Should the elite PUBLIC High Schools open themselves up to more Black, Hispanic and White Students (middle school, grades)

[kovert]

Originally Posted by lhpartridge

But would they work for what the jobs pay now? And under the current conditions?

Well this school seems to be working well for many parents.

Here's an excerpt:

"Shuang Wen Academy is a small, public elementary school in Chinatown featuring a rigorous dual-language program in English and Chinese.

If you look at the school's track record, the reason families of all races are clamoring to get into this school becomes clear.

Out of 1,200 New York City public schools, Shuang Wen ranked number three in math. And almost 97 percent of the students passed the reading test, compared to the city- wide average of only 33 percent.

CHOU: To us it's really not something we are -- in American culture, we say we are very proud of. But in Chinese culture, we say it's nothing. We should have done this.

LOTHIAN: High expectations are typically the norm for Asian American children. But when you consider the demographics of the community served by the school, the accomplishments stand out even more.

CHOU: We are Title I school with 70 percent population under poverty level. The majority are labor workers -- a lot of new immigrants. They're working at the restaurant or garment factories."

By the way, I'm not knocking teachers, or trying to claim any group is inherently superior to others.

As for the pay, as far as I know that largely depends on the community in which one works.

As for conditions you'd have to be more specific so I can comment on them.

[Padgett2]

We have an "elite" high school. It turns out well rounded students. I don't know how they are selected, but there is one distinction......If you don't or can't, keep up with the work, you go back to your regular school.

Perhaps, that chance of being kicked out is enough to encourage good study habits.

One year, my kids were sent home with blank report cards. It seems that some idiot thought that it might make kids feel bad about themselves and lower their self esteem if they were graded and held to some sort of standard. Soooo, why study? no one seemed to care how you did.

[lhpartridge]

Originally Posted by kovert

Well this school seems to be working well for many parents.

Here's an excerpt:



By the way, I'm not knocking teachers, or trying to claim any group is inherently superior to others.

As for the pay, as far as I know that largely depends on the community in which one works.

As for conditions you'd have to be more specific so I can comment on them.

Presumably the students at the school came from families with a strong sense of pride and a work ethic. Poor people who work hard instill different values in their children than poor people who don't work at all.

How about a school or district with 95% poverty rate, 80% single parent, most of whom were teen parents themselves, 20% of the students are also parents, 50% passage rate on graduation tests for initial administration, academic progress at the rate of 0.5 years per academic year (i. e. typical 10-grader on 5th grade level), 60% graduation rate, in a neighborhood with a high crime rate--murder, rape, armed robbery, etc. Now do that for less than $50k/year for the maximum after 25 years. Are there enough Asians to go around to run all those schools? And even if there were, would they be able to make such a change with a population that didn't share their values?

[Katarina Witt]

Originally Posted by nana053

While I agree that a single test is probably not a good way to choose the students, the problem with GPAs is that the schools the kids attend are not equivalent and the teachers are also not equivalent, so GPA may not show much about the student.

There's no way to guarantee total equivalency. One would presume the teachers are at least licensed, unless the student comes from a private or charter school.

[FOReverxpeace]

There's a reason they're elite and it isn't for everybody. Anyone can get into them if they have enthusiasm and commitment. I'm a strong believer in meritocracy and no races should be able to get in these top schools, just because people pity them or undermine them or want that "diversity".
There's plenty of opportunities for them to improve and do well and they don't take it. Not all preps cost money. If you put your heart into it and go to tutoring sessions your school provides for free, you can do it. I'm so tired of people saying how unfair it is these kids have parents who pay for them to improve, when in reality, you can get the same preparation at your public school. Believe me when I say I've been to these prep schools my parents have pushed me in on the weekends for 8 years. The tutors there all teach at public schools, which means ANYONE can get the same treatment. Paying to go for prep sessions means that you're willing to go the extra mile to improve - nothing wrong with that at all.
I live in NY myself and I see most of these hispanic, black teens just hanging out with their buddies instead and these are the ones that usually don't do well in class and misbehave. Trust me, I went to a predominantly black/hispanic high school and very few would care about their education.

[Jayess1]

Originally Posted by citylove101

Not a single other elite public high school in America chooses its student body SOLELY on one test

, So? That's a problem w/such schools in general.

All consider something else--grades, socio-economic status, recommendations, obstacles overcome, etc.

All issues which should never be selectors for academic excellence.

NYC is the only place where you can be a flaming a**hole and still attend the top school because you aced a test

Sadly, this is an attitude found @ hiring departments across the country. Here's a news flash - I've hired a number of folks who were top shelf engineers & techies, and I didn't care if they were "flaming" anything. It's how the real world works.

