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De Blasio and others trying to "diversify" specialized high schools in New York
#1

De Blasio and others trying to "diversify" specialized high schools in New York

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/06/02/nyreg...hools.html

For some background, there are 9 specialized high schools in New York to serve the needs of "academically and artistically gifted students". These are the best high schools in the city and a few (like Stuyvesant) are some of the best in the country and have many people who go on to attend top universities and colleges. 8 of these 9 schools require a standardized exam known as the Specialized High School Admission Test (SHSAT), which the city administers to students in their final years of middle school during the fall. All one needs to attend these schools is to score high enough on this exam, which usually isn't a problem for any student who has prepared effectively or attended a school with a strong curriculum.

The racial demographics of these schools are predominantly Asian (at least 50% average) and White (at least 20% average), but this is not because of the exam, which is merit-based and the only standard used for admission to these schools. Of course, that's not enough to satisfy the current SJW mayor of the city, who feels the need to get rid of a solid institution just because it doesn't promote diversity. As you can imagine, many people have already voiced their opposition to the idea.

The way I see it, the issue is not to include more black and hispanic students who are likely to fail out of these schools with rigorous curricula. Yes, many public schools in the city are in serious need of improvement, but even that's not the underlying issue. The biggest problem is that there is a culture among many black and hispanic families where education is not considered a priority and several children just don't receive the support that they need to even do well in school and set themselves up for a better future.


Edit: The city publishes demographic data for all of the public schools at this website under "Demographic Data". It's all in an Excel file.

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In the face of growing pressure to tackle New York City’s widespread school segregation, Mayor Bill de Blasio announced on Saturday a proposal that would change how students are admitted to eight of the city’s specialized high schools, a group of highly sought-after institutions where students gain entry based on a single test.

Black and Hispanic students, who make up 67 percent of the public school population, are grossly underrepresented at the specialized high schools, which include Stuyvesant High School and the Bronx High School of Science.

Mr. de Blasio campaigned on the issue when he first ran for mayor in 2013, saying the specialized schools should “reflect the city better,” but he has yet to make a dent in the problem. This year, black and Latino students received just 10 percent of the offered seats at specialized high schools, a percentage that has held essentially flat for years.

“The Specialized High School Admissions Test isn’t just flawed — it’s a roadblock to justice, progress and academic excellence,” Mr. de Blasio wrote in an op-ed published Saturday on the education website Chalkbeat.

“Can anyone defend this?” he continued. “Can anyone look the parent of a Latino or black child in the eye and tell them their precious daughter or son has an equal chance to get into one of their city’s best high schools? Can anyone say this is the America we signed up for?”

The most significant change Mr. de Blasio proposed was replacing the test, called the SHSAT, with a new method that would admit students based on their class rank at their middle school and their scores on statewide standardized tests. That change would require approval from the State Legislature, which has shown little appetite for such a move. A bill outlining those changes was introduced in the Assembly on Friday.

Mr. de Blasio announced another, smaller change on Saturday, one the city can do on its own. Beginning in the fall of 2019, the city would set aside 20 percent of seats in each specialized school for low-income students who score just below the cutoff; those students would be able to earn their spot by attending a summer session called the Discovery program. Five percent of seats for this year’s ninth graders were awarded this way, the city said.
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#2

De Blasio and others trying to "diversify" specialized high schools in New York

I hate to keep beating the same drum over and over, but the opening sentence of this article is an example of "inventing reality," a concept I've mentioned repeatedly on here.

"Inventing reality" is when the media passes off their own fiction as fact. Most people don't think to question it, because of the way they slip in these fictional ideas.

The lead sentence of this article reads: "In the face of growing pressure to tackle New York City’s widespread school segregation..."

FICTION! "Segregation" is when people of different races aren't allowed to be in the same place. It's the policy some schools in the U.S. south had in the 1950s. Additionally, if this were segregation per se, we wouldn't see Asians and whites mixing.

What is happening at New York City's high school's is that kids are getting sorted out according to ability. This is NOT segregation. This is sorting. And this is no different that why some adults get picked for high-paying jobs and some don't.

Using the New York Times' logic, we should demand the Ivy Leaguers in their newsrooms step aside so the paper can take in minorities from community colleges who score low on reading tests.

So the NYT invented the reality that we have "segregation" in 2018, and based an entire article on it. By the way, here is a photo of their 2018 class from their "Journalism Institute:"
[Image: DeDx5CSXUAEtghF.jpg]
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#3

De Blasio and others trying to "diversify" specialized high schools in New York

This issue will never go away because of the the statistical phenomenon called the tail effect. It's explained well in my post where I quoted John Derbyshire. Here's a snippet:

Quote:Quote:

(An audio presentation is not the ideal place to try explaining the tail effect, but I’ll give it a shot. Imagine two classic “bell curve” distributions of some statistic in some populations. Imagine the two bell curves are identical: one on a sheet of paper, one on a transparent overlay sheet. If you line them up exactly, they just look like one curve. Now shift the overlay sheet slightly to the right. Your distributions now have slightly different means.

Fix your attention on the far right-hand tails, and draw a single vertical line cutting off those tails at some point out there. The areas under the two curves east of that cutoff — that is, the numbers of individuals whose statistic exceeds that vertical line — are wildly different, the one you shifted to the right displaying a much bigger cutoff area than the other, even for just a slight shift. That slight difference in means is magnified out in the tails. That’s the tail effect.)

Regardless of what you're measuring, you'll find the extremes over-represented by groups where the mean is only slightly higher or lower than other groups.
thread-61725...pid1729703

The Derbyshire post is about IQ and Jews and Asians, but you can apply this effect to many statistical analyses.

“Until you make the unconscious conscious, it will direct your life and you will call it fate.”
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#4

De Blasio and others trying to "diversify" specialized high schools in New York






Magic dirt theory will fail again.
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