I have written before (here) about the concern over a lack of “diversity” at Thomas Jefferson High School for Science and Technology, the highly selective magnet high school in Fairfax County, Virginia. Now they’re at it again.
The concern, tiresomely predictable, is that applicants to the very selective school are not admitted at the same rate from every racial and ethnic group, which results, of course, in the racial and ethnic make-up of the student body being “unrepresentative.”
The limited diversity at Jefferson is “clearly not representative of the bright students in the African-American and Latino communities,” Principal Elizabeth Lodal said.
Most TJ students come from gifted and talented centers in the county’s middle schools. But guess what?
But county-wide, said Langston Hughes Middle School Principal Deborah Jackson, it has been noted that the student populations of GT centers are not as diverse as the school system as a whole.
Since it is taken as an article of faith (or of politics) that any deviation from proportional representation of all racial and ethnic groups in the gifted programs means the selection process is deficient and unfair, here’s something else that will come as a shock: a “blue ribbon commission,” including such heavyweights as the deans of admissions at UVa and Yale, was created to study the problem.
And here’s yet another surprise:
The “blue ribbon” commission charged with studying the school’s admissions procedures concluded that Jefferson’s current admissions process is not only disenfranchising some minority students, but may also be excluding students with more ability and a passion for science and technology than some that are admitted.
The worthies found that TJ has been relying too much on such unreliable criteria as grades and test scores.
Jefferson needs to reduce its reliance on admissions test scores, the commission said, and broaden the application process to consider data like student essays and teacher recommendations for all applicants, not just semifinalists.
“All of us recognize that the best students at the school may not be the high testers,” [Uva dean of admissions] Blackburn said.
Margit Dahl, a commission member and admissions director of Yale University, added that some qualities the school wants are not reflected in test scores.
“Not just the kids that get A’s,” Dahl said. “The kids who are really curious … and get that mental spark, I think you want at TJ.”
Since high grades and test scores seem to have such little correlation with what the “blue ribbon commission” regards as being a really good student, perhaps the problem is not with the selection criteria at TJ but with the grading criteria used throughout the county … and the world. Even, I daresay, at UVa and Yale.
Be careful about discussing grades at Yale – a subject the open, diverse, transparent, and free academic community there doesn’t believe you need to know about.
http://yaledailynews.com/article.asp?AID=25065
The grade results at “elite” universities more and more resemble the medal handout at a special olympics.
A grades and “honors” routinely run over 50%, at Princeton 80% of the grades are B or better.
Don’t worry, though- the schools in China aren’t interested in anything but success. We can depend on them to share their scientific, medical, and military advances with us.
One way or another…
A neighbor of mine has kids in a magnet high school in the Louisville, KY system. The school is located in an inner city neigborhood, and is about 80% black.
But the interesting thing about the school is that it is really 2 schools in 1. There’s a school for the black kids that offers lots of remedial and standard workload classes. There’s also a school for the white kids that offers lots of advanced placement classes, especially in Math and Science.
I was shocked at the degree of separation. One of the kids commented to me “Oh yeah, there were some black kids in my PE class a couple of years ago.” It seems the PE is the extent of integrated classes.
It just seemed surprising to me that the advanced math and science classes were lily white in a school that’s 80% black, probably a large dose of naivety on my part. Someway I don’t think this was what was intended with Brown vs BofE.
I used to go to a school like Thomas Jefferson, except it drew from the entire state of North Carolina (check out: http://www.ncssm.edu). To make it fair in terms of home school resources, as they could have filled the school with people from Raleigh, Chapel Hill, and Charlotte and none from any rural areas, there were quotas by Congressional district, so one was competing against other people from similar areas.
In particular, as I came from one of the “rich” areas, one had to show one had been underserved by one’s home school when it came to education. Lots of “more qualified” students from our local magnet school, kids who would take calculus in 11th grade, were waitlisted or not admitted while kids from Turkey Neck with only an Algebra II education would get in. (The school covers 11th and 12th grades, and is a free boarding school.) We all took the same admissions tests and placement tests, and those with weaker backgrounds were placed in the appropriate-level classes. Part of our admissions process was taking an IQ test. Unlike the other tests, we were never given the results of these. Hmmm, I wonder if I can get them from the school now. It worked out fine for us, but then we were drawing from a population across an entire state, as opposed to a single county.
