Success is learned by climbing hurdles, not by removing them.
If you’re inferring that supporting students so they can succeed means removing hurdles, your inference is wrong.
The Emerging Scholars Program, one of the most successful programs for increasing the success in calculus for students from groups that are underrepresented in STEM fields, is centered on having students work in groups on especially challenging problems.
“If you’re inferring that supporting students so they can succeed means removing hurdles, your inference is wrong.”
I am inferring that placing those without the necessary credentials into Ivy League schools or Medical Schools isn’t good.
I have no problem helping those that need help to learn how to jump over the hurdles. That is not what the left advocates.
I advocate charter schools where they are functioning well something that leftist politicians and the teachers union wish to eliminate.
I have no problems helping other PRIVATELY
Government should not be in the business of king winners and losers.
That violates equal protection.
Regardless, brightlines constraining government
If one is interested in education one will be interested in this article. Anonymous, this is a fascinating article and shows what can be accomplished.
https://quadrant.org.au/magazine/2021/01/the-queens-gambit-the-accelerated-polgar-variation/
And do you think that program can be applied universally ?
It is easy to come up with something that works when there is near universal buyin and excellent resources.
Getting anything to scale and still work is difficult to impossible.
There is no amount of practice or effort or support that will make me the athelete that Tom Brady is.
BTW there appear to be numerous differetn “emerging scholars programs” with different methods and targets. The ones I hecked are private.
“I have no problem helping those that need help to learn how to jump over the hurdles. That is not what the left advocates.”
You’re wrong about that. The Emerging Scholars Program was designed by someone on the left. The Algebra Project was designed by someone on the left. Over and over again, your partisanship blinds you to evidence.
Quotas tell us exactly what the left advocate. Quotas remove hurdles. They don’t fix the underlying problem.
You claim things – but you do not support those claims and you do not have the credibility to just be accepted.
Maybe you are right – but you have given us no means of knowing.
A google of ESP yeilds numerous programs. All those I checked were private, not public.
I do not care if ESP was started by the left – if it actually works.
Nor do I care greatly if it works – so long as it is private.
If some on the left are creating and funding programs that work – kudos
If you want success to continue – keep it out of government.
I just named two programs designed by people on the left and are advocated by people on the left: the Emerging Scholars Program and the Algebra Project.
Here’s background on the Emerging Scholars Program as a start –
https://files.eric.ed.gov/fulltext/ED562582.pdf
http://bfc.sfsu.edu/cgi-bin/prob.pl?Uri_Treismans_Dolciani_Lecture
I have no doubt that some on the left came up with potentially good programs. That is not the topic.
The left’s major emphasis is removing hurdles and that is why they push for quotas. The left also places politics in front of the children. That is why the left tries to limit and remove charter schools in NYC that have been proven to improve the education of those most in need.
Success is learned by climbing hurdles, not by removing them.
The first paper was lots of self serving nonsense. A diaria of words without a constipational thought.
The 2nd paper was better. It claimed to demonstrate some promising results.
But that begs the question – if there were promising results from something 40+ years ago – the entire problem should have been solved by now.
That is not the case.
Finally – the conclusions in the 2nd paper are not leftist. Aside from the “work in groups” conclusion they were pretty conservative.
“The first paper was lots of self serving nonsense. A diaria of words without a constipational thought.”
That is the basic foundation Anonymous builds from.
Thank you for reading the papers. I already learned that the vast majority of his links are worthless and do not mean what he thinks they mean.
His lack of critical thinking skills may be making him appear more ignorant than he is. Maybe he can compile data but is unable to appropriately use it.
The 2nd paper is quite interesting – and many successful elements of ESP reflect conservative not leftist orthodoxy.
But neither paper is inherently leftist. The first is merely gibberish and self adulation.
t
The 2nd has much more meat. It explains the development of a program that demonstrated remarkable success and as JF has noted has been widely adopted. But scaled it has had no impact
This is NOT an unusual outcome.
It usually means the results have more to do with the quality of the those running the program.
Essentially it means the results are cherry picked. Not necescarily consciously,
John, in business I care what works, not with what looks good or something praised by others. In NYC charter schools have demonstrated remarkable success under different companies, with different grades, different locations etc. yet I don’t claim them as conservative or liberal. I claim they work. This other stuff on the table under discussion has a lot of positive comments but no success in the marketplace. Why titles and consensus has come to mean so much to the left is beyond my understanding unless they have to promote what they have. What they don’t have is success.
That tells us the thinking process on the left. It values form rather than function.
The left likes to rant about “the science” – there is actually no such thing.
Science is a process.
The process of science is exactly the same as that of free markets.
Hypothesize, test, evaluate, modify, repeat.
Follow that process in an enviroment that rewards success, and you will get improvement.
Both my kids were cyber chartered. That worked for them. It is NOT a one size fits all solution for everyone.
But aside from my own kids it has been incredibly successful for minority students in $hitty schools.
The performance of Cyber Charters has only been slightly better than the mean in my state – but most of the students in cyber charters come from $hitty schools, they are inner city minorities that were setting the bottom of the curve. They have raised those students to to the middle.
At the same time Cyber Charters have changed over time. When my kids started they were learn at your own pace.
That was perfect for my daughter. Today they are as structured as traditional schools. That was wrong for my daughter, but better for minority students.
If we wanted real improvement in education (or anything else) we would get government as far out as possible.
Markets are excellent at relentlessly and competitively following that “scientific method” that brings about constant improvement.
Government sucks at that.
The ESP article you referenced appears to be decades old thing, the paper is pretty badly written – i.e. it is long and tedious and rarely says anything of importance. The introduction only offers a single sentence that suggest the program is successful and I could not find any in the conclusion at all.
