Do you think NY's "specialized" high schools are "racist"? (New York: how much, school district)

[fivefourthreetwoone]

I guess to play devils advocate, I know of people who pay a lot of money to get little Billy prepared to get into private schools. and when I say prepared I mean they are practically told what the answers are on the test. Schools like Riverdale Country, Horace Mann and the likes. These people hire psychologist who are trained to administer exams like the Stanford Binet etc.
So if a person of color who is prepared for the test but doesn't have the insight on the test that Billy does, guess who is getting in?
furthermore in these private schools if I happen to want to donate a wing or a library my not so bright child will have an "in".
sorry to digress from the specialized schools but also thought that was interesting.

[Moth]

Originally Posted by nykiddo718718

The problem of course is getting those kids to value education. The parents are often not in the picture or do not encourage the children in poor Black and Latinos communities. The community encourages street life, violence, ghetto-fication. The community has a monopoly on influence in these areas.

Identifying the problem is the first step. However, we as a society, cannot even do that. People will fire back that "its the schools" as if one school is getting more money than another.

[Mr. Zero]

I think that even if you changed the admission criteria, asians will still be over-represented. Nyc students do well on tests because that's what the current policies dictate. Change those policies and they will adapt to whatever new criteria are.

The top universities in the country take many factors into consideration, and asian americans still make up a disproportionate percentage of the population. The only way you're going to achieve a demographically representative student body at elite institutions through admission policies alone is with quotas. Take them away (especially in areas with a high concentration of asian americans) and you'll have student bodies like those at the specialized schools and top University of California campuses.

[bg7]

[quote=nykiddo718718;21461848]The barriers are not the same. Most Asians are not locked into generational poverty living in communities with the same social problems as Blacks and Latinos of any race.

Whats your point? I'm saying culture can overcome obstacles to educational success. You are saying barriers are different for each group (they are not the same for blacks versus latinos if you want to waste time on that path, and so what, where is comparing tragedies going to get you?). Asians here are generally not locked into generational poverty because of the culture they adopt which means the children of the first poor generation are educationally successful and, as a consequence, generally not poor themselves! If your saying some groups are not educationally successful because they are not educationally successful - congrats. Thats why a cultural approach that works is significant. Culture isn't genetic by the way - you can adopt what you like. While ones circumstances vary from person to person, one's decisions and actions are not imposed.

So hand-waving, apologizing, blaming, finding difficulties, nodding our heads in agreement about this issue, that problem, etc etc fine to do that in free time. In the meantime, who is suffering? - generation after generation of non-asian, non-immigrant minority kids. The obstacles are both are real ones and imagined ones, but they are not barriers.

Its all theory trumps practice in the "polite" societal discussion, meanwhile the kids are left behind by others practicing what has been shown to work.

[blackconverse]

Originally Posted by celticvisa

Maybe I'm an idiot too, I only have a masters degree, but the original post wasn't an exercise in logic, it was an attempt to express something the OP found shocking.

1. I don't think all high schools admit students purely on the basis of grades. If they do, it's for purely practical reasons. You can't expect Neighborhood High to have the admissions office of a Stanford University. If you are going to create specialized high schools, get the idea right and find a good means of selecting the best and the brightest, not the best test takers.

I got the OP's gist when she said that not even the best colleges use this type of method. Basically, the method sucks. Nobody uses it except the NY BOE. It's from 1972. That's nary 40 years ago.

Times change. Let's keep up with the Jones baby.

2. Most reviewers and educators, from what I remember, found the book Tiger Mom to be appalling. There's a right way to get to the right destination and Amy Chua wasn't using it. She admits to calling one of her children "garbage" in the book. She refused to feed or provide water to one of her children until the child had mastered a piano piece.

3. Nobody said that the specialized schools were the only good schools. For someone who expects punctilious logic, please tell me why you left yours at the door?

Main points for me:

1) We can't have racially segregated schools. That's wrong. Period.

2) The method to get into these schools is out-of-date. Period.
Also, it's RANDOM!!!!!! They use scrambled paragraphs to help determine who gets into these schools. There is no other test in America that asks students to unscramble paragraphs. It's crazy.

Case closed. Somebody needs to change these specialized schools.

1. Anyway, I'm not sure if you are from NYC, but I can assure that this is the case. Schools select students based solely on their 7th grade report cards. Their grades are important, with things like attendance being a tiebreaker. Otherwise, they find a spot in whatever their "zone" school is. Like you said, it's purely for practical reasons. Hence why this extra test can be considered a sort of "tiebreaker".


2. For many people, the destination is all that matters. Which kind of was my point. Many people use these methods disturbingly well.

