The Liberal Assault on Merit

[Mac1958]

This same attitude has been infecting public education in CA for quite awhile. Example: lots of histrionics about the high ratio of Asian in UC Berkeley Admissions.

The definition of Minority apparently means only low achieving Persons Of Color.

Asians are not a Certified Victim Group (CVG).

They keep standards and expectations high as a rule, and just don't need "fairness".

.

 

[saveliberty]

New York City’s eight specialized high schools — including Stuyvesant, Bronx Science and Dante de Blasio’s Brooklyn Tech — are the crowning symbols of our public-school system. To be admitted, students have to pass a rigorous entrance exam.

Turns out, minority kids are not passing the exams in numbers proportional to their population. So pols are offering their usual condescending solution: lower standards.

Legislation in Albany, backed by the teachers union, would change admission criteria from a merit-based exam to a formula that would include other factors, such as grade point average and attendance.

Regis proves you don’t have to choose between diversity and excellence. And the best charters show the same thing: Black and Hispanic kids can excel when challenged.

George W. Bush nailed the problem in New York back in 1999 when he complained about “the soft bigotry of low expectations” in too many US public school systems.

Undermining the elite high schools | New York Post

 

[PoliticalChic]

I graduated from Stuy. It was a good place to be, at least for me.

I don't support lowering the standards or changing the admission requirements - and neither do any "liberals" I know. Pretending that a few out-of-context quotes represent the views of all liberals is a constant failing of PC's threads.

"and neither do any "liberals" I know."

Hmmm......makes one think of rats fleeing a sinking ship.....or perhaps

'There's none so blind as they that won't see.'
Jonathan Swift



How about creation of a class of Americans based on the color of their skin....as in Affirmative Action?

Let's hear "I don't support creation of a class of Americans based on the color of their skin - and neither do any "liberals" I know.

That would be a good one too.



Seems each time the spotlight falls on some inanity of Liberalism there is always the "and neither do any "liberals" I know" faction.


The link features the NAACP.......Liberals?

Acorn.....Liberals?


De Blasio.....Liberal?


"...Community School District 3, then a predominantly black and Puerto Rican..."...Liberals?


"Mayor John V. Lindsay, an affluent Upper East Side liberal"

Perhaps you have heard of some of them?




"Pretending that a few out-of-context quotes represent the views of all liberals is a constant failing of PC's threads."

Liberals......in the words of the Brown Bomber.....you can run, but you can't hide.

 

[PoliticalChic]

This same attitude has been infecting public education in CA for quite awhile. Example: lots of histrionics about the high ratio of Asian in UC Berkeley Admissions.

The definition of Minority apparently means only low achieving Persons Of Color.

Hey......last time I checked, 'yellow' was a color, too.



I've always interpreted the oh-so-Liberal 'people of color' as anything but white.


Seems one has to be one of the "authentic" colors.

 

[PoliticalChic]

This same attitude has been infecting public education in CA for quite awhile. Example: lots of histrionics about the high ratio of Asian in UC Berkeley Admissions.

The definition of Minority apparently means only low achieving Persons Of Color.

Asians are not a Certified Victim Group (CVG).

They keep standards and expectations high as a rule, and just don't need "fairness".

.

Ohhhhh noooozzzzzzzz!


Now yez tells me!!!

 

[saveliberty]

He must know a lot of closet liberals?

 

[saveliberty]

Remember liberals, if you want to help these poor kids, opening your own wallet is perfectly acceptable.

 

[PoliticalChic]

New York City’s eight specialized high schools — including Stuyvesant, Bronx Science and Dante de Blasio’s Brooklyn Tech — are the crowning symbols of our public-school system. To be admitted, students have to pass a rigorous entrance exam.

Turns out, minority kids are not passing the exams in numbers proportional to their population. So pols are offering their usual condescending solution: lower standards.

Legislation in Albany, backed by the teachers union, would change admission criteria from a merit-based exam to a formula that would include other factors, such as grade point average and attendance.

Regis proves you don’t have to choose between diversity and excellence. And the best charters show the same thing: Black and Hispanic kids can excel when challenged.

George W. Bush nailed the problem in New York back in 1999 when he complained about “the soft bigotry of low expectations” in too many US public school systems.

Undermining the elite high schools | New York Post

There are some indications that we can simply keep race out of the discussion......maybe even treat folks as individuals.



1. "Senator Edward Brooke, speaking of Dunbar High School:
"Negro History Week was observed, and in American history they taught about the emancipation of the slaves and the struggle for equality and civil rights.