You claim the program was started by the left – yet, I did not find any evidence of that at all – unless you assume that the UCB math lab is on the left or that Exxon is on the left.
So you provided a tedious document that does not appear to support your contentions and barely claims success.
The claim that students are likely to be getting A’s and B’s is only meaningful if you ignore college grade inflation which doubled the number of A’s and I beleive did the same to the number of B’s in the period from 1977-1997.
Just to be cIear – I am happy for anything that is actually successful – but even the document itself does not suggest that.
This program is now over 40 years old and appears widely deployed. If it was widely successful I would expect to see the number of minorities in STEM having improved dramatically.
That poses a logical dilema to the left – If the program was successful – why are we still bemoaning racism ?
Conversely if it was not – why does it still exist ?
I would suggest something different – something evident from the same failure we see in our cities.
First democrats, and then minority democrats have gained political power in nearly all the cities in the US.
And yet there has been little if any consequential improvement in the plight of minorities in these cities.
I am not particularly seeking to attack ESP – except to note that if it or anything else had been found and implimented that worked – we would see evidence of that.
It is arguable that the left does NOT want minority success – if it did we would have it.
Maybe ESP is better than the evidence suggests. But you have not made your case.
Maybe ESP is a creation of the left – if it works I do not care. Regardless you have not made the case.
“You claim the program was started by the left – yet, I did not find any evidence of that at all “
John, Anonymous doesn’t know the distinctions of political entities. He roots for a team and knows precious little about it. He can provide isolated facts but doesn’t know if the team works together and can function as a winner. He shouts his head off but accomplishes little.
He doesn’t know right from left.
He doesn’t know capitalism from communism.
He doesn’t know fascism from classical liberal thinking
What does Anonymous know? Nothing. That is why he remains anonymous.
I would be shocked if the Person who developed ESP program was not a democrat.
But that does not alter the fact that the ESP program is not a “leftist” program
Nearly all of it reflects relatively conservative values.
Further it ultimately fails – because even though it works at small scale with cherry picked participants.
It does not scale. That is a massive common problem with all kinds of save the world solutions.
Your 2nd paper is better than the first.
If as you claim it comes from the left – that is not self evident.
The author seemed to do some thorough studies, and came to conclusions that for the most part REJECT leftist concepts.
I have some personal disagreement with the analysis – it seemed self evident that the public schools that minority students came from had failed them. Minority students who had done well in HS came to Berkeley and failed. They did not seek help – because they came to Berkeley from the top of their classes and thought that help was something others needed.
Regardless that is a well deserved indictment of our public schools.
My personal experience completely rejects this community education concept. I was periodically subject to that in public school, college and even even work. For h it always meant I was going to have to carry the group, which was harder than succeeding on my own.
That said – this is not about what works for me.
Anyway, your article shows lots of effort most of which failed – though we can learn from failure, and a few successes.
Those successes are pretty much “anti-leftist” in nature, and have either been abandoned, or did not prove that effective in the long run.
It is 2021. 40+ years later. Had anything that was broadly effective been done – we would have had dramatic results.
Where are they ?
Sorry, but I’m not going to buy your endless negative overgeneralizations about the left. You say “the left advocates …” as if it were some homogeneous entity. It isn’t, nor have you provided a shred of evidence that your characterization even captures the majority of the left. You’re not focused on discussing calculus education, which is the topic of this particular sub-thread, and I bet that you know next to nothing about calculus education in the US.
“overgeneralizations about the left. ”
Those with knowledge of freedom wish I was overgeneralizing.
“You’re not focused on discussing calculus education”
It’s very clear I am focused on true discussion. Success is learned by climbing hurdles, not by removing them. My two examples, quotas and the destruction of charter schools, are clear. You can’t respond to the larger policy issues so you respond with small efforts that may or may not work that I likely might approve of.
You are denying the facts. You are refusing to discuss basic policy that you know you cannot debate.
SM
It is irrelevant whether “the left” is homogenous.
However it is constructed, whatever its actual numbers – it is in control
I have no problem calling everyone who made that possible “the left”
Impossible to understand quotas without understanding the condition that bred them >> structural lack of opportunity. Quotas themselves don’t remove hurdles, they actually present them in many situations. And they encourage competition, which in large part explains why some people don’t approve of them. Opening up opportunity that was once entirely granted by ‘birthright’ is a threatening beast to contend with for those who may have taken for granted their access.
They serve a purpose…, and there are definite benefits and hinderances. They’re the mechanism that’s necessary to navigate in order to get to higher level study with truly gifted teachers.
Elvis Bug
“Impossible to understand quotas ”
Dealing with history is not dealing with the solutions. I skipped the rest of the post like I do with Natacha and for the same reason.
SM
The Way to Stop Discrimination on the Basis of Race Is to Stop Discriminating on the Basis of Race
“You clearly don’t care about being honest when you say “Those on left do not care about morality.””
Perfectly honest. You do not.
If you did you would not be using force to solve problems that we know can not be solved by force.
If you did you would not be pretending that you know with certainty things that we do not know at all.
If you were honest you would not be engaged in mass censorship of views and people that you disagree with, without any regard for whether they are true.
I can go on and on – the left is not moral.
“Support students so they can succeed in their courses instead of assuming that they cannot cope. Plenty of people on the left and right work on that.”
More misrepresentation. You presume that there are unlimited resources and that each of us is capable of doing what the best of us can do.
The core assumption of a Gifted school is that all students are not equal.
Do you dispute that ? If you do, then eliminate the gifted schools.
But it is dishonest idiocy to accept that students are not equal and then and use force to pretend you can make them equal.
You are also effectively demonstrating the failure of government and force. Where does this egalitarian nonsense end ?
