I'm chatting with some friends who are parents in the Bay Area. Their admittedly very Californian response is that at least this should reduce competition for college spots. (Their kids are obviously going to get tutoring.)
I'm not sure it will — there are still plenty of schools elsewhere that offer advanced coursework, and their graduates can more than fill the freshman class of elite colleges.
For example, I grew up in Sacramento, and our public schools had a tracked program from 2nd grade. Pretty much all of us took algebra/geometry in middle school, and those who were advanced were taking precalc or calc by 9th grade. It has been a disappointing experience to learn that in the heart of silicon valley, 30+ years later, the public schools have less to offer in terms of differentiated learning and accelerated education.
BTW, I have also been talking with Bay Area parents about this, including some HNers. Would love to chat with you/your friends to know how folks are sorting this out. We've had some success and are always looking to help others do the same. Contact info in profile.
I think getting rid of this will cause more disparity in the outcomes. Rich parents can afford tutors and poor parents can't, so poor kids come out even worse off.
Tracking helped me in particular by making my homeroom (the British school equivalent, j called a class) more civilized, n fair to students w less academic talent than me. Given the tracking in English n at one point, briefly, Mathematics, it meant the other boys had a shot at getn the best score in the class or at all enjoying leniency in grading, which my presence as a future Erdosian mathematician made impossible, n their parents would deny them privileges n beat them sometimes if they weren't excellent students, so they'd bully me for monopolizing the academics completely. The girls did not, because i believe there was not an expectation they be the best student n plus i was very good-looking to them, though not to myself. Future model too. But the bullying was the main challenge, no matter what they threw at me the academics were nothing in difficulty compared to the bullying. So for that reason alone tracking helped me out, n the homeroom out too.
As for bullying, I was a "gifted" kid in school, too. I was treated nicely when people wanted help and bullied ruthlessly when they didn't need me.
> their parents would deny them privileges n beat them sometimes if they weren't excellent students
100% agree that this was one of the biggest factors in my bullying. Shame is powerful, and if a child is being shamed for their academic achievements, they will lash out at someone who has what they desire: good grades in this instance.
Erdosian means having the genetic trait Paul Erdós had, which was the uncommonly good reaction to similar stimulants to those he took, without which he could not do any math research at all. He was steroidal, i'm steroidal too in my research, it's like bodybuilding in that steroids are part of the game. As long as they do not damage your health, it's fine. I literally get time dilation from the stimulants i take, which i do under prescription of course, but at the same time i know it's not fair to play sports for instance, because they're performance enhancing drugs (n generally outright forbidden). But sports are zero-sum, research is positive-sum, so that's what i do instead.
In particular the critical trait is amplified creativity to the point i share Erdos view that "Before, when I looked at a piece of blank paper my mind was filled with ideas. Now all I see is a blank piece of paper.". Same exact symptoms.
In addition, my being steroidal is justified by the fact that i got brain surgery, like the radio transcranial magnetic crap, against my will n without my knowledge, electroshock too, the works. So perhaps it is understandable in my case.
Ha that’s not actually happening though because college admissions aren’t going to be based in knowledge but on ability to jump through hoops perfectly
And what, exactly, do you expect administrators to do? They don't have any actual knowledge and if they do, they absolutely do NOT want to use it, so tests are out. There are now more administrators than teaching staff. We're not far off from having more "social" workers in schools than teachers.
First and foremost, these people want to decide what is equitable. Firstly, without taking actual ability (or "conscientiousness", how much effort kids are willing to put in), and secondly, they're human. They're corrupt.
That’s exactly what I expect. With no ability to differentiate candidates by ability all you can do is chase diversity metrics or look for people that haven’t made any mistakes yet (4.0 vs 3.9 etc)
I can't imagine colleges doing much beyond lots of AI interviews in the near future. That's if there is even a point in getting 95% of degrees anymore anyway.
