PM me @gallentjill if you want any specific info. You might be surprised that I have no idea what my own IQ is nor those of my kids. It is incredibly important for people (especially policy makers) to understand that these differences do exist, but for any individual person the value is limited.
The “leveling down” of public schools has been an educational policy disaster. I attended a wonderful suburban public school system in a mid-Atlantic state in the 60’s-70’s. We were tracked from kindergarten, so the resources were clearly there. Being a newly arrived immigrant with very limited English, I was tracked into the 3rd out of 4 groups, as was appropriate. I made my way up to the top track by first grade. In my graduating class of 200, we had 1 Harvard, 1 Yale, 2 Duke, 1 Swarthmore and 1 Bates matriculates in the top 10 students. In my son’s graduating class of over 450 (different state), there was 1 Yale and no other highly selectives, with most of the top students staying in state. More telling, if you walk down the hallways of the high school, there are portrait pictures of students who made National Merit (from Commended on up) through the history of the high school. In the 80’s and 90’s there were routinely 12-20 students. Then in the 2000’s the trend went downward until the past few years when there were less than 5 each year. Changing demographics clearly was a major factor, but a diminished quality of education only serves to accelerate demographic change in terms of quality of students.
When my kids were in elementary school, the district adopted the state’s version of Common Core (but not Common Core), with all students in elementary and for many courses in junior high stuck with the same course material and pace of study. I scheduled a meeting with the school superintendent and her chief education program sidekick to voice my concerns over such a “teaching to the middle” policy, which is a major disservice to students on the 2 other ends of the spectrum. When I started to talk about the benefits of tracking and my experience with it, I got a roll of the eyes because I was clearly a Neanderthal and did not have the “educator’s” benefit of their fancy Ph.D.'s. If I did not believe in the value of sending my kids to public school where they could interact and socialize across socio-economic spectrums, I would have sent them to private schools then and there.
Of course all of this is anecdotal, but I think many of us who were educated during a time when it was ok to recognize that kids are not all equal in their pace of development and absolute academic abilities can relate to the superior primary and secondary educational experience then.
@gallentjill I couldn’t agree more with what you wrote:
“My impression is that there is a wide range of innate ability which allows a hard working kid to achieve nearly anything. In other words, most people are not geniuses but are smart enough to achieve in school and in most fields of employment with the right work ethic and support.”
I have said the exact same thing before…a strong work ethic with “enough” intelligence is plenty to achieve success…yes there might be some gifted people that are the only ones that can handle certain professions…neurosurgeons, astrophysicists, whatever…but at the end of the day, if you are an overall smart person with a strong work ethic (which it sounds like your daughters are) there is no one saying they cannot someday become CEO’s, published professors and PhD’s, Senators, Secretary of State, or whatever. Success is a function of so many different variables.
Interesting excerpts form the NYT on the current case against Harvard. I’ll link the full article, but you may hit a pay wall:
@SAY I guess I’m more of an optimist than you. “It takes a village”…I think to a certain extent. we owe it to our youth to do what we can as a society to maximize educational opportunities for everyone. It doesn’t have to be a “zero sum”. “We” is the government. (And for the record, I am capitalist…)
There has been an increase in high school graduation rates across all races/subgroups:
Here’s a link:
https://www.yahoo.com/news/u-high-school-graduation-rate-141810426.html
And I believe it went up again the following year as well. Not sure if we have numbers for last year (2016-17) yet.
I would like to take this as a sign that some of our government’s efforts have paid off.
Regardless, I still do not agree that families should be on their own with this. I’m not sure that’s who we are as a country.
With respect collegemom anyone with kids knows they are their own. My older two kids went to a fancy private school and my younger kids to a large public HS. My kids all went to tops schools with three of them at HPYS. The private,school had large resources and knew my kids well and they were of virtually no help getting my kids into college. I had a front row seat to elite admissions forever a decade and in every case it was the family or the child’s own special skill that led to admission. For poor kids it’s being first generation and or being URM that gets them in far more than anything the government could ever do. The government can’t do anything right. Take the security line at the airports. The government has made this a top priority and spend billions of dollar yet when they do an internal check 95% of the weapons and explosives get through the security check. Government by nature is incompetent because no one ever can be fired. I’m not sure what you do but in most private businesses that would be unthinkable. The only way to have an effective team is to be able,to remove the poor performers. Take any organization where no one can be fired and it will be poorly run. You do realize that the military quickly removes the poor performers just for that reason.
