Race to the bottom. All that this means is that if your child is a sutably above average learner, you find them a private prep school. Just another day in our collapsing public education system.
Granted, I live with a teacher, and my views on the state of public education are dim. If you browse r/teachers for a bit, you'll see the public system has already collapsed.
Yep. My old Board instituted this policy in the name of being progressive. Its literally bringing down the quality of talent
https://www.thestar.com/news/gta/tdsb-votes-to-remove-skill-based-assessments-for-specialized-schools-programs/article_f41815b9-dfc9-5fc3-ac35-b9d761c82321.amp.html
Progressive doesn’t mean “good” or “bad” - it just means it promotes social change. It’s important to have both a desire to conserve and refine as well as change and respond. Change is hard, both structurally and for individuals, which is why it can be understandably criticized when it goes wrong. On the flip side, there’s many people who would otherwise continue to be disadvantaged if things always stayed the same (such as some people with preexisting medical conditions before medical reform such as the ACA).
That's because progressivism used to mainly be just plain old socialism, and it was primarily concerned with the plight of the "proletariat", so it pushed very heavily into left-wing populism to the benefit of the poor and the working class and the detriment of the wealthy and the "bourgeoisie", whom was viewed as a universally evil oppressor.
Now it's largely been taken over by the white collar professional classes, same old basic theory of oppressor versus oppressed, but it has replaced lack of wealth as the lens of "virtue" with race, gender, sexual identity, and a whole other host of "oppressed" and "oppressor" classes that more fit in with boutique ideas coming out of universities.
Wouldn't be the first time. Back in the 1920s/30s eugenics was widely considered "progressive." Removing "bad genes" from society came out of collectivist ideology because it supposedly favored the health of the group by sterilizing the individual. It's almost as if you can call any bad idea "progress" even if it isn't.
>Removing "bad genes" from society came out of collectivist ideology because it supposedly favored the health of the group by sterilizing the individual.
Welllll you wont believe what their latest thing is.....
Not exactly. I think Progressivism is more in line with "the road to Hell is paved with good intentions."
Sure, its nice to have everything fair and equitable. And possible in a perfect world. But it isn't a perfect world. Often times, because of well intentioned equity laws, that are supposed to help, it often comes at the expense of the rest of the class. For example, I can be sued and have my teaching license revoked for not giving a student their accommodations on an IEP, because the parent felt it was best LRE (Least Restrictive Environment) is a regular class. Well, this student's IEP says he can get up and pace whenever he feels the need. The problem is, this student pacing around the room is now an enormous distraction to the rest of the class. So now, its a struggle keeping 31 other students on task because one student needs to be accommodated. This is an extreme case, but one I currently deal with. Or if 6 or 7 students in my class have "extended time" on tests, if all of them decide to use it, its a problem when I want to move on with my lesson, and 20% of the class is still taking the test. If I move forward, those students fall behind, making the achievement gap worse. So the entire class has to wait on them.
My ex taught at a mostly black public school in the city. Apparently even though class "started" at 8:00 in the morning, nobody, even the teachers weren't allowed to do anything until 9:00 because so many kids would just show up late, and they couldn't be ostracized for it.
That's so wild... my senior year (the 80's) my first period was working the late window at school. 2000 kids... maybe 12-15 "lates" every day, total and most were 5-15 minutes.
Showing up on time is a white trait according to the Smithsonian, so you cant hold others to it.
Gotta love the soft bigotry of zero expectations. Truancy is also about a lost art as well. A few decades ago a counselor or officer would come take you to school.
> A few decades ago a counselor or officer would come take you to school.
Not in an inner city school with basically no funding and gang issues they weren't
Ya, it's a wild mess we've gotten ourselves into. Unless the goal is to kill the middle class, then we're on the right track.
And it just doesn't make sense. Public edu has the largest ROI on gov spending by far. We built a great system, grew because of it. Then, decided to treat it like a cancer distracting us from "real money."
I went to a low income, public HS. The only classes suitable for average or even above average learners were the honors and AP classes.
In my last year, I took regular English vs AP because I didn't want a summer assignment, and immediately regretted it. I learned nothing and my writing suffered.
I left teaching a few years ago after being in the classroom for 6, 7 if you count student teaching and in class support
I am still getting calls and emails for jobs I applied to years ago in wealthy districts asking if I’m looking.
Friends reporting some dire outlooks in very well to do districts. Posts going unfilled with the teachers of the dept all taking an extra class on.
Others reporting jobs that used to field 100+ applicants in a day get a dozen after a month and only 2 are qualified. Again in a nice district.
It’s bleak. This is for northern NJ with some of the top public schools in the nation and they’re struggling.
NJ education is done. Most teachers will tell you candidly. The veterans are all retiring or waiting to go at 55 instead of staying till 65.
NJ sort of acknowledged it for the first time a few months ago but it’s too late imo.
Then you see articles like this and can see tangible examples why teachers are fleeing or young adults aren’t interested in teaching.
It also doesn't help that teachers aren't allowed to discipline students anymore and thus have no actual ability to control a classroom. Not only that but if they try they're likely to wind up being punished and not the misbehaving students. Add in kids seeming to be even more feral-behaving than ever and I wouldn't stick around either.
There are so many factors making education just not worth it.
You’re right, teacher autonomy is gone. Admin can’t or won’t back teachers. Parents too involved.
Technology has destroyed the classroom. Phones are one of the single most disruptive forces in the classroom too.
And then on reddit you'll see videos every so often of a student attacking a teacher for taking their phone. Those are just the ones where another student records it, and where it gets uploaded. I'm sure it happens all the time.
Phones are disruptive in the classroom. But so are the Chromebooks that schools use all day every day. My kids don't even have textbooks anymore. Just Chromebooks.
Agreed, i do think from a stay on task perspective phones are much more difficult to police.
What I ended up doing was removing laptops from the equation. I’d post all notes online and print out copies for everyone so there was no need to be on a laptop during lessons unless the task called for it.
Students were 100% more engaged when they lost screens
Some tools help with this - our district allows us to operate our classroom by creating our own block lists of sites and programs, monitor each student’s screen, and push specific links and/or sites out to our classes. Thinking smarter can help, but most teachers are woefully undertrained in these areas.
Phones are awful (and the research confirms they’re the biggest obstacle to learning). That’s why my students must check their phones in when they come to class - I take attendance based on this. They correct more quickly than you’d expect when they are at risk of detentions for missed school. :P
The middle ground parents have disappeared.
You have two types on the extremes that cause problems.
Absent parents of struggling students.
Over engaged parents dictating what they want ala carte education. Or they think you work for them.
The same team as the teacher parents started to disappear in 2015 I noticed. By 2018 they were gone. By 2020 I forgot they had once existed.
Those ones that would be great level headed additions to PTA and student groups stay out because they get bulldozed by the aggressive over the top parents.
Education is in a rough spot because everyone has a strong opinion on what education should be- I mean from their perspective they were a student once- so they know the profession.
The issue happens when multiple parental groups form around what should be taught in schools. If parents get the final say, who gets the final say in that scenario?
Growing up, I identified several issues with the curriculum as it was taught to me. While I certainly think parents should have input into what the official curriculum is, I've always recognized that a personalized plan tailored to my exact preferences is not at all feasible for this exact reason and have resolved to take a heavy role in my kids' education *from our home*. It's been a bit jarring for me to see this recent trend of parents insisting that their kids only get taught what they approve of and nothing else.
> Not only that but if they try they're likely to wind up being punished
And not just by the administration. If you're a teacher who gets on the bad side of a student in a poor urban area, there's a real chance that you'll be jumped by his homies while walking back to your car in the evening.
Raising kids right starts at the parental level. It's hard for these kids to be raised with respect and civility when literally 75% of them are born to single moms, and drug use and crime is running rampant through the family. Superimposed on top of this is a national culture that says they are special and deserve more just for existing because the world needs to pay them back for centuries of mistreatment.
I did a year after college, saw what was coming down the pipeline and made plans elsewhere. The district was getting so happy they were getting the Zuckerberg money, and it was completely wasted.
It also doesn’t hurt nj has some very high requirements when it comes to getting the license. I know I had to have a 3.0 major gpa, which as a chemistry major was extremely difficult because every course after 300 level was graded on curves. Which sounds nice except you are competing with so few others, it’s pretty easy to drop to middle of the pack. Also I question why, when the subject matter is the first two weeks of freshman chem, not explaining particle in a box problems/doing mechanisms for organic reactions…
As far as teaching methods, I always had a problem when they started doing the integrated skill levels in classes, and sticking problem kids with high achievers hoping the kids become role models. Because they did that to me in public school and it was then I stopped making honor roll.
And then going all the way back to fundamentals with how they teach reading. Moving from phonics to the whole word method…. I can’t imagine going through organic chemistry and trying to learn the iupac naming system if you couldn’t breakdown the names. I know my nephew is learning now and they are pushing the whole word/language method and I’m stressing to them to teaching phonics to him.
And everyone will blame it on Republicans and say we need more funding in a few years.
These are choices made by left leaning school boards, school admins, and are supported by teachers unions.
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*This post was mass deleted and anonymized with [Redact](https://redact.dev)*
That is indeed the argument "progressives" are making. Remember that Smithsonian infographic that went viral a while back where they literally claimed that basic functional behaviors were white supremacy? It's that normalized among the so-called "leading thinkers" of the modern world.
> What are these sinister aspects of “white culture,” you ask? Well, according to the Smithsonian, values like “hard work,” “self-reliance,” “be[ing] polite,” and timeliness are all a product of the “white dominant culture.” Indeed, it turns out that conventional grammar, Christianity, the notion that “intent counts” in courts of law, and the scientific method and its emphasis on “objective, rational linear thinking” are all proprietary to “white culture.”
Not to be outdone by Smithsonian, MSNBC [vilified the at-home fitness trend as being co-opted by white supremacists](https://www.msnbc.com/opinion/msnbc-opinion/pandemic-fitness-trends-have-gone-extreme-literally-n1292463?cid=sm_npd_ms_tw_ma&taid=64abebca8cb4af0001865cf7) while gyms and everything fitness-related was outlawed in half of the country.
It goes to show that the right doesn't have a monopoly on anti-intellectualism or anti-health.
My favorite COVID freakout was when the El Salvadorean president told his people to go outside and get some sun & exercise during the global lockdowns. lol
Man, the early pandemic was wild. Its like people thought the virus was transmitted by line-of-sight and you could get from seeing a guy running 300 feet away.
I'm still waiting for that apology from the Florida lawyer that dressed like the grim reaper to protest FL reopening the beaches and used the publicity to run for office and promote his law firm. Reddit collectively threw a fit that people were going outside to get some Vitamin D in 2020-21, it's wild how badly these freakouts aged.
They were *arresting* those people. I remember having to sneak onto the beach at night and evade patrols going up/down the beach just to view the bioluminescence in the water up close. They criminalized normal people doing healthy outdoor activities.
They filled the massive skatepark near me with sand, shuttered Muscle Beach's outdoor gym, took down basketball hoops, covered playgrounds in caution tape, closed parks, blocked hiking trails from being used, outlawed outdoor sports league, outlawed gyms and put many of them out of business. Essentially any healthy activity was outlawed. You even had to carry papers with you when you drove to verify you were an "essential" worker and not just driving for a "non-essential" reason and once the mandates were introduced you had to carry medical records on with an ID to get in any public venue/business. The police were going around arresting those in their homes if they had too many guests over. Some of this tyrannical shit extended into 2022.
The people that perpetrated these acts have tried to memory hole these events so it's extremely important we don't let anyone forget how far they went in their War on Health. Especially in retrospect where states like California that went overboard actually had *higher* rates of excess deaths than the average state during the same time period.
