<p>Are you referring to something like what this article claims (although the schools described are neighborhood schools, not selective admission schools)?
<a href=“The New White Flight - WSJ”>http://online.wsj.com/news/articles/SB113236377590902105</a></p>
<p>A fair compromise, to maintain the principle of objective testing, would be use an index of admission test score, weight, and height.</p>
<p>An elephant in the room most dare not ask is: How important is the racial diversity in order for cohabitants on the Earth to be more peacefully living together?</p>
<p>After all, no single race should “own” the Earth. But the reality is only a small percentage of people can live a life like most of CCers can now.</p>
<p>A broader question that is not easy to get a concensus on is: how important it is for the resources (including capitals, education, healthcare, etc.,) to be more evenly shared by all people? Historically speaking, it seems the human race is quite incapable of resolving this issue, in the past, now, and likely in the future.</p>
<p>Raising or responding to this kind of big question may cause this thread to be shut down very quickly.</p>
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<p>From what I and many other alums have found in researching root causes of this issue:</p>
<ol>
<li><p>Elimination of advanced SP/E classes in all junior high schools which identified and provided good preparation for the exams without prepping. Now we have G & T schools which are limited in number and do not provide enough seats for all students who can or could potentially meet the challenged if prepped as in the past.</p></li>
<li><p>A long continuing problem of many K-8 teachers and admins who are either ignorant of the application process requirements to advise their students or worse, actively discourage their students…especially best ones from applying for various dubious reasons. Some URM SHS alums who have done outreach have reported hearing about and even having friends/neighbors encountering this issue…or experiencing it firsthand with their own kids. </p></li>
<li><p>Greatly increasing trend of private day/boarding schools like Milton, Choate, or Horace Mann in providing full scholarships to URM students who would have applied and attended a NYC SHS to graduation in the past. This trend was already starting when I was at Stuy as I found a few college classmates who received such scholarships straight from 8th grade or after spending a year at a NYC SHS. </p></li>
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<p>@ucb, wow… I was just being facetious in my previous post. But interesting WSJ article. Thx for the link.</p>
<p>But as per your linked article, whatever the white Cupertino parents say publicly about the school being “too competitive”, I suspect it’s just a code word for racial animus. </p>
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<p>It may also be the unfamiliar feeling for white people of being members of a minority group, and an apparently “underachieving” one at that.</p>
<p>While usually not stated, it does appear that there are posters on these forums who are not comfortable with the idea of going to a college where the majority (or at least plurality) group is something other than white.</p>
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<p>And/or motivated by the same animus many students have for one or a handful of kids in a class who are known to drive up the curve substantially and thus, lowering the curved grades of everyone else. </p>
<p>@ucbalumnus Interesting article. Apparently the author doesn’t know that math and science are “liberal arts”.</p>
<p>Although this is 9 years old. Based on the real estate prices, houses in that and similar areas are still in very high demand due to the schools.</p>
<p>I think the Cupertino situation wd make for a wickedly funny Sat Night Live skit… </p>
<p>cobrat, DS was one of the kids who you described when he was a high school kid. Do not know whether he was disliked by his peers because of his and a few of his peers’ immature action.</p>
<p>He was not like that in college (not that he was still capable of doing it - he needed sleep and had some fun. I could sense that, overall speaking, he liked his college years better than his high school years even though he complained about one aspect of his college life.)</p>
<p>Re: Cupertino. One of my colleagues lives there and plans to send his child to that school district. I believe he is a new immigrant from Russia. He insisted that kids at the Kindergarten age could start to learn algebra before he learns arithmetics. He said there is a method which could enable the very young kid to achieve that. (Tiger parents are not limited to Asian parents! It is more an new immigrant phenomenon - only for a small subset of new immigrant families though.)</p>
