For those who believed in authorizing a new class in America, based on skin color, this post will .....what's that Liberal term....oh...."offend."
1. "The Plot Against Merit....Seeking racial balance, liberal advocates want to water down admissions standards at New Yorks elite high schools.
2. In 2004, seven-year-old Ting Shi arrived in New York from China, speaking almost no English... he shared a bedroom in a Chinatown apartment with his grandparentsa cook and a factory workerand a young cousin, while his parents put in 12-hour days at a small Laundromat they had purchased on the Upper East Side. Ting mastered English and eventually set his sights on getting into Stuyvesant High School, the crown jewel of New York Citys eight specialized high schools.
3. [Ting bought] prep books for its eighth-grade entrance exam....prepared for the test over the next two years, working through the prep books and taking classes at one of the citys free tutoring programs. His acceptance into Stuyvesant prompted a day of celebration at the Laundromatan immigrant familys dream beginning to come true. Ting, now a 17-year-old senior starting at NYU in the fall, says of his parents, who never went to college: They came here for the next generation.
4. New Yorks specialized high schools, including Stuyvesant and the equally storied Bronx High School of Science, along with Brooklyn Technical High School and five smaller schools, have produced 14 Nobel Laureatesmore than most countries. For more than 70 years, admission to these schools has been based upon a competitive examination of math, verbal, and logical reasoning skills.
5. ...troubled by declining black and Hispanic enrollment at the schools, opponents of the exam have resurfaced. The NAACP Legal Defense Fund has filed a civil rights complaint challenging the admissions process. A bill in Albany to eliminate the test requirement has garnered the support...[and] new New York City mayor Bill de Blasio, whose son, Dante, attends Brooklyn Tech, has called for changing the admissions criteria. The mayor argues that relying solely on the test creates a rich-get-richer dynamic that benefits the wealthy, who can afford expensive test preparation.
As Tings story illustrates, however, the reality is just the opposite.
6. In 1971, the board of Community School District 3, then a predominantly black and Puerto Rican district on Manhattans Upper West Side, charged that Bronx Science was, as characterized by the New York Times, a privileged educational center for children of the white middle class because culturally oriented examinations worked to screen out black and Puerto Rican students. .... the board criticized the exam for being heavily loaded with intelligence test approaches and proposed that students should instead be admitted solely based on recommendations.
7. ....a 1997 report by the radical Acorn group assailing racial imbalance at Stuyvesant and Bronx Science.
But strikingly, the Acorn report focused less on the entrance exam and merit selection than on improved preparation of minority students.... Acorn made this focus more explicit: The question is not whether the entrance exam is unfair. The question is why students who attend public elementary and middle schools for eight or nine years are so unprepared to do well when they take it.
The Plot Against Merit by Dennis Saffran, City Journal Summer 2014
The question will surely break down along the usual lines: Liberals, equality of numbers is the only consideration.
Normal folks: merit should be rewarded.
1. "The Plot Against Merit....Seeking racial balance, liberal advocates want to water down admissions standards at New Yorks elite high schools.
2. In 2004, seven-year-old Ting Shi arrived in New York from China, speaking almost no English... he shared a bedroom in a Chinatown apartment with his grandparentsa cook and a factory workerand a young cousin, while his parents put in 12-hour days at a small Laundromat they had purchased on the Upper East Side. Ting mastered English and eventually set his sights on getting into Stuyvesant High School, the crown jewel of New York Citys eight specialized high schools.
3. [Ting bought] prep books for its eighth-grade entrance exam....prepared for the test over the next two years, working through the prep books and taking classes at one of the citys free tutoring programs. His acceptance into Stuyvesant prompted a day of celebration at the Laundromatan immigrant familys dream beginning to come true. Ting, now a 17-year-old senior starting at NYU in the fall, says of his parents, who never went to college: They came here for the next generation.
4. New Yorks specialized high schools, including Stuyvesant and the equally storied Bronx High School of Science, along with Brooklyn Technical High School and five smaller schools, have produced 14 Nobel Laureatesmore than most countries. For more than 70 years, admission to these schools has been based upon a competitive examination of math, verbal, and logical reasoning skills.
5. ...troubled by declining black and Hispanic enrollment at the schools, opponents of the exam have resurfaced. The NAACP Legal Defense Fund has filed a civil rights complaint challenging the admissions process. A bill in Albany to eliminate the test requirement has garnered the support...[and] new New York City mayor Bill de Blasio, whose son, Dante, attends Brooklyn Tech, has called for changing the admissions criteria. The mayor argues that relying solely on the test creates a rich-get-richer dynamic that benefits the wealthy, who can afford expensive test preparation.
As Tings story illustrates, however, the reality is just the opposite.
6. In 1971, the board of Community School District 3, then a predominantly black and Puerto Rican district on Manhattans Upper West Side, charged that Bronx Science was, as characterized by the New York Times, a privileged educational center for children of the white middle class because culturally oriented examinations worked to screen out black and Puerto Rican students. .... the board criticized the exam for being heavily loaded with intelligence test approaches and proposed that students should instead be admitted solely based on recommendations.
7. ....a 1997 report by the radical Acorn group assailing racial imbalance at Stuyvesant and Bronx Science.
But strikingly, the Acorn report focused less on the entrance exam and merit selection than on improved preparation of minority students.... Acorn made this focus more explicit: The question is not whether the entrance exam is unfair. The question is why students who attend public elementary and middle schools for eight or nine years are so unprepared to do well when they take it.
The Plot Against Merit by Dennis Saffran, City Journal Summer 2014
The question will surely break down along the usual lines: Liberals, equality of numbers is the only consideration.
Normal folks: merit should be rewarded.