I see nothing wrong with using differential standards for admission, as long as the magnet school is prepared to give a wider variety of classes (level-wise). But you’ve got to know what you’re doing and why. Truthfully, it’s not enough that the students love math and science, but also need to show that they’ve worked very hard in these at their home schools.
We had to submit teacher recommendations and essays as part of the initial application. Semifinalists had to take additional placement tests, and were privately interviewed by teachers (this was the interesting bit, because part of this the teacher asked if you really wanted to go there. They said that if you didn’t, you’d be rejected – and they never told the reason of rejections in their letters. Some kids were forced to apply by their parents, who didn’t want to go – it’s a really important thing to gauge for a boarding school. I think they realized this after the first couple years, and added that to the interview.)
Here at Princeton it’s a tradition that the graduating seniors in each department make t-shirts. This year the sociology seniors had a chalk outline and the caption “first victims of the grade inflation proposal.”
My daughter (and original co-blogger) Jessie just graduated from Bryn Mawr, which quaintly if appealingly suffers, if that’s the word, from grade DEFLATION. They grade hard there. The most popular T-shirt on campus features an actionable rip-off of the BMW logo on the front, modified only by an asterisk which refers to the saying on the back: “Bryn Mawr Woman: The Ultimate Striving Machine.”
I’m a graduate of the Jefferson Co. school system (L’ville, KY) and its three tiered tracking program (regular, honors, and advanced). I’ve also taught mathematics at a large public high school in Mississppi which did not employ tracking.
Without going on a rant (because I haven’t enough room nor time) I will simply say this:
Public schools need tracking. Mathematics classes simply cannot proceed at a proper pace if the students aren’t similarly qualified/talented/motivated. In other words, I wish that *more* schools grouped students according to their talents and needs. The fact that these groupings fall along racial lines in Jefferson Co. is a symptom–not a cause. Moreover, IMO, it’s a symptom of parental involvement and a general apathy towards their child’s education rather than racism on the part of the school system.
It is almost certainly not just a matter of parental apathy. Group average differences in IQ are likely just as much, if not more of a factor in why very few black students qualify.
Oh oh. Mac has just spoken the unspeakable.
Well, it’s the same old story with this debate. Liberals blame black underrepresentation in elite programs on a racist system. Conservatives point to black laziness. If somebody points out the uncomfortable reality of group average IQ differences, they are normally attacked by both sides. The fact is that very few African Americans are mentally gifted. Only about 2% of the high IQ population is black. So it isn’t realistic to expect that more than 2% of most gifted student programs will be black
Fairfax is also a very wealthy county. Didn’t they ever wonder if white and asian students apply in such high numbers and are admitted in such high rates because they’re the majority of the county?
Mac, I wouldn’t discount too much the effect of parental apathy on a child’s IQ.
My experience as a father is that we’re born with an intelligence somewhere between those of a tennis shoe and a toaster oven. Completely neglecting children during parts of their early development seems to consign them to a lifetime of borderline retardation, as unfortunately demonstrated on a large scale by the orphanages of communist Romania, so it isn’t a stretch to say that that below-average parenting would tend to lead to children later having below-average IQ’s. John recently linked to a study which as I recall highlighted a strong connection between early exposure to language/vocabulary and subsequent intelligence.
One of the other nasty things that no one will say is much of the cause of the statistically lower IQ averages for blacks in America.
See, most of the white population had ancestors to came here voluntarily. Yes, many were poor, and there were some white indentured servants, mostly Irish. But in truth, and in spite of material poverty, those white Europeans who immigrated to American did so because they were either adventurous, ambitious individuals who saw opportunity (economic or religious) and weren’t afraid to take it, or else who were misfits in their previous society, often by being too interested in displacing the status quo.
Now blacks, on the other hand, were brought here involuntarily. Those captured and sold as slaves were either the losers in local wars and were then sold to white slavers by the winners, or were unlucky enough to be captured directly by white or black slavers. (Perhaps ‘luck’ wasn’t the only factor; maybe the smarter, quicker ones got away.)