And of course, no elite college in America has such rigid admissions criteria either

Another damnation towards Higher Education. Fewer selections on non academic criteria would improve the lot...

The tragedy is that people's racial hysteria has blinded them to the fact that NYC just has a lousy way of picking kids for their top public high schools.

??? Just ????

A more holistic admissions process would garner both smart, academically talented kids AND racially diversify the student body

. Ah, now the rationale comes out. Bringing in those showing mastery of the sciences? Meh. Using an incredibly rigorous test to select those w/the background to succeed? Nah. Important to ensure the "proper" "racial mixture"? Yeah, that it!

[Tinawina]

Originally Posted by Jayess1

[/b], So? That's a problem w/such schools in general.
All issues which should never be selectors for academic excellence.


Sadly, this is an attitude found @ hiring departments across the country. Here's a news flash - I've hired a number of folks who were top shelf engineers & techies, and I didn't care if they were "flaming" anything. It's how the real world works.
Another damnation towards Higher Education. Fewer selections on non academic criteria would improve the lot...

??? Just ????

. Ah, now the rationale comes out. Bringing in those showing mastery of the sciences? Meh. Using an incredibly rigorous test to select those w/the background to succeed? Nah. Important to ensure the "proper" "racial mixture"? Yeah, that it!

I'm not picking on you specifically, but this just happens to be a convenient place to start.

This kind of thinking is popular, but misguided IMO.

The problem here is there is too much faith placed in testing as a way to measure intelligence and classroom potential. But that is not really how it works.

There have been multiple studies that expose the inherent flaws in high stakes testing. For one, did you know that if you put, say, women in a room and present them with, say, math questions... then tell them the questions are just to try out a new assessment or something, they get one score. Then take the same questions and tell a group of women you are testing their competency in math, and their score drops. This phenomenon happens over and over again with all kinds of people, especially people who are widely believed to be academically inferior in some way. There is a belief that people absorb some kind of messages about their own competency that affects their test scores.

Also, sticking to the same analogy, you can take a group of kids and give them, say, a multiple choice 8th grade level chemistry test, and they get one score. The boys will score higher than the girls. Then you take the group and give them an oral exam on the same material, the gap closes. Then you take the group and give them a activity-based test where they work in pairs and the statistical differences vanish. (I don't remember the exact types of tests used, but you get the idea). Now if the test was really only measuring subject competency, people would tend to score the same no matter how the test was administered. BUT THAT IS NOT WHAT HAPPENS. An individual's score can fluctuate greatly depending on the type of test.

This is why it makes no sense to base entry into a school on a single, solitary test. Testing has a purpose, but its supposed to be one tool among many used to asses progress in a particular subject. They are NOT reliable enough to become the be-all-and-end-all of anything. When you administer a high-stakes test to someone, you are really measuring a combination of subject matter mastery, skill for answering questions the given format, and unconscious beliefs about their own ability.

If you have a group that makes a point to score high on a test, they will become great at taking test in a particular format. That is indeed an achievement and takes hard work. But if your goal is to find intellectually talented students who would be good, dynamic classroom learners, you need to look at more than that unless you want a school heavy on the excellent memorizers and test takers. Some of them may be the best students, and some of them may not be... you won't know because your test isn't designed to measure that.

I didn't even get into the whole idea of "intelligence" and how even scientists who study it admit they have no idea what it actually is and how to measure it. They know IQ tests measure something and that something is real, but they also know it doesn't even come close to assessing full intellectual capacity.

[citylove101]

Originally Posted by Tinawina

I'm not picking on you specifically, but this just happens to be a convenient place to start.

This kind of thinking is popular, but misguided IMO.

The problem here is there is too much faith placed in testing as a way to measure intelligence and classroom potential. But that is not really how it works.

There have been multiple studies that expose the inherent flaws in high stakes testing. For one, did you know that if you put, say, women in a room and present them with, say, math questions... then tell them the questions are just to try out a new assessment or something, they get one score. Then take the same questions and tell a group of women you are testing their competency in math, and their score drops. This phenomenon happens over and over again with all kinds of people, especially people who are widely believed to be academically inferior in some way. There is a belief that people absorb some kind of messages about their own competency that affects their test scores.

