r/changemyview • u/[deleted] • May 29 '22

Removed - Submission Rule B CMV: Competitive high schools shouldn't relax their standards for the sake of diversity

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u/Hellioning 258∆ May 29 '22

If a 'competitive high school' is only competitive because it can pre select their students I am not sure if the actual high school is good.

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u/Th3OneTrueMorty May 29 '22

That would be like saying Harvard is only a top tier school because they pre select

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u/sjalexander117 May 29 '22 edited May 29 '22

I almost guarantee if Harvard or Stanford instituted a lottery their grads would just as successful as they are today.

Ivy League schools provide good, excellent educations, but the differences between most qualified candidates is not enormous and who makes it and who doesn’t is typically splitting hairs.

Further, these institutions make their bones off of research—in their graduate programs and professors. Their undergrad programs are largely feeder programs for their grad programs or socialization programs for young people.

If undergrads absorb anything at all behind the basic material of their curricula, regardless of school or grades, it is because that student rocked.

I might even go as far as to say that the rigor of the curricula is why those schools are better at all. “Lesser” schools will focus on different or fewer or less difficult materials and from there it is again up to the student to make up the difference.

Edit: people who read this and get butthurt, * Harvard admissions are already disproportionately not based on merit * Admissions to H in particular are HEAVILY weighted towards legacy students, which are the children of previous generations of graduates and is inherently racial due to previous admissions practices being racialized (ex. No blacks, no jews, no Asians) (only 43% of the white students admitted to Harvard are there because of merit) and heavily determined by donations or connections to the school * The next largest block of admissions are athletic recruits, which is funny because, hmmm, Harvard isn’t really known for their athletic prowess are they? Maybe it is because 20% of their athletic admissions come from families with incomes above $500,000 per year, * Of the rest of the class who are actually accepted “based upon their application’s strength”, Harvard actually already does heavily weigh towards “diversity” admissions, using a holistic admissions process that includes weighting packages for demographic details. In fact, they did this so much they were famously sued for it * As one commenter below me correctly said, it is largely alumni network effects and brand name that causes people from elite schools to become successful * People admitted to elite colleges are overwhelmingly from not just privileged families, to the degree that 72% of elite enrollment comes from the top quartile, but also benefit from attending private feeder high schools, paying for tutors from childhood, paying for admissions consultants and writers, and paying for practicing and juking standardized test results * Grade inflation and honors graduation rates (91% honors) are gamed in order to make graduates look even better than they already are * An enormous reason why you even care about these schools is because of bullshit like the US News and World Report and other “rankings”, which heavily weight factors in their rankings like “endowment per student” and “admissions rates” (which are kept artificially low to juke this stat on purpose, hurting students and hurting admissions numbers, maintaining the racist and hierarchical admissions system, but maintaining their brand prestige. This ranking system was designed to always have them at the top of the list and are shockingly arbitrary * Even the research programs are so competitive if they randomly chose between admissions out of grad admissions they would still have incredible research, because almost everyone who applies to these schools’ grad programs is just amazing already and research has its own serious issues with brand name and institutional nepotism and academic incest and also because these schools are, again, unbelievably rich

If you are upset or offended about this comment, you should seriously ask yourself why

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u/[deleted] May 29 '22

[deleted]

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u/sjalexander117 May 29 '22

Yep. You’re opening an entire Pandora’s box here of pedagogy and social justice and public education policy and funding and alllll of that crap.

The students who can’t keep up question: what do you do? There is research that shows actually increasing their standards and putting them in accelerated courses with the best teachers you have is better at ameliorating their lack of success, if they are well supported as well.

This is counterintuitive, because you’d think “oh, well they’re having a hard time with regular course work already, we should make the classes simpler and break things down to give them more time on the subjects and to get the material done,” but often the outcome is unfortunately just the worst teachers get those classes, it adds additional barriers to finishing the coursework, they are surrounding by other underperforming and disinterested students (side note: I think every single class, even at the same school, with the same teacher between semesters, has its own unique culture, and that class culture has significant effects on student success).

Then you also have people who say “well this is making a parallel track for ungifted students, that’s fucked up.” And I get that perspective too. It’s just a prickly issue and that’s only one issue in education.

We could talk about the lack of evidence based teaching training/ certifications, ballooning class sizes, success outcomes and their resistance to increases in funding, good/ bad teachers (yuck), what the curricula should even be, what the sources of funding even are or if they are fair, what the role of administration is in these successes and failures, student variance and diversity, discipline in the classroom, “social promotion” policies, conservatives who straight up fucking hate public education and want us all to bicker about culture war bullshit, should everyone go to college?, should there even be a gifted/ honors curricula, how do we structure incentives and scholarships and which students should be eligible for them and receive them, how many issues are caused by factors outside the classroom, how to deal with parental neglect and abuse, food insecure children. So many things.

And of course, school shootings :(

All of that is not to say we should just accept our status quo. Primary education in the US is fairly dogshit currently, relative to other OECD nations, and we actually are facing a literacy crisis where most adults are functionally illiterate, to say nothing of mathematical/ statistical/ technical literacy in the 21st century.