But there was no demand by students for more, no real interest in Africa and its heritage. We knew about Africa as we knew about Finland." A VERY SPECIAL MONUMENT - The New Yorker



2. "Edward William Brooke III (born October 26, 1919) is an American Republican politician, in 1966 being the first African American popularly elected to the United States Senate. He was the only person of African heritage sent to the Senate in the 20th century until Democrat Carol Moseley Braun of Illinois in 1993, and the only African-American Senator to serve multiple terms. He was elected to the Senate as a Republican from Massachusetts, defeating his Democratic opponent, former Massachusetts governor Endicott Peabody in a landslide. He served for two terms, and was defeated by Paul Tsongas in the 1978 senate election."
Edward Brooke - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia




But, seeing folks as individuals, not groups.....Wouldn't be very Liberal, though......would it.





Now.....culture....that's a different thing.....


3. Another feature to consider in the heredity vs. environment controversy: females are several times as numerous as males among blacks with high IQs.
Witty and Jenkins, "Educational Achievement of a Group of Gifted Negro Children," Journal of Educational Psychology, vol. 25, p. 593.

They inherit the same genes, are raised in the same homes and neighborhoods......explanations rest on the culture, the excessively 'macho' roles of males associated with and emphasizing certain sociopathologies.



4. Lest any miss the point, it is that the multiculturalists' unfortunate belief that all cultures are equal, is both prevalent in education, and destructive. During WWI, the results of mental tests of white soldiers from various Southern states were lower than the mental test scores of black soldiers from various Northern states.
H.J.Butcher, "Human Intelligence: Its Nature and Assessment," p. 252.



5. Empirical studies show a negative correlation between black students' academic achievement and their popularity among other black students. An opposite pattern was found among both white Americans and Asian Americans.
Stuart Buck," Acting White: The Ironic Legacy of Desegregation," pp. 11-17.

a. Nor is this a racial characteristic; it is cultural. In England, lower class whites show a pattern strikingly similar to American blacks, who resent academically achieving classmates. Theodore Dalrymple reports lower class school children being beaten so badly that they require hospital treatment simply because they are doing well in school. Dalrymple, "Life At The Bottom: The Worldview That Makes The Underclass," p.69.

 

[PoliticalChic]

Remember liberals, if you want to help these poor kids, opening your own wallet is perfectly acceptable.

You do know that you speak of the group that doesn't believe in individual charity....only government welfare......

 

[saveliberty]

Just tell them its the new welfare...better yet call it progressive welfare.

 

[PoliticalChic]

How to explain the victimology/ group identity politics that the Left practices?
Easy.....it may hurt the groups under discussion, but it wins elections.....and that means power.

What happens when power becomes the one true aim, and right and wrong no longer matter?



14. "..... this once would have been the stuff of liberal dreams: a racial minority group historically victimized by discrimination begins coming to America in greater numbers because of an immigration reform sponsored by Ted Kennedy. Though many in the group remain in poverty, they take advantage of free public schools established by progressive New York City governments. By dint of their own hard work, they earn admission in increasing numbers to merit-based schools that offer smart working-class kids the kind of education once available only at Andover or Choate.




15. To modern “progressive” elites, though, the story is intolerable, starting with the hard work. As Charles Murray has observed, while affluent liberals themselves tend to work hard, they seem embarrassed by their own lifestyles and refuse to preach what they practice in an age that frowns on anything bourgeois, self-denying, or judgmental.

These liberal elites seem particularly troubled by the Asian-American work ethic and the difficult questions that it raises about the role of culture in group success."
The Plot Against Merit by Dennis Saffran, City Journal Summer 2014

 

[initforme]

Merit will only get one so far. Having a family with money gets you a lot farther. In today's America its all about who has the most money because that means you are able to control the entire system. Look at examples like Sores, Koch. They got the money. They control the whole system. The middle class guy with all the merit in the world? No shot.

 

[NoTeaPartyPleez]

What annoys me are people who immediately attack the OP writer before even one intelligent post.

It's because it's...."...take notes".....A MESSAGE BOARD. She treats it like it's her personal lectern. Crashing bore...endlessly long diatribes based on OpEds and blogs. Copy n' paste.

 

[M.D. Rawlings]

"So someone up fpr Supreme Court justice ought to have started off poor and black because otherwise they can't have empathy for poor black plaintiffs."

That's pretty much the Clarence Thomas story.....so, how come they hate him?

He watched too much Long Dong Silver...

So, you remain a devotee of high tech lynching......


...you probably don't know how brilliant Thomas is.