The internet should have transformed education. For curious self-learners it has, there’s incredible resources online for those who seek them out. But it hasn’t made much of a dent in ‘the education system’
Something I say to anyone who will listen is that we have lived through the moment in history when the cost to receive a world-class elite education has collapsed to near zero and hardly anybody has noticed. We still talk as if an official four year university education is the goal and bemoan the cost of it rising faster than general inflation and worry about taking on debt that will burden them for the rest of their lives and worry about our kids “getting in” to the university of their choice.
It has changed education. And people who have kids nearing college age, who have noticed, will be able to help them navigate this world in a much more useful way than people who tell their kids to take on as much debt as they can to go to any university they want.
The pipeline that fuels our decision making of what to focus on in primary/secondary school as it relates only to what will help them stand out in a college application and our decision making of what a university-level education means as it relates to getting a job is fascinating.
The sort of personal mentoring, practical supervision, and social skills development that is required for intellectual maturity cannot be acquired from YouTube videos.
I learned these skills more thoroughly in a week of fast food training than in sixteen years of public and private schooling. If these are important context for education, you'd think we would still teach decorum.
Because ability to asses knowledge is poor everywhere. programming might be a bit better at it but everyone else relies on signaling. Also many industries are essentially government adjacent so they continuation of college entrenchment continues
The main purpose of college besides education and networking is the development of social stratification. Many employers will toss your CV without a degree even if it is not required in any capacity for the job in question.
I personally am afraid to speak out against such things. I did in college and was viciously flamed by people who thought it was a good idea. You can shut down the entire conversation by just calling someone “racist” or “bigot”.
I don’t want to lose my job or be ostracized.
To be clear, my opinions are only that it seems wrong to me to discriminate against someone based on their immutable characteristics (like race).
It only seems inexplicable if you accept as reality the most extreme characterization of DEI programs, which personally I believe should be a tip-off that such a characterization might not be entirely accurate. The more ridiculous programs naturally get the most attention, regardless of how representative they are, and DEI programs as a whole are further strawmanned by politicians and pundits looking to trigger your outrage. The discourse thoroughly ignores all the programs working on DEI as a topic in ways most reasonable people would probably be OK with.
As an example right in this thread, the grandparent comment talks about the Dallas schools looking at the issue of children unevenly taking advantage of advanced courses and coming up with a solution that helped expand access across the board. This absolutely would qualify as a DEI program (they even used the equity trigger word), but did not do anything I would think many people would find objectionable.
On the contrary, I think most DEI programs suck and people know it. There's a few like the Dallas program that actually try to solve the problem in a reasonable way, and you won't find nearly as much pushback from people on those.
Well meaning if misguided attempts to address race and other social issues without improving pay or making structural changes to government and economic systems.
The amount of equity a society enforces should be inversely proportional to age. If a kindergartener is unable to succeed, we need to give them extra help. If a 45 year old is unable to succeed, they had their chances and it's their fault.
I agree with you that I was wrong to say "It's their fault." There are people who get screwed by life.
The main way they got screwed was when life taught them whining was better than working hard. We need to stop screwing people that way. We need to hold a hard line on the principle that they can succeed or fail in a free market, and we will not reward whining. This means eliminating all entitlements for adults.
I'll help kids learn to be successful adult. I'm a teacher, that's what I do. Let the kids and their families pick their schools from any school they can get to, including online schools.
I will not help some whiny adult who can not even train themselves when they have Internet access.
If you give money to whiny adults, who do you take it from? Do you take it from long-term investments in education? Do you take it from long term investments in our economy like paying off our national debt? Our (US) national debt eliminates many options we would otherwise have. It is more compassionate to provide the best education we can to the children, and let the adults pay for themselves.
Long-term benefits should outweigh short-term benefits. A society that educates and raises its children to be productive, the provides a free market will outperform a society that rewards whining.
Even if an older person’s situation is largely not their fault, it is much more difficult to correct, and society’s benefit for its investment is much lower.
On ramps for everyone are important, but as you say, far far more important and effective in people’s early years.