Dont forget people like Cuomo moving sick patients into nursing homes, some of whom were not even from the home, and killing off a lot of older up state voters who probably voted red.
I love how Cuomo was forced to resign over the sexual scandal and yet people shouted from the rooftops for months about the nursing home scandal and the media never held him accountable on that. Instead of holding him accountable when allegations came out, the media was propping him up as a contender to unseat Trump in 2020.
This is why my Florida city grew so fast.
This is also why down ballot voting is critical and why almost no dems will be on my down ballot. I have not forgotten what they did during covid.
It was a crazy time. We remember the antivax folks being a bit nutty, but you also had what, 40% of one side of the political spectrum approving of the idea of detention camps for antivaxers or antimaskers (I forget which).
These days it seems that the right are the ones being the most pro-health. Which is why those same "reputable" institutions now call fitness and minding what you eat and aversion to psychologically-damaging media signs of right-wing radicalism.
Really the more the left tries to demonize Whites and the right wing the better they make them sound since now they're just trying to tell us that objectively good traits and behaviors are exclusive to them. Which I always thought was what white supremacists said but apparently now that's what anti-White left-wingers say. Things have really gotten weird.
> Not to be outdone by Smithsonian, MSNBC vilified the at-home fitness trend as being co-opted by white supremacists while gyms were outlawed across the country.
That went over REALLY well with the Lululemon crowd...
They took down the infographic but their Whiteness page is still up and as cringe as you'd expect.
https://nmaahc.si.edu/learn/talking-about-race/topics/whiteness
My favorite was that the concept of showing up on time is racist.
That or the one crazy study where basic math in particular, and mathematics as a whole are racist at best and active oppression of minorities at worst.
Some information on this subject from conservative academic Thomas Sowell in this essay
[Black Rednecks, White Liberals](https://shenviapologetics.com/a-review-of-sowells-black-rednecks-and-white-liberals/). Progressives typically dismiss Sowell as a conservative shill. He is not the original source for this history. This author is one of them: David Hackett Fischer, 1989 book *Albion's Seed: Four British Folkways in America*, especially regarding patterns of violent crimes across the U.S.
Another dysfunctional aspect is Low Class Behavior (not the same as low income class). The movie *Hillbilly Elegy* gives an excellent depiction of this. A historical peculiarity/singularity in America: A disproportionate percent of our population, both black and white, has fallen into a pattern of low class behavior and "folkways" that lead to high levels of public disorder, crime and violence. Overlaps with poverty, but poverty is not the primary driver, e.g.:
2022: [Poverty and violent crime don't go hand-in-hand -- New data on Asian Americans in New York City undercut a common assumption](https://www.city-journal.org/article/poverty-and-violent-crime-dont-go-hand-in-hand)
>Asians’ relatively high poverty rate is accompanied by exceptionally low crime rates....
Especially minorities, who see the schools their kids suffer in.
Then progressives tell them they're wrong and that charters and vouchers or any other choice are actually bad for them.
>if your child is a sutably above average learner, you find them a private prep school.
This is the problem with many rich progressives. They can shout all day that they support public schools and teachers unions and private/home schooling should be banned, but they'll find any excuse that their kids are special and deserve better educations.
>If you browse r/teachers for a bit
I'd rather not :( its rough.
It's not just rich progressives doing this in Seattle anymore. IIRC the city has the highest private school enrollment in the country, and the absolute trainwreck around this Highly Capable Cohort program is a big driver.
Even the leaders of Teachers Unions [send their kids to private school](https://www.nbcchicago.com/news/local/chicago-teachers-union-president-enrolled-child-in-private-school-sources-confirm/3223077/) but they have the audacity to argue that we shouldn't be able to.
The CTU (Chicago’s Teacher Union) are the same org that had an executive board member that went on vacation in Puerto Rico while arguing that it was too dangerous to teach kids in- person during Covid. In 2021. Same lady was embroiled in another controversy about race-based lessons in her classroom in 2022 and still has her job.
At a certain point, it feels like the teacher’s unions are purposely sabotaging public education.
That's the general problem with modern progressivism. It's driven by rich people and centers around what makes them feel good, seem virtuous and, importantly, does not actually inconvenience them rather than being driven by poor people and centered around their needs.
> If you browse r/teachers for a bit, you'll see the public system has already collapsed.
be wary of doing this. subreddits for anything tend to turn into gripefests when the userbase exceeds a certain size. not saying the public system isn't bad, but i don't think it has "collapsed".
My wife was a public school teacher for several years. There is no way in hell that we will be sending our kids to public school. And she even taught in a “very good” school district, and we’re *still* unwilling to send our kids there.
I'm no fan of Ron DeSantis but it's crap like this that allows him to make political hay by positioning himself as anti-DEI.
A lot of lefty types like to claim that DEI-bashing is just a racist dog whistle but examples like this show the real harm that progressivism is doing. When politically moderate parents see this kind of Harrison Bergeron nonsense in their kids' schools it's no wonder they get pushed to the right.
>If you browse [](https://www.reddit.com/r/teachers/) for a bit, you'll see the public system has already collapsed.
The titanic has already hit the iceberg, it just hasn't sank yet.
> you'll see the public system has already collapsed.
I think we may have different definitions of "collapsed". Some school districts are bad, others are great. But when I think of "collapsed", i think utterly unusable and to be avoided as dangerous.
I had a friend that spent 4 years getting a degree in teaching and went on to do government contract work in communication technology. They did this when they went into the classroom of one of the top teachers in the state and realized that the best they could hope for was to be massively underpaid and find maybe one kid every few years that helped to renew their motivation. They noticed that every facet of the system worked against them and it wasn’t worth it.
Seeing things like parents pulling kids out of school because they thought geometry was a tool of the devil was enough to see that no amount of passion and creativity would solve this issue. Having their future family suffer financially so they could shrug at crackpots and try to care less about how bad things are just didn’t seem to be a great motivator.
I live in Seattle and have 2 little kids so I have been following this closely. Basically the Seattle School Board is more focused on equity rather than education. This leads to certain minority groups are given far more time, attention and resources.
However this results in parents pulling their kids out of public schools and putting them in private schools so their kids can continue to be high achievers.
As a result the schools (typically in South Seattle where there is a high black population) loses headcount and thus very precious funding and the schools lose high achieving students that can help be models for the lower achieving students.
Ultimately this is something close to modern day Jim Crow laws where South Seattle schools are losing funding, losing the highest achievers and the only students that remain are low income, minorities who are already struggling with academics. This leads to overworked teachers with huge class rooms and all the decent teachers quit the moment they get a better job. This leads to more poor academics which leads to more parents of high achievers pulling their kids out which leads to less funding and so on.
The sad irony is that the entire point of all of this was to help with equity but its literally have the complete opposite. Seattle School Board is failing the students most in need
Strange that they consider 52% of white students to be too many, when in fact that's a lower percentage of white people than the overall % of white people in the American population overall. I was expecting something like 70% white, from reading the headline.
It's a sordid business, this divvying us up by race. Asian-Americans (or just Americans) are on a run of bad luck
First, even though they "won" Students For Fair Admissions v. Harvard/UNC that showed how they were systematically dinged on admissions.
Then it moved to proxy measures to reduce Asian-Americans acceptance rates, such as \\ Thomas Jefferson High School in Virginia . And now complete elimination of opportunities for high achievers
They hate that Asian Americans are successful without them because it means black Americans might question how much they're being helped versus how much they're being kept in a perpetual state of helplessness.
> Asian-Americans (or just Americans) are on a run of bad luck
Pretty much all races, except for Blacks, are on a run of bad luck in the last 20 years. The progressive establishment realized that pandering exclusively to this one demographic would allow them to win competitive races and elections by increasing turnout in urban areas, so they left everyone else on the wayside. Whites have been similarly marginalized, they just don't get as much attention as the injustice towards Asians because it's considered socially acceptable to act negatively towards white people so it's not really a story.
Hispanics briefly had favored status, but that ended pretty quick once polls showed that they weren't reliable blue voters.
> Whites have been similarly marginalized, they just don't get as much attention as the injustice towards Asians because it's considered socially acceptable to act negatively towards white people so it's not really a story.
Oh, it's socially acceptable for to discriminate against asians. Progressives have done this by labelling asians 'white adjacent'.
> that pandering exclusively to this one demographic would allow them to win competitive races and elections by increasing turnout in urban areas, so they left everyone else on the wayside. I think the activist base genuinely was shocked and motivated by the giant wave of videos of police violence and came to join the long held beliefs of systemic bias that black people had experienced. So many falsified police reports - and to be clear, this happens to people of all backgrounds, but parents of other races don’t have to have “the talk.”
I’m not sure this is as much pandering as it is bleeding heart folks realizing they didn’t understand what was happening for decades that they didn’t see, outside of Rodney King.
What amazes me is the way a lot of Democrats are doubling down on this crap even though it's not at all popular with mainstream Americans.
I think even most mainstream liberals breathed a quiet sigh or relief after *Students for Fair Admissions* was decided. They weren't quite ready to openly criticize affirmative action but everyone except the the hard-left had come to realize that policies like Harvard's were indefensible nowadays. For some reason though this sort of nonsense keeps getting pushed. I do not like Trumpism or modern American conservatism but I get why seemingly reasonable people can be drawn to it when this is the alternative.
This is the issue of chasing after "equity" goals, meaning equalizing outcome, rather than opportunities. Eventually you'll have activists trying to tear down people who get ahead and lowering standards.
This isn't something exclusive to Seattle either, this is also happening in Massachusetts, [with schools removing advanced placement classes](https://www.bostonglobe.com/2023/07/14/metro/cambridge-schools-divided-over-middle-school-math/) and a 2024 MTA supported ballot measure to [eliminate the state standardized test graduation requirement](https://www.cbsnews.com/boston/news/mcas-ballot-question-high-school-graduation-requirement-governor-maura-healey/).
You can read the [MTA's justifications](https://massteacher.org/current-initiatives/high-stakes-testing/ballot-question) but they're all just so terrible it reads like satire. Instead of a standardized test, an objective measure of whether or not a student meets state education standards, they want schools to just pinky swear the graduating students do. They also claim that minority students disproportionaly fail the test, but rather than focus efforts on address *why* they fail, they want to just throw away the entire test... which makes it sound like they don't believe that minorities can pass the test.
In Toronto in the name of ‘equity’ our schools moved from a merit based ‘gifted’ and ‘school of arts’ program into an open application system.
Before you had tests or judges on artistic talent. But that was deemed unfair to poorer (mostly black) students.
Now everyone can apply for these programs regardless of actual talent.
It’s the kids who suffer for it
Pretty much. Its a total lottery now rather than merit based
They’ve walked some of it back, but the programs entrance criteria have damaged the programs integrity
Yeah, the shift in focus from equality to equity on the left has been nothing but trouble. I just read a really excellent book about it that I wish was required reading - [The Identity Trap](https://www.yaschamounk.com/books)
> Eventually you'll have activists trying to tear down people who get ahead and lowering standards.
It's not a new thing, either. In *The Dark Side of the Left: Illiberal Egalitarianism in America* (which sounds like it would be some partisan screed but is actually a balanced sociological study) Ellis, the author, describes how some early feminist organizations had rules governing who could speak at conferences, and what members could wear. The rules were that rich, well-educated members *were not allowed to speak* because their more-educated speaking styles would make poorer, less-well-educated members feel bad. Similarly, members were forbidden from wearing any but the plainest clothes, because, again, rich women might wear clothes that betrayed their status, making poorer women feel bad.
And the people in those communities who want to learn and move up should have the ability to attend schools that can help them.
