To Increase Equity, School Districts Eliminate Honors Classes

[Matriarchy Refugee]

It's not just you. Everyone here is invested in keeping the Pre K - to PhD going, without realizing the end product is just a better fit for the white economy - most of them are probably products of honors and ap classes and hold degrees and good jobs.

Watch them have further opinions when you post up HS prom pictures, and all the boys are black, and all the girls are white.

Whole place is not serious about these topics.

If they were serious, the discourse would change.

But its the Locker Room, it's the Coli, it's the internet.

It's all a distraction in the first place.

Tell us, o' wise one, what should we be talking about then?

 

[Professor Emeritus]

The lottery process is mandated by law, you understand this right?

This "navigation" process you're talking about is not too much different than filling out a public school application and the existence of charters is pretty well known by these communities, you understand this right?

You do understand that unions and politicians are prohibiting charter schools from gaining real estate to expand their operations and accept more children. There are literally prohibitions when buildings are sold for them to not be converted into schools, you understand this right?

You've repeated all that about 6 times without comprehending that that is completely fukking irrelevant to whether the data is comparable or not.

If these schools are so well known, and so incredibly successful, and anyone in the state of New York can apply, then why do they only get 17,000 applications a year across the entire 50-school network? There are over a million kids enrolled in public schools in New York City alone, nearly 100,000 per grade level, and only 17,000 of those kids are applying to Success Academy....but you want to believe somehow that the hundreds of thousands of kids who aren't applying to Success Academy are just as motivated and have just as much home support as the 17,000 who are?

 

[ISO]

You've repeated all that about 6 times without comprehending that that is completely fukking irrelevant to whether the data is comparable or not.

If these schools are so well known, and so incredibly successful, and anyone in the state of New York can apply, then why do they only get 17,000 applications a year across the entire 50-school network? There are over a million kids enrolled in public schools in New York City alone, nearly 100,000 per grade level, and only 17,000 of those kids are applying to Success Academy....but you want to believe somehow that the hundreds of thousands of kids who aren't applying to Success Academy are just as motivated and have just as much home support as the 17,000 thow are?

It is relevant to the conversation at large because my argument was was that teachers union, politicians, and the bureaucracy are the issue and would impede any progress whether it be charter schools, phonics, or applying Finnish models to American public schooling.

Success is just one of the charter school networks, 17,000 is not a bad number considering the circumstances, obviously public schools are more popular with a longer legacy, and its funny you pulled that from an article without even reading the context.

Charter school leader Success Academy again called for a major sector expansion Thursday, noting that they got more than 17,000 applicants for just 3,017 seats for next year.

“Every year, we’re heartbroken that we can’t serve more families — parents who want to send their child to a great school, but have so few options,” said Success Academy founder and CEO Eva Moskowitz. “And we’re stunned that City Hall continues to let the pleas of waitlisted parents fall on deaf ears.”

Success Academy said that this will mark the fourth consecutive year that they amassed a waiting listing topping 10,000 families.

“The extraordinary wait list underscores the urgency with which parents across NYC are attempting to flee hundreds of failing schools,” SA said in a statement.

Applications from students zoned to the city’s worst performing schools shot up by 30 percent, the network said.
Success officials noted that they will christen two new schools this year – down from the addition of five new campuses last year.

“The mayor has attempted to obstruct charter school growth by denying charter school students access to public space, even though there are currently 144,000 empty seats available in NYC public school buildings,” SA officials said.

Department of Education officials have rebuked those vacancy totals, arguing that space allocation is in constant flux.

A total of 5,600 Bronx families vied for a spot at the high performing network – a total of fifteen per available seat, SA said.

This year’s applicant pool also included 615 students zoned to one of the city’s controversial Renewal schools, struggling campuses being infused with funds with dubious results.

Success Academy now has a total of 41 schools across all boroughs except Staten Island and enrolls roughly 14,000 kids. 95 percent of them are minorities and 77 percent are considered low income.

De Blasio (a teacher's union backed puppet) has sought to undercut often strong charter school test scores, arguing that they’re inordinately fixated on test prep. He has also stated that charters are able to cull their student bodies to retain promising students whereas public schools are tasked with educating all comers.

Charter backers have disputed those claims and point to swelling applications as proof of basic demand for their services.

I'm just going to ask you the question what makes these kids different? How exactly are they more motivated than other students and have more home support? Is a parent filling out a meager application of basic questions enough for you to state that this kindergartener is automatically more supported and motivated to learn than the parent who enrolled their Kindergartener in public school?

 

[Professor Emeritus]

It is relevant to the conversation at large because my argument was at large was that teachers union, politicians, and the bureaucracy are the issue and would impede any progress whether it be charter schools, phonics, or applying Finnish models to American public schooling.

There are numerous things impeding progress, of which the people you name are a part of it.

But I'd entirely disagree that "Success Academy" is progress. From the things I read it looks regressive as fukk. Obsessing with test results, teaching to the test, wasting instructional time with test tricks rather than learning objectives, draconian punishments for minor infractions (how the fukk do you suspend 22% of your student body in a single year, when you already have a self-selected student body that wanted to be there in the first place?), rewards for test scores, public shaming of low test scores, all of this shyt has been shown to be counterproductive to long-term motivation and actual skill development. They're using the sort of psychological techniques that are only successful for short-term, low-cognitive fact retention, and trying to apply them to the entire education. Which likely explains why their students do so well in the immediate test but so much worse when they apply for high schools later, a factor you haven't explained. I'd bet anything that, like that other poster said, their post-schooling college experience data is even more lacking because they've set the kids up so poorly.