<p>As the mom of a current Brooklyn Tech student (one more day of class!) whose test scores were far above the one required for Bronx Science and almost high enough for Stuyvesant (but who was not interested in either school), I would like to point out that 1) although her test scores put her well above the middle 50 percent at Tech, her grades were not; 2) that using the test as the indicator of intelligence and future potential means that Asians are heads-and-shoulders above other ethnic groups, with over 70 percent of the students at Stuy, almost 70 percent at BxSci, around 60 percent at Tech (Asians are around 20 percent of the students in the city and with white students about the same percentage); and 3) that a good percentage of the white students at these schools are Russian/former USSR immigrants.</p>
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<p>That’s disappointing to hear. I wish people would focus more on these schools, rather than Stuy.</p>
<p>zoozermom!!! I’ve missed your well thought out, balanced and even keeled input.</p>
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<p>I don’t think the current results necessarily indicate #2 as shown in the points I brought up in my previous post. </p>
<p>Regarding the high number of Asians and Russian/Eastern European immigrants, a large part of that is likely due to the fact the educational environments from their countries of origin had far higher expectations regarding rigor and coverage of topics at earlier ages than the case here in the US…including STEM fields. </p>
<p>For instance, one older Stuy alum who emigrated here from the ROC(Taiwan) recounted how upon immigrating here to the US as a 5th grader and being enrolled in one of the worst public schools in the city that the curriculum was such he was effectively repeating nearly everything he learned in an ordinary ROC elementary school until he entered Stuyvesant. </p>
<p>He also didn’t prep at all for the SHS exam. He wasn’t even planning to do so until he found a good friend was doing so and taking it with him meant they had a good excuse to spend the rest of the afternoon hanging around together in Manhattan free of parental supervision. </p>
<p>In my entering class, I knew an incoming sophomore who literally arrived from Hong Kong less than a year before and spent his first year of HS in NYC at a crime-ridden zoned HS similar to the one I’d be consigned to if I had not been admitted. He also found the material covered on the exam to be such the math part was a cakewalk to him and he only needed to spend a few months prepping for the English part. Not shabby considering his prior schooling in Hong Kong was in the Chinese school system where Cantonese/written Chinese, not English was the dominant language. </p>
<p>I’ve heard similar stories about Eastern European/Russian immigrants as their elementary/junior high curricula were similarly rigorous, especially if they were placed on higher vocational or moreso…the college preparatory track. And yes, all of those countries, even under Communist rule were much more adamant about tracking students by academic ability…certainly moreso compared with most American K-12 systems. </p>
<p>I am just saying that the Asians (many of whom are from South Asia, especially Bangladesh, at Brooklyn Tech–lot of headscarves worn there) and immigrant white students make up a huge majority of the students at Brooklyn Tech and likely at Stuy and Bronx Science. I have no doubt that the education in their original countries of immigrant students and their parents plays a huge part in this. Again, that’s an indictment of K-8 education in NYC.</p>
<p>Also worth noting: Brooklyn Tech is 64% free lunch eligible, Bronx Science is 46%, and Stuyvesant is 47%. Among several of the other elite screened schools: Beacon is 28% free lunch, Millennium Manhattan and Brooklyn are 43 and 44%, respectively. Eleanor Roosevelt is 25%. Townsend Harris is 51%. Only Brooklyn Tech approaches the NYC average.</p>
<p>Wonder if an article like this is somewhat relevant to this thread. The mentioning of “queueing for God’s place” is interesting. Rich or not, the priority of the family could be very different due to the social structure of the countries which they immigrated from.</p>
<p><a href=“The other arms race”>http://www.economist.com/news/special-report/21588204-south-koreas-education-fever-needs-cooling-other-arms-race</a></p>
<p>Also, this link from BBC:</p>
<p><a href=“http://m.bbc.com/news/business-24537487”>http://m.bbc.com/news/business-24537487</a></p>
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<p>Oldmom4896,</p>
<p>This is the 20 ton white elephant few NYC/state politicians and educational officials are willing to talk about. If anything, the NYC SHS and its admissions process is being used as a diversion to avoid having any meaningful scrutinizing discussion over NYC K-8…as they’ve have for the last 3 or so decades. </p>
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Implement “Top 10% Rule” like Texan did. See <a href=“Texas House Bill 588 - Wikipedia”>http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Texas_House_Bill_588</a></p>