If with a little help a few edge cases can manage – then with enough help – everyone can manage – can’t they ?
And Why stop at SF ? Why shouldn’t the school be forces to accept those who MIGHT succeed from nearby cities ? States ? Countries ?
You are rejecting the reality that we are not equal and we can not be made equal by force.
And you wonder why you are immoral ?
Jerk, the word you originally used was “morTality,” not “morality,” and that’s why I responded as I did. Reread the initial exchange. I’m not going to follow you down your rabbit-hole of attempting to change the topic to morality.
Mortality was a typo – that should have been clear in context.
Your response had nothing to do with mortality – you did not link education and mortality.
You can hurl insults,
I stand by my remarks.
John, Anonymous has been around a long time and has always been a bottom feeder. He will correct misspellings to prove to himself his worth. When he sees something contrary to what he wants to believe he scours the Internet to prove that something wrong, trying to make others appear ignorant. He can’t follow up on what he produces because he might only be referring to a headline where the content proves worthless or something quite different than he believed. He will post a link that provides worthless information or information that is stale being 40 years old. He is also known not to read or comprehend his links that frequently have proven his contentions wrong.
Being Anonymous is the least of his problems regarding credibility. His actions and statements falling under the Anonymous label prove him to be not credible.
“Mortality was a typo – that should have been clear in context.”
It wasn’t. You said “Those on left do not care about mortality. Put him in calculus, give him a participation prize when he can not cope,” and I interpreted “mortality” in the context of success or failure in a calculus class.
If you instead meant “Those on left do not care about morality,” your claim is false. Some on the left and right care about morality, and some on the left and right don’t. You again resort to counterproductive overgeneralizations.
“Your response had nothing to do with mortality – you did not link education and mortality.”
My response had to do with people on the left caring about student success and failure.
“You can hurl insults”
So do you.
“I stand by my remarks.”
And I stand by mine.
mortality: DEATH.
I am not responsible when you misinterpret a typo into complete idiocy.
“If you instead meant “Those on left do not care about morality,” your claim is false. Some on the left and right care about morality, and some on the left and right don’t. You again resort to counterproductive overgeneralizations.”
Wrong. The foundation of morality is free will. Morality does not exist without freedom.
The modern left places little value in freedom. That is immoral.
That you are clueless about morality is not my problem.
If a master orders a slave to do something objectively good – who acted morally ?
Can a slave earn moral credit for food he was compelled to perform ?
Can a master earn moral credit for the good consequences of immoral acts ?
Morality does not exist without freedom.
The modern left is at best amoral.
Your inability to understand the foundations of morality does not convert fact to opinion.
The right is not inherently moral. The left is very nearly inherently immoral.
“My response had to do with people on the left caring about student success and failure.”
Nearly everyone cares. There is no merit in caring – another idiocy of the left.
Merit comes from what you DO not what you FEEL.
Postive mnmorality requires ACTS, not emotions.
Long ago a demonstraton project was created at Cabrini Green.
The best social workers and case workers and psychologists and accountants and … were brought in.
Residents were carefully assessed and a select portion of them were given the assistance they needed to survive and thrive in private rentals. This was tremendously successful.
So the program was incorporated into law and applied to public housing accross the country. To devastating consequences.
Why did it fail ?
Because carefully selected people are not everyone.
Because the best and brightest of social workers etc are not ordinary social workers.
We have to make the world work with the people we have – not those we magically wish existed.
Absolutely every single student in the country can do better with the proper support – but we do not have the ability to provide that assistance effectively to more than a few.
We can not do what the left wishes – because there is no limits to what the left wishes.
We can not because we do not have the infinite wealth necescary
We can not because we do not have the human resources necescary.
You, the left seeks to impose an unacheivable utopia by force.
In the real world people are ultimately responsible for themselves.
We are not equally able – that is life – reality as it actually is.
Nor are we equally blessed with “support”.
Some of us are raised in loving intact families.
We do not have the capacity to fix this by force.
It is immoral to pretend that you can.
“The first paper was lots of self serving nonsense. A diaria of words without a constipational thought.”
That’s your personal opinion. My opinion is different than yours. More relevant is that dozens of researchers disagree with you: https://scholar.google.com/scholar?hl=en&as_sdt=0%2C21&q=https%3A%2F%2Ffiles.eric.ed.gov%2Ffulltext%2FED562582.pdf&btnG= (see “Cited by 55,” and if you click on that, you can see where it was cited).
“Finally – the conclusions in the 2nd paper are not leftist. Aside from the “work in groups” conclusion they were pretty conservative.”
Once again, you demonstrate your failure to read attentively. I said “The Emerging Scholars Program was designed by someone on the left.” Uri Treisman is his name. He is liberal, not conservative.
“So you provided a tedious document that does not appear to support your contentions and barely claims success.”
And yet again, you demonstrate your failure to read attentively. I did not provide the links as evidence of the program’s success. I provided the links as “background on the Emerging Scholars Program.” If you want evidence of the success, use Google Scholar or ERIC and search.