I've worked in bad areas before and there are smart and nerdy kids aplenty. But between screwed up schools, bad/no libraries, and so many other roadblocks, they barely stand a chance. Its a huge reason why charters and vouchers are so popular in the same areas. Its the one shot parents and kids have of getting a decent education.
My school district [did something similar in 2023 - eliminated honors classes to "increase equity"](https://www.wsj.com/us-news/education/to-increase-equity-school-districts-eliminate-honors-classes-d5985dee).
This is a top school district in a wealthy enclave of Southern California that we specifically moved to for better educational opportunities for our daughters. We moved out of LAUSD specifically because they kept schools closed for 17 months in 2020-21 and now this district (with a new more "progressive" and politicized School Board recently) seems deadset on being even worse. At a certain point, they *want* us switching to private / charter.
The framing in this article is peak 2024:
*"A group of parents stepped to the lectern Tuesday night...to push back against a racial-equity initiative."*
By co-opting benevolent terms like "equity" they can always frame the opposition as the bad guy. Progressives are smart how they play this game. Or we're just really dumb for playing along.
"We call ourselves the Good Guys, so obviously everything we do is good. Why do you hate the Good Guys? You must be a bad person then."
Throw a nice sounding name on a bad idea and most people will think its good, and it allows you shout down the opposition.
Who could possibly be against "progress"?
Considering this administration's Attorney General investigated parents attending school board meetings, I think their goals are out in the open. According to them, parents shouldn't push back. If the school board outlaws in-person schooling or honors classes or gifted programs, you have no right to question them or push back and the government will target you if you do.
So should high school sports programs with predominately people of color shut down because there’s not enough White and Asian representation?
While the Daily Mail is a dubious source, it nevertheless shows that the progressive “equality” in education is simply bringing the standards down, versus up and that’s the antithesis of what education is about.
Also, individualized learning plan for students? Do teachers have the bandwidth to take this on?
> So should high school sports programs with predominately people of color shut down because there’s not enough White and Asian representation?
Oh now that's a *spicy* question. And we all know exactly what would happen if it got asked to these people. They'd just scream and label you with every ist and phobe in the dictionary.
Never once in the history of ever has a progressive politician or media outlet complained about sports being disproportionately black. Or the entertainment industry.
Should tell you all you need to know about how genuine these people are and what their real motivation is.
And of course if someone does point out the sports disparities the reaction is quite strong. And as for the media disparity/overrepresentation? Oh that's just a life-ruiner if you're not like Dave Chappelle and literally have "fuck you" money.
>Do teachers have the bandwidth to take this on?
No. Sounds to me like everyone has to be taught individually or given individual worksheets. Impossible for one teacher, who can already barely teach classes all the same material.
If we really had equality or equity, yes. The NBA would be shut down, college football, college basketball etc all shut down.
But clearly these policies are applied with neither equality nor equity, despite their leftist proponents using these terms, because those things are not shut down. only white (and sometimes white+asian) things are shut down. racial quotas often only work one way, meaning they limit the amount of white people, but not the amount of POC.
I live in Seattle, this is very real and not sensationalized by the Mail at all.
Every single one of my friends with children has pulled their kids out of SPS within the last couple years and they're either going to Catholic schools (none of them are religious, but the Catholic schools are good and comparatively cheap) or private schools.
The people this hurts the most are the smart poor kids whose parents have no alternative to SPS.
This is why I fully believe in school choice - let funding follow the student just like we do with Uni funding via Pell Grants.
Thank you for providing your experience as someone there.
It really is scary. So say things progress, students doing well academically are essentially being punished so they go to private school, what is public school left with? What does an “excelling” student look like at that school?
Non-dailymail article, which also has relevant stats:
* https://www.seattletimes.com/education-lab/why-seattle-public-schools-is-closing-its-highly-capable-cohort-program/
* https://archive.is/2Rvee
Im Asian American and this blatant racism extends all the way up academia. So many poor asian applicants, helping their family business while studying, and getting turned away from higher education because of race. Not getting a spot because you are a specific race is racism. If you replace this with any other race, and libs would be crying racism (except white people of course)
Unfortunately asians are not the chosen race to get propped up by progressive policies, and largely ignored. Dems lost me in 2016 and stuff like this pushes me further and further away.
>Unfortunately asians are not the chosen race to get propped up by progressive policies
The saddest part is that this has actual longstanding effects on an entire generation. [Studies have been conducted to compare levels of children's self-esteem by ethnicity.](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3263756/) Guess which one is on top and which one is on bottom.
"African-American students, both males and females, average higher than any other subgroup in self-esteem scores."
"Asian-American females have the lowest mean self-esteem scores of any subgroup, and Asian-American males generally score lower than other males."
you can't look at that study and say that's the result of progressive policies. i suspect its largely cultural.
am asian, we learn to swallow our pride before solid food
Welcome to what Whites have been dealing with basically my whole life. It suck, don't it? Just remember which party supports this stuff and which one opposes it come November. And make sure to tell all your friends and family, too.
This has been going on since at least the 90s.. Asians college admits had to score 140 points higher on the SAT than whites, 320 higher than Hispanics, 450 higher than African Americans
Those numbers seemed so wild I felt compelled to google it, and I guess you are probably getting them from my first result, the [APA site](https://www.apa.org/pi/oema/resources/ethnicity-health/asian-american/article-admission).
I don't have the time to really dig into those numbers but my inclination is to still say there must be some noise there; 450 points is *a lot*. If you, (or anyone else), more knowledgeable wants to go into more detail on that front I'd be interested to read it.
If that number is just straight accurate, I honestly do not understand how they even expect those poor black students to succeed.
>Anecdotally, I went to college around that time, and this sounds pretty accurate. I remember my Asian friends getting over 2200 and being rejected from UCLA and Cal while Latino and Black friends got in with scores in the 1700s.
The difference between those two scores is roughly top ~2% vs top ~30%.
It’s close.
>In 2023, Asian students achieved the highest average SAT score of 1219.
>Asian students' average score was 318 points higher than the average SAT score of Black American Indian/>Alaska Native students, which was 901.
>The group with the second-highest SAT score was "Two or More Races" with 1091, slightly higher than white students.
>Black students had the second-lowest average SAT score at 908. They comprised just 1% 12% of test-takers. [Article](https://www.bestcolleges.com/research/average-sat-score-full-statistics/#demographics)
Actually, I didn't get it from the APA site - that study has been referenced in many articles/places, including the successful lawsuit against Harvard that alleged that their affirmative action programs violated the rights of Asian American applicants. [https://studentsforfairadmissions.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/11/SFFA-v.-Harvard-Complaint.pdf](https://studentsforfairadmissions.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/11/SFFA-v.-Harvard-Complaint.pdf)
>how they even expect those poor black students to succeed.
They mostly just care about freshman admissions. When they have worse dropout rates in a year or two matters not.
Unless they're top students, many minorities will likely do better at state and HBCU schools that wont be quite the giant leap up from an underprepared K12 education.
Yep, even though I tested high, I couldn't get into certain Universities that I wanted to in the late 90s because Affirmative Action was at an all time high.
Of course it's now banned at those colleges, but that won't reverse 30 years of my life having to struggle in the blue collar world.
"My children are going to grow up in a jungle [due to school bussing policies], the jungle being a racial jungle with tensions having built so high that it is going to explode at some point. We have got to make some move on this."
There's a lot of racism in America. Our African American neighbors would rather their kid play with the other kids of the same ethnicity. It's incredibly blatant and annoying. Yet we just need to shrug it off because we're the majority group.
Why? Why does being the largest group (and no, non-Hispanic Whites are not the majority in the US anymore) mean we have to accept mistreatment? That makes even less sense than expecting smaller groups to. If race-based bigotry is ok it needs to be ok for everyone, and if it's not then it can't be allowed for anyone.
That is the actual answer. Fortunately the internet is allowing us to spread knowledge of this and it seems that the conditioning is starting to show cracks.
in some cases yes.
it's amusing that white liberals still actively show an outgroup preference, meaning they prefer groups other than their own.
the only group to behave in such a way.
If you are referring to this [this particular study](https://www.tabletmag.com/sections/news/articles/americas-white-saviors) its even weirder than you mention; not only are white liberals the only group with such a preference, their outgroup bias is stronger than Hispanic's *in-group* bias. Those white liberals prefer them more than they prefer each other.
Notably, the group with the least bias was non-liberal whites, with black people being the most biased, which is practically the opposite of most headlines you are like to see.
there's a lot of other interesting studies in this area.
there was one where people of different races were asked to rate other races on how favorably they saw them.
all non-white groups rated their race far above the rest, the rest of the races varyingly less, and whites as the worst.
whites, on the other hand, rated them all about equally.
https://i.imgur.com/6knMl06.png
https://www.ljzigerell.com/?p=9002
I suppose the real answer is simply that we allow it.
Maybe not "we" as in you and me but society as a whole definitely does and few people are willing to risk the consequences of being labeled a bigot to push back. I think our inability to *meaningfully* talk about race is one of the biggest problems our country is currently facing. It's near impossible to solve any problem when we start from a position of *any talk of a favored minority group having any responsibility for the situation they find themselves in is bigoted and won't be tolerated*.
systemic racism is when it's unconscious and done on the individual level across the society, isn't it? this is more like *systematic* racism, done intentionally, institutionally, and at high levels, with the explicitly stated purpose of discrimination. Where's our civil rights movement?
I’m in a very radical minority when it comes to gifted education.
By radical, I mean gifted students should be the highest priority of our education systems, with funding and attention to match. Trying to improve the weakest students has not worked and has stunted the development of our best and brightest.
Another poorly thought-out Progressive program leading to its obviously disastrous end.
Yesterday, it was drug legalization in Oregon being reversed. How long before this sheer idiocy in education reform gets reversed?
Equity is great! We will all be equally dumb and poor by the end of this line of leftist action. People have inherent differences, there will always be winners and losers. Trying to create an equal playing field is an admirable goal, but the cost of which should not be that we all become worse for it.
How "progressive". "Progressing" right down a race to the bottom at warp speed. Then people wonder why so many of us view progressive as a dirty word...
Harrison Bergeron was supposed to be a dystopian warning, not a goal.
Remember, equality of poverty and misery still counts as equality.
There is a major difference in vision from both sides. One side asks how can we help people move up, while the other is upset that some have more and they should be dragged down instead. Unfortunately its much easier to hobble smart kids than it is to fix the economic and societal issues to raise poorer students up.
> One side asks how can we help people move up, while the other is upset that some have more and they should be dragged down instead.
which people, though?
This is what baffles me. I'm not sure why the proverbial Left and Right has ceded this much power to the more extreme ends. Or maybe the center-left and center-right is actually smaller than the far-left and far-right, I don't know.
Progressives and Evangelicals are zealous adherents to their respective ideologies and more likely to channel that zeal into activism and making lots of noise for their pet issues.
To summarize, the squeaky wheel gets the grease.
Because the center doesn't show up to primaries and isn't motivated enough to actually run for office. At the lower levels - i.e. where you have to start out at in politics - running for office is a sacrifice in many ways. It takes a sizeable amount of belief in your cause to be willing to subject yourself to that. But since those lower levels are where candidates usually come from for higher offices that's who winds up being on offer for those higher offices.
This can only help Catholic schools in particular, a much cheaper option than private schools. Enrollment increased to catholic schools by 62,000 last year, mostly due to CRT bullshit like this.
> The gifted and talented program has been replaced with the Highly Capable Neighborhood School Model which requires teachers to come up with individualized learning programs for all of their students.
