The Liberal Assault on Merit

[PoliticalChic]

How does a recommendation system benefit the poor? Seems like the rich would have better access to quality referals. If anything, it is a disavantage to the poor.

There should be no effort to benefit the poor. If there is a lack of integrity in the referral system, then the issue is a disadvantage to everyone. Nonetheless, there should be a test and nothing more. There should not be a perversion of the scores to entitle anyone or give an unfair advantage. You pass, you are in, you fail you are out. It is the 21st century and time to set equal standards instead of perverting competition that cheapens an institution.

Who is making an effort to benefit the poor????


Those who intend the dismantling of the special schools of NYC??????

Liberals?????
Hardly.






16. Now, remember, our pal said, earlier: " Pretending that a few out-of-context quotes represent the views of all liberals is a constant failing of PC's threads."

Well....maybe I shouldn't mention the NAACP Legal Defense Fund....someone might think they were Liberals.....


".... the NAACP Legal Defense Fund filed a complaint with the U.S. Department of Education, which dispenses federal educational funding to the city, charging that use of the SHSAT as the sole basis for admission violates Title VI of the 1964 Civil Rights Act, which prohibits racial discrimination by federal aid recipients.

The complaint does not allege that the exam intentionally discriminates against black and Hispanic students. Instead, citing statistics regarding declining black and Latino enrollment and SHSAT pass rates, the LDF bases its argument entirely on the theory of “disparate impact”—that is, that discrimination should be inferred merely from racial differences in test scores.






17. The LDF also called for guaranteed admission for valedictorians and salutatorians, and perhaps other top students, at each public middle school program—a proposal that sounds modest but would actually require a set-aside of at least 1,000 of the 3,800 seats in each class.

Breaking with Acorn’s focus in its 1997 report on test preparation, the LDF declared that “more test prep is not the answer” and quoted the president of another civil rights group, who said that “encouraging students to spend weeks and months furiously studying . . . is wrongheaded and clearly hasn’t worked.”

(Yeah.....read that again: it said just what you thought it said.)





18. Critics of the SHSAT will reply that something must be done about declining black and Hispanic enrollment at the specialized high schools.
The answer, however, can never be to lower objective standards.

Doing so hurts everyone, including minority students. For all its other faults, Acorn was on the right track in 1997 when it wrote that the “question is not whether the entrance exam is unfair” but why minority students in the city school system “are so unprepared to take it.”


The LDF and other progressive advocates have gone off course when they declare that “more test prep is not the answer” and dismiss spending long hours “furiously studying” as “wrongheaded” and futile. Adopting this cynical approach would do no favors for black and Latino children, while opening the door to discrimination against Asian kids like Ting.

It is not the specialized schools’ emphasis on merit, but rather the advocates’ defeatist worldview that is truly—and tragically—wrongheaded."
The Plot Against Merit by Dennis Saffran, City Journal Summer 2014






Did everyone get that? "... the [ NAACP Legal Defense Fund] declared that “more test prep is not the answer” and quoted the president of another civil rights group, who said that “encouraging students to spend weeks and months furiously studying . . . is wrongheaded and clearly hasn’t worked.”


No encouraging hard work!!!
We can't have that in a Liberal paradise!!!

 

[NYcarbineer]

What does being poor have to do with anything? It is the wealth of the mind that counts.

What does being poor have to do with costly tutoring programs?

Did you really have to ask that?

From the thread:

"13. .... in an NPR story last year: “Even the lowest-paid immigrants scrape up enough money for tutoring, because those high schools are seen as the ticket to a better life” for their children. Thus, one immigrant family featured in the NPR story had spent $5,000 per year, of the parents’ combined $26,000 income as garment workers, to send their three sons to tutoring.

Their oldest boy, now a student at Stuyvesant, said of his mother, who did not speak English and, like her husband, did not finish high school in China:
“Basically, she just worked every day . . . and saved up the money.”
The Plot Against Merit by Dennis Saffran, City Journal Summer 2014



You Liberals would be well advised to look to apply the above to your destructive welfare policies.
Recipients should not be held to any less.

You post that as if it's a good thing. Disgusting.