As a start:
“Several journal articles provide evidence of the ESP model’s success and identify several kinds of effects. For example, ESP participants tend to achieve higher grades in calculus than underrepresented students who do not participate in the program—and often ESP participants receive higher grades than their (nonparticipant) white and Asian classmates (Alexander, Burda, & Millar, 1997; Bonsangue, 1994; Fullilove & Treisman, 1990; Moreno, Muller, Asera, Wyatt, & Epperson, 1999; Murphy, Stafford, & McCreary, 1998). ESP participants are more likely to complete the calculus sequence than nonparticipants (Alexander, Burda, & Millar, 1997; Murphy, Stafford, & McCreary, 1998). Furthermore, underrepresented minority students who participated in an ESP are more likely to persist in a calculus-based major (Bonsangue, 1994; Murphy, Stafford, & McCreary, 1998). The studies have had issues with defining appropriate control groups, if for no other reason than not being able to control for self-selection bias, i.e., the fact that ESP students choose to enter the program. Nevertheless, for the most part, the outcomes cited in these studies cannot be explained by preexisting differences in admissions criteria (e.g., SAT scores) between the ESP participants and the control groups. While there is scant research examining which program features contribute most to which outcomes and for what reasons, Herzig and Kung (2003) attempted to isolate the effects of cooperative learning and length of time in class. They concluded that “it is likely that the success of ESP results from some combination of the various aspects of the program, including length of time, use of group learning, types of students, and community-building activities” (p. 46).”
source: pp. 4-5 of
Hsu, E., Murphy, T. J., & Treisman, U. (2008). Supporting High Achievement In Introductory Mathematics Courses: What We Have Learned From 30 Years of the Emerging Scholars Program. In M. Carlson, & C. Rasmussen (Eds.), Making the Connection: Research and Teaching in Undergraduate Mathematics. Washington, DC: Mathematical Association of America. Print ISBN: 978-0-88385-183-8.
Here’s a copy: http://math.sfsu.edu/hsu/papers/Hsu-Murphy-Treisman-final.pdf
“You claim the program was started by the left – yet, I did not find any evidence of that at all – unless you assume that the UCB math lab”
The program was started by a single person, Uri Treisman, not a “math lab.” Uri is liberal. What would convince you of that?
“The first paper was lots of self serving nonsense. A diaria of words without a constipational thought.”
“That’s your personal opinion.”
No, it is not an opinion.
There is very little of substance int he first paper.
“More relevant is that dozens of researchers disagree with you”
1) they do not. There is a difference between claiming ESP works and claiming value to the first paper you linked.
2). Your researchers are clearly Wrong, and I need not read them to know that. ESP is widely adopted, and yet Black STEM graduates are declining slowly, making a tiny portion of engineering graduates.
To be clear – I am not challenging any of this research.
You (and they) still do not grasp that what works in a study often fails in the real world particularly at scale.
Most typically that is because what you think is the independent variable you are testing is actually a dependent variable.
I am not interested in 10,000 studies of ESP or anything else that claims it works “in the lab”
It is clear that it has not worked in the real world widely deployed.
“Once again, you demonstrate your failure to read attentively. I said “The Emerging Scholars Program was designed by someone on the left.” Uri Treisman is his name. He is liberal, not conservative.”
Do not care how Uri self identifies.
There are myriads of successful people on the left – who have succeeded because their actions within their domain of success are not leftist.
Dp not care how anyone self identifies. I care about what WORKS.
Leftism does not work.
“I did not provide the links as evidence of the program’s success. ”
Then why did you provide them ?
Because You too are nothing more than a diariah of words without a constitpational thought.
My debate is about the success or failure of ideas, not individual people, especially those who say one thing and do another.
“If you want evidence of the success, use Google Scholar or ERIC and search.”
And yet a program that is in wide spread use has not only not budged the needle, minority performance has declined.
You can’t see the forest for the trees,
“As a start:”
Will 10,000 journal articles change the fact that minority STEM graduates have not increased or in many instances have declined ?
““You claim the program was started by the left – yet, I did not find any evidence of that at all – unless you assume that the UCB math lab”
The program was started by a single person, Uri Treisman, not a “math lab.” Uri is liberal. What would convince you of that?”
Again, Forest Trees. I do not care what Uri calls himself. The program itself has no idelogical bent to it.
Leftists have been known to eat oatmeal that does not make oatmeal leftist. They have been know to repair cars. That does not make auto repair leftist.
There is plenty of annecdotal evidence that ESP works – at small scales in cherry picked environments.
This may be hard for you to grasp – but even a study is just anecdotal evidence unless the study is of behavior across the entire domain.
The overwhelming majority of ideas that appear good in “studies” do not scale.
“My point is that ALL gifted students should have access to the gifted programs, not just some.”
No one has a problem with that. But all students are not gifted. At most about 10% are gifted in any specific area.
The good news is that the 10% best intellects, are not the 10% best musicians, are not the 10% best athletes.
“If 1000 are academically qualified, then the school district should make the gifted program large enough to accommodate all 1000”
Why ?
A band is only so large, a soccer team only so large, a debate team only so large.
We have universally taken the best of a population to fill the available positions, not the other way arround.
We only needs a finite number of plumbers.
“What we see is that districts will create a program for say 400 students per year, no matter how many would qualify, and that number could have been set decades ago and not kept up with an increase in population growth.”
So what ?
No one is stopping you from setting your own STEM charter school.
If 1000 are academically qualified, then the school district should make the gifted program large enough to accommodate all 1000.
You have no idea about the statistical distribution of talent.
Why do CEO’s make $100 million a year plus bonuses? The could just promote a bright accountant for a fraction of the money and all is great right?
No, There is a very small set of persons with the skill set to achieve results.
You Could just double the amount of MLB baseball teams right? Twice the amount of players making money right? Not at all. There are only so many humans with the skill set to compete at that level.
The screening is an attempt to find those skill sets. The screening is about 15% more students than will be able to do the work.
Why do CEO’s make $100 million a year plus bonuses?
Almost none of them do. The median cash compensation for company presidents is around $200,000 a year. And the Fortune 500 execs pulling monster compensation do so because those are not arms length transactions.
No Ceo’s salary is arms length. More so than any other position in any company the Ceo’s compensation is tied to performance of the company.
I am sure Kodak shareholders wish they had paid more for their CEO when they went bankrupt.
More so than any other position in any company the Ceo’s compensation is tied to performance of the company.