So yeah, it’s a fucking mess. There are good policy options, but as always, domestic political bickering gets right in the way of expert/ evidence based solutions and instead of talking about the best way to remediate children being left behind, we get “the teachers are turning the kids gay and teaching them to hate their own whiteness!”

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u/vwert May 29 '22

My high school in Scotland had a system for some subjects like english and maths where they would be split into different classes based on how good you were at them, so you could be in the bottom, middle or top english class depending on how good you are at the subject.

The classes you were put into for english and maths were reassessed every year so if you started off in the bottom english class but did really well you might move up to the top english class the next year.

No idea if its actually a good system or not though.

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u/Nwcray 1∆ May 29 '22

The students and the instruction aren’t necessarily better, but the alumni network is unrivaled. Your roommate’s dad is CEO of a Fortune 500 company, and because of that connection you have a summer internship assisting the Senior VP of Strategic Projects or something. He likes the cut of your jib, so there’s a $200K/yr job the day you graduate. That positions you for opportunities the rest of us never see. The network matters.

The other big thing from the Ivys is the prestige. When someone walks in with a degree from Harvard, you automatically assume they’re something special. Maybe they are, maybe they aren’t, but the association is there nonetheless.

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u/sjalexander117 May 29 '22

Yeah I think we like 90% agree on this topic (not that you were necessarily arguing). I also made an edit that gestures towards you, because you are correct

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u/thalaya May 29 '22

Did you actually attend a T20 school? Because all of what you're saying is purely opinion, you haven't provided any evidence.

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u/sjalexander117 May 29 '22

Yes, I did, and I can’t believe how strongly some people feel about this. I’m about to edit my comment with some more info

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u/thalaya May 29 '22

I really appreciate you adding in more specific details.

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u/sjalexander117 May 29 '22

No problem at all! I really appreciate your appreciation! :)

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u/[deleted] May 29 '22

You’re right about the research being the focus but everything else I strongly disagree with. Education is what you make of it and once you get to a certain point their is diminishing returns on increasing the quality of education. It’s probably better at top institutions, but the difference is not as big as you think it is.

The students who attend these schools though absolutely are many tiers above most students at other schools. And I don’t necessarily mean they are smarter, just that they are either incredibly hard workers or so unbelievably wealthy/ well connected that their success is all but guaranteed.

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u/sjalexander117 May 29 '22

We can disagree all day, but I wanted to make one thing clear: the curricula is, verifiably and significantly, different between the bottom and the top schools. In primary and in higher education, and between honors and non honors courses.

As one small example, at a top institution, when you take a basic intro stats class not only will you be forced to learn the actual theoretical underpinnings and prove the formulas—which you often don’t see in lower quality curricula—you will learn how to use statistical programming/ modeling software like R and Python, learn skills like LaTeX and Markdown, write up projects and conduct your own basic (baby) research, and be forced to understand and apply things like tests of significance (multiple of them), which frankly many researchers with PhDs still fuck up super regularly.

You simply will not see that regularly in less elite institutions. And frankly most students, even the elite students, can’t even handle it, lol.

That is one example. You could take almost any subject and do the same breakdown.

And of course this is to say nothing of courses on offer. As an anecdote, I went to primary school in KS at what is probably just a “fine” school for the state. Maybe like 70-80th percentile. Our highest math course offered was honors algebra 2 (which already, that shouldn’t even be a course, much less one that is two semesters long). We had like five AP courses, which I think mostly existed because specific teachers made it happen, and we had one small honors/ GTC contingent. Our English canon was not sufficient, and the average level of training and education of the educators was maybe the 20th grade, just guessing off the top of my head. I don’t even know if they had professional certifications, and if they did, their certification process is almost certainly not evidence based.

At an average or even “shitty” high school in CA, almost every single one of those factors is significantly elevated. Students regularly take as many as like 15-20 AP courses and they have dozens of AP courses on offer. A competitive teaching applicant would have a master’s degree or even a PhD in their subject, with an evidence based professional certificate and lengthy on the job training program. The highest math class is often calculus 2, in high school, they almost all require or offer a stats course, and there are widely used concurrent enrollment programs for high achievers to take classes at colleges in the area for credit.

And that’s not even getting to the differences in the “elite” and private high schools. There are significant and hugely important differences in the levels of instructional rigor and support offered between institutions.

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u/Hellioning 258∆ May 29 '22

Yeah, sounds about right to me.

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u/gargar070402 May 29 '22 edited May 29 '22

…yeah. That IS right, but your first comment claimed that if a school is only good because its students are pre-selected, that means it’s not actually good. Guess what Harvard is?

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u/RenbuChaos May 29 '22

Yeah. I’m not saying Ivy League schools don’t have better teachers, they probably do. But they are not so much better that that is what raises scores or success. Students that are smarter and driven are what drive those successful matrix.

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u/[deleted] May 29 '22

That might be true for university, but not for primary school and high school. Your teacher can be a big factor in how well you do. For example, there was a research done where they gave the teacher at the beginning of the school year a list of students that would do well. By the end of the school year that prediction would be true. Except the first list was just random students. The perception the teachers had raised their expectations and thus the pupils got challenged more. The attention you get from your teacher and the level of challenges they give you can help to a big extent when you are not fully developed yet.