Children need to be educated well and given opportunities to guarantee the future of society, but ensuring adults are content or at least able to support themselves is important for stability today. More un/under-employed/unemployable people means more crime and social unrest, retarding growth and costing more resources than would have been spent supporting them.
Plenty of kids get away with being stupid. If those same kids knew that they would have to provide for themselves once they turned 18, they would be studying and learning to work.
Intelligence and education are different things. You can't train intelligence - you can teach some tools or frameworks for reasoning and such and that can help but some people will understand them and others won't.
As a simple example just look at how many people think math is useless. Even having spent 10+ years with people trying to bash it into their heads they still can't figure out any of the infinitely many useful things you can do with math.
Education is the result, intelligence is potential. Stupid people have less potential for results. Doesn't mean some of them can't pull a Forrest Gump, nor that they aren't valuable members of society. Just means they suck at learning (at least some) things so their time is better spent doing other stuff.
I know it’s vogue to ridicule DEI programs, but the reality is that as the blog post points out, these measures achieve the opposite of DEI (all 3 letters of those).
Even standardized tests. There is already evidence that standardized tests reduce equality. Which is not surprising at all because standardized tests are the one part of a college application that someone can excel at purely with concentrated hard work over a relatively short period of time.
An underprivileged kid motivated to go to a good college cannot make up for poor grades earned from K-8 when they barely had the ability to plan a day in the future, and so was driven to do whatever their friends were doing. And then that set them up behind the 8 ball in many ways from 9-12 as well.
Finally, real DEI requires listening to actual underprivileged people. The vast majority of underprivileged parents will not respond to data showing that their kids are underperforming by saying “make sure no one can do this”. They will respond by demanding the schools provide more resources so their kids can excel.
The OP wonders how Cambridge, Mass and CA are making such changes. But it’s not surprising at all because these decisions are being driven largely by upper middle class educated people who absolutely cannot relate to the under privileged people they claim they’re helping.
And this is an implementation of the worst of privilege. Making decisions for the underprivileged by the privileged without ever asking the supposed beneficiaries what will actually help them.
> They will respond by demanding the schools provide more resources so their kids can excel.
Right? Why would any parent want other kids in their class to be dumber so their kid is magically "smarter"? They want their child to grow up to be a competent person who is capable of competing in the world at large, not a wave-through at a "progressive" school.
Parents recognize that their children will be competing with the entire world for jobs, and easily see the folly of such a policy.
Such policy really does seem actively hostile toward the goals of such parents. For a group of educators to suggest that the solution is to do away with "mean grades and homework" is like saying, "We all know that you're kid isn't going succeed in advanced classes so let's not even pretend that they will."
rich white people introduce these regressive DEI policies so that smart poor and not-connected kids could not compete and enter elite ranks of society, and their (relatively dumb, but rich&well connected) kids could easily outcompete everyone.
1. It is incredibly hard for rich&connected kid to excel among smart & hard-working individuals
2. If barrier is lowered, and overall pool is "diverse" in terms of IQ and ability, then for a rich kid it gets much easier to outcompete and stand out (due to parent's $$$ and connections)
3. The only reason rich white privileged people want regressive DEI is to make it easier for their kids to stand out from competition
It won't reduce competition for college spots. Admissions committees will continue to fulfill shadow racial quotas using first names, last names, and reparations sob stories as filters to maintain the status quo. Test scores of special protected classes hardly matter as long as those primary objectives are met.
Not sure exactly what you're dancing around, but man, if some of those top schools in CA could reduce competition by, say, expanding admissions, that would be great.
Poor Californians who can’t afford tutors will lack the skills to compete with other students. (If you’re graduating without calculus, you’ll have a tough time becoming an engineer or performing on a standardised test.) That reduces those with means’ competition, ceteris paribus.
Maybe things have changed in the ~15 years since I took the ACT, but no calculus was necessary for me to get a score in the 30s. You're probably right about getting accepted into an engineering major at a prestigious school though.
I'm chatting with some friends who are parents in the Bay Area. Their admittedly very Californian response is that at least this should reduce competition for college spots. (Their kids are obviously going to get tutoring.)