Also, sticking to the same analogy, you can take a group of kids and give them, say, a multiple choice 8th grade level chemistry test, and they get one score. The boys will score higher than the girls. Then you take the group and give them an oral exam on the same material, the gap closes. Then you take the group and give them a activity-based test where they work in pairs and the statistical differences vanish. (I don't remember the exact types of tests used, but you get the idea). Now if the test was really only measuring subject competency, people would tend to score the same no matter how the test was administered. BUT THAT IS NOT WHAT HAPPENS. An individual's score can fluctuate greatly depending on the type of test.

This is why it makes no sense to base entry into a school on a single, solitary test. Testing has a purpose, but its supposed to be one tool among many used to asses progress in a particular subject. They are NOT reliable enough to become the be-all-and-end-all of anything. When you administer a high-stakes test to someone, you are really measuring a combination of subject matter mastery, skill for answering questions the given format, and unconscious beliefs about their own ability.

If you have a group that makes a point to score high on a test, they will become great at taking test in a particular format. That is indeed an achievement and takes hard work. But if your goal is to find intellectually talented students who would be good, dynamic classroom learners, you need to look at more than that unless you want a school heavy on the excellent memorizers and test takers. Some of them may be the best students, and some of them may not be... you won't know because your test isn't designed to measure that.

I didn't even get into the whole idea of "intelligence" and how even scientists who study it admit they have no idea what it actually is and how to measure it. They know IQ tests measure something and that something is real, but they also know it doesn't even come close to assessing full intellectual capacity.

^^This.

And, BTW, for anyone who wants to understand how seterotyping affects the academic performance of students, mcuh has been written by Claude Steele at Stanford on this phenomena, termed "stereotype threat" Google it.

Of course, those predisposed to believe in the almighty predictive power of the single test as measure of academic worthiness probably won't.

[Coldjensens]

We ran into this in our former school distrcit. There wwere certian schools that motivated parents with motivated students tended to put heir kids into. Those schools massively outperformed the other schools in an otherwise terrible school distrcit. Powers that be decided this was unfair. Since you could not bring the other schools up to par witht he higher performing schools, they needed to make things "fair" by mediocritizing the higly performing schools. They atarted a program to spread out the "smart kids" into the poorly perfoming schools. Naturally when the parents realized their kids were being held back by the poorly perfomring schools they were forced to attend, they moved or put their kids in private schools. The result was all of the public school began performing poorly and there were nto stand out schools where more advanced students could go. the result of this wa that the competent students who othersiwse may have done very well were held back and kept from achieving their potential unless their parents could afford to move or pay for private school.

But hey, at least things were finally fair. Everyone did eaually poorly (except those who had money and went elsewhere).

[Jayess1]

Originally Posted by [B

Tinawina[/b] ;27187393]The problem here is there is too much faith placed in testing as a way to measure intelligence and classroom potential. But that is not really how it works.

Which would be a problem if such a regimen were to measure intelligence or classroom potential. In this case, however, neither is under measure.
The goal of the test is to measure mastery of certain topics prior to selection for admission.

There have been multiple studies that expose the inherent flaws in high stakes testing.

The "flaw" exists only in the application of test scores.

An individual's score can fluctuate greatly depending on the type of test

Of course it can. And that's fine. There is no world in which every possible variant can be accommodated, and to wish for such a thing is simply silliness of the first order.

This is why it makes no sense to base entry into a school on a single, solitary test

If you say so, but that's an opinion, not objective reality. Going further, you say:

When you administer a high-stakes test to someone, you are really measuring a combination of subject matter mastery, skill for answering questions the given format, and unconscious beliefs about their own ability.

Ahem. That's the point of the exercise.

If you have a group that makes a point to score high on a test, they will become great at taking test in a particular format

You're kidding me, right? You realize you just disagreed w/your previous line - no matter the "talent" of test taking, one must still provide the correct answers.

That is indeed an achievement and takes hard work

Glad you approve.

But if your goal is to find intellectually talented students who would be good, dynamic classroom learners, you need to look at more than that unless you want a school heavy on the excellent memorizers and test takers

And if your goal is to find those who exhibit the top level mastery of the topics required, well... FYI, it's not a multiple choice exam.

Some of them may be the best students, and some of them may not be... you won't know because your test isn't designed to measure that.

Nothing is 100%, and to expect so is just...

I didn't even get into the whole idea of "intelligence" and how even scientists who study it admit they have no idea what it actually is and how to measure it. They know IQ tests measure something and that something is real, but they also know it doesn't even come close to assessing full intellectual capacity

Again, the issue isn't one of "intelligence". It's mastery. Nothing more.

Originally Posted by citylove101

Of course, those predisposed to believe in the almighty predictive power of the single test as measure of academic worthiness probably won't.

And those of us who realize that our identity doesn't lie w/in the group realize that fact...