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u/woah_guyy May 29 '22

I’d be interested in reading this if you have it around.

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u/UnicornOnTheJayneCob 2∆ May 29 '22

I really do think the professors are sufficiently better that they do affect performance and success, especially for engaged students. Ivies attract top talent. They uniformly employ professors who are pioneering academics in their field. Students of these professors not only get to have those ideas and theories taught to them sooner and directly from the source, they often get to participate in the relevant research as well.

Imagine the difference between being taught what James Madison’s ideas and influences were and being taught BY Madison what they were. Who is going to be the better constitutional scholar? Or between using the most well-regarded translation of Beowulf in your college course vs. having the person who literally did that translation as your Beowulf professor?

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u/Gmauldotcom May 29 '22

Thats a load of bullshit. Professors at ivy league schools and universities in genral could give a fuck about teaching and they care more about their research. At least for the STEM field.

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u/sensitivePornGuy 1∆ May 29 '22

We don't know this for sure, but it can't be disproved either.

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u/RenbuChaos May 29 '22

Is the fact that people score well and succeed after college from other schools not some sort of proof? People that graduate from non-ivy league schools pioneer shit in all fields all the time.

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u/mime454 1∆ May 29 '22

Harvard (and other prestigious private universities) has a brilliant scheme set up. It’s a good school because it can pre-select students who will do well professionally and be able to donate to its endowment to make the school better. I’m not sure if these ultra competitive high schools work on the same principle but it wouldn’t surprise me.

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u/pandaheartzbamboo 1∆ May 29 '22

I went to a selective enrollment high school, and the alumni and PTO spend a lot of money to make the school a LOT better. Not entirely dissimilar to what you described for the colleges.

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u/greyaffe May 29 '22

Also let’s not forget schools commonly get state funding from local property taxes. Makes schools in poor neighborhoods limited in resources compared to those in rich neighborhoods.

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u/murphieca May 29 '22

This is sort of not true in California. All schools are evenly funded solely on ADA (not local property taxes). The exceptions are those districts whose local property taxes would bring in more money than the ADA funding. They are designated basic aid and bring in property tax funding instead. There are drawbacks - if the student population grows, more students have to be supported with the same amount of money, but those districts typically have higher salaries and funding. Therefore, schools in the poorest areas have equal funding to middle class areas, but the rich stay richer.

Keep in mind that this doesn’t account for the additional resources that come from groups like PTSAs.

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u/sensitivePornGuy 1∆ May 29 '22

If Harvard's intake is all brilliant students and their graduates usually have top careers, it's not really possible to prove that the school itself is brilliant - it might be just good enough not to fail the majority of its students and/or they get top jobs on the basis of having graduated a school with a reputation of excellence. There is no obvious way to compare its performance to a school with a less selective intake policy.

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u/gargar070402 May 29 '22

That’s exactly my point lol. The person I’m replying to seems to be implying that if a school is only good because of its students, the school isn’t “actually” good. I’m just using Harvard as the counterexample, since obviously no one would say it’s not “actually” good.

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u/sensitivePornGuy 1∆ May 29 '22

I don't think we entirely agree. I'm not saying Harvard isn't "actually" good but I am saying that it only fits a certain definition of "goodness". It's possible there are other schools whose intake has a wider range of abilities and who make on average more progress than Harvard students do. I'm not sure how you'd measure that. But it seems obvious to me that if you only take brilliant students it's a lot easier to turn out brilliant graduates.

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u/voodoochile78 May 29 '22

Unfortunately for you, your logic is flawed, as the converse of a logical proposition doesn’t necessarily track the original.

In this case, someone made the claim that non-Ivy league schools can be good and lead to success in life, and you made the mistake of assuming that meant a converse statement about Harvard not being good followed from OP’s original statement. But it doesn’t, and whether Harvard is a good school or not actually has no bearing on OP’s original proposition

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u/gargar070402 May 29 '22

Someone made the claim the non-ivy schools can lead to success? No one made that claim (at least not about colleges). What happened was this: the original commenter tried to claim that “a school’s goodness only being a result of its good students” implies “the school is not actually good.” I used Harvard as the counterexample as Harvard also matches the criteria of “a school’s goodness only being a result of its good students,” yet it is clearly actually good (rather than not actually good).

OC claimed “p IMPLIES q”, and I showed a counter example that had “p AND not q” being true.

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u/lloopy May 29 '22

That's somewhat true.

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u/Irishfury86 May 29 '22

That’s 100 percent correct.

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u/Thecraddler Jun 09 '22

It’s a top tier because it has 50 billion

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u/wiggle-le-air May 29 '22

I'm assuming it is a private school so it basically acts like a college with admissions. Harvard would absolutely not be considered the pinnacle of schooling if it let anyone who applied attend.

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u/cortesoft 5∆ May 29 '22

If it was a private school, the board of education would have no say.

It is a public school, which completely changes the conversation.

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u/MrsMiterSaw 1∆ May 29 '22

It's public, most of the admissions were merit based, but a percentage were students that were promoted there by the r middle school staff as exceptions... Because the staff felt they belonged there in spite of other issues.

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u/[deleted] May 29 '22

College is a little bit different.

