Althouse: Equity.

February 27, 2021

Equity.

Equity = punishing kids for doing well in school. If they’re white or Asian. https://t.co/EAPbs83IRB
— Andrew Sullivan (@sullydish) February 27, 2021

102 comments:

wendybar said...: How dare those white and Asian kids work hard to get a good education. The dumbing down of America is from the left. Period. This is a prime example. I wonder how Dr. Ben Carson did it??; 2/27/21, 8:37 AM
Achilles said...: Jordan Peterson speaks a lot about how incredibly evil and pernicious the pursuit of Equality of Outcomes is.

And nobody defends Quotas.

Now the racists have switched to Equity as justification for their racism.

This will come back on them hard.; 2/27/21, 8:38 AM
Oso Negro said...: I suggest giving every Negro a PhD in Astrophysics at birth. This will fix the problem.; 2/27/21, 8:41 AM
DavidUW said...: Again. Equity’s other side is debt.

Pay up suckas; 2/27/21, 8:41 AM
Dear corrupt left, go F yourselves said...: Woke insanity + democratic party = another heaping helping.; 2/27/21, 8:43 AM
chickelit said...: Worse is waiting until a person has gone through extensive PhD training and THEN telling him with a straight face: "we'd hire you but we need to hire a woman or a minority." That is straight up racism.; 2/27/21, 8:43 AM
Fernandinande said...: School Committee member Lorna Rivera said ...

"This is just not acceptable," Rivera said at a recent school committee meeting. "I've never heard these statistics before, and I'm very very disturbed by them."

If Rivera isn't aware that those statistics reliably appear in almost every school environment, almost all the time, then she shouldn't be on any school committees.; 2/27/21, 8:43 AM
Fernandinande said...: Bankster on twitter: "When everyone is poor and uneducated we can finally rest"; 2/27/21, 8:44 AM
Ann Althouse said...: 30% was still a pretty big number. What about the 30% who were in the program and not white/Asia? You would think they'd get more support.; 2/27/21, 8:46 AM
Fernandinande said...: almost every school environment, almost all the time

But not in Lake Wobegon.; 2/27/21, 8:46 AM
rhhardin said...: You work hard at what you're good at.

East Asian 105
White 100
American black 86

average IQ.

Why does average matter? It doesn't unless you do group statistics. You'd never notice otherwise. There's lots of population overlap, and you don't notice IQ in real life anyway.

Stop doing group statistics and creating problems that don't otherwise exist.; 2/27/21, 8:54 AM
I'm Full of Soup said...: Will the Equity Zealots come for TV's Talking Heads? or The Associated Press BOD or the WAPO staff which is awfully white and Asian not to mention just pain awful.

Lastly, is it OK for me to buy gas at a Paki owned station? Because they seem to own a lot of them in my area.; 2/27/21, 8:54 AM
Greg Hlatky said...: Anyone with a brain could see this coming years ago.; 2/27/21, 8:55 AM
Fernandinande said...: If Rivera isn't aware that those statistics reliably appear

...and that's Dr. Lorna Rivera, who is a bit of a racist:

"Dr. Rivera is working on the Latinx Student Success Initiative, ...

She also works with the .. programs that serve Latinx bilingual students ...

Dr. Rivera serves on ... Support Immigrant Organizing and the Latino Education Institute, and on ... an arts-based youth development organization serving Afro-Latinx youth in Boston."

No Asian or White kids need apply.; 2/27/21, 8:56 AM
Achilles said...: Ann Althouse said...

30% was still a pretty big number. What about the 30% who were in the program and not white/Asia? You would think they'd get more support.

This is where I disagree with Jordan Peterson about Hierarchies.

He believes the function of the right is to support hierarchies and the left is to monitor them and flatten them where they get out of control. That is fine.

He thinks that the left oversteps when they are pushing for equality of outcome to destroy the hierarchies as is happening here.

I do not believe they are trying to destroy all hierarchies so much as replace them with a hierarchy that puts them at the top.

In doing this the left is destroying many more hierarchies than they create and this leads to an immense destruction of wealth and happiness.

Which is fine with the leftists as long as they are on top of the highest hierarchy.

You can see this where they purposely remove competence as the key measure of ascendance and replace it with tribal allegiance or membership in the party which thy control.

This is the revolution of the HR department. They can't make or do anything well that anyone wants. So they have managed to insert themselves into hierarchies through other means.

It is a coup on the natural order.; 2/27/21, 8:59 AM
daskol said...: Some days, it feels like the wizard behind the curtain, who btw is going through a dystopian sci-fi phase, is just flipping through his oeuvre looking for ways to get us to amuse him. This week it's what, Harrison Bergeron?

