Posted on 02/15/2021 8:53:40 AM PST by Kaslin
Excellence is falling prey to activists who prefer to believe that social justice means making outcomes equal for every race at any expense.
Excellence is falling prey to activists who prefer to believe that social justice means making outcomes equal for every race at any expense.
[Advocates for standardized tests] will claim white and Asian kids on average score higher on tests because they are smarter or work harder. Meaning Black and Latinx kids are not as smart or not as hard-working. Meaning white and Asian kids are superior.Board member Allison Collins was one of the school authorities taking her cues from Kendi, muttering in one town hall meeting with defenders of the merit-based process: “I’m listening to a bunch of racists.”
This is the kind of awful logic that unfairly blames Asian Americans for playing by the rules of the game. If standardized tests are a metric for entry into an academically excellent public high school, then it is not “racist” for Asian American students to study for them to get in. On the contrary, it shows both intelligence and preparation — meritorious characteristics we need to see reflected in more American students — to perform well on a standardized test.
But the biggest reason, it seems, that the school board is acting so quickly on eliminating the merit-based admissions program to Lowell High School is because the idea of merit itself is odious to its most fervent of today’s “social justice” advocates.
“Lowell High School has often been referred to as SFUSD’s ‘elite’ ‘academic’ high school,” the board wrote, “[but] San Francisco Unified School District does not believe that any student or school is more or less ‘elite’ than any other school.”
The hard truth is, however, Lowell High School has been referred to as an elite academic high school because it is an elite academic high school. Lowell’s mission was always to train the brightest students and offer a place for gifted students to achieve their full potential in the San Francisco region.
The school’s website asserts it is “one of the highest performing public high schools in California” and a four-time National Blue-Ribbon school of excellence. Without Lowell, parents of gifted children would likely be forced to dig deep in their own pockets to send their kids to private schools that can hone and refine their abilities.
Due to the coronavirus lockdowns, Lowell High School eliminated the merit-based admissions process for one year. Tellingly, a Change.org petition of concerned families with more than 11,000 signatures, reveals that Lowell High School alumni and parents feared back in October of 2020 that “the transition will become permanent and remove one of the two remaining academic and merit-based public high schools in the city.” Sadly, it appears their apprehensions were warranted.
The school district has also aggressively moved to implement other parts of a broadly “antiracist” agenda during this time, including renaming San Francisco Schools (including a school named after Abraham Lincoln) and adopting “ethnic studies” curricula in all of its high schools focusing on “African American Studies,” “Latino American Studies,” and “Asian American Studies.”
Ultimately, the elimination of Lowell’s merit-based system represents, yet another victory for the “equity” advocates who use the narrative of systemic racism to tear down San Francisco’s centers of excellence in the name of diversity and desegregation. Sadly, unless more Americans stand up to the schemes of leftists, Lowell will undoubtedly not be the last bastion of distinction to be toppled.
Isn’t the use of Roman numerals on the building facade defacto racist?
I taught Physics in urban high schools for many years. Algebra and Trigonometry were the prerequisites. And that made sense.
Well, not enough blacks had the prerequisites. So the prerequisites were dropped. End result? Without the math, physics is no longer physics. So we physics teachers had to teach the math before we taught the physics. Everything slowed to a crawl. Yet we were held accountable for the student results on the state exams. Thank goodness I had the time in to retire.
Let me be clear about something. I do NOT blame the black kids here. Something truly is wrong when half the school is black, yet only one or two black kids were in physics.
The solution, of course, was to go back and fix the basic math classes. Demand good attendance there. Demand good classroom behavior. Demand that the homework be completed. Etc. It can be done. Private schools do it all the time.
But it was so much easier to just draw a line through the prerequisites.
The headline for the article is not supported by the excerpted part of the text of the article. There doesn’t seem to be any “selecting students by skin color” going on in the activities being described. The article is more of an indictment of “equity” and suppression of merit programs, which are equally horrendous.
Soon parents will be sending their kids out of country for any education worth mentioning
This is why they now use “white supremacy” in lieu of “racism”. It makes their own hypocrisy less obvious.