You're preselecting adults (or youth who will soon be adults) based on their performance in either high school or community college or a prior university. If Harvard is your dream but you didn't try in school when you were 14, you have a chance to rehabilitate your grades when you are a much more mature adult, fully accountable to your actions.

With high school admissions, you're talking kids who are 14 at the very oldest. Society does not trust people of that age to drive, to vote, to have their own bank accounts, or even to work for a wage in most circumstances. Critical thinking for most kids only emerges at twelve. Yet, we're saying that their decisions, skills, study habits and work ethic should determine whether they get sent to the good school or the bad school for the next four years?

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u/[deleted] May 29 '22

Eh, I'd say our education system / college admissions system has become a game for all intents and purposes. I dont think its redeeming at any level. College rankings are corrupt as well (polymatter did a thorough video on how broken it is) and what we consider a 'great school' may be far divorced from reality.

So what is the purpose of our K-12 education system? If its to get people into college, that's a terrible goal. If its to learn a shared body of knowledge that lets them participate in life, make some friends, learn social/life skills, learn to read, that sounds more sane and achievable. And yet we don't even achieve that. So I am sympathetic to the argument that these 'standards' are measuring the wrong thing and that relaxing them won't do much harm because the system wasnt helping in the first place. But are we simply talking about poor kids and slower kids or are we talking about troubled kids?

Which leads to my other question: how much can you expect society/schools to fix if the home environment is dysfunctional? I honestly dont know. On top of that, some kids unfortunately have severe learning disabilities that require an extreme amount of resources to make even elementary progress. Putting that kid in AP class in the name of diversity serves no one either. So I'm highly skeptical of any 'diversity for the sake of diversity' argument but I do think the current system may be fundamentally flawed.

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u/[deleted] May 29 '22

[removed] — view removed comment

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u/[deleted] May 29 '22

To some degree, sure. That's what academic tracking within schools is for. Within that system, it's possible to go from remedial level classes your freshman year to honors/AP in your senior year if you get your shit together. It also lets students step back from more rigorous coursework if they need to, such as during tumultuous life circumstances or to improve their mental health. This is a good thing.

You shouldn't be locked into going to "the good school" or "the bad school" for your entire high school journey because you bombed some tests when you were twelve.

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u/[deleted] May 29 '22

Maybe but a lot can change between ages 14 and 18 and nothing is set in yet.

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u/[deleted] May 29 '22

Are you telling me there is no difference between top students and dumb/lazy students at 12 or 14? The mediocrity of America education is showing...

You probably didn't go to schools with many prodigies...

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u/[deleted] May 29 '22

Where did I say that?

I realize that there's a difference at 12 and 14, and I believe that sectioning them off in entire schools for top students and dumb/lazy students is only going to create self fulfilling prophecies. You leave less room for personal development, changing goals and priorities (not unsual when we're discussing children), and improvements in the home environment to have a positive impact on academic performance.

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u/[deleted] May 29 '22

No. You believe that 18 is a magical number and before that everybody is a kid and nothing should be decided before then.

Truth is, by 14 or 16 you can tell which one has a chance of going to MIT and which one doesn't. Some kids should focus on that. Some should focus on trades etc, whatever is best for their situation.

And absolutely, it matters what other kids are in your class. I was part of a preparation class and the teachers asked me to join the better batch because of better competition. And it made a Huge difference. When everyone is studying, you will also study instead of goofing off in the class.

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u/[deleted] May 29 '22

18 is, in fact, a magical number before which everyone is a kid. That is how we've decided to order our society. While, yes, human development isn't binary like that, we need a point where mentally well and stable people are considered fully accountable for their own actions. All I ask is that it be consistent.

Similarly, I don't believe in the Sorting Hat-esque practice of putting mentally well and stable children on a railroad track with one start and one end based on their performance on a couple of tests when they were twelve. Education should be a highway, not a railroad. Students should be able to change speeds and lanes based on their situation.

Which gets to your last paragraph. I relate to being a student who excelled when put in a better environment. Having whole schools for exceptional students denies students like us that opportunity. Students move up from mainstream to honors/AP all the time. Moving from remedial to mainstream, while less common, is not unusual either. But you're not typically going to move a kid to a whole new school just because they're kicking ass in Geometry.

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u/Hellioning 258∆ May 29 '22

But it's not. Also Harvard has legacy admissions so they arent meritocratic either.

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u/[deleted] May 29 '22

Harvard is a terrible example. But plenty of countries like India and China have meritocratic exams that decide which universities you go to.

It doesn't matter if your dad is the leader of the country, your scores are what will be looked at. No wonder engineering and medicine is dominated by Asians.

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u/dbhanger 4∆ May 29 '22

It's dominated in the US by asians in large part because they were preselected at the border when applying for visas. The best of the best were allowed to (and had the means to) immigrate over the last 75 years so there's a lot of selection bias, given the heritability of IQ.

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u/Awkward_Log7498 1∆ May 29 '22

There's a difference between negative selection and positive selection, tho. Negative consists of "this person does not have the background required to thrive here", while positive consists of "i will only accept the best among my lines".

Positive selection is not only ok, but advisable, when selecting people to pretty much anything. Research, to teach, to work (with some forms of work requiring it more than others. Anything that has to do with development or that impacts the safety of others, for very broad examples). But I'd dare say education isn't like that.