Althouse's point is a good one: a strong academic program in an inner city school system that can get to 30% black and hispanic is doing better than most. Thank God NYC's miserable neoracist Schools Chancellor Richard Carranza is out. Too bad he managed to fuck most of the elite high schools in NYC, many of which school's leaders were all too eager to embrace the new non-standard standardless standards, although his campaign failed when it came to the most elite specialized high schools (admission based exclusively on standardized test, 60-75% Asian and struggle to get Black/Hispanic representation into double digits in most of them). God help the bright children of the city he lands in.; 2/27/21, 9:01 AM
chickelit said...: Fernandinande said...Bankster on twitter: "When everyone is poor and uneducated we can finally rest"

That is a lesson from my Parable of the Gas. You have to remove nearly all of the energy from the system before you achieve true equity. There must always be a distribution of talent and energy. To think otherwise to imagine that all members would have the exact same energy or be found on one side of the vessel. Both notions fight entropy and natural distribution.; 2/27/21, 9:01 AM
daskol said...: Well, I guess God helped them already. Let's hope their parents have money for private school or the time and inclination for home school, because he's going to wreck their public schools.; 2/27/21, 9:02 AM
Michael said...: Althouse
Yes 30% is significant but that cohort has to suffer for the goal of equity. There is a solution, of course, and that is to put the under achievers in a class called advanced and the over achievers in a class called remedial but continue to teach as they have been. The administration will be thrilled as will all of the parents.

These people are stone stupid. Happily these kids will compete against mine.; 2/27/21, 9:04 AM
R C Belaire said...: This is how civilization commits suicide : One small step at a time. Soon, you are so far removed from your original mission that you can't even remember it.; 2/27/21, 9:04 AM
MartyH said...: Equitable but separate as the Asian/white flight hits Boston public schools.; 2/27/21, 9:07 AM
Achilles said...: How you regulate ascendance in a hierarchy matters.

This is a video of Jack Ma and Elon Musk having a debate. The issue here is which one of these men do you want to manage limited resources in a society.

The Chinese system selects their business leaders based on certain criteria.

The US system had different criteria.

The Democrats are actively trying to destroy businesses that do no follow the company line and make our economy more like China. We now have state sponsored giant corporations acting in ways that are blatantly anti-competitive.

Jack Ma is completely nonthreatening. He is the type of CEO China and the Regime want. Jeff Immelt was of this variety. He was very good at getting favors from the government and bad at innovation and organization and efficiency.; 2/27/21, 9:10 AM
Levi Starks said...: Socialism always starts with the premise of elevating the the underclass.
When that fails it leaves only one other option.; 2/27/21, 9:11 AM
Retail Lawyer said...: Public Schools are circling the drain. Defund them, move on. Watch where elites put their children.; 2/27/21, 9:12 AM
Breezy said...: We are a bizarre bunch here in the US We lament that we are behind other nations in academic excellence, so we push a lot of cash to the schools and teachers. Then we survey the results and find that we’re still behind and we need everyone to be at the same “behind” status so we take away the avenues for them to pursue their highest academic achievement which improves our world standing. We are not doing this right. What is the goal of education these days? Let’s stop with the cash injections if it’s not to improve overall outcomes.; 2/27/21, 9:20 AM
Bemac said...: Harrison Bergeron High School, where no children are above average.; 2/27/21, 9:21 AM
GatorNavy said...: This is anecdotal, but, I believe a valid statement. I work healthcare in Milwaukee’s north side. The most segregated city in America and completely run by Democrats or Socialists for the entire history of the city. The staff that I supervised was majority young African American single moms who went to great lengths to get there kids into a Catholic or Lutheran school. I had many conversations that went like this.
‘I need Tuesday off’
‘Okay, I can do that. Is everything okay?’
‘Yes, I’m getting my child into Saint Thomas More’
‘But you don’t live on the south side’
‘Don’t care, my child isn’t going to be ruined by MPS. I’m making it happen ‘.
‘Gotcha, how can I help’.

This dialogue happened every summer and right before winter break. It is still happening. Every African American that I know works like hell to get there kid into a Lutheran, Catholic or suburban school. My opinion is the public school system in almost every state is irretrievably broken and the unions made it happen; 2/27/21, 9:23 AM
Fernandinande said...: You have to remove nearly all of the energy from the system before you achieve true equity.

The most "equitable" human systems are probably the simplest and the most primitive, e.g. Amazon Indian tribes. Everyone has the same kind of car, which is none.

Making the school system simpler by removing "Advanced Work Classes" increases the school's (apparent or measurable) equity.

"Why g matters: The Complexity of Everyday Life"; 2/27/21, 9:28 AM
Clyde said...: “...And the trees are all kept equal
With hatchet, axe and saw.”

Rush, “The Trees,” Exit... Stage Left, 1981; 2/27/21, 9:29 AM
Fernandinande said...: Parable of the Gas

Those curves reminded me of black-body radiation (can we say that?) so it was interesting to see Planck mentioned.; 2/27/21, 9:30 AM
Original Mike said...: This is so sad.; 2/27/21, 9:33 AM
Chris N said...: As usual, it hurts the person who needs it most.

The kid who can (naturally gifted) and will (motivated enough), but who’s stuck in a shitty, underperforming classroom.; 2/27/21, 9:36 AM
Chris N said...: Let’s turn the schools into Detroit. Let’s take a tough situation and make it worse with justified resentment, envy, and self-aggrandizing fantasies of punishment.; 2/27/21, 9:40 AM
Chris N said...: Let’s also fulfill the stratification fantasy of ‘it’s not race it’s class’ by taking away self-determination and opportunity as potential guiding ideas, replacing them with mediocrity and victimization.