Buy my bridge.
Ha. That’s funny, Arty.
Elvis Bug
Fortune 500 ceos average comp in 2016 was $11.5 million., that is cash plus options plus etc.
One supposes that average is a lot higher now. And fewer and fewer are worth it
Rent-seeking elites, by and large, parasites and cowards, hired for their lack of scruples and cunning, and little more
Sal Sar
https://www.marketwatch.com/story/fortune-500-ceos-are-paid-from-double-to-5000-times-more-than-their-employees-2018-05-16#:~:text=The%20median%20total%20compensation%20for,Equilar%20released%20last%20year%20found.
1. The main objection to the merit system is that the tests used are racist, and there is plenty of research that backs that up.
There is no research that backs that up. There are people who define screening people for their vocabulary, their reading comprehension, their capacity to compose sentences in grammatical English, and their performance in arithmetic and geometry is ‘racist’. We’re not compelled to take them seriously.
2. My biggest issue with this is that these systems put an artificial limit on the number of seats in these gifted programs.
That’s a silly complaint. The point is to sort youngsters into classes wherein the students in each can be expected to absorb material at a similar pace. If the students are normally distributed, you’ll have 16% who absorb at a pace a standard deviation above the mean, 16% who do so at a standard deviation below the mean, and 68% who absorb at a rate within a 1/2 standard deviation of the mean. Stuffing more youngsters in the first group means you have to slow down the pace, which is a cost to the extant students. There are always trade-offs you make in assigning people to sections. You cannot avoid that.
1). Actually there is not.
There have been IQ tests for over a century that are graphic – they do not require understanding any language.
These produce the same results – in the US and in developed nations as Standardized tests in English that purportedly have cultural or racial biases.
Regardless, it MIGHT be possible to make a claim of racial or cultural bias for an english test.
How are you going to do so for a Math test ?
There is a reason that many on the left are claiming that math and science are racist – that is because math and science performance show differences between races.
Racial differences in average test performance are no more racist than the fact that professional sports are dominated by minorities.
I would note that the SAT’s as well as most standardized tests, are just IQ tests. You can go online and if you know your SAT score and the year you took the test, you can find out your IQ from your SAT score.
The biggest “racial bias” that exists in testing today is that the education in minority areas is so poor that many graduating from those schools are functionally illiterate.
That is a failure of our education system. It is also a MASSIVE failure of the left, and of democrats. The worst schools in the country are among the most expensive public schools in the country and they are inner city schools that have been run by democrats all of my life.
These schools are often so expensive the students could be sent to excellent private boarding schools cheaper than to crappy public schools.
2). Skills, talent, productivity, … all have a pareto distribution.
That is immutable.
In most any system 50% of the skill, talent, intelligence, productivity is going to be vested in approximately the square root of the number of people involved. Loosely speaking that is about 10% of the population or in this instance students.
If you really wish to optimize the education of the rest – there education needs are radically different from those near the top.
Regardless, the limits are not artificial. If you have an IQ below 120 you do not belong in a gifted program, and it is not going to help you.
Your education needs will be radically different.
This is no different from grasping that few people have the skills necescary to compete in college sports,
They are not given access to the best programs. They are given access to the programs best suited for them.
My daughter as an example performs very well in school – but it is very hard for her. She has serious learning disabilities that would make it stupid to put her into gifted programs.
Education is not a one size fits all proposition.
It is also damning to the entire leftist ideology. Most of us grasp that every student is not going to excel academically.
That each student is individual.
Further every single parent in the world wants the best for their kids.
No parents want an “equal education”. Most parents will do what they are able to get the best education they can for THEIR child.
Not for ALL children.
If our child is smart – we want them in gifted programs, If they are talented in the arts – we want them in the best arts and music programs. If they are athletically inclined we want them in the best athletic programs.
If if our kids are physically, or intellectually challenged – we want them in the best program for THEIR capabilities.
We do not want equality.
“main objection to the merit system is that the tests used are racist”
Tell us how math tests are racist.
You are not keeping up – Math and science are the most racist of all. And 2 + 2 = 5.
How many black mathematicians can you name – clearly math is a tool of white male opproession.
1. The main objection to the merit system is that the tests used are racist, and there is plenty of research that backs that up.>
Research proves that the exams highlight disparate backgrounds for test takers.
https://www.brookings.edu/research/race-gaps-in-sat-scores-highlight-inequality-and-hinder-upward-mobility/
I took the SAT in the 70s and none of my peers at a Jesuit high school run by Cuban Jesuits, scored exceedingly well. Proctors noticed that we struggled with Americanisms, phrases and idioms, since Spanish was our dominant language. Still, the scores did not keep us back. Admissions to colleges, be they Ivy League or moderate universities, are based on a host of factors not just SAT scores. Setting aside students having wealthy parents, other students get accepted eventually to an accredited university, do well while working jobs, access loans, grants, scholarships, etc, graduate and continue in their chosen careers.
Ben Carson almost failed his first year in medical school at U of Michigan.
Condaleeza Rice attended University of Denver
Clarence Thomas attended a Jesuit institution, College of the Holy Cross
Jerome Adams (former Trump era Surgeon General) attended U of Maryland.
None of these schools are Ivy League. Success is possible in America regardless of school chosen
NB: Bill Gates and Steve Jobs were college drop outs
Wherever you are getting your data it is wrong.
I have no idea about your jesuit school in the 70’s,
but my catholic elementary school in the 60’s significantly outperformed local public schools.
This continues to be the norm today.