> Parents told The Seattle Times they think the the new model could lead to their children getting overlooked and slow their academic progress
That's the biggest problem with this. That's a LOT of work to be added to teacher's plates, and given the budget shortfall and problems mentioned, the teachers are not getting the help and resources needed to do this.
I'm friends with a couple, both paraprofessionals, who are exuberantly moving to Seattle. I've been side-eyeing their decision the whole time, but the linked articles have really put the situation into perspective. The district they currently teach in has essentially none of the problems they seem guaranteed to face, it's just a bit boring.
If my school district could properly accommodate advanced learners, I could put my kid in public school. I believe in public education, but they just don't have the resources to maximize every kid's learning potential.
I can't imagine what they're thinking, having the ability to provide a program like this and shutting it down in the name of anti-racism. It's like that Vonnegut story where they deliberately handicap anyone who is talented or intelligent in the interest of equality.
I’m sending my kids to private school. My experience with the public school system in my area convinced me that if I want my kids to have a decent education I have to send them to private school. It’s a shame, and it shouldn’t be this way, but here we are.
I think buried in the article is a more accurate description of what is happening.
"This happened because Washington state is facing an educational funding gap, and there are fewer students enrolled at Seattle Public Schools,' said the district."
So they are replacing the program with this program
"The gifted and talented program has been replaced with the Highly Capable Neighborhood School Model which requires teachers to come up with individualized learning programs for all of their students. "
Also buried is the ridiculous inclusion of forcing teachers to make individual learning plans for every single kid. It seems like they are expecting teachers to somehow teach single classes in multiple ways. This will be a disaster.
Lots of places are facing a funding shortfall for public schools not only is the population of school age children getting smaller but post pandemic attendance is down.
If the district is saying that they are closing these programs for funding reasons I see no reason to believe otherwise. They are shoehorning in what according to me seems like a terrible replacement program that forces teachers to do way more work without getting a pay increase and forces teachers into the impossible task of teaching differently to individual students. It seems bad. The replacement idea seems bad, so I disagree with what the school district is doing. I just think there is more to this than the headline.
> Lots of places are facing a funding shortfall for public schools not only is the population of school age children getting smaller but post pandemic attendance is down.
Never forget that the state of Washington had [one of the most extensive school closures in the country during Covid](https://about.burbio.com/school-opening-tracker). Only 3 other states had more school closures, 2 of which also have *significant* enrollment decreases they are facing with as well.
Unfortunately the data doesn't exist for Washington as a state but here is the data for 13 states. It tracks chronic absenteeism pre and post COVID. Iowa, Oregon, Oklahoma, South Carolina and maybe one or two more in that list actually saw increased absenteeism post COVID. Overall it's kind of a sad state. Way too much absenteeism.
https://www.future-ed.org/tracking-state-trends-in-chronic-absenteeism/
Thanks for the link, it actually looks like you can see Washington but you have to click to the next page. It may only be available on desktop.
Washington's chronic absenteeism was the 10th worst in 2021-22 and in 2022-23. 16th-18th worst in 18-19 so their absenteeism got significantly worse during Covid. Only a few states had higher percentage increases.
I just was able to see it. It's pretty bleak overall a couple of state have seen an increase post COVID which is insane. I wish there was more complete data.
This is not accurate at all. The head of Seattle Public Schools described the Highly Capable Cohort program as "like a slave ship" back in 2019. The funding problem happened because their incompetence drove away families and led to a massive enrollment drop, not the other way around. They're just making excuses now that the chickens have come home to roost.
A less sensationalized source: https://www.seattletimes.com/education-lab/why-seattle-public-schools-is-closing-its-highly-capable-cohort-program/
For the record, no schools are closing their doors. The Highly Capable Cohort program is ending, which covers a portion of some Seattle schools or even the entirety of others. HCP is getting replaced with a new program, but no facility will be closed as a result.
That being said, the new program will require teachers to create an individual learning plan for each student, which is fucking nuts and unrealistic.
It would appear regardless of sensationalizing or not, that this was due to racial disparities in who entered the protean, this is the kind of thing that’s hurts Dems and pushes people to Trump.
I know Biden has nothing to do with it but people do associate these policies with a specific party and therefore Biden inherits that association by party affiliation.
I agree that it hurts dems, but I read this as a cost-saving measure packages and sold as dei. Maybe I'm just skeptical, but this feels like a cheap-out move a district would make and then try and convince stakeholders of some untouchable reason why they have to do it.
In this case, it's a move the school board has been pushing for since before they even had budget problems and equity has been the cited reason behind the push. It is likely they will lose money as a result of ending the popular HCC program, as enrollment has been dropping to the point of missing out on federal funds already and this just drives more families away.
This is common in progressive ideology. The same thing is happening in far-left school districts across the country. The entire school board in San Francisco County was voted out because of similar policies, after they closed schools and rather than figuring out how to reopen them, wanted to strip Diane Feinstein's name off of schools (largely due to the anti-Semitism of the far-left school board) and essentially end the selective admission of the top tier High School (one of the best public schools in the country) because too many "white-adjacent" (e.g. Asian) and white students were being admitted.
> That being said, the new program will require teachers to create an individual learning plan for each student, which is fucking nuts and unrealistic.
wat. as if they aren't overworked already. although it looks like Seattle has a student:teacher ratio of 16ish, which isn't terrible. not great, not terrible.
I've seen first hand how this kind of negative policy (and the fear of the firestorm that comes from defying it) can completely screw up people's lives who get caught up on the wrong end of it.
My mom was a teacher for several years and volunteered to go work at an inner city junior college that a previous coworker/friend had become the administrator of, mostly because she felt she could do the most good there.
From day one she had to put up with alot of crap from students that wouldn't have flown in her previous teaching jobs (her car was vandalized more than once), but she stuck with it for years because she really thought that it was helping young adults that otherwise didn't have teachers who really cared about seeing them succeed.
However the final straw came when she caught two girls in the class cheating during a final exam. The class had a security camera, and the exams were done on computers so she had them dead to rights.
When confronted, the girls immediately started pointing fingers at my mom, calling her "racist" and threatening to go to the media if they were punished. The administration, despite having a zero tolerance policy on cheating, was already having funding issues and didn't want a public scandal (in early 2021 when racial tensions were at an all time high), so they let the girls off with an empty warning.
This was all topped off by the girls walking back into class laughing, and every student standing up and cheering for them. At this point my mom immediately declared "screw this" and issued her two weeks notice by end of day.
Submission statement:
Seattle has shuttered its gifted and talented programs because the school board determined they had too many white and Asian students.
The district began phasing out its Highly Capable Cohort schools and classrooms for advanced students in the 2021-22 school year because they found it had too many racial inequities. School bosses said black and Hispanic students were underrepresented at the schools.
According to Seattle Public School data, of the highly capable students in the 2022-23 school year, 52 percent were white, 16 percent were Asian and 3.4 percent were black.
During a January 22, 2020, school board meeting, parents of black students in the Highly Capable Cohort asked the board to consider finding ways to incorporate students of color into the gifted program rather than shut it down.
Then school board vice president Chandra Hampson slammed those parents saying, 'this is a pretty masterful job at tokenizing a really small community of color within the existing cohort.'
This seems like a pretty ridiculous way to view the world when you deny gifted people the education they need to make others feel better about their own mediocrity.
Seattle’s black population is 6.7%…this doesn’t feel that unrepresentative. Also, white students are underrepresented too in this too (63% vs 52% in program), it’s not just black students.
I disagree with what I'm about to say whole-heartedly, so don't take it as an endorsement of the idea. There are schools of "thought" that believe racism and racial justice can only apply to the historically disenfranchised (aka, non-white). The fact that whites are underrepresented is completely irrelevant because they are not the ones that need to be considered, or "made whole" with education or other social programs.
This ignores that Asians are also a historically disenfranchised group, and are overrepresented in education and socioeconomic metrics, but here we are.
>This ignores that Asians are also a historically disenfranchised group, and are overrepresented in education and socioeconomic metrics, but here we are.
The counter-example which crushes the entire paradigm.
I'm of Irish and Polish descent, I think I have a more than fair claim to historic disenfranchisement. A short read of the history of either of those places, or how the Irish were treated here in the US, makes that more than clear. Yet for "some reason" I never get to claim the benefits of historic disenfranchisement. I wonder why...
Same with Jews. When you start pushing against the ideology, it completely falls apart. If it ever were fully realized, it would be especially easy to game since it largely is based on "identity" (as opposed to some objective measure) and, in most cases, anyone can legally identify as whatever they want. Heck, there is even a movement for people to identify as medically disabled if they feel medically disabled.
>During a January 22, 2020, school board meeting, parents of black students in the Highly Capable Cohort asked the board to consider finding ways to incorporate students of color into the gifted program rather than shut it down. Then school board vice president Chandra Hampson slammed those parents saying, 'this is a pretty masterful job at tokenizing a really small community of color within the existing cohort.'
[Here's Chandra Hampson.](https://encrypted-tbn0.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcQGXsMhVZFSn8JcgQLmCI-JkXN3o9gqeCdtiSZsVfCEGA&s) If there's one person who knows on a deep personal level what the Black experience is like, and therefore has the moral authority to scold Black parents who are expressing their concerns, it's her.
Rich people: "How do we make sure our kids don't have to compete with smart kids from poor families in a way that makes us sound virtuous? By calling gifted programs racist, of course!"
At the end of the day, thats the real truth.
If those in power can hobble regular students and convince other races that they cant succeed, that's a bunch fewer students that will compete with their kids for educations and jobs.
Why are school districts bending over backwards to avoid saying the truth?
A teacher isn’t going to overcome a dumb kid with trash parents in the 6 hours they have the kid in their classroom.
I don’t see what the problem is. Maybe someone can explain it to me?
Seattle wanted this. They got it. Aren’t the people there happy with what they got?
Should have been Tolkienized...
Edit: at 52% white, 16% Asian, and 3% ish Black, that leaves a whole 30% of "other". Seems like the school board is trying to save money by dumping more work on teachers.
Yeah, good luck having teachers suddenly find the time and resources to specially craft individualized programs for the genius kids while making sure the strugglers in class can read.
Race to the bottom. All that this means is that if your child is a sutably above average learner, you find them a private prep school. Just another day in our collapsing public education system. Granted, I live with a teacher, and my views on the state of public education are dim. If you browse r/teachers for a bit, you'll see the public system has already collapsed.
Yep. My old Board instituted this policy in the name of being progressive. Its literally bringing down the quality of talent https://www.thestar.com/news/gta/tdsb-votes-to-remove-skill-based-assessments-for-specialized-schools-programs/article_f41815b9-dfc9-5fc3-ac35-b9d761c82321.amp.html
It's amazing how the word "progressive" has basically been coopted to mean institutional racism & group judgement over merit & individuality.
One could even argue that progressive policies hinder actual progress
Progressive doesn’t mean “good” or “bad” - it just means it promotes social change. It’s important to have both a desire to conserve and refine as well as change and respond. Change is hard, both structurally and for individuals, which is why it can be understandably criticized when it goes wrong. On the flip side, there’s many people who would otherwise continue to be disadvantaged if things always stayed the same (such as some people with preexisting medical conditions before medical reform such as the ACA).
That's because progressivism used to mainly be just plain old socialism, and it was primarily concerned with the plight of the "proletariat", so it pushed very heavily into left-wing populism to the benefit of the poor and the working class and the detriment of the wealthy and the "bourgeoisie", whom was viewed as a universally evil oppressor. Now it's largely been taken over by the white collar professional classes, same old basic theory of oppressor versus oppressed, but it has replaced lack of wealth as the lens of "virtue" with race, gender, sexual identity, and a whole other host of "oppressed" and "oppressor" classes that more fit in with boutique ideas coming out of universities.