Losers minting losers. And plenty more political corruption and wasted money to come.

Humans can’t bear too much reality, and this makes future probabilities that much worse.; 2/27/21, 9:45 AM
hawkeyedjb said...: "...nearly 80 percent of all Boston public school students are Hispanic and Black."

Working hard to make that 100%.; 2/27/21, 9:48 AM
DavidUW said...: >>
‘Yes, I’m getting my child into Saint Thomas More’
‘But you don’t live on the south side’
‘Don’t care, my child isn’t going to be ruined by MPS. I’m making it happen ‘.
‘Gotcha, how can I help’.
>>

TM accepts vouchers. I know from personal experience.

Great high school and set me up for all my success.; 2/27/21, 9:52 AM
Jupiter said...: Ann Althouse said...
"30% was still a pretty big number. What about the 30% who were in the program and not white/Asia? You would think they'd get more support."

Theyze actin' white! Thass rayciss!; 2/27/21, 9:55 AM
Eleanor said...: A good student can be a good student anywhere it's safe to be a good student, but that's the catch. It's not that our inner city schools don't have good teachers and good students or enough money to provide them with a good education. It's that it's not safe to be a good teacher. If a teacher sets high standards and demands them of all students, he's a racist and finds himself defending himself more time than he spends teaching. If a student wants the opportunity to learn and is willing to be a smart kid, he's up against both physical and verbal bullying. If he's black or hispanic, multiply the level by 10. The black and the hispanic communities are not going to benefit by dumbing down the white and asian kids. Those kids and their parents are going to find ways for them to get a good education just not in the same place as the kids who are not interested.

While we hear a lot about the emotional stress online education is having on kids, we aren't hearing about the kids who are eating it up. With the time sink of sharing a class with the "losers" gone, they are finding themselves with the opportunity to follow their own interests and a treasure trove of resources. Bright, motivated kids can get a 6 1/2 hour school day done in about 2 to 3 hours a day and have the rest of the time to learn on their own. And they are. There are some really good online schools with teachers who really know how to do it. Some of them are even tuition-free. If school choice passes, look for a lot of inner city smart kids to opt out of in-person school. When there's no necessity to go to a dumbed down version of school where they don't feel safe, or be trapped by teachers willing to toe the party line, the smart kids of every color and ethnicity will escape. Some small town kids will, too, but for different reasons.; 2/27/21, 9:57 AM
Gahrie said...: East Asian 105
White 100
American black 86

average IQ.

Why does average matter? It doesn't unless you do group statistics. You'd never notice otherwise. There's lots of population overlap, and you don't notice IQ in real life anyway.

Actually you do. That's why it is illegal to give a Black school kid an IQ test in California, but IQ tests are used everyday in California schools on non-Black kids. Why did they pass a law making it illegal to give Black kids IQ tests in California? Their results were too low and they couldn't qualify Black kids for special education using them. We see it in standardized test scores and grades. Much of the racial racket today is designed to "fix" the problems caused by Black people underperforming academically while ignoring the unpleasant cause.

Stop doing group statistics and creating problems that don't otherwise exist.

Ignoring the problem won't make it go away.; 2/27/21, 9:57 AM
Ken B said...: Achilles
“ This will come back on them hard.”

I would like to think so. But I don’t. It used to be the case that pointing out that something benefitting kids and furthering their education would win the argument. Now it doesn’t. It really no longer does because the kids as individuals are no longer seen as important. It’s the imagined honor of their ethnic group that matters. When I state it that baldly it sounds too crazy to be true — “you must be exaggerating Ken B” — but it is true.

It’s also just a matter of time before they — politicians beholden to teachers unions and the woke — come for things like Khan Academy.; 2/27/21, 9:58 AM
daskol said...: It’s also just a matter of time before they — politicians beholden to teachers unions and the woke — come for things like Khan Academy.

Khan Academy sort of came for itself already. I took a long look at their high school materials this past year, a deep dive. They have terrific AP courses, like American and world History that faithfully propound the critical theory influenced message that missionary activity in the New World is an example of "religious intolerance" (that's the correct answer in a multiple choice test). I get that Khan academy doesn't make this curriculum. Since its pivot to a more focused "business" it is a more explicit high school or college alternative, but it is still propounding the AP curriculum, when it used to have a more eclectic mix of classes/lectures. It toes the line, so no longer a threat.; 2/27/21, 10:05 AM
Eleanor said...: Re: Gahrie's comment- Most folks don't realize "special education" laws don't address kids who have low IQs. To qualify for special education services, a child must have a higher IQ than his work product suggests. A child with an IQ of 86 is expected to do poorly in school. It's the child with the IQ of 115 who is failing everything who qualifies for special education.; 2/27/21, 10:07 AM
AlbertAnonymous said...: Such garbage journalism and garbage analysis (or lack thereof).

The article says third graders get tested, those who score high (whatever that means) get put in a lottery. Those pulled from the lottery get invited to apply.

453 invited to apply. 143 actually applied, 116 accepted.

I’m sorry, so “applying” must now be racist. Only 32% of those who got an invite actually applied. 67-68 % didn’t even apply?