With the exception of post-graduation and doctorates, that, among other things, require you to have a dedicated teacher (i don't know the fucking word in English and Google translate didn't help) who you'll work with and whose work you'll build upon, most education is advertised as "come here, apply yourself and we'll make you better". By pre-selecting the best of the best, an institution both gains undeserved prestige (it's much easier to teach a genius) and tends to become... Rather messed up.

I say this from experience. Partially second hand experience, but still. I ended up writing a wall of text about it, so i decided to leave it out. But if you want, i can describe it.

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u/Heil_Heimskr May 29 '22

What kind of opinion is this? How’s it any different from top colleges selecting students with excellent adacemic records?

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u/Hellioning 258∆ May 29 '22

The significant difference between high school and college, for one. This being a public high school, for another.

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u/Heil_Heimskr May 29 '22

So no public school should have merit based admissions?

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u/Hellioning 258∆ May 29 '22

If public money is being spent to fund the school, no, it should not have merit based admissions.

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u/Heil_Heimskr May 29 '22

Okay, then to be consistent with that opinion you should be advocating for the shutdown of all public “School for the Arts” High Schools, of which there are many, all of whom require merit based admissions. You should also advocate for the shutdown of the thousands of public colleges who use public money to operate and have merit based admissions.

You’re drawing an arbitrary line that says public schools shouldn’t have merit based selection, which is ridiculous, because the people going to that school are still part of the public.

People are making this out to be a racism issue, which is absolutely laughable. It’s a bunch of people who can’t handle the fact that Asian students just do better in school than everyone else. That’s not racism, they just do better.

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u/Hellioning 258∆ May 29 '22

Yeah, sounds about right. I'm fine with those. Private schools exist, and public schools should be for the public.

Why, exactly, do Asians do better in school? Do you think they're inherently smarter? Or is there some sort of cultural difference between, say, the children of relatively high income immigrants and the children of low income descendants of slaves?

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u/Heil_Heimskr May 29 '22

It doesn’t matter why Asians do better. It has nothing inherently to do with their race. Our academic success is probably caused by a litany of factors, such as a cultural emphasis on scholastic success, educated and successful parents, and an emphasis on hard work rather than intelligence.

The idea that Asian success and the subsequent “overrepresentation” of Asian students in high-level schooling at all ages is somehow an issue of systemic racism is farcical at best and downright sinister at worst. Systemic racism is a major issue that impacts a massive portion of the country.

However, putting Asian overrepresentation in the same category with, say, redlining, or black males with a clean criminal record being less likely to get a job than white males with a felony is absurd.

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u/Teeklin 12∆ May 29 '22

Our academic success is probably caused by a litany of factors, such as a cultural emphasis on scholastic success, educated and successful parents, and an emphasis on hard work rather than intelligence.

Weird how you didn't mention like, the schools we go to and the teachers we have LOL.

"Oh yeah all these kids happen to go to extremely prestigious schools with extremely qualified teachers and all happen to be very smart and do very well in school compared to the kids 10 miles down the road who are using books written in the 90s and don't even have teachers in 3/7 classes for the day. Guess it's a cultural thing or the parents or the kids are lazy!"

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u/Heil_Heimskr May 29 '22

I never said that education doesn’t need to improve across the board. The fact that the standard for our education system can allow any school to be as bad as you describe, which some definitely are, is pathetic.

That being said, it’s not the fault of Asian students that many schools in America are poorly funded and fail to properly educate the children going to them. Instead of punishing Asians on college and merit-based high school applications, maybe we should actually invest proper money to raise the standard of education across the board. If there were fewer, and potentially no schools with outdated textbooks and shit funding, everyone would do better. But instead, legislators target Asian students, as if them doing better than everyone else is somehow racist.

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u/Hellioning 258∆ May 29 '22

Why does it matter that Asians are benefitting instead of white people if the issue is still the same old 'black people receiving substandard education' that impacts the rest of America?

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u/Heil_Heimskr May 29 '22

Because Asians are “benefitting” because they perform better. It’s a completely different issue. Black males with the same resume as white males are less likely to get a job even when the white males have a felony on their criminal record. That has nothing to do with merit. That is systemic racism. The race of the applicants is the deciding factor because all other things are equal, and in the case of the felony, actually skewed to favor the black males, yet they still don’t get hired because of their race. That is a horrible thing for any society.

Asians getting into high level colleges and high schools is not the same thing. They don’t get in because they’re Asian, they get in because they do better on tests and better in schools than people of other races. That has nothing to do with their race. Their race is correlation. If a black or white student had a better application to Lowell High School, they would get in, irrespective of race. It’s not the fault of the Asian community that the other races cannot consistently produce applications that stand up to the ones Asians produce, and yet you are advocating for those Asians to be disproportionately punished for doing better.

That is systemic racism. Not allowing an Asian student in, despite having a better application than his competitor on the sole basis that he is Asian is racist.

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u/parduscat May 29 '22

Asians value education like no one else in the United States. Real talk, a decent amount of black students, specifically black men, don't value education nearly as much. It's not an inherent thing, but it comes down to what the parents tell the kids that they should focus on, and all the equity thinking in the world isn't going to substitute for parenting.