Nothing could be clearer. Somehow the poor Asian families figure it out but Harvard and the politicians claim it’s unfair because some people do better than others. It’s funny however because these same people never object to the NBA, NFL, and major college sports being hugely disproportionately filled by African Americans.
@collegemomjam I believe the reason the graduation rates have gone up in several states has partially to do with changing what counts as a failing grade. In NC below 70 was considered failing years ago but at some stage this was changed to being below 60. It is my understanding that this resulted in a higher graduation rate…
@yearstogo hints at a very common phenomenon. Politicians adjust the difficulty and/or passing thresholds of high stakes tests in order to generate the illusion that student ability is improving and racial achievement gaps are narrowing. This is then sold to a public that is largely innumerate, but which likes to hear good news. No one really cares about the actual kids, sadly, who are just pawns in the game.
Here is a good article from one of my faves, La Griffe, that speaks specifically about North Carolina, and how the apparent improvements are simply artifacts of the data. He also examines Texas data also widely touted, making a convincing case that the kids did not become smarter. In both states the tests were simply made dumber, by moving the passing threshold down.
(Stick with it through the math, which really isn’t too tough to understand conceptually but might look daunting to people who aren’t used to the symbols. BTW, many people think La Griffe was the late Dan Seligman, the longtime journalist who himself was a 1940s graduate of the NYC specialized schools we’ve been talking about .)
I actually like the idea for NYC of admitting the 7% top performers for each middle school separately. It would result in a self desegregation of the schools as families with higher performing kids will try to game the system and move back out into less competitive middle schools. In the end the racial composition of the magnet schools might not even change that much, but the benefit will be a less unbalanced student population in the lower schools.
Another measure would be to put more money into offering advanced classes at the regular high schools so that a talented student does not even need to go to Stuyvesant in order to receive a quality education. Alternatively one could allow qualified students of regular high schools to attend individual advanced classes at neighboring magnet schools in case the home school does not offer it.
Similarly, instead of focusing on Harvard and other elite schools a better allocation of resources would be a goal to raise quality and standards at public colleges so that admission to a public honor program comes with the same kind of prestige and financial aid that a well funded private would present.
nypapa the state and federal government have spent trillions of dollars on various programs and for the past 40 years not much has changed. Motivated parents will always be able to move faster than anything government can do. Some families are motivated and some families don’t care much. Some students are more motivated and smarter than other students. So what? Why are we even worried about this since there will always be differences between people.
@SAY I don’t disagree with a lot of what you are saying. I want to remind you I was disagreeing with you on the fact (and still am) that this should entirely be up to the families and that the government has ZERO role. That’s where we disagree, on the “ZERO” part.
I am first gen myself (white). But my (loving and supportive, but uneducated) parents moved to a town where people went to college. My sister and I were top students naturally from when we were small but also because we had good habits. Always did our homework and handed everything in on time. My parents actually were surprised and a little against my sister (who was older than me) when she came home from school one day in 10th grade and told my parents she wanted to go to college. She had a conversation with her SS teacher who asked her where she wanted to go to college and my sister said she wasn’t going she wanted to be a secretary (like most of her female cousins). The teacher sat her down and said, “You’re going to college!!!”. My parents didn’t stand in our way but we had zero help from them in the admissions or preparatory process. But they paid for college (for my sister they paid for her masters also…I also have a masters (MBA from a top 20 program for the record…got into Columbia MBA but chose NYU for a more flexible schedule) but my company paid for most of it and and the rest I paid for myself.
So in our personal case, our performance and then desire to even go to college came from within, but hadn’t we lived in the nice upper middle class town we lived in and had we stayed in the more urban and less educated town my cousins all lived in (and many still do), we may not have even gone. We are white and had no help from AA. And back then no one cared about first gen AT ALL. And I was personally a victim of AA (but that’s a different story).