Changes of success go up significantly if you participate. Good Lord!; 2/27/21, 10:10 AM
AlbertAnonymous said...: Chances of success...; 2/27/21, 10:13 AM
Temujin said...: Reading Michael Yon this morning in a great piece, one line stuck out as I continue to watch our citizenry, our standards, and our history be attacked and mocked by those in charge.

Michael Yon: "...people feel and think the government is legitimate and not predatory."

What his article was saying was that we need to rethink the paradigm of how we view our government. Maybe they are predatory.

If you look at Biden's cabinet selections, you would sure come to that conclusion. If you look at those who run our public health, our schools, etc.; 2/27/21, 10:16 AM
daskol said...: Eleanor, that's an interesting nuance re qualifying for special ed. Do you know if that's broadly how they handle qualification for special ed programs? NYC has guaranteed FAPE (free and appropriate public ed) in the LRE (least restrictive environment) with an appropriate IEP (individual education plan), but they conspicuously don't speak at all about the qualification process and only mention that it starts with some kind of referral.; 2/27/21, 10:23 AM
Ray - SoCal said...: I wish Trump had pushed school choice more.

As well as starting the critical race theory fight at the start of his term.; 2/27/21, 10:29 AM
Ken B said...: Daskol
Depressing. But it likely won’t save them. They are still competition for teachers unions and make them look bad so they are a target. They aren’t the top priority right now — school choice is — but they are next in line.

Unless America can break the stranglehold the unions have on education it can only get worse. Watch for the Democrats to pour money into “education” in ways that benefits the unions and to take steps against Khan, charter schools, private schools, religious schools.

If you have a kid of the right age, consider foreign universities in less woke lands. It seems drastic but India has good STEM and its in English. Germany has at least one university that teach in English!; 2/27/21, 10:35 AM
Jupiter said...: I think the way to look at this, is that a significant fraction of the people are who are making black kids' schools worse, imagine that what they are doing will help black kids. This is especially true of the blacks who do this, because they are shamed and angered by the inability of blacks to perform well in school, and would like to blame it on someone else if they can't fix it. But the people who dream all this shit up see it as a way to deepen the divisions between blacks and whites, and among whites of different political persuasions. They know that threatening people's children is a sure way to engage their emotions. And they have chosen this particular 'flaw' in American society as the basis for their shuck because they know the problem is utterly intractable. It will never go away. It's only going to get worse, as a result of the policies they support. They hate America every bit as much as the Chinese who manufactured the fentanyl that killed George Floyd.; 2/27/21, 10:36 AM
Renee said...: They're now doing it by zip-code within the city. If you want in, just move to another neighborhood. Either it will create more diversity or more gentrification.; 2/27/21, 10:37 AM
Eleanor said...: Daskol, there are two kinds of education services for kids who are not succeeding in school. "Special Education" services cover the kind of mismatch I described. Other kids might be covered under the Americans with Disabilities Act. The first group gets an IEP. The second group gets a 504 plan. The differences about how the kids are sorted depend on whether what is keeping a child from succeeding qualifies as a disability under the ADA or not. From an observer's prospective they may not look all that different, but it makes a big difference in who is responsible for executing the plan and who pays the bill for the extra support.; 2/27/21, 10:42 AM
daskol said...: The best thing about Corona long term may be the way in which it's revealed for so many people just how destructive the teachers union is for children's education.; 2/27/21, 10:42 AM
daskol said...: Thanks, Eleanor. I know some folks who've been through the 504 process, go through it annually in fact, but had no idea about the other track.; 2/27/21, 10:49 AM
Yancey Ward said...: Ken is right- the parents will just bend over and say, "Use more lube next time."; 2/27/21, 10:54 AM
Francisco D said...: What is the real goal?

1. Improve educational opportunities and outcomes for Black and Hispanic students OR;

2. Lower the opportunities and outcomes for White and Asian students?

Both will improve "equity."; 2/27/21, 10:57 AM
Rick said...: Oso Negro said...
I suggest giving every Negro a PhD in Astrophysics at birth. This will fix the problem.

If your astrophysics is wrong your spacecraft is going to crash. It's probably better to give them PHDs in public policy. As we see there's no real consequence for government incompetence and the left already treats government as a jobs program.; 2/27/21, 11:00 AM
Browndog said...: communism; 2/27/21, 11:12 AM
Dust Bunny Queen said...: Kurt Vonnegut predicted his short story Harrison Bergeron

Truly....IOt is worth the time read and see where we are going with this equity and everyone is equal bullshit.

"Harrison Bergeron
By Kurt Vonnegut

THE YEAR WAS 2081, and everybody was finally equal. They weren’t only equal before God and the law. They were equal every which way. Nobody was smarter than anybody else. Nobody was better looking than anybody else. Nobody was stronger or quicker than anybody else. All this equality was due to the 211th, 212th, and 213th Amendments to the Constitution, and to the unceasing vigilance of agents of the United States Handicapper General.

Some things about living still weren’t quite right, though. April, for instance, still drove people crazy by not being springtime. And it was in that clammy month that the H-G men took George and Hazel Bergeron’s fourteen-year-old son, Harrison, away. .............."; 2/27/21, 11:13 AM
LA_Bob said...: "Cassellius says interest in the program had declined over several years..."