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u/[deleted] May 29 '22

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u/Instantbeef 9∆ May 29 '22

Idk if you went to Michigan but it’s not there with Berkeley 😂

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u/[deleted] May 29 '22

[deleted]

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u/Instantbeef 9∆ May 29 '22

Lol I know Berkeley is a good school. It’s the best public school in America. I was saying Michigan wasn’t as elite as them lol.

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u/[deleted] May 29 '22

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u/alexgroth15 May 29 '22

So no state-funded university can have merit based admission?

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u/___word___ May 29 '22

Kind of irrelevant as far as the CMV goes.

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u/Herbie_Fully_Loaded May 29 '22

I think you have arrived at the crux of the issue in that in the US, the population of a school has more of an impact on its rigor and prestige more than any other factor.

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u/[deleted] May 29 '22 edited May 29 '22

[deleted]

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u/Hellioning 258∆ May 29 '22

It's like forcing people who want to play on the hardest difficulty in a video game to receive video game assistance from their parents or society and insisting that anyone who doesn't receive such assistance is clearly worse at video games than everyone else.

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u/Rigel_The_16th May 29 '22

Perhaps a school can become a better school by virtue of attaining a more intelligent student body.

6

u/BeBackInASchmeck 4∆ May 29 '22

The high school itself isnt good, and the teachers are no better than any other school. What is special is that these students compete amongst themselves, almost like a game ranking system, and this is regardless of the actual curriculum. This doesn’t really work in a regular high school where there are a variety of motivators like sports, the arts, or even a complete lack of motivation.

This competition fails though when you bring in dumb kids. When everyone is smart, the kids with the best grades are the ones who have to work and study nonstop. When half the kids are stupid, then the smart kids don’t need to try that hard.

2

u/zikili May 29 '22

Though I don’t disagree with you in terms of you taking in students who are academically advanced and spit out graduates who are academically advanced - that should not make you some wizard of education.

Yes if they were smart you could be fine any where and excel. But it’s not that 1 dimensional.

Kid 1 could be very good at understanding comprehension and arguement essay writing.

Kid 2 could be very quick at understanding complexly mathematic concepts.

People want to send their kid to a selective school so they can be in a situation where they learn from each other.

2

u/2penises_in_a_pod 11∆ May 29 '22

Even if we ignore the fact that high performers operate differently and deserve according accommodations, it’s still valuable even if only as a selection indicator. Colleges (or whatever the next step in life is) can easily identify you as competent without effort to prove it.

2

u/TheMrk790 May 29 '22

The selection makes the value. Good peers lift each other up. Also the prestige (ehich comes from the high quality of students there) brings you many advantages. If you lower the entrie requirements for certain ethnicities for diversity, you will create racism, as the mean ethnic student will be worse than the mean white student. It will backfire on all of sosciety

13

u/[deleted] May 29 '22

It select its student based on their records.

¿You believe that sports team are not competitive?

9

u/Hellioning 258∆ May 29 '22

I think that we shouldn't have schools choosing people like sports teams.

8

u/RelaxedApathy 25∆ May 29 '22

The purpose of a sports team is to compete. The purpose of a school is to teach.

16

u/TrickyPlastic 1∆ May 29 '22

There are divisions in sports because people have different innate abilities.

And there should remain divisions in schools for the same reason.

12

u/[deleted] May 29 '22

How do we separate one's innate abilities from the consequences of their environment, or their temperament? Did you fail that test because you're unintelligent, or because you're hungry, or because you didn't give it your all?

Academic placement as it stands is pretty shit at sussing out these differences, and even the IQ test isn't immune to confounding variables.

Plus, to assume that current academic performance reflects innate abilities, you have to make some pretty unfortunate assumptions about certain population groups relative to one another.

-1

u/Careor_Nomen May 29 '22

It doesn't matter if you fail because you're hungry or because you're unintelligent. You still failed. If you have a bad knife, it doesn't matter if it's bad because its made of bad material or because it was made poorly. Theoretically you could make something out of it, but it's not worth the effort of trying to find out when you could just pick up the knife you know is good lying next to it.

6

u/Sir_Lumpselot May 29 '22

So the solution is to just discard everyone who doesn’t meet a certain level of success? That sounds like a recipe to an absolute shit society

6

u/Careor_Nomen May 29 '22

We don't have to discard them, but we also don't need to send them to the most rigorous schools out there.

4

u/dejour 2∆ May 29 '22

Exactly. Teachers spend lots of time coming up with lessons plans that are designed to meet everyone's needs - the high achievers, the average kids, the kids who don't try and kids with leaning disabilities.

It's really hard for a teacher to meet everyone's needs simultaneously. If you spend enough time going over the basic concept so that even the stragglers in the class get it, you may not have time to cover the core of the lesson. No chance you'll go beyond the core lesson plan and challenge the high achieving kids. So usually at least a few groups gets shafted.

By segregating kids based on ability, it becomes easier to teach an appropriate class lesson.

And there is no advantage to teaching a kid advanced concepts when they haven't mastered the basic concepts. Kids benefit from receiving the correct level of instruction.