YEP! How did the article’s title pass editorial review?
(It) ain't pretty no more.
Fascinating post, thank you for sharing.
So what’s the endgame here? If our entire education system is trending toward the remedial by slashing prerequisites and lowering standards, aren’t we setting ourselves up for two eventualities?
1. We get our asses handed to us by the Chinese, et al, in tech and other STEM fields
2. We have to import more foreign students and workers who have the prerequisites just to be able to keep up?
One has to step back and contemplate, how did we arrive at all this insanity regarding race?
It can all be explained by blindly accepting the false notion that that all races are the same.
If you assume that, then the only explanation for the people of one race doing better in life than another is because the race that is doing better is intentionally oppressing and keeping the other one down.
So pretty much everything you see about the racial dynamics can be explained by the almost universal acceptance of that false assumption.
How about selecting students with brains.
I taught an embedded systems class at a junior college for 3 1/2 years. My students ranged in age from 15 to 65. Their ability to perform in the class fell in 4 broad categories. 1) Learn a principle and run with it. Little direction required. 2) Learn a principle and master it with some coaching. 3) Observe and copy. Unable to master the principles, but able to mimic sufficiently when shown. 4) Incapable of understanding principles and unable even to grasp concepts when served on a silver platter. The group 4 people never made it through the course.
> So what’s the endgame here? <
I’m a huge believer in public schools. And here’s why. I have taught in both public and private schools. Public schools are great melting pots. They are - in theory - good for America. Private schools, not so much. Oh, the stories I could tell you about that.
Unfortunately, I fear public schools are beyond redemption. The PC mentality is just too entrenched. So our only hope going forward will be with charter schools. A good charter school would combine the best of public schools with the best of private schools.
But it remains to be seen if the PC crowd would allow that.
Part of the problem is using words like “Latinx”. It isn’t a word, and Latino people don’t like it.
Oh....it’s for the queers?
I see...
Another part of the problem...
Coddling queers.
Are all Dems queer to an extent?
Looking more that way.
They won’t. Look how the DC crowd ran Michelle Rhee out of town and then claimed they were helping students. Look at the vehement opposition to anything charter school related by teachers unions at all levels.
The PC crowd is only interested in perpetuating racial myths to advance their narrative and, secondarily, to protect union jobs for teachers.
I am also a product of public school system, including inner-city schools in my elementary school days. And I agree with you that the system is now beyond redemption because there’s nobody who has the means to do so, gives a hoot about actual reform. As I said, refer back to Michelle Rhee.
“The Bell Curve” being totally ignored for the race of professional victims.
You just can’t make this stuff up.
Dare we ask the question: Has racial integration of the public schools either improved learning for Black and Hispanic students, or diminished learning for white and Asian students?
Put another way: Has racial integration of the public schools diminished learning in American schools?
I’m willing to stipulate to the proposition that “all races are equal” but I also observe that identifiable subcultures correlate highly with race and all cultures are definitely not equal. Even at that though the budding totalitarians violently disagree.
“I’m willing to stipulate to the proposition that “all races are equal” “
The AVERAGE IQ of blacks is around 85,whites about 100, east ASIANS slightly higher 105.
Success in life is highly corrolated with IQ.
Culture, which boils down to a set of values is also highly corrolated with IQ. A smarter person is more likely to choose values that will bring him success.
And what are values? Values are rules for living that are likely to make you happier in the long run. It’s a delayed gratification type of thing, which means you have to extrapolate how an action today may play out in the future, ie, you have to be able to “connect the dots”. Who do you think would be better at doing that, the lower IQ person or the one with the higher IQ?
I’ve come to the sad conclusion that two groups of people who have significantly different AVERAGE IQs AND whose members can be easily identified as belonging to one or the other group can never be able to peacefully coexist together.
If you think about it,(extrapolate) you’ll come to the same conclusion.
I understand that no one wants to go there, but it’s a reality. And pretending that that reality doesn’t exist has led to the insane asylum we live in today.
Fighting racism with racism.
Sounds like something LBJ dreamed up.
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