Would be interesting to know why this is.

Are they running out of whites and Asians in the school district?; 2/27/21, 11:14 AM
Joe Smith said...: It's the Harvard way.

First they fucked the Jews and now they're fucking the Asians.

How about we tax all university endowments and make all donations non-deductible.

Harvard is sitting on $40 billion.; 2/27/21, 11:19 AM
GatorNavy said...: David UW said

said...
>>
‘Yes, I’m getting my child into Saint Thomas More’
‘But you don’t live on the south side’
‘Don’t care, my child isn’t going to be ruined by MPS. I’m making it happen ‘.
‘Gotcha, how can I help’.
>>

TM accepts vouchers. I know from personal experience.

Great high school and set me up for all my success.

DavidUW, I am glad to hear this. However, consider whom is hell bent against vouchers? Or any kind of school choice?; 2/27/21, 11:27 AM
Joe Smith said...: Is 'white flight' a thing anymore?

It should be...; 2/27/21, 11:29 AM
Joe Smith said...: "School Committee member Lorna Rivera said ..."

Does she speak Spanish?

If so, why would she speak the language of her conquering, oppressive, white overlords?

Maybe she should take up Nahuatl...; 2/27/21, 11:33 AM
Original Mike said...: "Cassellius says interest in the program had declined over several years..."

I don't believe her. What parent wouldn't be interested? Unless they've already left the district because it's failing their children.; 2/27/21, 11:51 AM
Achilles said...: Gahrie said...

"Stop doing group statistics and creating problems that don't otherwise exist."

Ignoring the problem won't make it go away.

But inaccurately characterizing the problem will create new problems.

Are all white people the same? Why are Jews separated from other white people? What does non-hispanic white even mean?

Are Jamaicans different than people from sub-saharan Africa?

Are people from India Asian? Are they the same as Chinese people? Indonesian people?

If you focus on categorization based on race as a focus for your search for "problems" you are going to make false and prejudicial assumptions.

Treat William as William and Sally as Sally and stop trying to figure out if the problem has to do with being black.; 2/27/21, 11:54 AM
Ken B said...: Achilles
“ Treat William as William and Sally as Sally and stop trying to figure out if the problem has to do with being black.”

Touching really. Looking forward to the Easter Bunny bringing eggs are we?; 2/27/21, 11:56 AM
JAORE said...: Equity is having ALL students in a crappy educational system.; 2/27/21, 11:57 AM
Unknown said...: disparate impact - either own it an equalize everything or kill it; 2/27/21, 12:02 PM
DavidUW said...: DavidUW, I am glad to hear this. However, consider whom is hell bent against vouchers? Or any kind of school choice?
>>
Unions, and suburban wine moms.

The rest don't really care as they think their public schools are fine and it's just not an issue or they don't think deeply enough about it and buy the lies that vouchers "steal money" from their public schools (that they think are fine).

If Republicans were smart (stop laughing), they'd really study how DeSantis won Florida. It was his support of vouchers that peeled off something like 500,000 votes from black women according to polls as I recall.; 2/27/21, 12:06 PM
JAORE said...: Is 'white flight' a thing anymore?

It should be...

It is. And so is black flight and brown flight. It isn't just white people that want their kids out of the crappy schools/crime dens/etc. If you have any drive at all you get out.; 2/27/21, 12:17 PM
Unknown said...: I really think the justification of 'disparate impact' is the driving philosophy for critical race theory; the 'system' awards success and since the minority culture that decides that kind of 'success' is not worth pursuing (oddly) has less success, the system by definition is based on disparate impact. Math is hard, teaching math delivers disparate impact. Objective facts help success, so objective facts deliver disparate impact.

And, disparate impact came about through a court case in the arena of - drum roll - HR; 2/27/21, 12:21 PM
hstad said...: Blogger Achilles said...
2/27/21, 9:10 AM

Your statements are nonsense. "The Chinese system selects their business leaders on certain criteria? Yes, as long as these "business leaders" pledge their fidelity to the CCP. "...Jack Ma is completely nonthreatening. He is the type of CEO China and the Regime want..." Really? That's why the CCP took away Ma's power, shares of Alibaba and put him under house arrest for 90 days. Ma was getting all of the limelight while Xi Jinping was upstaged that's a no no in China. Comparing the Chinese system to the American system is pure child's play. The two have nothing to compare. Moreover, in China all assets belong to the 'State' while in America it belongs to the individual - at least for now.; 2/27/21, 12:35 PM
YoungHegelian said...: 30% was still a pretty big number. What about the 30% who were in the program and not white/Asia?

Since this is Boston, the dirty little secret they aren't talking about here is that most of the black students among that 30% are no doubt children of African or Caribbean immigrants, who routinely perform almost as well as white children in academic tests.