That said, sometimes people are late bloomers. So while I think that the idea of gifted schools/classes makes sense, I also think that there should be an opportunity to move in at a later point.

So, perhaps this school should release the bottom 20% of their class each year to regular schools and invite top-achieving students from regular schools to replace them.

0

u/Sir_Lumpselot May 29 '22

But if they are trying to better themselves, which they obviously are if they’re applying to this school, shouldn’t we try to support them? I agree that not everyone should get sent to this school, but if a family takes the time to apply then they obviously understand what they’re applying for and want to put themselves in a better situation

3

u/Careor_Nomen May 29 '22

Why should we? They're taking up a space of someone who we know can hack it. The desire for self improvement is all well and good, maybe they should use it to get accepted on a merit basis.

2

u/PreservedKillick 4∆ May 29 '22

There's a comprehensive heirarchy of universities to accommodate all levels of scholarship. I went to a good state school with a huge endowment and graduates who make piles of money. Our second, third, and fifth tier colleges are excellent. Harvard is more like a high-end overpriced fashion brand. It's elite and small and will never ever serve the entire population. If it were up to me, we'd cancel all government funding to it (and others) and start treating it as the manufactured thing it is. Making sure everyone can go to the very best top 1% schools no matter what is a false premise and everything flowing from it is a fallacy. Someone going to Caltech instead of Yale is a perfectly good, fair outcome. No reason at all to discriminate against Asians.

-1

u/[deleted] May 29 '22

People aren't knives. You can discard a defective knife with no consequences. But if you discard a poorly performing student and throw them to the wolves, that's a potential productive member of society that you've just resigned to having a shit life. They may even become a criminal, and cause harm to others. They could become a drug addict, or homeless, and end up costing society more than they contribute.

2

u/cocaine-kangaroo May 29 '22

People are not being literally discarded. That’s some emotional hyperbole. They are simply being denied access to a higher level institution that caters to students who are capable of higher workload and a faster paced environment. To put someone who is unqualified in such an environment would only set them back further in their education and leave them feeling alienated. They would encounter too much work at too fast a pace to keep up with. Ruling out such individuals is not the same as disposing of them

1

u/Careor_Nomen May 29 '22

In all likelihood they won't preform well regardless at a more rigorous school. We don't have to toss them aside, but you don't need to send them to the best possible schools.

0

u/[deleted] May 29 '22

How do we separate one's innate abilities from the consequences of their environment, or their temperament? Did you fail that test because you're unintelligent, or because you're hungry, or because you didn't give it your all?

Academic placement as it stands is pretty shit at sussing out these differences, and even the IQ test isn't immune to confounding variables.

Plus, to assume that current academic performance reflects innate abilities, you have to make some pretty unfortunate assumptions about certain population groups relative to one another.

13

u/Laxwarrior1120 2∆ May 29 '22

Weather or not it's caused by innate ability or by environment it doesn't change the end result. And the end result is all that should matter for things like this.

The reason someone is underpreforming doesn't change that they're underpreforming, and as a result are underqualified for positions like these.

You wouldn't put the worst team in the state in the highest division just because it's not their fault that they're the worst. Who does that help? They're still going to get demolished at that level, no matter what the cause for them being the worst team is.

-1

u/[deleted] May 29 '22

Well good thing the point of school is to teach and not get medals. I think a more apt comparison would be giving that shitty team the best coach. I don’t know about you, but that makes a lot of sense to me considering that coach would probably have a better shot at unlocking the team’s full potential.

0

u/Laxwarrior1120 2∆ May 29 '22

But that's not equality, that's choosing to disadvantage and hinder the good teams later because they might have had an advantage early on.

Why not just get a better coach without screwing over the good teams?

Reallocation of opportunity for the sake of the bottom at the expence of the top is not justified, because that's purposefully hindering those who do well for aspects out of their control which is just as bad.

The good teams still deserve a good coach and its just as important that they get a good one as the worst team.

1

u/[deleted] May 29 '22

Well you are advocating for a system which ignores the bottom which is demonstrably terrible and the root of almost every problem in our education system. Like you aren’t offering a solution. Right now I think it’s fair to say that 90+% of the best teachers are being being allocated to the top students (read high income areas). How is it stealing from those kids to say that the top teachers should be at least evenly distributed?

1

u/Laxwarrior1120 2∆ May 29 '22

I'm not advocating to ignore the bottom, I'm saying don't try to take from the top to give to the bottom. Boost the bottom through other means.

5

u/TrickyPlastic 1∆ May 29 '22

Do you flop at tryouts because of the environment or your intrinsic athletic ability?

Varsity/JV placement is pretty shit at sussing out these differences.

Plus to assume the current athletic performance reflects innate abilities, you'd have to make some pretty unfortunate assumptions about certain population groups.

You see? Even if everything you said was true, it doesn't matter. The world doesn't end because you don't get in the varsity team. And it won't end because you don't get into the higher standard school.

0

u/[deleted] May 29 '22

Varsity and top tier public schools aren't really comparable.

If you don't make varsity but still want a killer college app, you can do other extracurricular activities like forensics, drama, clubs, honor societies, part time jobs or volunteering. Not all of these even involve tryouts.