As I noted earlier, most standardized tests – like SAT’s are IQ tests. We have IQ tests that are completely graphic and have no cultural or racial biases, and those confirm the results of other tests like SAT’s
Further it is well known that the initial adoption of SAT’s by the Ivy’s resulted in a radical shift in the student body from WASP’s to Catholics and jews. Today SAT’s favor asians. Regardless, they do NOT favor the rich, or the white or the priviledged.
Thomas got his law degree from Yale, Rice graduated from Notre Dame. Carson graduated from Yale. Gates did not fail out. He left by choice to create Microsoft.
Wherever you are getting your data it is wrong.
I provided a link to Brookings Institution. Predictably you ignored it but countered with your ex-cathedra blatherings once again. You’re tiring bud. Our previous exchange (on virology no less) involved your ad nauseam novelettes sans data (aka links).
Thomas got his law degree from Yale, Rice graduated from Notre Dame. Carson graduated from Yale. Gates did not fail out. He left by choice to create Microsoft.
Thomas entered his college education at Holy Cross, Rice at UD, Carson at Yale but his MD attempt at UMichigan demonstrated he couldn’t hack it his first semester. Gates and Jobs dropped out of college irregardless of motive
All this is to minimize the supraimportance that some give to standardize high school tests.
Of course I ignored it. The increase in admissions of catholics and jews in Ivy’s that occured when they shifted to SAT scores for admissions is well documented.
As is the general outperformance of catholic education vs public education over the long term.
Brookings is where Steele Russian Spy/primary subsource came from.
You keep repeating your claims regarding Rice, Carson and Thomas.
My Wife graduated from a Podunk state school, Then she graduated Summa from Penn Law.
You are looking for a pattern that is not there. I have no idea about Carson’s med school performance.
His medical carreer is stellar. If he had problems – he got over them.
There are lots of problems with Ivy’s today – they seem intent on making their students stupider on graduation.
Regardless, they do not let in morons.
SAT’s are an IQ test.
IQ is not a perfect predictor of success in life. But it is by far the best one that we have.
There is plenty of studies to document that.
Colleges can use whatever criteria they want for admissions.
But if they are seeking to determine the likelyhood of success in college and in life – IQ is the best criteria available.
Gates did not flunk out – which is what you imply. He left by choice.
Nor is he alone – many many successful and inteligent people left college to start changing the world.
John Say,
“But it is by far the best one that we have.”
High conscientiousness comes in a close second.
https://www.thinkspot.com/online_content/jordan-peterson/2016-personality-lecture-12-conscientiousness-industriousness-and-orderliness/gd9u5a/Event
I have known people who were wicked smart but didn’t apply themselves. Those for whom learning didn’t come quite so easily but who worked their tails off to master things anyway ended up quite successful anyway.
Agreed.
For the record, i will correct myself – Conscientuousness is close to IQ in predicting success.
Neither of these are compatible with any leftist ideology
Conscientiousness is actually worse than IQ.
only a small percentage of the students in a given district will have access to the best programs.
Gifted programs do not offer the best educators or education. It is exactly the same public school administrators, teachers and aides. The only difference is all the students in the program have motivation to excel, and course work to challenge their abilities. Exactly like the rest of the Public schools.
The screening keeps out the literal “riff raff” Disrupters are sent back to the normal class rooms. Leaving those interested is scholorship to concentrate on the subject at hand.
Iowan2,
“It is exactly the same public school administrators, teachers and aides. ”
I think it may depend on the district. The “gifted” kids will regularly meet with a particular teacher who coordinates the talented and gifted program at their respective level. By high school, the kids are typically in the Honors or AP classes. In elementary and middle school, yes, it is mostly the same teachers as ‘regular’ students.
I agree. Meritocracy is unfair. I refuse to watch any NBA games the teams are more diverse.
I want more Pygmies in the NBA and the NFL. It’s racist to exclude them.
Moreover, I want more Samoan jockeys.
Race is only a social construct so it is absurd that these people are excluded.
According to you, Pygmies and everyone in the NBA already belong to the same race, so you’ll have to excuse us if we don’t take your musings seriously.
Nope. I didn’t say that. You don’t take my musings seriously because you don’t understand them.
You did say that. You said “The term ‘race’ has been used roughly to describe populations that can be better defined as proper subsets of the general population.” {Pygmies} U {everyone in the NBA} is one of many proper subsets of humans.
Maybe you meant something other than what you said, and you lack the understanding to express what you meant.
That’s OK – I am a Black transgendered woman. Because that is how I chose to identify, and my prefered pronoun is pfft.
In four iterations, the American Founders legislated what America would be.
America lived for but 72 years.
In his “Reign of Terror,” “Crazy Abe” Lincoln abrogated and demolished the Founders’ America through the liberal application of tyranny and brutal military force.
The Constitution was mortally injured, America died and with it, its resolve.
Invading foreign hyphenates came, saw and conquered, nay, were unconstitutionally delivered, of fake, factitious, nonexistent, phantom guilt, the culture, the wealth and the nation.
God knows why.
____________
The Naturalization Acts of 1790, 1795, 1798 and 1802
United States Congress, “An act to establish an uniform Rule of Naturalization,” March 26, 1790
Be it enacted by the Senate and House of Representatives of the United States of America, in Congress assembled, That any Alien being a free white person, who shall have resided within the limits and under the jurisdiction of the United States for the term of two years, may be admitted to become a citizen thereof
“[Only two percent of its student body were African-Americans.”
Instead of blaming others (their “racism”), why not draw the obvious conclusion? There is something wrong with the values of a culture, when such a low percentage of its children can qualify for advanced programs.
Or are we no longer allowed to point out the obvious?
Culture in part but an average IQ of 85, meaning about half are below that, isn’t going to get many of that cohort into any advanced studies, and that is also obvious.
And, NO, you cannot point out the obvious if it is wrong think. Truth doesn’t matter.