 

[NYcarbineer]

...but no, let's jump to lowering standards and dumb down everyone's education.

That's the very nature of the "bottom up" society to which the Left subscribes.

Rather than motivating and inspiring those on the bottom rungs to rise up via standards and expectations, you cater to them first by making excuses for them and expecting less, ultimately dropping standards across the board.

.

What does that have to do with putting the entry requirement to a special school entirely on one test score that is subject to manipulation with some well placed $'s?

 

[NYcarbineer]

Hardly a "plot" drama queen.

It's about equality of results, not equality of opportunity

If you really believed in equality of opportunity in this situation you would support a means tested program of tuition/fees assistance for all students that would give them equal opportunity to improve their scores on the particular test being used here as the entrance exam.

But I'm guessing you don't.

 

[saveliberty]

So NYC thinks the test results are manipulated now? Link.

 

[NYcarbineer]

So NYC thinks the test results are manipulated now? Link.

Read the thread idiot.

 

[squeeze berry]

PC, will you ever put forth an original thought of your own on this forum? This copy and paste crap may fly with the simpletons of this forum, but everyone else is just annoyed.

Why, BillyZeroIQ.....every single thing I post is based on my thoughts.

That is the content.

What you call "copy and paste crap" is method of presentation, and is based on supporting documentation and quotes from experts.


You may understand the difference when and if you ever get out of junior high.





"...everyone else is just annoyed..."

Really? Did you interview everyone?
Or is this "reporting" on the level of elementary-school gossip: "Everyone hates you"?


Trust me on this...I will give it all the consideration it, and you, deserve.

Well your pure binary thinking about liberals is really just a nuisance to anyone with basic critical thinking skills. I don't even think you can define that term.

Your "presentation" involves stitching together random information together forming painfully obvious logical fallacy.

hey Billy McDoosh,

post an intelligent rebuttal with sources like PC did or shut up

 

[NYcarbineer]

What does being poor have to do with anything? It is the wealth of the mind that counts.

What does being poor have to do with costly tutoring programs?

Did you really have to ask that?

From the thread:

"13. .... in an NPR story last year: “Even the lowest-paid immigrants scrape up enough money for tutoring, because those high schools are seen as the ticket to a better life” for their children. Thus, one immigrant family featured in the NPR story had spent $5,000 per year, of the parents’ combined $26,000 income as garment workers, to send their three sons to tutoring.

Their oldest boy, now a student at Stuyvesant, said of his mother, who did not speak English and, like her husband, did not finish high school in China:
“Basically, she just worked every day . . . and saved up the money.”
The Plot Against Merit by Dennis Saffran, City Journal Summer 2014



You Liberals would be well advised to look to apply the above to your destructive welfare policies.
Recipients should not be held to any less.

You don't even find it slightly obscene that

1. a two earner family in America is making 26,000 a year

2. that same family is spending 20% of that income trying to get their children educated.

????

 

[PoliticalChic]

What does being poor have to do with costly tutoring programs?

Did you really have to ask that?

From the thread:

"13. .... in an NPR story last year: “Even the lowest-paid immigrants scrape up enough money for tutoring, because those high schools are seen as the ticket to a better life” for their children. Thus, one immigrant family featured in the NPR story had spent $5,000 per year, of the parents’ combined $26,000 income as garment workers, to send their three sons to tutoring.

Their oldest boy, now a student at Stuyvesant, said of his mother, who did not speak English and, like her husband, did not finish high school in China:
“Basically, she just worked every day . . . and saved up the money.”
The Plot Against Merit by Dennis Saffran, City Journal Summer 2014



You Liberals would be well advised to look to apply the above to your destructive welfare policies.
Recipients should not be held to any less.

You post that as if it's a good thing. Disgusting.

I was about to respond along the lines of how disgusting YOU are.....but, adept at second level thinking, I realize that the real problem with your post is, in this case, how stupid you and the bulk of Liberal policies are with respect to understanding human nature.


The things that we value are things we earn, achievements brought to fruition by our own efforts.

Thus: "What we obtain too cheaply we esteem too lightly." Thom. Paine



Welfare recipients don't love you Liberals for exposing their weakness, and facilitating same.....