Downtown Silver Spring, MD close to where I live, is routinely called "Little Addis Ababa" because of the number of Ethiopians in the area. Of course, many of the service jobs in the area are taken by these Ethiopians. Why? Because it's a "win-win" for the employer. They get to claim the Ethiopians as "black" on their employment stats, they can speak Amharic to the other Ethiopian customers, and they're as good of employees as anyone else.; 2/27/21, 12:35 PM
William said...: I live in NYC. I'm white and ethnic Catholic. In the highly selective high schools like Stuyvesant and Bronx HS of Science, I think the white kids are mostly Jewish. I don't care. I'm glad for their success and I'm glad that I live in a city where smart kids with supportive families can reach their full potential. I want my doctor to be smarter and harder working than me. If he doesn't match my ethnic make up, that's not a factor.....I don't think it's at all possible to reach equality of outcome, but it is possible to reach at state where people don't resent unequal outcomes.; 2/27/21, 12:47 PM
Achilles said...: Ken B said...

Achilles
“ Treat William as William and Sally as Sally and stop trying to figure out if the problem has to do with being black.”

Touching really. Looking forward to the Easter Bunny bringing eggs are we?

Gahrie is here in good faith. I can present arguments to him and have a reasonable expectation that he will read them and be able to represent them back to me accurately. I also believe he is persuadable.

You on the other hand are a slightly above average thinker who has figured out he can sometimes win arguments by misrepresenting what other people say. You think you are more intelligent than you actually are and you get upset when your positions are found wanting so you resort to bad faith to cover the shortfall.

I don't expect someone like you to understand this sort of discussion. Your goal is to "win" the discussion. It is infantile.; 2/27/21, 12:49 PM
Achilles said...: hstad said...

Blogger Achilles said...
2/27/21, 9:10 AM

Your statements are nonsense. "The Chinese system selects their business leaders on certain criteria? Yes, as long as these "business leaders" pledge their fidelity to the CCP. "...Jack Ma is completely nonthreatening. He is the type of CEO China and the Regime want..." Really? That's why the CCP took away Ma's power, shares of Alibaba and put him under house arrest for 90 days. Ma was getting all of the limelight while Xi Jinping was upstaged that's a no no in China. Comparing the Chinese system to the American system is pure child's play. The two have nothing to compare. Moreover, in China all assets belong to the 'State' while in America it belongs to the individual - at least for now.

If you read my post again you will notice that what you just said reinforces my point.

It actually is the object lesson supporting my point about how you structure ascendance in hierarchies.

It also shows why the democrats trying to make the US be more like China is bad.

Maybe read my post a couple times...; 2/27/21, 12:54 PM
William said...: I know of some upper middle people in Manhattan who sent their kids to private schools. These schools are super expensive. By upper middle class here, we're talking about incomes well over $250,000. I also know some parents who spent a lot of time and effort coaching their kids to get into these specialized schools. It's a big savings for them if their kids are accepted. I guess in a way this encourages scholarship among the middle class....I suppose a lot of parents who love their kids and who are unable to get them into a good school will move to the suburbs. This will hasten the exodus of caring parents from NYC. This will not foster equality if everybody in NYC is either stupid or rich.; 2/27/21, 12:56 PM
Original Mike said...: "That's why it is illegal to give a Black school kid an IQ test in California, but IQ tests are used everyday in California schools on non-Black kids."

Wow. That's shocking.; 2/27/21, 1:03 PM
Patrick Henry was right! said...: Griggs was the worst Supreme Court decision of all time. More insidious than even Plessis. The Supreme Court is the cause of all major national crises. Government by lawyers.; 2/27/21, 1:13 PM
daskol said...: I want my doctor to be smarter and harder working than me. If he doesn't match my ethnic make up, that's not a factor

What you want in a doctor is a lack of charisma and physical attractiveness. Signal he didn't coast through on charm and good looks (hat tip to Taleb).

William, I have 3 school-age kids, one entering high school this year, a very strong student. Private school wasn't even in the conversation until Carranza and DeBlasio took the COVID crisis opportunity to implement a lot of changes they had failed to get through in prior years.
Most of the better public high schools will mostly not use grades or test scores this year, or to the extent they use them at all, they will count for a very small percentage of the application. Same with grades--no grades from the last 1 year of school considered, and since no standardized tests typically considered for admission were given, they will lightly consider ERBs from 6th grade only. They have given themselves a lot of discretion, and most of the schools have committed to majority DIA (diversity in admissions) commitments, allocating between 50-75% of their seats for various under-privileged groups (DIA categories are not explicitly racial, but the school's have room to make them so, and include free/reduced lunch, learning disabled and non-native English, among others).

They announced they were scrapping the rules in the middle of the game, took a long time to announce new rules, and when they did, it hardly shed light on what people can expect at the upper end of the high school options. Many school leaders were happy to embrace this, despite the fact that some other brave school leaders called out how destructive it would be to kids to mix academically underprepared kids with the strongest students in the city. I suspect this is because like most of our elites, these school leaders are more interested in signaling virtue to their peers than in maintaining the excellence of the schools they lead. The only exception is the specialized schools, which are only 7-8 schools, where there are programs to mentor borderline students from underprivileged communities, but where their test still drives admission (and they even publish lowest scorers admitted each year).

Finally, NYC public schools won't announce admissions until May or June, while private schools announced yesterday, and require a hefty non-refundable deposit within 10 days of acceptance. If the public schools push it out to end of May or June, families will have to pay not only the deposit but potentially additional installments before they even hear where their kids got in.