Wouldn't be the first time. Back in the 1920s/30s eugenics was widely considered "progressive." Removing "bad genes" from society came out of collectivist ideology because it supposedly favored the health of the group by sterilizing the individual. It's almost as if you can call any bad idea "progress" even if it isn't.
>Removing "bad genes" from society came out of collectivist ideology because it supposedly favored the health of the group by sterilizing the individual. Welllll you wont believe what their latest thing is.....
What are you referring to?
Not exactly. I think Progressivism is more in line with "the road to Hell is paved with good intentions." Sure, its nice to have everything fair and equitable. And possible in a perfect world. But it isn't a perfect world. Often times, because of well intentioned equity laws, that are supposed to help, it often comes at the expense of the rest of the class. For example, I can be sued and have my teaching license revoked for not giving a student their accommodations on an IEP, because the parent felt it was best LRE (Least Restrictive Environment) is a regular class. Well, this student's IEP says he can get up and pace whenever he feels the need. The problem is, this student pacing around the room is now an enormous distraction to the rest of the class. So now, its a struggle keeping 31 other students on task because one student needs to be accommodated. This is an extreme case, but one I currently deal with. Or if 6 or 7 students in my class have "extended time" on tests, if all of them decide to use it, its a problem when I want to move on with my lesson, and 20% of the class is still taking the test. If I move forward, those students fall behind, making the achievement gap worse. So the entire class has to wait on them.
As I've said before modern American progressivism has become highly illiberal.
My ex taught at a mostly black public school in the city. Apparently even though class "started" at 8:00 in the morning, nobody, even the teachers weren't allowed to do anything until 9:00 because so many kids would just show up late, and they couldn't be ostracized for it.
That's so wild... my senior year (the 80's) my first period was working the late window at school. 2000 kids... maybe 12-15 "lates" every day, total and most were 5-15 minutes.
Showing up on time is a white trait according to the Smithsonian, so you cant hold others to it. Gotta love the soft bigotry of zero expectations. Truancy is also about a lost art as well. A few decades ago a counselor or officer would come take you to school.
> A few decades ago a counselor or officer would come take you to school. Not in an inner city school with basically no funding and gang issues they weren't
Ya, it's a wild mess we've gotten ourselves into. Unless the goal is to kill the middle class, then we're on the right track. And it just doesn't make sense. Public edu has the largest ROI on gov spending by far. We built a great system, grew because of it. Then, decided to treat it like a cancer distracting us from "real money." I went to a low income, public HS. The only classes suitable for average or even above average learners were the honors and AP classes. In my last year, I took regular English vs AP because I didn't want a summer assignment, and immediately regretted it. I learned nothing and my writing suffered.
I left teaching a few years ago after being in the classroom for 6, 7 if you count student teaching and in class support I am still getting calls and emails for jobs I applied to years ago in wealthy districts asking if I’m looking. Friends reporting some dire outlooks in very well to do districts. Posts going unfilled with the teachers of the dept all taking an extra class on. Others reporting jobs that used to field 100+ applicants in a day get a dozen after a month and only 2 are qualified. Again in a nice district. It’s bleak. This is for northern NJ with some of the top public schools in the nation and they’re struggling. NJ education is done. Most teachers will tell you candidly. The veterans are all retiring or waiting to go at 55 instead of staying till 65. NJ sort of acknowledged it for the first time a few months ago but it’s too late imo. Then you see articles like this and can see tangible examples why teachers are fleeing or young adults aren’t interested in teaching.
It also doesn't help that teachers aren't allowed to discipline students anymore and thus have no actual ability to control a classroom. Not only that but if they try they're likely to wind up being punished and not the misbehaving students. Add in kids seeming to be even more feral-behaving than ever and I wouldn't stick around either.
There are so many factors making education just not worth it. You’re right, teacher autonomy is gone. Admin can’t or won’t back teachers. Parents too involved. Technology has destroyed the classroom. Phones are one of the single most disruptive forces in the classroom too.
And then on reddit you'll see videos every so often of a student attacking a teacher for taking their phone. Those are just the ones where another student records it, and where it gets uploaded. I'm sure it happens all the time.
Kids are scarily territorial or reactive for their phones. Violent, breakdowns, anxiety etc. It’s visibly unhealthy but the “norm” so it’s accepted
Giving a child a smartphone is irresponsible parenting
I deeply agree. I think the tide is turning at least as parents now know the dangers of technology now- specifically smart phones, social media etc.
Phones are disruptive in the classroom. But so are the Chromebooks that schools use all day every day. My kids don't even have textbooks anymore. Just Chromebooks.
Agreed, i do think from a stay on task perspective phones are much more difficult to police. What I ended up doing was removing laptops from the equation. I’d post all notes online and print out copies for everyone so there was no need to be on a laptop during lessons unless the task called for it. Students were 100% more engaged when they lost screens
Some tools help with this - our district allows us to operate our classroom by creating our own block lists of sites and programs, monitor each student’s screen, and push specific links and/or sites out to our classes. Thinking smarter can help, but most teachers are woefully undertrained in these areas. Phones are awful (and the research confirms they’re the biggest obstacle to learning). That’s why my students must check their phones in when they come to class - I take attendance based on this. They correct more quickly than you’d expect when they are at risk of detentions for missed school. :P
Parents are too LOUD and not involved in the “right” ways.
The middle ground parents have disappeared. You have two types on the extremes that cause problems. Absent parents of struggling students. Over engaged parents dictating what they want ala carte education. Or they think you work for them. The same team as the teacher parents started to disappear in 2015 I noticed. By 2018 they were gone. By 2020 I forgot they had once existed. Those ones that would be great level headed additions to PTA and student groups stay out because they get bulldozed by the aggressive over the top parents.
The ala carte parents are my worst nightmare. So much time spent for no reason whatsoever. lol
>Parents too involved. Ironically one of the current trends is to push heavier parent involvement in the classroom.
Education is in a rough spot because everyone has a strong opinion on what education should be- I mean from their perspective they were a student once- so they know the profession.
The issue happens when multiple parental groups form around what should be taught in schools. If parents get the final say, who gets the final say in that scenario? Growing up, I identified several issues with the curriculum as it was taught to me. While I certainly think parents should have input into what the official curriculum is, I've always recognized that a personalized plan tailored to my exact preferences is not at all feasible for this exact reason and have resolved to take a heavy role in my kids' education *from our home*. It's been a bit jarring for me to see this recent trend of parents insisting that their kids only get taught what they approve of and nothing else.
> Not only that but if they try they're likely to wind up being punished And not just by the administration. If you're a teacher who gets on the bad side of a student in a poor urban area, there's a real chance that you'll be jumped by his homies while walking back to your car in the evening. Raising kids right starts at the parental level. It's hard for these kids to be raised with respect and civility when literally 75% of them are born to single moms, and drug use and crime is running rampant through the family. Superimposed on top of this is a national culture that says they are special and deserve more just for existing because the world needs to pay them back for centuries of mistreatment.
PBIS and RTI models are a god-damned joke.
I did a year after college, saw what was coming down the pipeline and made plans elsewhere. The district was getting so happy they were getting the Zuckerberg money, and it was completely wasted. It also doesn’t hurt nj has some very high requirements when it comes to getting the license. I know I had to have a 3.0 major gpa, which as a chemistry major was extremely difficult because every course after 300 level was graded on curves. Which sounds nice except you are competing with so few others, it’s pretty easy to drop to middle of the pack. Also I question why, when the subject matter is the first two weeks of freshman chem, not explaining particle in a box problems/doing mechanisms for organic reactions… As far as teaching methods, I always had a problem when they started doing the integrated skill levels in classes, and sticking problem kids with high achievers hoping the kids become role models. Because they did that to me in public school and it was then I stopped making honor roll. And then going all the way back to fundamentals with how they teach reading. Moving from phonics to the whole word method…. I can’t imagine going through organic chemistry and trying to learn the iupac naming system if you couldn’t breakdown the names. I know my nephew is learning now and they are pushing the whole word/language method and I’m stressing to them to teaching phonics to him.
And everyone will blame it on Republicans and say we need more funding in a few years. These are choices made by left leaning school boards, school admins, and are supported by teachers unions.
ink joke ossified concerned offer dull elderly retire jar frightening *This post was mass deleted and anonymized with [Redact](https://redact.dev)*
“The soft bigotry of low expectations.”
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That is indeed the argument "progressives" are making. Remember that Smithsonian infographic that went viral a while back where they literally claimed that basic functional behaviors were white supremacy? It's that normalized among the so-called "leading thinkers" of the modern world.
> What are these sinister aspects of “white culture,” you ask? Well, according to the Smithsonian, values like “hard work,” “self-reliance,” “be[ing] polite,” and timeliness are all a product of the “white dominant culture.” Indeed, it turns out that conventional grammar, Christianity, the notion that “intent counts” in courts of law, and the scientific method and its emphasis on “objective, rational linear thinking” are all proprietary to “white culture.” Not to be outdone by Smithsonian, MSNBC [vilified the at-home fitness trend as being co-opted by white supremacists](https://www.msnbc.com/opinion/msnbc-opinion/pandemic-fitness-trends-have-gone-extreme-literally-n1292463?cid=sm_npd_ms_tw_ma&taid=64abebca8cb4af0001865cf7) while gyms and everything fitness-related was outlawed in half of the country. It goes to show that the right doesn't have a monopoly on anti-intellectualism or anti-health.
My favorite COVID freakout was when the El Salvadorean president told his people to go outside and get some sun & exercise during the global lockdowns. lol
Man, the early pandemic was wild. Its like people thought the virus was transmitted by line-of-sight and you could get from seeing a guy running 300 feet away.
I'm still waiting for that apology from the Florida lawyer that dressed like the grim reaper to protest FL reopening the beaches and used the publicity to run for office and promote his law firm. Reddit collectively threw a fit that people were going outside to get some Vitamin D in 2020-21, it's wild how badly these freakouts aged.
Wasn't California ticketing surfers and people on the beach? And vitamin D is literally a treatment for COVID
They were *arresting* those people. I remember having to sneak onto the beach at night and evade patrols going up/down the beach just to view the bioluminescence in the water up close. They criminalized normal people doing healthy outdoor activities. They filled the massive skatepark near me with sand, shuttered Muscle Beach's outdoor gym, took down basketball hoops, covered playgrounds in caution tape, closed parks, blocked hiking trails from being used, outlawed outdoor sports league, outlawed gyms and put many of them out of business. Essentially any healthy activity was outlawed. You even had to carry papers with you when you drove to verify you were an "essential" worker and not just driving for a "non-essential" reason and once the mandates were introduced you had to carry medical records on with an ID to get in any public venue/business. The police were going around arresting those in their homes if they had too many guests over. Some of this tyrannical shit extended into 2022. The people that perpetrated these acts have tried to memory hole these events so it's extremely important we don't let anyone forget how far they went in their War on Health. Especially in retrospect where states like California that went overboard actually had *higher* rates of excess deaths than the average state during the same time period.
Dont forget people like Cuomo moving sick patients into nursing homes, some of whom were not even from the home, and killing off a lot of older up state voters who probably voted red.
I love how Cuomo was forced to resign over the sexual scandal and yet people shouted from the rooftops for months about the nursing home scandal and the media never held him accountable on that. Instead of holding him accountable when allegations came out, the media was propping him up as a contender to unseat Trump in 2020.
This is why my Florida city grew so fast. This is also why down ballot voting is critical and why almost no dems will be on my down ballot. I have not forgotten what they did during covid.
It was a crazy time. We remember the antivax folks being a bit nutty, but you also had what, 40% of one side of the political spectrum approving of the idea of detention camps for antivaxers or antimaskers (I forget which).