3.
Basically the specialized system is geared to separate students based on race. White and Asian students get their own, “special” schools of remarkable quality, while black and Latino students receive racially segregated schools which are often dangerous.

That would seem to me to imply all the other schools are simply poor, which is not the case.


--- onto your points.


1. We do not have racially segregated schools. Fact.

2. How is it random if all the kids are taking the same test? I have yet to read that the actual test is "racist", just whining about the results:


The specialized school system looks like a pleasant and useful system to foster academic excellence, but in reality it is a disgraceful way to segregate children racially and to instill harmful racial attitudes into our young people.


So, how do you and others want to change it?

[celticvisa]

By "random" I meant that using scrambled paragraphs is a random means of judging intellectual ability.

Why not have 8th graders throw darts at a dart board?

Scrambled paragraphs?!!!!!

Then, to play devil's advocate, a person could argue that testing reading and math skills is somewhat random too. Why not try to test EQ? Why not test the measure of altruism a student has? What if I'm really good at writing poetry and I might become a really great poet who can enrich peoples' lives but I suck at math. I don't deserve to go to a specialized school?

Basically, it looks as if the students who get into these specialized schools might just be like the characters on Big Bang Theory. :P These guys on that show are really emotionally crippled and shallow people. I don't mean to insult the winners of the specialized exams, but the criteria used to let people in is really limited and random.

[sheaosaurus]

Originally Posted by celticvisa

By "random" I meant that using scrambled paragraphs is a random means of judging intellectual ability.
I don't mean to insult the winners of the specialized exams, but the criteria used to let people in is really limited and random.

To get into kindergarten I had: to arrange blocks in a certain shape, be able to write my name and my parents name with no misspellings, interact well with the other children while a teacher was present, know the alphabet, eat cereal without making a mess and be watched behind a class by a lady while I sat in a room with other children for an hour to see how I interacted.

Now that's random.

Originally Posted by blackconverse

Like I said, quite the logical jump. Your "logic" is convoluted. The jump you made with it was astounding.


Here's a sample on how high test scores can be achieved:
The Difficult Life of a Korean Student | LifeAfterCubes
Tiger Mothers: Raising Children The Chinese Way : NPR

Just read the Korean Student article. Could you imagine if American teachers called their students to find out why they aren't in school or to see if they were studying on the weekends.
I'm not going to bash people's parenting styles, but I truly believe that education begins in the home. If the home environment fosters education, the child should (and I say should because some children do rebel) do well in school. If it is not fostered, then well, anything could happen.

[AllenDullesMJ12]

A lot of the kids who go into schools like Stuyvesant are natural intellects, and some of them might be geniuses who end up going to MIT and working on advanced technologies. Are we realistically saying that we should devalue this source of human progress because, lets be honest here, blacks just don't have neither the inclination nor capacity for high abstract thinking at this level?

These specialized schools are not camps or clubs, they are an important and somewhat fragile part of the educational system in this country. The kids who go to the top tier specialized science school usually do technical stuff on their spare time, they join the math club, and compete in programming and electronic invention contests for Intel. They are not rich or spoiled kids. They are hard working, smart, they read books, study, and create things with inexpensive tools and parts. The problem is that the majority of students are better at opening their mouths than opening their books compared to the smarter kids.

If black students had this kind of brilliance they could easily get into the specialized schools. They just don't. Creating quotas for pointless diversity when it's not needed will end up deteriorating the educational process. This is why we have special ed classes. Put some of those students into regular classes, and then tell us if that won't do anything to the rest of the students.

[sheaosaurus]

Originally Posted by AllenDullesMJ12

A lot of the kids who go into schools like Stuyvesant are natural intellects, and some of them might be geniuses who end up going to MIT and working on advanced technologies. Are we realistically saying that we should devalue this source of human progress because, lets be honest here, blacks just don't have neither the inclination nor capacity for high abstract thinking at this level?

If black students had this kind of brilliance they could easily get into the specialized schools. They just don't. Creating quotas for pointless diversity when it's not needed will end up deteriorating the educational process. This is why we have special ed classes. Put some of those students into regular classes, and then tell us if that won't do anything to the rest of the students.

What is that supposed to mean? Stop generalizing "black students", and putting them all into one category. Just because you may have a preconceived notion about a race, that does not mean every person in that race follows that path. "We just don't" have brilliance? May I please ask where you picked this opinion up? I'm a black student and I did very well in my k-12, which is far more selective than Stuyvesant, and I am doing very well in college.

[Andez]

In my graduating class at Brooklyn Tech, there were 3 black kids that managed to get into Harvard. That was higher than the amount of white kids that got in. Just putting that out there.