So fast forward to when it was turn for me to have my kids. I live in a very nice town also. My kids are not only surrounded by other college-bound students, but like me and my sister were, they are very driven and hardworking, and also have great grades. My oldest was 7th in her class and my second was Valedictorian. Both are in great colleges in great programs and will have great opportunities when they graduate. I have friends that I can tell are “jealous” of how well positioned my kids are and my reaction is “too bad…they worked REALLY hard to get where they are now”. And it’s true. They both often made social sacrifices to do their homework or study for ACT/SAT. My oldest during gymnastics season often didnt even START hw until 930 because she had to first go to hs practice, then her club practice EVERY DAY. No one handed her anything. So she deserved to be 7th in her class, to have a strong ACT score, to get NJSIAA Scholar Athlete, to be an All County gymnast four years in a row, to get National Honor Society (very hard to get at their school)…she deserved to put all of this on her application which is why she is in a good college, why as we speak she is living in NYC experiencing a great internship at a great company as a rising senior. I hope my other daughter (who turned down Dartmouth, for what it’s worth) will have similar opportunities, but she is on the same track (she is working even harder at a slightly better school). My son is also a hard worker and will likely graduate around with daughter number 1 did. No one handed them anything. But my husband and I instilled in them from when they were young that this is what gets you somewhere in life…this very thing. Working hard in school and doing well. Getting into a good college and then working even harder. So we are on the same page as you with this @SAY.
I have never, ever had my kids fall back on the government, so if that’s what you are implying or thinking (which I’m not saying you are, but I’m not sure) I have done the complete opposite. I think we have raised our children similarly.
But I have instilled in my children from what I have observed from my own upbringing that they still have, as did I, a LOT more opportunities than many other children. A big part of it is just having had the opportunity to live in the towns we live in and to be surrounding by other upwardly mobile children with good family support systems.
Would my sister and I, or my children, or your children be in the same place they are in now if they grew up in the inner city or in a poor rural community??? Maybe your brilliant children (and I mean that sincerely if they are at HYPS) would still be in those schools? Are you saying the elite private schools you sent them too didn’t help at all position them for where they are today? That 30-40K per year you paid to send them there didn’t help?? And your kids that went to public school (like my kids and I), I bet it was a good one. Yes the high schools didn’t help us much at all with college admissions (everyone knows that the guidance counselors at most public high schools are spread too thin and obviously, don’t know much about college admissions…I’m sure it’s different at your kids private elite high school). But we still had a lot of opportunities that we should be grateful for. We didn’t ask to be born into the families we were born in.
I am the furthest thing on the planet from a communist and I am the firmest believe of everyone I know that there is no luck in life…that we make opportunities for ourselves by working hard. My children know this and are living their lives that way. They expect noting from anyone. We and they expect no help from the government. Nor do we need it.
But to your original point that got this whole conversation started, that doesn’t mean the government has ZERO role in all of this…but AA is something the government more or less supports , so that is something and that does indeed help some people that need it (helps some of the wrong people too…but that’s another debate…but we all know AA has its flaws). Where we differ is maybe you think that’s where it should end. I personally do not. I think there is more we could be doing as a society to help educate the children born into communities where the schools completely suck and there are no role models. Schools that you and I would NEVER in a million years send our kids to.Yes, some kids will rise out of these communities and do just fine…but to turn a blind eye to it as a society is not the solution. If we can help educate our country better and our poorer communities better, we will ALL WIN. And for the record, I think there is as much to be done in the poor white communities than the black and hispanic and more “ethnic” ones. Perhaps if our children were better educated, there would be less divisions in society. Children would be more empathetic and understand that just because people are different than you, it doesn’t mean you can’t like them or that they are bad people or worthy of less than you. Imagine how far that could get us?? It’s frightening how divided this country still is in the year 2018.
An expression I love is “In order to be able to pull yourself up from your bootstraps, you have to have boots”.
“In order to be able to pull yourself up from your bootstraps, you have to have boots”.
@collegemomjam Sadly, that is the best quote ever.
@Meddy my favorite.
The quote sounds nice, but it’s just rhetoric and no substance.
Poor students receive so much help from the government it’s not even funny. Trillions and decades have been wasted trying to close the achievement gap and there’s been no progress at all.