It's like they're running a clinic on how to drive kids from the public school system into private schools or out of the city altogether.; 2/27/21, 1:24 PM
William said...: We're always being asked to check our white privilege. Fair enough. Although in my own life I have not noticed a surfeit of such privilege, I suppose I've had more breaks than the kid of a Lowndes county sharecropper. But why can't we ask the less fortunate to check their underclass resentment. The resentment of the underclass is just as much a destructive prejudice as the smugness of the upper class.....The sans colluttes, the Bolshies, the Red Guard were just as pernicious as the people they leveled. This attempt to destroy the NYC schools that have produced so many Nobel Prize winners is a further example.; 2/27/21, 1:25 PM
loudogblog said...: "Equity" is the new buzzword. (Because you can't say "quota.") I'm literally seeing it dozens of times a day. Yesterday, I saw it in an online job description for a job opening. It just showed up in a banner at the top of my company's online wellness program. It's in all the Covid case reporting at the State and County levels. It's in multiple news stories. It's everywhere. (And I think it's going to be with us for a long time.); 2/27/21, 1:26 PM
daskol said...: Oh, and of course NYC public schools have not committed to in-person learning yet, while most of the private schools have been mostly in person this year already (all NYC publics are remote). So yeah, it's a clinic in how to convince anyone with the option or the means to look elsewhere.; 2/27/21, 1:28 PM
Dude1394 said...: Who thought that the idiocracy would actually be created by democrats, not them I am sure.; 2/27/21, 2:23 PM
Francisco D said...: Achilles said... You on the other hand are a slightly above average thinker who has figured out he can sometimes win arguments by misrepresenting what other people say. You think you are more intelligent than you actually are and you get upset when your positions are found wanting so you resort to bad faith to cover the shortfall.

Why are you being so mean to Karen B?

However, I certainly agree with what you said.; 2/27/21, 2:29 PM
n.n said...: Social justice anywhere is injustice everywhere.

That said, diversity of individuals, minority of one. #BabyLivesMatter(BLM); 2/27/21, 3:15 PM
n.n said...: the dirty little secret they aren't talking about here is that most of the black students among that 30% are no doubt children of African or Caribbean immigrants, who routinely perform almost as well as white children in academic tests

Social progress has left a wide wake of victims and collateral damage.; 2/27/21, 3:17 PM
GatorNavy said...: DavidUW

Unions, and suburban wine moms.

The rest don't really care as they think their public schools are fine and it's just not an issue or they don't think deeply enough about it and buy the lies that vouchers "steal money" from their public schools (that they think are fine).

If Republicans were smart (stop laughing), they'd really study how DeSantis won Florida. It was his support of vouchers that peeled off something like 500,000 votes from black women according to polls as I recall.

Republicans need spine transplants and Democrats need daily ethics infusions.

And you are correct about DeSantis, it is just too bad the RINO’s, cucks and “principled conservatives” will stab him in the back.; 2/27/21, 3:54 PM
Fernandinande said...: That's why it is illegal to give a Black school kid an IQ test in California, but IQ tests are used everyday in California schools on non-Black kids.

That was only true for a short time about 30 years ago - see Larry P. v. Riles

What they do now is more insidious: the tests for black kids are normed differently ("culturally sensitive") so black kids score higher than they would on with racially fair norming.

This accomplishes the goal of reducing the number of black kids in special education, but it also increases the number of dumb black kids in regular classes and makes the schools' ever-so-important "gap" look worse.

(Regular IQ tests aren't racially biased since people with a given IQ miss the same questions regardless of their race, and the tests have similar predictive power for all races, and actually tend to slightly over-predict black success).; 2/27/21, 3:56 PM
Gahrie said...: Treat William as William and Sally as Sally and stop trying to figure out if the problem has to do with being black.

Sure when dealing with individuals. The problem is, at least 50% of the American population is obsessed with "fixing" the "racial inequity" in our country. They have been for at least 60 years. We have spent literally trillions to try and fix the problem, and our institutions are corrupted by attempts to fix the problem.

How can we fix the problem if we don't accurately diagnose the cause? My precise thesis is that we have failed because we aren't dealing with the actual causes, because as you demonstrate, they're unpleasant. I agree, they are unpleasant. Difficult, if not impossible, to solve too. I don't like the facts anymore than you do. They aren't going away though.

We have no problem accepting the fact that Black Americans, on the average, are better athletes than Whites. The NBA doesn't have Affirmative Action for White people.; 2/27/21, 4:13 PM
Earnest Prole said...: Boston School Superintendent Brenda Cassellius is a dead ringer for the girls’ PE teacher at my junior high circa 1974. She always wore sweats if you know what I mean and I think you do.; 2/27/21, 4:36 PM
Rick said...: Breezy said...
What is the goal of education these days? Let’s stop with the cash injections if it’s not to improve overall outcomes.

It seems clear the goal is to funnel as much government cash as possible to reliable Democratic voters. Once you understand that the cash infusions make perfect sense.; 2/27/21, 4:40 PM
Daniel Jackson said...: "Worse is waiting until a person has gone through extensive PhD training and THEN telling him with a straight face: "we'd hire you but we need to hire a woman or a minority."