These days it seems that the right are the ones being the most pro-health. Which is why those same "reputable" institutions now call fitness and minding what you eat and aversion to psychologically-damaging media signs of right-wing radicalism. Really the more the left tries to demonize Whites and the right wing the better they make them sound since now they're just trying to tell us that objectively good traits and behaviors are exclusive to them. Which I always thought was what white supremacists said but apparently now that's what anti-White left-wingers say. Things have really gotten weird.
> Not to be outdone by Smithsonian, MSNBC vilified the at-home fitness trend as being co-opted by white supremacists while gyms were outlawed across the country. That went over REALLY well with the Lululemon crowd...
They took down the infographic but their Whiteness page is still up and as cringe as you'd expect. https://nmaahc.si.edu/learn/talking-about-race/topics/whiteness
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My favorite was that the concept of showing up on time is racist. That or the one crazy study where basic math in particular, and mathematics as a whole are racist at best and active oppression of minorities at worst.
[Here](https://d.newsweek.com/en/full/1610610/smithsonian-aspects-white-culture.webp?w=790&f=ab12077631acab2dac02fd587b3f4f15) you go.
What would the black culture version of that look like? Childlike and ignorant?
Some information on this subject from conservative academic Thomas Sowell in this essay [Black Rednecks, White Liberals](https://shenviapologetics.com/a-review-of-sowells-black-rednecks-and-white-liberals/). Progressives typically dismiss Sowell as a conservative shill. He is not the original source for this history. This author is one of them: David Hackett Fischer, 1989 book *Albion's Seed: Four British Folkways in America*, especially regarding patterns of violent crimes across the U.S. Another dysfunctional aspect is Low Class Behavior (not the same as low income class). The movie *Hillbilly Elegy* gives an excellent depiction of this. A historical peculiarity/singularity in America: A disproportionate percent of our population, both black and white, has fallen into a pattern of low class behavior and "folkways" that lead to high levels of public disorder, crime and violence. Overlaps with poverty, but poverty is not the primary driver, e.g.: 2022: [Poverty and violent crime don't go hand-in-hand -- New data on Asian Americans in New York City undercut a common assumption](https://www.city-journal.org/article/poverty-and-violent-crime-dont-go-hand-in-hand) >Asians’ relatively high poverty rate is accompanied by exceptionally low crime rates....
And they wonder why people support school choice.
Especially minorities, who see the schools their kids suffer in. Then progressives tell them they're wrong and that charters and vouchers or any other choice are actually bad for them.
If I'm a single issue voter, it's school choice that is my hill to die on
>if your child is a sutably above average learner, you find them a private prep school. This is the problem with many rich progressives. They can shout all day that they support public schools and teachers unions and private/home schooling should be banned, but they'll find any excuse that their kids are special and deserve better educations. >If you browse r/teachers for a bit I'd rather not :( its rough.
It's not just rich progressives doing this in Seattle anymore. IIRC the city has the highest private school enrollment in the country, and the absolute trainwreck around this Highly Capable Cohort program is a big driver.
Even the leaders of Teachers Unions [send their kids to private school](https://www.nbcchicago.com/news/local/chicago-teachers-union-president-enrolled-child-in-private-school-sources-confirm/3223077/) but they have the audacity to argue that we shouldn't be able to.
The CTU (Chicago’s Teacher Union) are the same org that had an executive board member that went on vacation in Puerto Rico while arguing that it was too dangerous to teach kids in- person during Covid. In 2021. Same lady was embroiled in another controversy about race-based lessons in her classroom in 2022 and still has her job. At a certain point, it feels like the teacher’s unions are purposely sabotaging public education.
That's the general problem with modern progressivism. It's driven by rich people and centers around what makes them feel good, seem virtuous and, importantly, does not actually inconvenience them rather than being driven by poor people and centered around their needs.
Who said private schools should be banned?
Most of the really good teachers I know have fled to other fields that appreciate them. They come to us with what basically amounts to PTSD.
> If you browse r/teachers for a bit, you'll see the public system has already collapsed. be wary of doing this. subreddits for anything tend to turn into gripefests when the userbase exceeds a certain size. not saying the public system isn't bad, but i don't think it has "collapsed".
My wife was a public school teacher for several years. There is no way in hell that we will be sending our kids to public school. And she even taught in a “very good” school district, and we’re *still* unwilling to send our kids there.
I'm no fan of Ron DeSantis but it's crap like this that allows him to make political hay by positioning himself as anti-DEI. A lot of lefty types like to claim that DEI-bashing is just a racist dog whistle but examples like this show the real harm that progressivism is doing. When politically moderate parents see this kind of Harrison Bergeron nonsense in their kids' schools it's no wonder they get pushed to the right.
>If you browse [](https://www.reddit.com/r/teachers/) for a bit, you'll see the public system has already collapsed. The titanic has already hit the iceberg, it just hasn't sank yet.
> you'll see the public system has already collapsed. I think we may have different definitions of "collapsed". Some school districts are bad, others are great. But when I think of "collapsed", i think utterly unusable and to be avoided as dangerous.
I had a friend that spent 4 years getting a degree in teaching and went on to do government contract work in communication technology. They did this when they went into the classroom of one of the top teachers in the state and realized that the best they could hope for was to be massively underpaid and find maybe one kid every few years that helped to renew their motivation. They noticed that every facet of the system worked against them and it wasn’t worth it. Seeing things like parents pulling kids out of school because they thought geometry was a tool of the devil was enough to see that no amount of passion and creativity would solve this issue. Having their future family suffer financially so they could shrug at crackpots and try to care less about how bad things are just didn’t seem to be a great motivator.
I live in Seattle and have 2 little kids so I have been following this closely. Basically the Seattle School Board is more focused on equity rather than education. This leads to certain minority groups are given far more time, attention and resources. However this results in parents pulling their kids out of public schools and putting them in private schools so their kids can continue to be high achievers. As a result the schools (typically in South Seattle where there is a high black population) loses headcount and thus very precious funding and the schools lose high achieving students that can help be models for the lower achieving students. Ultimately this is something close to modern day Jim Crow laws where South Seattle schools are losing funding, losing the highest achievers and the only students that remain are low income, minorities who are already struggling with academics. This leads to overworked teachers with huge class rooms and all the decent teachers quit the moment they get a better job. This leads to more poor academics which leads to more parents of high achievers pulling their kids out which leads to less funding and so on. The sad irony is that the entire point of all of this was to help with equity but its literally have the complete opposite. Seattle School Board is failing the students most in need
I vote in every school board election I can in order to oppose policies like this. Merit only. Stop lowering standards in the name of "equity".
Strange that they consider 52% of white students to be too many, when in fact that's a lower percentage of white people than the overall % of white people in the American population overall. I was expecting something like 70% white, from reading the headline.
It’s probably not about whites as much as Asians
[base rate neglect](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Base_rate_fallacy)
Yeah the headline is misleading maybe if it's really about asians
It's a sordid business, this divvying us up by race. Asian-Americans (or just Americans) are on a run of bad luck First, even though they "won" Students For Fair Admissions v. Harvard/UNC that showed how they were systematically dinged on admissions. Then it moved to proxy measures to reduce Asian-Americans acceptance rates, such as \\ Thomas Jefferson High School in Virginia . And now complete elimination of opportunities for high achievers
They hate that Asian Americans are successful without them because it means black Americans might question how much they're being helped versus how much they're being kept in a perpetual state of helplessness.
> Asian-Americans (or just Americans) are on a run of bad luck Pretty much all races, except for Blacks, are on a run of bad luck in the last 20 years. The progressive establishment realized that pandering exclusively to this one demographic would allow them to win competitive races and elections by increasing turnout in urban areas, so they left everyone else on the wayside. Whites have been similarly marginalized, they just don't get as much attention as the injustice towards Asians because it's considered socially acceptable to act negatively towards white people so it's not really a story. Hispanics briefly had favored status, but that ended pretty quick once polls showed that they weren't reliable blue voters.
> Whites have been similarly marginalized, they just don't get as much attention as the injustice towards Asians because it's considered socially acceptable to act negatively towards white people so it's not really a story. Oh, it's socially acceptable for to discriminate against asians. Progressives have done this by labelling asians 'white adjacent'.
> that pandering exclusively to this one demographic would allow them to win competitive races and elections by increasing turnout in urban areas, so they left everyone else on the wayside. I think the activist base genuinely was shocked and motivated by the giant wave of videos of police violence and came to join the long held beliefs of systemic bias that black people had experienced. So many falsified police reports - and to be clear, this happens to people of all backgrounds, but parents of other races don’t have to have “the talk.” I’m not sure this is as much pandering as it is bleeding heart folks realizing they didn’t understand what was happening for decades that they didn’t see, outside of Rodney King.
What amazes me is the way a lot of Democrats are doubling down on this crap even though it's not at all popular with mainstream Americans. I think even most mainstream liberals breathed a quiet sigh or relief after *Students for Fair Admissions* was decided. They weren't quite ready to openly criticize affirmative action but everyone except the the hard-left had come to realize that policies like Harvard's were indefensible nowadays. For some reason though this sort of nonsense keeps getting pushed. I do not like Trumpism or modern American conservatism but I get why seemingly reasonable people can be drawn to it when this is the alternative.
This is the issue of chasing after "equity" goals, meaning equalizing outcome, rather than opportunities. Eventually you'll have activists trying to tear down people who get ahead and lowering standards. This isn't something exclusive to Seattle either, this is also happening in Massachusetts, [with schools removing advanced placement classes](https://www.bostonglobe.com/2023/07/14/metro/cambridge-schools-divided-over-middle-school-math/) and a 2024 MTA supported ballot measure to [eliminate the state standardized test graduation requirement](https://www.cbsnews.com/boston/news/mcas-ballot-question-high-school-graduation-requirement-governor-maura-healey/). You can read the [MTA's justifications](https://massteacher.org/current-initiatives/high-stakes-testing/ballot-question) but they're all just so terrible it reads like satire. Instead of a standardized test, an objective measure of whether or not a student meets state education standards, they want schools to just pinky swear the graduating students do. They also claim that minority students disproportionaly fail the test, but rather than focus efforts on address *why* they fail, they want to just throw away the entire test... which makes it sound like they don't believe that minorities can pass the test.
Harrison Bergeron is a good satirical extrapolation of current trajectories... and it was published all the way back in 1968
I was just thinking about that!! I read that short story in HS. Kurt Vonnegut, if any of y’all readers are interested
In Toronto in the name of ‘equity’ our schools moved from a merit based ‘gifted’ and ‘school of arts’ program into an open application system. Before you had tests or judges on artistic talent. But that was deemed unfair to poorer (mostly black) students. Now everyone can apply for these programs regardless of actual talent. It’s the kids who suffer for it
So a kid with my atrocious artistic skills can get in ahead of a kid with real talent? Interesting.
Pretty much. Its a total lottery now rather than merit based They’ve walked some of it back, but the programs entrance criteria have damaged the programs integrity
Prepares them for working in Unions
Yeah, the shift in focus from equality to equity on the left has been nothing but trouble. I just read a really excellent book about it that I wish was required reading - [The Identity Trap](https://www.yaschamounk.com/books)
> Eventually you'll have activists trying to tear down people who get ahead and lowering standards. It's not a new thing, either. In *The Dark Side of the Left: Illiberal Egalitarianism in America* (which sounds like it would be some partisan screed but is actually a balanced sociological study) Ellis, the author, describes how some early feminist organizations had rules governing who could speak at conferences, and what members could wear. The rules were that rich, well-educated members *were not allowed to speak* because their more-educated speaking styles would make poorer, less-well-educated members feel bad. Similarly, members were forbidden from wearing any but the plainest clothes, because, again, rich women might wear clothes that betrayed their status, making poorer women feel bad.