Once here, another ugly fact that no one wants to talk about is that blacks were not just enslaved, but were bred like animals, and for specific traits. Physical strength, placid temperament, and bidability were highly desired qualities. Those who resisted slavery, who showed too high intelligence or independence of thought or action were often killed, or at least not permitted to breed. It sounds ugly, and it was ugly. But it is a fact of life in those times, and it may have consequences for the descendants of those slaves today, both in intelligence and initiative.
American blacks are not necessarily a good statistical representation of blacks worldwide, and may not compare favorably to whites STATISTICALLY in areas of intelligence solely because the population has been artificially skewed by the reprehensible practices of the past.
Should we then consider blacks to be somehow ‘inferior’? Certainly not. However, we should NOT consider blacks to be the statistical equivalents of whites in all things. The populations’ histories preclude this. Forcing numerical equivalency on populations artifically is discrimination, pure and simple. Better to forget aggregating ability based on pigmentation levels. The real discrimination comes (and should come) based on ability and merit.
It may make intuitive sense to assume that group differences have a genetic component, especially if one can come up with a clever tale about “breeding,” but it’s amazing just how much effect culture, upbringing, and education can have on intelligence. For instance, the Flynn effect shows that among whites in the United States and Western Europe, IQ has gone up about a standard deviation (about the same amount as the intra-generation black-white gap) per generation throughout the 20th century, despite the lack of any plausible mechanism for strong genetic selective pressure. Likewise, our culture and education systems have changed somewhat, but not that much, which shows you how relatively small differences in culture/education and no differences in genes can still yield big observed IQ diferences. Anyway, the point is there are more reasons than just good taste and morality to avoid pulling out the calipers and measuring skull sizes.
Magnet schools provide private-school educations at taxpayer expense. They should be shut down.
More of them should be built.
Clearly Mac is not PC.
To Gabriel Rossman: Yes, it actually does make intuitive sense that group differences have a genetic component–clever tales or no.
You say: “…it’s amazing just how much effect culture, upbringing, and education can have on intelligence.”
Perhaps so, but if these variables impact intelligence, would they not also impact performance in other areas as well? I’m speaking of athletics, and just for argument’s sake I’ll highlight the men’s 100-meter dash. Though I could just as easily discuss this from the perspective of any athletic event which features meaningful black competition.
In a world free of “oppression” and “cultural bias” in the testing mechanism, one holding an orthodox view of “diversity” might believe that elite performance would parallel the racial stratification of the competing pool. But it does not.
In fact, since 1984 (as far back as I cared to research) ALL eight men in the 100-meter finals of EACH of the last five Olympiads have been black. That’s 40 out of 40 for those concerned about racial representation. Oddly enough, Jesse and Al have issued no comment.
But here’s my question to you: How would you imagine that culture, upbringing, or education may have contributed to this statistical anomaly? And if not those factors, then what? That is unless you think these radical group differences might have a genetic component–which surely they can’t.
Nels said:
“it isn’t a stretch to say that that below-average parenting would tend to lead to children later having below-average IQ’s”
No, not as all. I don’t think there is any doubt of the fact that early childhood environment has an effect on IQ. But I am very skeptical of claims that poor parenting, and other environmental causes, can account for the entire group-average-IQ-gap between blacks and whites. And according to a survey I saw, most professionals in the field of human intelligence are skeptical as well.
Most African Americans are not “ghetto”. There are millions of black children growing up in perfectly normal middle and upper class homes, with storybooks, music, and all the other stimulations any white child gets. Yet, very, very few score as gifted on IQ tests, or get 1400+ on SATs. There is no environmental explaination for this that I am aware of.
As for Claire’s theory that slavery has lowered black IQs in America. There may be something to it, but I wonder how she would account for the fact that blacks in Africa score much lower on intelligence tests than do African Americans. Not to mention the fact that nearly all African nations are dysfuntional hell holes, with only the slimmest grasp on civilization. American blacks are better educated, wealthier, and score higher on IQ tests than blacks in any African or Carribean nation. They are the most successful large population of blacks in the world. Slavery was a horrible thing, but on the whole, the ancestors of African slaves have benefited.
Gabriel said:
“Anyway, the point is there are more reasons than just good taste and morality to avoid pulling out the calipers and measuring skull sizes.”
Actually, I can’t think of a single good reason NOT to pull out the calipers and measure skull sizes if there is any chance that this can lead to better, more complete scientific understanding of the topic. The same sorts of arguments made against Rushton were also made against Galileo.
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