....they despise you.

"If you pick up a starving dog and make him prosperous, he will not bite you. This is the principal difference between a dog and a man."
Mark Twain




So, once again, I am torn between finding you more disgusting....or more stupid.

It's a toughie.

 

[saveliberty]

So NYC thinks the test results are manipulated now? Link.

Read the thread idiot.

No one has claimed test RESULTS being manipulated until you just did. Again, post a link proving your position.

 

[Jarhead]

What does being poor have to do with costly tutoring programs?

Did you really have to ask that?

From the thread:

"13. .... in an NPR story last year: “Even the lowest-paid immigrants scrape up enough money for tutoring, because those high schools are seen as the ticket to a better life” for their children. Thus, one immigrant family featured in the NPR story had spent $5,000 per year, of the parents’ combined $26,000 income as garment workers, to send their three sons to tutoring.

Their oldest boy, now a student at Stuyvesant, said of his mother, who did not speak English and, like her husband, did not finish high school in China:
“Basically, she just worked every day . . . and saved up the money.”
The Plot Against Merit by Dennis Saffran, City Journal Summer 2014



You Liberals would be well advised to look to apply the above to your destructive welfare policies.
Recipients should not be held to any less.

You post that as if it's a good thing. Disgusting.

It is a good thing.

It demonstrates that a family CAN do what it needs to do when it wants to.

Heck, when I was broke, I worked 7 days a week....2 jobs PLUS going to the library studying up on how to start a business..(we did not have internet back then).

The first 2 years of my business, I made very little money, but never saw a day off.

I sold it after 5 years....and then started 2 more.

Rags to riches....cause I wanted to.

 

[saveliberty]

You didn't build those businesses yourself Jarhead...

See, if you deny merit, you can try to take credit away from others. Neat plan huh?

 

[PoliticalChic]

From the thread:

"13. .... in an NPR story last year: “Even the lowest-paid immigrants scrape up enough money for tutoring, because those high schools are seen as the ticket to a better life” for their children. Thus, one immigrant family featured in the NPR story had spent $5,000 per year, of the parents’ combined $26,000 income as garment workers, to send their three sons to tutoring.

Their oldest boy, now a student at Stuyvesant, said of his mother, who did not speak English and, like her husband, did not finish high school in China:
“Basically, she just worked every day . . . and saved up the money.”
The Plot Against Merit by Dennis Saffran, City Journal Summer 2014



You Liberals would be well advised to look to apply the above to your destructive welfare policies.
Recipients should not be held to any less.

You post that as if it's a good thing. Disgusting.

It is a good thing.

It demonstrates that a family CAN do what it needs to do when it wants to.

Heck, when I was broke, I worked 7 days a week....2 jobs PLUS going to the library studying up on how to start a business..(we did not have internet back then).

The first 2 years of my business, I made very little money, but never saw a day off.

I sold it after 5 years....and then started 2 more.

Rags to riches....cause I wanted to.

Excellent! And inspiring.

We need to hear more stories like that.....they give the lie to Liberal policies.



Can I add this:


1. For a real-world perspective on the American ethic, find the Adam Shepard book, “Scratch Beginnings, in which the author recounts his own social experiment, at age 24, starting out at the lowest rung of the economic ladder.
The question: could he conquer poverty in one year at his best efforts?


2. He left his home with nothing but a tarp, sleeping bag, an empty gym bag, the clothes on his back, and $25. The went to Charleston, South Carolina…a city where he had never been before, and where he knew nobody. He didn’t use his college education as a resume, nor any family or other contacts.


3. The first night he finds the Crisis Ministries homeless shelter, and, next morning, begins working odd jobs. Within a few weeks, he gets a regular job with a moving company. He moonlights on weekends to make extra money.


4. He makes friends and contacts, and these help him to find jobs and housing…Within five months, he gets a raise from the moving company to $10/ hour. And another, to $11/hour in less than nine months.


5. Progress was retarded by breaking his foot on the job, yet by three months he was able to move out of the homeless shelter and rent a room in a large house in an upscale part of town. (It was owned by a friend he met while working a second job on weekends.) Then, just a month later, he moved into a two-bedroom duplex with the cousin of one of his co-workers. It was a bit rundown, so the two of them spent a week-end making it like new. (His share was $325 because he took the master bedroom.)