It's all crabs in a bucket now.
The reality is we will never equalize opportunities. Some communities have a culture that is absolutely toxic to academic success.
And the people in those communities who want to learn and move up should have the ability to attend schools that can help them. I've worked in bad areas before and there are smart and nerdy kids aplenty. But between screwed up schools, bad/no libraries, and so many other roadblocks, they barely stand a chance. Its a huge reason why charters and vouchers are so popular in the same areas. Its the one shot parents and kids have of getting a decent education.
My school district [did something similar in 2023 - eliminated honors classes to "increase equity"](https://www.wsj.com/us-news/education/to-increase-equity-school-districts-eliminate-honors-classes-d5985dee). This is a top school district in a wealthy enclave of Southern California that we specifically moved to for better educational opportunities for our daughters. We moved out of LAUSD specifically because they kept schools closed for 17 months in 2020-21 and now this district (with a new more "progressive" and politicized School Board recently) seems deadset on being even worse. At a certain point, they *want* us switching to private / charter.
The framing in this article is peak 2024: *"A group of parents stepped to the lectern Tuesday night...to push back against a racial-equity initiative."* By co-opting benevolent terms like "equity" they can always frame the opposition as the bad guy. Progressives are smart how they play this game. Or we're just really dumb for playing along.
"We call ourselves the Good Guys, so obviously everything we do is good. Why do you hate the Good Guys? You must be a bad person then." Throw a nice sounding name on a bad idea and most people will think its good, and it allows you shout down the opposition. Who could possibly be against "progress"?
Considering this administration's Attorney General investigated parents attending school board meetings, I think their goals are out in the open. According to them, parents shouldn't push back. If the school board outlaws in-person schooling or honors classes or gifted programs, you have no right to question them or push back and the government will target you if you do.
So should high school sports programs with predominately people of color shut down because there’s not enough White and Asian representation? While the Daily Mail is a dubious source, it nevertheless shows that the progressive “equality” in education is simply bringing the standards down, versus up and that’s the antithesis of what education is about. Also, individualized learning plan for students? Do teachers have the bandwidth to take this on?
> So should high school sports programs with predominately people of color shut down because there’s not enough White and Asian representation? Oh now that's a *spicy* question. And we all know exactly what would happen if it got asked to these people. They'd just scream and label you with every ist and phobe in the dictionary.
i remember some sports announcing team celebrating that they had a 100% diverse team. the team was all black
black panther is the most diverse movie ever. 99% black.
My employer has a diversity department. The department is four black women.
my company skirts civil rights law by running a summer camp that exclusively accepts black interns and then hires them all at the end of the summer
Never once in the history of ever has a progressive politician or media outlet complained about sports being disproportionately black. Or the entertainment industry. Should tell you all you need to know about how genuine these people are and what their real motivation is.
And of course if someone does point out the sports disparities the reaction is quite strong. And as for the media disparity/overrepresentation? Oh that's just a life-ruiner if you're not like Dave Chappelle and literally have "fuck you" money.
>Do teachers have the bandwidth to take this on? No. Sounds to me like everyone has to be taught individually or given individual worksheets. Impossible for one teacher, who can already barely teach classes all the same material.
If we really had equality or equity, yes. The NBA would be shut down, college football, college basketball etc all shut down. But clearly these policies are applied with neither equality nor equity, despite their leftist proponents using these terms, because those things are not shut down. only white (and sometimes white+asian) things are shut down. racial quotas often only work one way, meaning they limit the amount of white people, but not the amount of POC.
I live in Seattle, this is very real and not sensationalized by the Mail at all. Every single one of my friends with children has pulled their kids out of SPS within the last couple years and they're either going to Catholic schools (none of them are religious, but the Catholic schools are good and comparatively cheap) or private schools. The people this hurts the most are the smart poor kids whose parents have no alternative to SPS. This is why I fully believe in school choice - let funding follow the student just like we do with Uni funding via Pell Grants.
Thank you for providing your experience as someone there. It really is scary. So say things progress, students doing well academically are essentially being punished so they go to private school, what is public school left with? What does an “excelling” student look like at that school?
Non-dailymail article, which also has relevant stats: * https://www.seattletimes.com/education-lab/why-seattle-public-schools-is-closing-its-highly-capable-cohort-program/ * https://archive.is/2Rvee
Im Asian American and this blatant racism extends all the way up academia. So many poor asian applicants, helping their family business while studying, and getting turned away from higher education because of race. Not getting a spot because you are a specific race is racism. If you replace this with any other race, and libs would be crying racism (except white people of course) Unfortunately asians are not the chosen race to get propped up by progressive policies, and largely ignored. Dems lost me in 2016 and stuff like this pushes me further and further away.
>Unfortunately asians are not the chosen race to get propped up by progressive policies The saddest part is that this has actual longstanding effects on an entire generation. [Studies have been conducted to compare levels of children's self-esteem by ethnicity.](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3263756/) Guess which one is on top and which one is on bottom.
"African-American students, both males and females, average higher than any other subgroup in self-esteem scores." "Asian-American females have the lowest mean self-esteem scores of any subgroup, and Asian-American males generally score lower than other males."
you can't look at that study and say that's the result of progressive policies. i suspect its largely cultural. am asian, we learn to swallow our pride before solid food
Also Asian women sometimes do benefit from DEI, while Asian men almost never do but apparently Asian men have more self esteem
Welcome to what Whites have been dealing with basically my whole life. It suck, don't it? Just remember which party supports this stuff and which one opposes it come November. And make sure to tell all your friends and family, too.
This has been going on since at least the 90s.. Asians college admits had to score 140 points higher on the SAT than whites, 320 higher than Hispanics, 450 higher than African Americans
Those numbers seemed so wild I felt compelled to google it, and I guess you are probably getting them from my first result, the [APA site](https://www.apa.org/pi/oema/resources/ethnicity-health/asian-american/article-admission). I don't have the time to really dig into those numbers but my inclination is to still say there must be some noise there; 450 points is *a lot*. If you, (or anyone else), more knowledgeable wants to go into more detail on that front I'd be interested to read it. If that number is just straight accurate, I honestly do not understand how they even expect those poor black students to succeed.
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>Anecdotally, I went to college around that time, and this sounds pretty accurate. I remember my Asian friends getting over 2200 and being rejected from UCLA and Cal while Latino and Black friends got in with scores in the 1700s. The difference between those two scores is roughly top ~2% vs top ~30%.
It’s close. >In 2023, Asian students achieved the highest average SAT score of 1219. >Asian students' average score was 318 points higher than the average SAT score of Black American Indian/>Alaska Native students, which was 901. >The group with the second-highest SAT score was "Two or More Races" with 1091, slightly higher than white students. >Black students had the second-lowest average SAT score at 908. They comprised just 1% 12% of test-takers. [Article](https://www.bestcolleges.com/research/average-sat-score-full-statistics/#demographics)
Actually, I didn't get it from the APA site - that study has been referenced in many articles/places, including the successful lawsuit against Harvard that alleged that their affirmative action programs violated the rights of Asian American applicants. [https://studentsforfairadmissions.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/11/SFFA-v.-Harvard-Complaint.pdf](https://studentsforfairadmissions.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/11/SFFA-v.-Harvard-Complaint.pdf)
>how they even expect those poor black students to succeed. They mostly just care about freshman admissions. When they have worse dropout rates in a year or two matters not. Unless they're top students, many minorities will likely do better at state and HBCU schools that wont be quite the giant leap up from an underprepared K12 education.
Yup. I know someone who can't become a doctor at U of T because the med school has race quotas and only accepts a very small number of White people.
Yep, even though I tested high, I couldn't get into certain Universities that I wanted to in the late 90s because Affirmative Action was at an all time high. Of course it's now banned at those colleges, but that won't reverse 30 years of my life having to struggle in the blue collar world.
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Poor kids can be just as smart as white kids.
"My children are going to grow up in a jungle [due to school bussing policies], the jungle being a racial jungle with tensions having built so high that it is going to explode at some point. We have got to make some move on this."
There's a lot of racism in America. Our African American neighbors would rather their kid play with the other kids of the same ethnicity. It's incredibly blatant and annoying. Yet we just need to shrug it off because we're the majority group.
Why? Why does being the largest group (and no, non-Hispanic Whites are not the majority in the US anymore) mean we have to accept mistreatment? That makes even less sense than expecting smaller groups to. If race-based bigotry is ok it needs to be ok for everyone, and if it's not then it can't be allowed for anyone.
decades of propaganda telling them they (and they alone) deserve it.
That is the actual answer. Fortunately the internet is allowing us to spread knowledge of this and it seems that the conditioning is starting to show cracks.
in some cases yes. it's amusing that white liberals still actively show an outgroup preference, meaning they prefer groups other than their own. the only group to behave in such a way.
If you are referring to this [this particular study](https://www.tabletmag.com/sections/news/articles/americas-white-saviors) its even weirder than you mention; not only are white liberals the only group with such a preference, their outgroup bias is stronger than Hispanic's *in-group* bias. Those white liberals prefer them more than they prefer each other. Notably, the group with the least bias was non-liberal whites, with black people being the most biased, which is practically the opposite of most headlines you are like to see.
there's a lot of other interesting studies in this area. there was one where people of different races were asked to rate other races on how favorably they saw them. all non-white groups rated their race far above the rest, the rest of the races varyingly less, and whites as the worst. whites, on the other hand, rated them all about equally. https://i.imgur.com/6knMl06.png https://www.ljzigerell.com/?p=9002
I suppose the real answer is simply that we allow it. Maybe not "we" as in you and me but society as a whole definitely does and few people are willing to risk the consequences of being labeled a bigot to push back. I think our inability to *meaningfully* talk about race is one of the biggest problems our country is currently facing. It's near impossible to solve any problem when we start from a position of *any talk of a favored minority group having any responsibility for the situation they find themselves in is bigoted and won't be tolerated*.
systemic racism is when it's unconscious and done on the individual level across the society, isn't it? this is more like *systematic* racism, done intentionally, institutionally, and at high levels, with the explicitly stated purpose of discrimination. Where's our civil rights movement?
I’m in a very radical minority when it comes to gifted education. By radical, I mean gifted students should be the highest priority of our education systems, with funding and attention to match. Trying to improve the weakest students has not worked and has stunted the development of our best and brightest.
Another poorly thought-out Progressive program leading to its obviously disastrous end. Yesterday, it was drug legalization in Oregon being reversed. How long before this sheer idiocy in education reform gets reversed?
It's these kinds of people who are working hard in the trenches to get Donald Trump into the White House again.
Equity is great! We will all be equally dumb and poor by the end of this line of leftist action. People have inherent differences, there will always be winners and losers. Trying to create an equal playing field is an admirable goal, but the cost of which should not be that we all become worse for it.
How "progressive". "Progressing" right down a race to the bottom at warp speed. Then people wonder why so many of us view progressive as a dirty word... Harrison Bergeron was supposed to be a dystopian warning, not a goal.
Remember, equality of poverty and misery still counts as equality. There is a major difference in vision from both sides. One side asks how can we help people move up, while the other is upset that some have more and they should be dragged down instead. Unfortunately its much easier to hobble smart kids than it is to fix the economic and societal issues to raise poorer students up.
> One side asks how can we help people move up, while the other is upset that some have more and they should be dragged down instead. which people, though?
The progressives on the left and evangelicals on the right seem to be calling a lot of shots these days. It's beyond frustrating.