And in case you call me an entitled trust fund kid, I was actually born to a lower-income household in NYC (<$25,000 annual income).
I still aced everything and got a 2240 on the SAT with no prep and got a full-ride at a top 15 university (Non-Ivy, since I wasn’t the ‘right’ race).
I saved up $2000 working odd summer jobs and invested them into bitcoin in 2011. I now have over $15 mill in cryptos, $1.5 mill in 401k, $300k in stocks and bonds, $250k in bank account and I just turned 30. I’m also a high-ranking executive of a F500 company and make $300k/year.
As much as do-gooders like you hate to admit it, your financial outcome is pre-determined at birth. Those with higher IQs, like me, will succeed no matter how little effort they put into life. This is the cold-hard truth.
Studying you of course are correct though maybe a bit harsh. The USA is fantastically generous and rather than lacking bootstraps the bigger problem is the entitlement of many of these students. No one on this thread has yet adequately explained why the US taxpayer is spending billions trying to raise the educational attainment of nearly illiterate third world young people that have flooded into the country. Why are they given preference in college admission? America has done nothing but been amazingly generous to them. There simply is no justification and the Harvard Asian Law Suit might just end this completely unjustified policy. The bottom line is that some groups of people are simply smarter than others just like some groups run faster or jump higher. No government program can ever change thousands of years of natural selection.
LOL, I like your style. But you certainly do overstate the case, and leave out a few things.
Intelligence is very important. In fact, it is the single biggest predictor of success in just about any field or endeavor requiring cognitive ability, and that’s most of them. But of course it’s not the whole thing, and no one should think it is. All sorts of other behavioral characteristics come into the mix. And then there’s sometimes just luck. While luck is of course a bit random, it’s becoming more and more clear that these other behavioral characteristics are also largely pre-determined. Now that’s the real cold-hard truth.
In the face of this we all should take a step back and realize that we are less in the driver’s seat than we would like to imagine. A little humility from those at the top of the “lucky sperm” club should also coexist with some sincere gratitude from the bottom of the distribution to the society carries that carries them through life. In most periods of history, and in most societies, the least productive - whether due to low intelligence or poor behavioral characteristics or just bad luck - do not survive very long, with the result that they leave fewer offspring. Although few think of it this way, modern society has reversed this phenomenon in much of the world through various mechanisms, with observed fertility rates generally inversely proportional to productive potential, both within societies as well as across them. It’s an evolutionary turnaround, and the future results are far from clear. Just some food for thought this morning!
BTW, @StudyingIsBad, I had an experience remarkably similar to yours, including growing up poor in NYC, but I sure wish I had thrown some coin into crypto back then! Chapeau!
This is related insofar as it is further illustration of the decades of political machinations (ever increasing) to engineer outcomes.
@SAY you say the following:
" The bottom line is that some groups of people are simply smarter than others just like some groups run faster or jump higher. No government program can ever change thousands of years of natural selection."
So why have public schools? Social Security? Medicare? Heck, why have public roads and highways??? Why have FEMA? Why have government at all???
And @StudyingIsBad, if you are even a real person because your post is so unbelievable you might be just having fin on this thread, if your financial success is so predetermined, why go to college or even school at all???
None of us “do gooders” are saying that the government should do everything for everyone and completely level the playing field. NOT AT ALL. YOU PEOPLE NEED TO STOP SAYING THAT!!! But you are SELECTIVELY applying Darwinism to support your bias. There are probably numerous examples from your own lives that would make you look quite hypocritical right now.
@SatchelSF your quote:
" …with observed fertility rates generally inversely proportional to productive potential"…just wondering, the immigrants that some people are claiming are unnecessarily getting tax payers dollars to help them afford college or whatever…doesn’t our country’s decreasing fertility rate put our economy at risk? I think there are some people that would argue that tax payers dollars helping to fund immigrant education might be an investment, not a waste of money. There are lots of different ways to look at it, and I’m sure many studies to support both sides of the argument.
And why “lucky sperm”, why not “lucky egg”? That says a lot right there…
Touche! I’ll start saying that from now on. It takes two to have a baby, that’s for sure.