6. After just ten months he was living in his own furnished apartment, with his own car, and he had $5,300 in savings.


a. The book also tells of other low-income people he met, and how they, also, would like a safety net second to their own work,

"Scratch Beginnings: Me, $25, and the Search for the American Dream,"
Adam W. Shepard (Author)

 

[rdean]

Remember the GOP Texas Party Platform. They don't want their children to learn "critical thinking skills"?

And they talk about "merit"? Really?

 

[Mac1958]

.

When you tell me that you want a raise or a promotion, just remember:

You didn't build that. Someone else made it happen.

Roads and bridges 'n stuff.

.

 

[PoliticalChic]

Remember the GOP Texas Party Platform. They don't want their children to learn "critical thinking skills"?

And they talk about "merit"? Really?

For purposes of clarity......is your work an example of the "critical thinking skills" taught in government schools?


Da, or nyet, spaseeba.

 

[NYcarbineer]

From the thread:

"13. .... in an NPR story last year: “Even the lowest-paid immigrants scrape up enough money for tutoring, because those high schools are seen as the ticket to a better life” for their children. Thus, one immigrant family featured in the NPR story had spent $5,000 per year, of the parents’ combined $26,000 income as garment workers, to send their three sons to tutoring.

Their oldest boy, now a student at Stuyvesant, said of his mother, who did not speak English and, like her husband, did not finish high school in China:
“Basically, she just worked every day . . . and saved up the money.”
The Plot Against Merit by Dennis Saffran, City Journal Summer 2014



You Liberals would be well advised to look to apply the above to your destructive welfare policies.
Recipients should not be held to any less.

You post that as if it's a good thing. Disgusting.

It is a good thing.

It demonstrates that a family CAN do what it needs to do when it wants to.

Heck, when I was broke, I worked 7 days a week....2 jobs PLUS going to the library studying up on how to start a business..(we did not have internet back then).

The first 2 years of my business, I made very little money, but never saw a day off.

I sold it after 5 years....and then started 2 more.

Rags to riches....cause I wanted to.

Nonsense. There is nothing good about an American family with 2 earners making 26,000 a year, in what sounds like a sweatshop scenario,

and on top of that having to spend 20% of their income just to get their kids a decent education.

Nothing.

 

[NYcarbineer]

What does being poor have to do with anything? It is the wealth of the mind that counts.

What does being poor have to do with costly tutoring programs?

Did you really have to ask that?

From the thread:

"13. .... in an NPR story last year: “Even the lowest-paid immigrants scrape up enough money for tutoring, because those high schools are seen as the ticket to a better life” for their children. Thus, one immigrant family featured in the NPR story had spent $5,000 per year, of the parents’ combined $26,000 income as garment workers, to send their three sons to tutoring.

Their oldest boy, now a student at Stuyvesant, said of his mother, who did not speak English and, like her husband, did not finish high school in China:
“Basically, she just worked every day . . . and saved up the money.”
The Plot Against Merit by Dennis Saffran, City Journal Summer 2014



You Liberals would be well advised to look to apply the above to your destructive welfare policies.
Recipients should not be held to any less.

What's destructive about the above family receiving Medicaid? which they would obviously be eligible for.

Medicaid is the biggest segment of the so-called welfare state, is it not?

 

[NYcarbineer]

So NYC thinks the test results are manipulated now? Link.

Read the thread idiot.

No one has claimed test RESULTS being manipulated until you just did. Again, post a link proving your position.

The manipulation occurs when some students can hire professional tutoring schemes to artificially jack up their scores by doing one thing and one thing only -

training the kids on how to take that one specific test.

 

[NYcarbineer]

Remember the GOP Texas Party Platform. They don't want their children to learn "critical thinking skills"?

And they talk about "merit"? Really?

For purposes of clarity......is your work an example of the "critical thinking skills" taught in government schools?


Da, or nyet, spaseeba.

The excellent schools referred to in your OP are government schools aren't they?