Know this situation quite well. A known story.

It's why I tell my son not to go for a PhD.

So far, he has listened.; 2/27/21, 5:06 PM
Caligula said...: "I’m sorry, so “applying” must now be racist.

Self-selection for academically demanding courses is racist. Because, umm, well, it produces unequal outcomes. Which violates what's being defined as "equity," aka equal outcomes. Even when these are the result of unequal talent and/or unequal willingness to work hard.

Because, often the best way to select outstanding students (with no recourse to standardized exams, let alone IQ) is to just let them select themselves.; 2/27/21, 6:44 PM
daskol said...: This accomplishes the goal of reducing the number of black kids in special education

Wait...if I'm reading Eleanor correctly, norming the scores excluding higher scoring groups would actually reduce the number of kids who qualify for special ed, since it's based on underperformance in school relative to IQ. So if the IQs are artificially inflated, and kids are not performing up to standards for other kids at that level, they would now qualify for special ed where before they would not (since their school outcomes matched expectations).; 2/27/21, 7:08 PM
Lem Vibe Bandit said...: If the Supremes work up the courage to take on the equity question and they vote along party lines, it will be the strongest signal yet we are in big trouble.; 2/27/21, 7:42 PM
Achilles said...: Gahrie said...

I don't think more than 10% of the population disagrees with the assertion that we need to fix racial inequality. Yes I know I used a different word.

The problem with your statement is that it includes people that are using race in bad faith. Anyone who uses the word equity has evil intentions.

They don't want to fix racial inequality. They want to breed racial strife and division. Then they want to create equity by imposing a socialist/fascist government framework that conveniently makes them all rich and powerful and everyone else equal.

And bringing up IQ test results no matter how well intentioned is going to help them do that.; 2/27/21, 9:05 PM
Gahrie said...: They want to breed racial strife and division. Then they want to create equity by imposing a socialist/fascist government framework that conveniently makes them all rich and powerful and everyone else equal.

And bringing up IQ test results no matter how well intentioned is going to help them do that.

So what's the answer? Continue throwing trillions down the rabbit hole, even though we know it doesn't work? How much more damage will be done to our institutions to root out systemic racism where there is none? Our current answers don't work because we won't face up to the real problems, and we'll never solve the problem until we address the root causes.

I believe every individual has value and worth. I believe every individual deserves an opportunity for productive work.

At this point I'm starting to think homesteading might be the answer. Open up some of those federal lands in the west to the poor. Give them the same deal we gave the original homesteaders, and send experts like Joel Salatin to help them get started. If it makes some people happier, we can concentrate on the inner city first and call it reparations.; 2/27/21, 9:23 PM
Josephbleau said...: "Worse is waiting until a person has gone through extensive PhD training and THEN telling him with a straight face: "we'd hire you but we need to hire a woman or a minority."

Actually this is true only in academia. So industrial research PhD’s are ok for non minorities and Asians.; 2/28/21, 6:19 AM
Balfegor said...: I think I've commented on this before, but my impression over the last few years has been that when people complain about "White supremacy," a lot of the times they're really complaining about Asians, and just reaching for a convenient ideological tool to attack systems and institutions where Asians do well. Selective schools, standardized tests, the tech industry, etc.

And "woke" young Asians are still going along with it. After the recent spate of attacks on elderly Asians, an Asian-American actor put out a reward for the capture of the perpetrator, and had a bunch of young Asians criticising him on twitter because the criminal was obviously Black so . . I guess the message was, as usual, that Asians should just shut up and take it? I raised concerns about the effect of affirmative action on Asians to an Asian activist years ago, when I was still a law student, and that's basically what he told me, although with a lot of euphemistic cant. Solidarity against Whites means we need to suck it up and acquiesce to discrimination against us. I think of these activists as Quislings. Which term has its own rather racist implications, I know, like Hanjian (漢奸) or Volksverräter, but still -- I feel a sense of disgust.; 2/28/21, 2:18 PM
RigelDog said...: Scott Adams makes a good case that 1) breaking the system of terrible schools/education for the poor and minorities would solve systemic racism, and 2) breaking the teacher's unions is necessary to enact meaningful reform.; 2/28/21, 2:19 PM
RigelDog said...: William said: "I know of some upper middle people in Manhattan who sent their kids to private schools. These schools are super expensive. By upper middle class here, we're talking about incomes well over $250,000. I also know some parents who spent a lot of time and effort coaching their kids to get into these specialized schools. It's a big savings for them if their kids are accepted."

Same here in Philadelphia. We earned a "high-middle" middle to upper-middle class income and 90% of the overage after basic living expenses went to pay for private school for our two kids. There was basically ONE academically excellent public school (Masterman) and it was highly selective. Neither of our bright kids passed the test for admission, which I used to lament thinking of how much money it would have saved us.

We are now so grateful that our kids didn't get in to Masterman---the school went way woke even twenty years ago and our kid's values would have probably been ruined. Paying for private school was hands-down the best use we could have ever made of all that money.; 2/28/21, 2:31 PM