So very true what you state…
Leftists are Dumb and Dumber but they are able to capture the culture of failure and keep those cultures in their power by continuing to promise them a better world. Only problem is that the lie that is their philosophy leads the cultures of failure to the continuous state of failure and dependency. The cultures of failure are largely unable to comprehend what has happened to their culture and why this failure is perpetuated. They need look no further than their leaders and their very own choices, but this would be painful. They would have to admit to themselves and others that they have been duped and for decades…
Fortunately some within the cultures of failure have emerged triumphant… such as Dr. Ben Carson.
And what do those in power of the cultures of failure do to these success stories???
Like our fraudy sixth president, they say… “Hey man, you ain’t black”
Testing. Nesting. Two pees in a pod.
When we talk about merit, meritocracy and especially meritocracy based on standardized testing…those are racist systems.… You can’t talk about social justice, and then say you want to have a selective school that keeps certain kids out from the neighborhoods that you think are dangerous.”
It would appear that Collins identifies herself as a VP of something other than the San Francisco Board of Education.
If merit is removed from the education process input, then the system will be forced to accept an unknown degree of variation on the input, which in turn will lead to an inefficient and more complex process, if they desire a meritable output.
…and parents continue to send their kids to these re-education camps for their fair share of communist (liberal, progressive, socialist, democrat, RINO) propaganda and indoctrination.
“It’s the [party], stupid!”
– James Carville
Make the change to a lottery system, as those fools want to do, and the school will no longer be a school of OR for high achievers, gifted students. It will be just another high school!
That’s right. Put in a lottery system to circumvent requirements then you no longer have a gifted program, you have a raffle. Can anyone guess how the “winners” would perform in the gifted program if the curriculum and standards remained the same? Exactly, and that would not do justice for unqualified students. It would ensure their failure. Colleges would devalue that “gifted” program accordingly as they should. Obviously colleges and companies don’t want people who can’t perform. You cannot fake success no matter the starting point “curve”. Successful people do whatever it takes while having the confidence, desire and belief in their achievement. They KNOW it, and knowing it is a state of mind built over time by putting in the work and reaping the reward. By failing and learning from the experience.
OT:
Officer Brian Sicknick was an ardent Trump supporter.
Capitol Police officer Brian Sicknick died of injuries suffered when supporters of President Donald Trump invaded the U.S. Capitol building. Brian Sicknick was a Trump-supporting U.S. Capitol Police officer and military veteran who has died of injuries suffered during a pro-Trump riot on January 6, 2021, at the Capitol building, authorities say. Sicknick was injured while “physically engaging” with rioters, the U.S. Capitol Police Department said in a statement. He died at 9:30 p.m. on January 7, the department said.
Heavy found a Twitter account in Sicknick’s name. It indicates that he was a Donald Trump supporter; the cover photo is Trump’s plane. The account has been temporarily restricted for “unusual activity.” On Facebook, his cover photo is of an American flag. The mayor of South River, New Jersey, where the officer was from, told My Central New Jersey, “The family has requested privacy at this time and said Brian did his job.”
Lt. Col. Barbara Brown, a spokeswoman for the New Jersey National Guard, told My Central New Jersey, “Staff Sgt. Sicknick’s commitment to service and protect his community, state and nation will never be forgotten.”
1. The Officer’s Social Media Featured Patriotic Themes & a Democratic Staffer Recalled How He Comforted Her After the 2016 Election Even Thought He Supported Trump & She Was in Tears
Visible posts on Sicknick’s private Facebook page featured American flags and patriotic themes. A 1998 article in the Central New Jersey Home News said that then Airman Brian D. Sicknick was the son of Charles and Gladys Sicknick of South River. At the time he was “a security-force apprentice assigned to the 108th Air Refueling Wing” at McGuire Air Force Base, the outlet reported. He was a 1997 graduate of Middlesex County Vocational Technical High School in East Brunswick.
“Officer Sicknick was the officer posted at the door of the Capitol I entered through every day for two years. He was mostly quiet, but always had jokes and a quick sense of humor,” wrote Caroline Behringer on Twitter. She’s worked for Nancy Pelosi and Barack Obama. “the day that Trump won the election, I came to work in tears. When he saw me walking up, he had the other officers hold the doors open for me and help me inside. I collapsed in tears and he held me while I cried, even though I knew he supported Trump.”
– Heavy.com
Hey anonymous ….. Officer Sicknick died of natural causes hours after the “insurrection”. He was never injured by anyone. You must be a CNN botzi to parrot lies and propaganda of the lord darth biden institution from china. Typical lefty hobgoblin of falsehood.
Race, race, bo base.
Banana fanna foe hase.
Fee fi Moe stase.
Face!
If your mom was all white and your dad was grey.
Drop those words and say the name…
Like Kamala is a black and Obama is a white.
And Fred, Red, singing until dead.
And Mary. Barry. Same as Larry.
In other words. Moe, Larry, Cheese.
The Three Stooges run the the schools.
What missed opportunities to acknowledge being bi-racial people in the USA! Early on, obama lived his life as if his mother (and her parents, the ones who raised him) of European descent did not exist; having been sired by a man from Africa, he proclaimed himself black or African-American – as that was advantageous in social circles, educational opportunities and (of course) politics. Similarly, harris only infrequently acknowledges a mother who came to the USA and Canada to escape religious persecution in India and raised harris as a single, working mother; she only calls herself black and African-American, largely misstating her heritage, a father who immigrated to the USA from Jamaica.
The country is in the grip of a Critical Race Theory hysteria, where race has become the prioritized measure of standards. Until this trend passes, schools will be devastated. From coast to coast, CRT has infiltrated US education at all levels, and students spend more time apologizing for their “whiteness” than in actually learning the basics.
