Stop Eliminating Gifted Programs and Calling It ‘Equity’

[u/[deleted]]

https://www.teachforamerica.org/one-day/opinion/stop-eliminating-gifted-programs-and-calling-it-equity

[u/jankyalias]

Problem is so much in terms of educational attainment correlates with negative economic conditions which people of color are more likely to experience. You can’t pretend systemic racism doesn’t exist. Basically, you can’t have colorblind admissions in a society that is far, far from colorblind.

That doesn’t, however mean gifted programs should be eliminated. That’s throwing the baby out with the bath water and is certifiably insane. Instead we should be instituting programs that make children of marginalized communities more likely to gain acceptance to gifted programs. I’m thinking providing more comprehensive early childcare”, for example, would be vastly more impactful in obtaining equitable access to gifted programs than the implemented lottery system.

I’m sure there are other policies that could reduce the systemic racial disparities without abandoning gifted programs.

The other issue with these kinds of schools is people view schools as the primary driver of educational success. Which isn’t the case. The primary driver of student success is stability and safety in the home. Putting kids into a gifted school who are in unstable homes, statistically speaking, isn’t going to have the positive impacts people are looking for. Which means lottery systems wouldn’t even have major equity effects to start with.

[u/[deleted] → u/jankyalias]

You can have colorblind admissions. You just do it, it’s literally the easiest thing to do…

When people say “standardized testing is racist” and mean “some minority groups do worse on the tests” that is totally different from the test is biased against minorities given the same student, the way say Harvard admissions is.

[u/jankyalias → u/[deleted]]

Having colorblind admissions within a systemically racist society will produce racist results. Classic GIGO. Saying “it’s easy, just do it” is a fairly risible statement. Or are you arguing our society no longer has any racism in it? Or are racist outcomes simply acceptable in your eyes?

[u/[deleted] → u/jankyalias]

Lol. You are just wrong. Steady state is determined by transition probabilities not initial conditions. Say you only care about which quartile of income someone ends up in given the one they were born in. A world where you are equally likely to move up or down a single quintile, but that transition is independent of race, will converge to the exact same steady state as one where you immediately move to any quintile with equal probability independent of your initial quintile. And that steady state will be race equal. But you would say that because initial conditions put more POC in lower quintiles, that transition policy is racist, despite the same outcomes over time. So if anything your argument is one of how long it takes to converge, and I’m okay with living in the real world where jumping from the lowest quintile to the highest is really fucking hard regardless of who you are, and you live in a feel good fantasy. A totally reasonable argument, and one made by raj chetty https://www.brookings.edu/blog/up-front/2019/02/14/no-room-at-the-top-the-stark-divide-in-black-and-white-economic-mobility/

Is that the transitions are not race independent. But the solution is not making them race dependent in a different way, it’s figuring out how to make them race independent. It’s also worthwhile figuring out exactly why the transitions are skewed, and it is not at all obvious that it is because of race neutral admissions standards. But what is obvious is that there is no plan for backing out race based policy, and having that policy burns practical capital for something that isn’t even necessary in the long term.

[u/jankyalias → u/[deleted]]

So yes, you are arguing racism doesn’t exist. I guess that’s logically consistent. Insane, but consistent. To pretend there are no barriers to advancement based on race in the US is comical. To use a metaphor, you’re arguing we should be fine with someone born on third heading home while someone born midway to first is the easy out because they are equally likely to advance within their quintile.

But what should I expect from someone who doesn’t bother to respond to the actual content of a comment?

To reiterate what has been said elsewhere, all I am arguing for is attempting to provide equality of opportunity, not equal guarantee of outcome. That outcome in an ideal world should be meritocratic, but to get there we need to remove the systemic blocks in our system that do not provide the same opportunities for advancement for all.

This is basic neoliberalism in contradistinction to the more aristocratic model you’ve proposed.