1. Writes Jeffrey Toobin:

"In several of the most important areas of constitutional law, Thomas has emerged as an intellectual leader of the Supreme Court. Since the arrival of Chief Justice John G. Roberts, Jr., in 2005, and Justice Samuel A. Alito, Jr., in 2006, the Court has moved to the right when it comes to the free-speech rights of corporations, the rights of gun owners, and, potentially, the powers of the federal government; in each of these areas, the majority has followed where Thomas has been leading for a decade or more. Rarely has a Supreme Court Justice enjoyed such broad or significant vindication.

This is one of the most startling reappraisals to appear in The New Yorker for many years.

...it means that liberal America has spent a generation mocking a Black man as an ignorant fool, even as constitutional scholars stand in growing amazement at the intellectual audacity, philosophical coherence and historical reflection embedded in his judicial work."

New Blue Nightmare: Clarence Thomas and the Amendment of Doom - The American Interest

and

Partners - The New Yorker

Thomas is the greatest Supreme Court justice since Taft, in my opinion, but, then, I measure a justice's worth based on his fidelity to the imperatives of natural and constitutional law, and his ability to articulate and defend them.

 

[PoliticalChic]

Merit will only get one so far. Having a family with money gets you a lot farther. In today's America its all about who has the most money because that means you are able to control the entire system. Look at examples like Sores, Koch. They got the money. They control the whole system. The middle class guy with all the merit in the world? No shot.

Clearly you have attained you education from Leftist bumper stickers.



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Millionaires clip coupons and other secrets of the rich! | www.clarkhoward.com

 

[thereisnospoon]

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 York’s 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 grandparents—a cook and a factory worker—and 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 City’s 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 city’s free tutoring programs. His acceptance into Stuyvesant prompted a day of celebration at the Laundromat—an immigrant family’s 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 York’s 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 Laureates—more 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 Ting’s 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 Manhattan’s 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.

Merit....Or more accurately opposing any semblance of it, is precisely why liberals support labor unions....Those collectives eschew the concept of merit in pay and benefits.
Those that work harder, perform better at their jobs are actually qualities frowned upon by unionists.
Liberals are opposed to the concepts of merit achievement and success...Except their own.

 

[M.D. Rawlings]

What annoys me are people who immediately attack the OP writer before even one intelligent post.

It's because it's...."...take notes".....A MESSAGE BOARD. She treats it like it's her personal lectern. Crashing bore...endlessly long diatribes based on OpEds and blogs. Copy n' paste.

Another boorish critique from the two-second-attention-span brigade, albeit, from the rabidly anti-Semitic battalion.

Even that prig Smedley barely gets beyond this basement-level complaint, and even he, as I have shown, for all his command of the English language, is an empty suit, all snide and no cattle.

Psst. You forgot to mention how PC laces her rejoinders with insults, well-deserved in my opinion.

Moving on. . . .

 

[NYcarbineer]

Shouldn't you prove that there is no 'merit' to the argument that costly test preparation schemes are giving some students unfair advantage? Beyond one item of anecdotal evidence which as an argument has little or no 'merit'?

I guess you should prove everyone needed a test preparation class to gain entrance to the school first. It improves your chances of getting in, not a requirement for entry.

I'm not taking the position that kids who don't deserve to go to these schools should go to them.

The OP says it's the test that gets you in or not.

 

[TemplarKormac]

What annoys me are people who immediately attack the OP writer before even one intelligent post.

It's because it's...."...take notes".....A MESSAGE BOARD. She treats it like it's her personal lectern. Crashing bore...endlessly long diatribes based on OpEds and blogs. Copy n' paste.

It is only because you cannot offer up a decent rebuttal that she treats you and your liberal friends as fodder. Her 'copy and paste' is far superior to your whining. Trust me.

 

[NYcarbineer]

Instead of being a mindless drone like you are, I prefer to have a mind. You work mindlessly, I work with my mind. Liberals like you love to be manipulated, you don't think freely. And there are close to 48 million people being paid to sit on their asses as we speak, something you support, and you lecture me? No wonder you liberals think so little of merits. If I recall, that's one of the goals of Communists, to end merit based society.

I don't care much for people who say out loud and exclaim, "I've earned that privilege." If you're earning the privilege to sit on your backside via a welfare check, that privilege came at the expense of someone else. Privilege is what is wrong with this nation. Privileges create welfare states, privileges take hard work and meritorious achievements and throw them to wayside. It discourages competition. To say you've "earned that privilege" is meaningless. You have no idea what privilege is.

I'm retired with 2 pensions that took me 40 years to earn.

Sure, 2 pensions being paid for by the State of New York no doubt. Spare me. Your attitude is what broke the city of Detroit, New York isn't doing so hot either.

You've shrunk to the size of a toadstool. Watch out for the housecat!!!!