…and parents continue to send their kids to these re-education camps for their fair share of communist (liberal, progressive, socialist, democrat, RINO) propaganda and indoctrination.
“It’s the [party], stupid!”
– James Carville
Meritocracy programs mirror the opportunity that only America provides and has made it the greatest nation on the planet. The American dream is based upon the idea that any person, from any background, religion, race or sex can be successful and improve their way of life through hard work and excelling(merit). Meritocracy is the fuel of capitalism. Capitalism provides the vehicle to greatness that is available to all and permits each person to drive. Where each person goes is up to them. To remove these programs would also remove the incentive, opportunity and access to the American Dream. To remove these programs would not help those who aren’t in them and only hurt those who are.
Good post.
Agree
“. . . and only hurt those who are.”
Which, of course, is the ultimate goal.
The destruction of talented programs is fueled by egalitarianism — an evil ideology that achieves “equality of results” by “chopping down tall poppies,”
Alison and her fans would not been successful settlers in Jamestown, VA.
https://www.nps.gov/jame/learn/historyculture/a-short-history-of-jamestown.htm
A Short History of Jamestown
By late 1609, the relationship between the Powhatan Indians and the English had soured as the English were demanding too much food during a drought. That winter of 1609-10 is known as the “Starving Time.” During that winter the English were afraid to leave the fort, due to a legitimate fear of being killed by the Powhatan Indians. As a result they ate anything they could: various animals, leather from their shoes and belts, and sometimes fellow settlers who had already died. By early 1610 most of the settlers, 80-90% according to William Strachey, had died due to starvation and disease.
Collins obviously was not selected for the gifted program in school. If she had been, she’d know that such programs are designed to challenge the minds of students whose abilities are far above the level of their other classmates, for whom curriculum is designed. Gifted students are challenged. Students lacking in those abilities are going to fail. A good example of how students fail is the high school in DC which sends most of its students to colleges (because of the color of their skin) but only a small percentage are able to keep up with the demands of higher education. Yes, gifted education should be for the gifted, not the never-gonna-make-its.
If she had been, she’d know that such programs are designed to challenge the minds of students whose abilities are far above the level of their other classmates, for whom curriculum is designed….but only a small percentage are able to keep up with the demands of higher education.
Read Malcolm Gladwell’s “David & Goliath” where he recounts stories of bright students being accepted into top universities only to earn mediocre grades because the schools were far harder than average universities.
In the same book Gladwell wrote extensively about Dr Emil Freireich, who had a brutal, deprived, heart wrenching childhood. This awful childhood experience precisely groomed him to be the ball buster Hematologist, loathed and mocked by his peers, who revolutionized the treatment of pediatric leukemia, a truly depressing field at the time.
IOW: Adversity can be the fire in the belly.
Legendary MD Anderson faculty member Dr. Emil J Freireich passes away at 93
https://www.mdanderson.org/newsroom/legendary-md-anderson-faculty-member-dr–emil-j-freireich-passes.h00-159458478.html
Emil J Freireich, M.D., a trailblazing oncologist who developed groundbreaking therapies for childhood leukemia and came to be recognized as a founding father of modern clinical cancer research, passed away peacefully in Houston at his beloved institution, The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center, on Feb. 1. He was 93.
The son of Hungarian immigrants, Freireich was born in 1927 and grew up poor in inner-city Chicago during the Great Depression. The death of his father at age two had a dramatic impact on him, and the loss of other loved ones was prominent in his formative years. Best-selling author Malcolm Gladwell, in “David and Goliath: Underdogs, Misfits, and the Art of Battling Giants” (2013), cast Freireich as a “David,” observing that those early hardscrabble years gave him the will to push himself and his patients particularly hard in order to achieve dramatic results.
The need to achieve greater diversity in top public high schools is real and needs to be addressed.
It is not real and does not need to be addressed. The application of impersonal performance standards will not result in a student body which resembles that of the general population according to the coarse categories liberal favor (while ignoring every other possible categorization). It will lead to a student body which is ready for the pace, which will generally come in a number of colors. You’re all advocates of damaging the school’s educational mission (or, in her case, eliminating it) because you insist the black portion thereof be 14% rather than 6%. Not worth it.
The oppression of white and asian youth by affirmative action is what needs to be remedied
Saloth Sar
The need to achieve greater diversity in top public high schools is real and needs to be addressed.
BS. Would you argue top performing manufacturing companies need a greater diversity in the quality of the raw materials they use to produce their desired output?
The education process is no different. The raw material (students) should meet measurable standards for acceptance into the school’s designed education process. If the desire is to have an increase in the demographic diversity on the output, then the effort needs to be made to develop the raw material before it’s accepted, not after.
Injecting poor quality raw material into a high performing process, will only succeed in producing a more diverse, low quality output.
I wonder if Boeing strove for greater diversity when designing and building its new plane that keeps crashing?
No school should be so demanding that any black student cannot graduate with honors.
That is the goal.
Average black IQ in America: 85
Refuse to take your word for that. Besides for the first time in history we have the means of increasing a motivated persons IQ.
John: “Besides for the first time in history we have the means of increasing a motivated persons IQ.”
***
Better start work on your own.
IQ is complicated. Among other things IQ is defined based on deviation from the norm.
That means that if we increase intelligence over time we do not change the portion fo the population with an IQ over 120.
There is also some evidence that even learned intelligence is heritable.
This effort to eliminate meritocracy is proof of failure of public schools.
Not failure; sedition.
Why can’t it be both? 🙂
Keep in mind that this nonsense is in SF in CA. No surprise, considering all their other nonsense.
Plenty of other communities consider high standards and excellence a core value of their school district and community.