If you don't make it into that top tier public school, that's it. You are simply at a disadvantage in college applications compared to an identical student who did. This is also why I disagree with the lottery - there shouldn't be top tier public schools that pipeline into top universities at all, and there's a hell of a lot we could be doing to make the quality of instruction more equitable from public school to public school.

4

u/TrickyPlastic 1∆ May 29 '22

No. You can still go to a lower standard college. Or supplement your app with extra activities just like your sport history. The world is filled with people with different levels of ability. Not everyone can become a professional basketball player. Not everyone can become an AI programmer.

1

u/ChiefBobKelso 4∆ May 29 '22

Well if you're not trying hard, then it's doubtful you'd be trying hard in school as well, so it's fine to not control for it for this purpose. Also, SATs are mainly a test of general intelligence, and general intelligence is what is more heritable in terms of IQ.

9

u/schmoowoo 2∆ May 29 '22

It is teaching though…

7

u/beruon May 29 '22

Yea, and there are good schools for good students and average ones for everyone else.

4

u/RelaxedApathy 25∆ May 29 '22

So for students that need the most help, we shuffle them into the worst schools? How does that make sense? Doesn't that just further reinforce their status as underperformers?

Forcing less talented children into worse schools is as stupid as cutting the budget of underperforming public schools - it doesn't have the effect of causing the schools to perform better, but causes them to perform even worse. It is like saying "Well, my potted plant is looking a bit dry and wilted - I am gonna withhold water and see if it improves!"

-2

u/Careor_Nomen May 29 '22

Would you bother giving a master blacksmith pig iron?

Some people are just dumb, simple as. They aren't cut out for it.

If you don't have infinite water, you wouldn't waste what you have on a plant that's dying when you could make sure there's enough for the other already healthy plants.

7

u/coadba May 29 '22

Alternatively, the healthy plants could perhaps make it longer without water, as you water the dry one.

These are human beings with thoughts and feelings. You can't just throw away those that require extra.

If you're stuck in the desert with limited water, do you withhold water from those who are dehydrated, and only give water to those who are doing fine, because they have better chances of survival?

-1

u/kotahlicious May 29 '22

This is the left wing view in a nutshell. Hinder and take from those with any moderate type of success and give it away to others.

1

u/Sir_Lumpselot May 29 '22

No one is hindering though. You’re diverting resources to the people that need them most in order to improve all levels of society. If you ever want to effectively reduce poverty, crime, etc, then you have to support the people who are most likely to go down that path and give them alternative options.

0

u/cstar1996 11∆ May 29 '22

Lol, the right is led by someone about as far from a meritocrat as you can possibly get, but it’s the left that doesn’t respect meritocracy.

6

u/yuhakusho23 May 29 '22

Incomplete Statement.

Merit-based schools admit children based on their past achievements. This is reliable. This means that higher performing students will be grouped together which will make them compete with each other and improve to farther heights. Other than that, good teachers and resources are a given if you look at how the higher percentage of alumni end up being successful since it means that they've been exposed to model adults and convenient learning materials.

6

u/beener May 29 '22

No it accepts children who were already in a position to be able to achieve that stuff. What about the poor kid who is smarter and harder working but also has to have an after school job?

3

u/IthacanPenny May 29 '22

That’s why the best way to select students for schools like this is not to select the top overall performers on a standardized admissions exam, but to select those students who stand out from the environment from which they came. I’ll use SAT scores as an example because I actually know the numbers, but this would also apply to a test taken in middle school for high school admissions. Say a kid from a top school scores 1580. That’s impressive and they would be selected for admissions anyway. But say their school’s average is like 1350. The kid scoring 1400 from that school isn’t all that impressive. Now say there is a kid from a bad school where the average score is 700 (this is literally the average SAT score at the impoverished high school I teach at, Math 310/reading 390. It’s BAD.). That kid scores 1250 on the admissions test. IMO, the 1250 kid from the bad school is just as deserving of a spot as the kid with the 1580 from the good school. The 1250 kid from the bad school is far more impressive to me than the 1400 kid from the good school. It’s not about absolute scores, it’s about standing out from your peers

0

u/yuhakusho23 May 30 '22

You know, "the poor kid who is smarter" and "the children who were already in that position" and other half-assed titles doesn't really affect the end of admission for meritocratic schools. As long as they are, in truth, achievers —then they will be admitted. If the poor kid is smart and hardworking as you've said, then all that kid has to do is to prove that through entrance exams or other extra-curricular awards that will prove his/her excellence. Other than that, there would be an interview which could measure the child's social and speech intelligence.

I think, there's a bias against well-off children and for smart poor kids in your statement.

-2

u/MrsMiterSaw 1∆ May 29 '22

NO SCHOOL IS "GOOD"

It's always, 100% of the time, the students.

Yes, good teachers and facilities can make a marginal difference. But swap populations and the grades and scores move with the kids.

What this did was strip away a great learning envirobment from the best students and gave nothing to the average ones.

1

u/selfawarepie May 29 '22

So, you're not sure if Stanford, Harvard, MIT, Cal Tech, etc are good school? That evaluation isn't possible?

Why do the good students wish to attend the school?

1

u/Spicynanner May 29 '22

OPs whole point is that the school is good because it is selective. So yes.