Posted on 06/19/2019 5:46:49 AM PDT by Kaslin
New York Mayor Bill de Blasio says that the city's specialized high schools have a diversity problem. He's joined by New York City Schools Chancellor Richard A. Carranza, educators, students and community leaders who want to fix the diversity problem. I bet you can easily guess what they will do to "improve" the racial mix of students (aka diversity). If you guessed they would propose eliminating the Specialized High Schools Admissions Test as the sole criterion for admissions, go to the head of the class. The Specialized High Schools Admissions Test is an examination that is administered to New York City's eighth- and ninth-grade students. By state law, it is used to determine admission to all but one of the city's nine specialized high schools.
It's taken as axiomatic that the relatively few blacks admitted to these high-powered schools is somehow tied to racial discrimination. In a June 2, 2018 "Chalkbeat" article, de Blasio writes: "The problem is clear. Eight of our most renowned high schools -- including Stuyvesant High School, Bronx High School of Science and Brooklyn Technical High School -- rely on a single, high-stakes exam. The Specialized High School Admissions Test isn't just flawed -- it's a roadblock to justice, progress and academic excellence."
Let's look at a bit of history to raise some questions about the mayor's diversity hypothesis. Dr. Thomas Sowell provides some interesting statistics about Stuyvesant High School in his book "Wealth, Poverty and Politics." He reports that, "In 1938, the proportion of blacks attending Stuyvesant High School, a specialized school, was almost as high as the proportion of blacks in the population of New York City." Since then, it has spiraled downward. In 1979, blacks were 12.9% of students at Stuyvesant, falling to 4.8% in 1995. By 2012, The New York Times reported that blacks were 1.2% of the student body.
What explains the decline? None of the usual explanations for racial disparities make sense. In other words, would one want to argue that there was less racial discrimination in 1938? Or, argue that in 1938 the "legacy of slavery" had not taken effect whereby now it is in full bloom? Genetic or environmental arguments cannot explain why blacks of an earlier generation were able to meet the demanding mental test standards to get into an elite high school. Socioeconomic conditions for blacks have improved dramatically since 1938. The only other plausible reason for the decline in academic achievement is that there has been a change in black culture. It doesn't take much to reach this conclusion. Simply look at school behavior today versus yesteryear.
An Education Week article reported that in the 2015-16 school year, "5.8% of the nation's 3.8 million teachers were physically attacked by a student." The Justice Department's Bureau of Justice Statistics and the Department of Education's National Center for Education Statistics show that in the 2011-12 academic year, there were a record 209,800 primary- and secondary-school teachers who reported being physically attacked by a student. Nationally, an average of 1,175 teachers and staff were physically attacked, including being knocked out, each day of that school year.
In the city of Baltimore, each school day in 2010, an average of four teachers and staff were assaulted. A National Center for Education Statistics study found that 18% of the nation's schools accounted for 75% of the reported incidents of violence, and 6.6% accounted for half of all reported incidents. These are schools with predominantly black student populations. It's not only assaults on teachers but cursing and disorderly conduct that are the standard fare in so many predominantly black schools.
Here are questions that might be asked of de Blasio and others who want to "fix the diversity problem" at New York's specialized schools: What has the triumph of egalitarian and diversity principles done for the rest of New York's school system? Are their academic achievement scores better than students at New York's specialized schools? The most important question for black parents: What has been allowed to happen to cripple black academic excellence?
Black culture is corrupt.
The “Plantation Owners” at work...keeping their “slaves” where they want them
Republicans need to be making a much bigger issue of this. Immigration alone is not going to defeat the left.
Giving them extra points on entrance exams, for being Black. Passing them when they should be failed. Expecting less from them. Ignoring what test after test is telling us. Not expelling them when they should be expelled, so as to keep the statistics looking good.
All that tells them that they can blame their failures on Whitey, and so they do just that.
Some NY Times commenters have suggested that wealthy private schools are siphoning off all the high-quality blacks. By the time they would be taking the exam for the specialized high schools, they are no longer in the public school system.
Giving them extra points for being black is not only wrong, it is also racist, because it is assumed that they can not do the job without help
Indeed, LBJ's war on poverty (supported by demonrats and republicans) effectively destroyed the inner city black families.
No father in the family, no lessons on honesty and integrity, no example for the value of work; the results were inevitable.
No amount of tax and spend will cure that.
Corrupt and corrupting. It seems like rap crap infects every gathering where some pinhead wants to virtue signal. Saying words forcefully and with anger does not mean they understand a damn thing about the words.
What's next? Billions more handed out to this free loading demographic because their great, great grandmother was a slave?
Correct a black child and you have “disrespected” the child. Black child tries to achieve good grades is accused by his peers of “acting white”. White man wears his pants above his butt, black wears his pants below his butt because whitey wears them above. It is cultural alright. Willful, cultural rot encouraged by the left. (”Let them touch those things...”)
That’s also why AOC’s parents moved to a suburban town even though she insists that she’s really a “Bronx girl.” She didn’t live in a bad neighborhood as a young child, but her parents knew they had to get her out of that dumpster fire known as the New York City public school system.
Maybe the Black community just needs to listen to more gangster rap, hip hop, and all the entertainment that glorifies selling dope, pimping,pandering and the thug lifestyle.
And the Bell Curve is unfortunately a real thing.
Stop subsidizing single parent families.
“Forty acres and a mule” only enables you to prosper by dint of hard work.Education - education and citizenship in a republic of opportunity - is the modern equivalent of “forty acres and a mule.”
“Reparations?” From who, to who, for what? Even for the descendants of white slaveowners, how much do they have to show for that? What they have, at this point, is the cultural legacy that says that self-discipline is essential.
People who will lottery jackpots all too frequently lose self-disciple - and promptly dissipate their jackpot. Being given a jackpot called “reparations” would be no different.
“New York City’s public schools are for kids whose families can’t afford better alternatives —”
South Flori-DUH ? isn’t much better....Decades ago the ‘powers that be’ decided to get more blacks to pass an exam to be a teacher they’d just ‘dumb down’ the test...Worked as desired, but now the teachers teach subjects that they can’t pass the tests their students have to pass....Dem,der and doze prevail now....
Poor home grown bastards cannot integrate into whiteys proven system.... shows you the “hope” for the black and muslim.....barack’s sons.
And the Bell Curve is unfortunately a real thing.
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And the Bell Curve(s) is/are shifting to the left. And it’s not only black demographics that are being dumbed down. Sad but, IMHO, true.
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