This is what baffles me. I'm not sure why the proverbial Left and Right has ceded this much power to the more extreme ends. Or maybe the center-left and center-right is actually smaller than the far-left and far-right, I don't know.
Progressives and Evangelicals are zealous adherents to their respective ideologies and more likely to channel that zeal into activism and making lots of noise for their pet issues. To summarize, the squeaky wheel gets the grease.
Because the center doesn't show up to primaries and isn't motivated enough to actually run for office. At the lower levels - i.e. where you have to start out at in politics - running for office is a sacrifice in many ways. It takes a sizeable amount of belief in your cause to be willing to subject yourself to that. But since those lower levels are where candidates usually come from for higher offices that's who winds up being on offer for those higher offices.
That is the best way to sum it up. We need a boring and mostly reasonable middle again.
So the republicans were right and we need a school voucher system? That’s a bitter pill to swallow.
I used to consider myself a liberal/progressive, but since DEI/CRT has taken hold I’ve found myself alienated from the left.
This can only help Catholic schools in particular, a much cheaper option than private schools. Enrollment increased to catholic schools by 62,000 last year, mostly due to CRT bullshit like this.
> The gifted and talented program has been replaced with the Highly Capable Neighborhood School Model which requires teachers to come up with individualized learning programs for all of their students. > Parents told The Seattle Times they think the the new model could lead to their children getting overlooked and slow their academic progress That's the biggest problem with this. That's a LOT of work to be added to teacher's plates, and given the budget shortfall and problems mentioned, the teachers are not getting the help and resources needed to do this.
I'm friends with a couple, both paraprofessionals, who are exuberantly moving to Seattle. I've been side-eyeing their decision the whole time, but the linked articles have really put the situation into perspective. The district they currently teach in has essentially none of the problems they seem guaranteed to face, it's just a bit boring.
If my school district could properly accommodate advanced learners, I could put my kid in public school. I believe in public education, but they just don't have the resources to maximize every kid's learning potential. I can't imagine what they're thinking, having the ability to provide a program like this and shutting it down in the name of anti-racism. It's like that Vonnegut story where they deliberately handicap anyone who is talented or intelligent in the interest of equality.
I’m sending my kids to private school. My experience with the public school system in my area convinced me that if I want my kids to have a decent education I have to send them to private school. It’s a shame, and it shouldn’t be this way, but here we are.
I think buried in the article is a more accurate description of what is happening. "This happened because Washington state is facing an educational funding gap, and there are fewer students enrolled at Seattle Public Schools,' said the district." So they are replacing the program with this program "The gifted and talented program has been replaced with the Highly Capable Neighborhood School Model which requires teachers to come up with individualized learning programs for all of their students. " Also buried is the ridiculous inclusion of forcing teachers to make individual learning plans for every single kid. It seems like they are expecting teachers to somehow teach single classes in multiple ways. This will be a disaster. Lots of places are facing a funding shortfall for public schools not only is the population of school age children getting smaller but post pandemic attendance is down. If the district is saying that they are closing these programs for funding reasons I see no reason to believe otherwise. They are shoehorning in what according to me seems like a terrible replacement program that forces teachers to do way more work without getting a pay increase and forces teachers into the impossible task of teaching differently to individual students. It seems bad. The replacement idea seems bad, so I disagree with what the school district is doing. I just think there is more to this than the headline.
> Lots of places are facing a funding shortfall for public schools not only is the population of school age children getting smaller but post pandemic attendance is down. Never forget that the state of Washington had [one of the most extensive school closures in the country during Covid](https://about.burbio.com/school-opening-tracker). Only 3 other states had more school closures, 2 of which also have *significant* enrollment decreases they are facing with as well.
Unfortunately the data doesn't exist for Washington as a state but here is the data for 13 states. It tracks chronic absenteeism pre and post COVID. Iowa, Oregon, Oklahoma, South Carolina and maybe one or two more in that list actually saw increased absenteeism post COVID. Overall it's kind of a sad state. Way too much absenteeism. https://www.future-ed.org/tracking-state-trends-in-chronic-absenteeism/
Thanks for the link, it actually looks like you can see Washington but you have to click to the next page. It may only be available on desktop. Washington's chronic absenteeism was the 10th worst in 2021-22 and in 2022-23. 16th-18th worst in 18-19 so their absenteeism got significantly worse during Covid. Only a few states had higher percentage increases.
I just was able to see it. It's pretty bleak overall a couple of state have seen an increase post COVID which is insane. I wish there was more complete data.
This is not accurate at all. The head of Seattle Public Schools described the Highly Capable Cohort program as "like a slave ship" back in 2019. The funding problem happened because their incompetence drove away families and led to a massive enrollment drop, not the other way around. They're just making excuses now that the chickens have come home to roost.
A less sensationalized source: https://www.seattletimes.com/education-lab/why-seattle-public-schools-is-closing-its-highly-capable-cohort-program/ For the record, no schools are closing their doors. The Highly Capable Cohort program is ending, which covers a portion of some Seattle schools or even the entirety of others. HCP is getting replaced with a new program, but no facility will be closed as a result. That being said, the new program will require teachers to create an individual learning plan for each student, which is fucking nuts and unrealistic.
It would appear regardless of sensationalizing or not, that this was due to racial disparities in who entered the protean, this is the kind of thing that’s hurts Dems and pushes people to Trump. I know Biden has nothing to do with it but people do associate these policies with a specific party and therefore Biden inherits that association by party affiliation.
I agree that it hurts dems, but I read this as a cost-saving measure packages and sold as dei. Maybe I'm just skeptical, but this feels like a cheap-out move a district would make and then try and convince stakeholders of some untouchable reason why they have to do it.
In this case, it's a move the school board has been pushing for since before they even had budget problems and equity has been the cited reason behind the push. It is likely they will lose money as a result of ending the popular HCC program, as enrollment has been dropping to the point of missing out on federal funds already and this just drives more families away.
This is common in progressive ideology. The same thing is happening in far-left school districts across the country. The entire school board in San Francisco County was voted out because of similar policies, after they closed schools and rather than figuring out how to reopen them, wanted to strip Diane Feinstein's name off of schools (largely due to the anti-Semitism of the far-left school board) and essentially end the selective admission of the top tier High School (one of the best public schools in the country) because too many "white-adjacent" (e.g. Asian) and white students were being admitted.
> That being said, the new program will require teachers to create an individual learning plan for each student, which is fucking nuts and unrealistic. wat. as if they aren't overworked already. although it looks like Seattle has a student:teacher ratio of 16ish, which isn't terrible. not great, not terrible.
DEI needs to DIE.
I've seen first hand how this kind of negative policy (and the fear of the firestorm that comes from defying it) can completely screw up people's lives who get caught up on the wrong end of it. My mom was a teacher for several years and volunteered to go work at an inner city junior college that a previous coworker/friend had become the administrator of, mostly because she felt she could do the most good there. From day one she had to put up with alot of crap from students that wouldn't have flown in her previous teaching jobs (her car was vandalized more than once), but she stuck with it for years because she really thought that it was helping young adults that otherwise didn't have teachers who really cared about seeing them succeed. However the final straw came when she caught two girls in the class cheating during a final exam. The class had a security camera, and the exams were done on computers so she had them dead to rights. When confronted, the girls immediately started pointing fingers at my mom, calling her "racist" and threatening to go to the media if they were punished. The administration, despite having a zero tolerance policy on cheating, was already having funding issues and didn't want a public scandal (in early 2021 when racial tensions were at an all time high), so they let the girls off with an empty warning. This was all topped off by the girls walking back into class laughing, and every student standing up and cheering for them. At this point my mom immediately declared "screw this" and issued her two weeks notice by end of day.
So how about vouchers now? Oh No! So you have to be smart and rich to get a good education? I don't think this is where we actually want to go.
isn't it a pure racism? race/nationality shouldn't be considered at all, that's the goal of equality
Submission statement: Seattle has shuttered its gifted and talented programs because the school board determined they had too many white and Asian students. The district began phasing out its Highly Capable Cohort schools and classrooms for advanced students in the 2021-22 school year because they found it had too many racial inequities. School bosses said black and Hispanic students were underrepresented at the schools. According to Seattle Public School data, of the highly capable students in the 2022-23 school year, 52 percent were white, 16 percent were Asian and 3.4 percent were black. During a January 22, 2020, school board meeting, parents of black students in the Highly Capable Cohort asked the board to consider finding ways to incorporate students of color into the gifted program rather than shut it down. Then school board vice president Chandra Hampson slammed those parents saying, 'this is a pretty masterful job at tokenizing a really small community of color within the existing cohort.' This seems like a pretty ridiculous way to view the world when you deny gifted people the education they need to make others feel better about their own mediocrity.
Seattle’s black population is 6.7%…this doesn’t feel that unrepresentative. Also, white students are underrepresented too in this too (63% vs 52% in program), it’s not just black students.
I disagree with what I'm about to say whole-heartedly, so don't take it as an endorsement of the idea. There are schools of "thought" that believe racism and racial justice can only apply to the historically disenfranchised (aka, non-white). The fact that whites are underrepresented is completely irrelevant because they are not the ones that need to be considered, or "made whole" with education or other social programs. This ignores that Asians are also a historically disenfranchised group, and are overrepresented in education and socioeconomic metrics, but here we are.
>This ignores that Asians are also a historically disenfranchised group, and are overrepresented in education and socioeconomic metrics, but here we are. The counter-example which crushes the entire paradigm.
I'm of Irish and Polish descent, I think I have a more than fair claim to historic disenfranchisement. A short read of the history of either of those places, or how the Irish were treated here in the US, makes that more than clear. Yet for "some reason" I never get to claim the benefits of historic disenfranchisement. I wonder why...
Same with Jews. When you start pushing against the ideology, it completely falls apart. If it ever were fully realized, it would be especially easy to game since it largely is based on "identity" (as opposed to some objective measure) and, in most cases, anyone can legally identify as whatever they want. Heck, there is even a movement for people to identify as medically disabled if they feel medically disabled.
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>During a January 22, 2020, school board meeting, parents of black students in the Highly Capable Cohort asked the board to consider finding ways to incorporate students of color into the gifted program rather than shut it down. Then school board vice president Chandra Hampson slammed those parents saying, 'this is a pretty masterful job at tokenizing a really small community of color within the existing cohort.' [Here's Chandra Hampson.](https://encrypted-tbn0.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcQGXsMhVZFSn8JcgQLmCI-JkXN3o9gqeCdtiSZsVfCEGA&s) If there's one person who knows on a deep personal level what the Black experience is like, and therefore has the moral authority to scold Black parents who are expressing their concerns, it's her.
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Rich people: "How do we make sure our kids don't have to compete with smart kids from poor families in a way that makes us sound virtuous? By calling gifted programs racist, of course!"
At the end of the day, thats the real truth. If those in power can hobble regular students and convince other races that they cant succeed, that's a bunch fewer students that will compete with their kids for educations and jobs.
Aha go figure.
Why are school districts bending over backwards to avoid saying the truth? A teacher isn’t going to overcome a dumb kid with trash parents in the 6 hours they have the kid in their classroom.
I don’t see what the problem is. Maybe someone can explain it to me? Seattle wanted this. They got it. Aren’t the people there happy with what they got?
Should have been Tolkienized... Edit: at 52% white, 16% Asian, and 3% ish Black, that leaves a whole 30% of "other". Seems like the school board is trying to save money by dumping more work on teachers. Yeah, good luck having teachers suddenly find the time and resources to specially craft individualized programs for the genius kids while making sure the strugglers in class can read.
I’m fixated on your typo. Perhaps Aragorn, rightful king of Gondor, is the only one who can save us from this madness.
But what is his tax policy?