Success is just one of the charter school networks, 17,000 is not a bad number considering the circumstances, and its funny you pulled that from an article without even reading the context.

You appear to continue to miss the point. It's not about whether it's a "bad number" or a "good number". It's about the fact that only a tiny % of the NYC student body is applying, so of course those kids are not going to be representative. You're portraying Success Academy as this amazing school that every parent would want their student to be a part of, you're talking about it like it's life change, but when EVERY child below 4th grade in NYC Public Schools is eligible to apply for the lottery (same goes for students in the rest of the state), only a small fraction do. How is that not going to give you a distorted applicant pool?

I'm just going to ask you the question what makes these kids different? How exactly are they more motivated than other students and have more home support. Is a parent filling out a meager application of basic questions enough for you to state that this kindergartener is automatically more supported and motivated to learn than the parent who enrolled their child in public school?

Yes, the parent even knowing about the school, caring about getting their kid enrolled, knowing how to fill out the application, doing it in a timely manner, and then following up afterwards to actually get their student enrolled if selected, are all barriers to entry that will weed out certain families.

It doesn't have to weed out 90% of families. Even if you only weeded out the least successful 30%, that would create a massive upward effect on your test averages. And then you have them pushing out the low scorers even after they enroll to further the gains.

 

[Silky Johnson]

It is relevant to the conversation at large because my argument was was that teachers union, politicians, and the bureaucracy are the issue and would impede any progress whether it be charter schools, phonics, or applying Finnish models to American public schooling.

Knock it off. We had to organize and join the UFT in my network because it's actually the non-educators, donors and board members who were impeding progress, stealing wages and abusing staff. The union is the only thing keeping the shytshow somewhat functional. There are only a few other networks that are fully unionized but SA isn't one and that's why they get away with the bullshyt that they do.

Success is just one of the charter school networks, 17,000 is not a bad number considering the circumstances, obviously public schools are more popular with a longer legacy, and its funny you pulled that from an article without even reading the context.


I'm just going to ask you the question what makes these kids different? How exactly are they more motivated than other students and have more home support? Is a parent filling out a meager application of basic questions enough for you to state that this kindergartener is automatically more supported and motivated to learn than the parent who enrolled their Kindergartener in public school?

The so-called lottery is a nonsense process without any oversight or transparency and can be easily manipulated at the principal/network's discretion due to sibling weighting and other factors.

 

[Silky Johnson]

The grading scale from public school to public school can differ just as it does in charter schools.

Of course there are kids at public schools who can outperform kids in charter schools. There are public schools that produce superior results than charter schools. It really all depends.

One of the ways networks game the system is by using non-standard grading and academic calendars. They use Quarters and Trimesters to fluff up the credit hours on transcripts.

 

[WIA20XX]

Tell us, o' wise one, what should we be talking about then?

Thank you for putting some respect on my name. Bout damn time. I expect this tone from you in particular from here on out.

Quite simply, we have to rethink what type of Black Students do we want.

That's a discussion we need to have.

The current system creates a very small number of black students that can only hope and pray to get into and then rise in corporate America.

I think that's a major mistake. Considering my time in corporate America, managed by idiots and often next to Black Brilliance - me and my degrees along with my black compatriots should not be at the mercy of a CEO's frat brother at Bain that suggests a pivot. Jumping from one Fortune 500 to another is what these people seek - but it's not the way. And I make good coin.

For me, I want a school system that creates Black Business Founders - that can

1. Found companies
2. Keep Control of companies
3. Employ Black people at SCALE with good wages so those Black families can buy homes, cars, pay taxes and put their kids in good school systems and perpetuate Black wealth.

With that goal in mind, I look to our communities best business successes.

David Stewart (Tech) and Robert M. Smith (Finance) - billionaires in non-entertainment businesses.

• Stewart's company has 8,000 employees.
• Robert F. Smith's company has ~500 employees.

So 2 black billionaires and 8,500 employees between them.
Assume the employees are all Black (believe me Vista Equity is not all Black)

8,500 out of ~45,000,000 (13-14% of the US population) Black People.
If we call that 8,500 families, that's 34,000 - husbands, wives and 2 kids.

Flatbush BK is 105,000 people. So not even a 3rd of Black Families in Flatbush. Look up your own hood and see what those numbers look like.

~45M is our number.

That's the scale that I am talking about. The educational system that serves Black people has to be aware of capitalism.

With capitalism in mind, the system we have purposefully constrains the numbers, by putting everyone through this battle royale.
The powers that be do not want people to be taught to succeed. The school system - even the good ones - even the ones that teach critical thinking - want to create good employees, good voters, and good consumers.

It does not want to create employers, candidates/politicians, and producers. And this not just at the academic level, but also at the socialization level. It's in school that you learn to line up, raise your hand, not disrupt the teacher and other authority figures.

*speaking of the hidden curriculum - Malcolm Gladwell describes research in Outliers, where upper class families teach their children to ask their own questions when they get medical care. Middle and Working Class families do not. - That's a whole other universe and different topic.

Back to this system, what happens to the "winners"?

When you do all the math right, get all the recommendations, do the right type of volunteering, perfect scores. - What happens to Asians?

Asians and Indians are 50.1% of Silicon Valley tech bros.

But....

Statistics show that despite 33% of all software engineers in the Silicon Valley being people of Asian descent, they make up only 6% of board members and 10% of corporate officers of the Bay Area's 25 largest companies.

They make up the bulk of the smart workforce, but have very little say in funding, management, and ownership compared to their numbers. You can point to 2 Indian CEOs (Microsoft and Google), but out of how many Tech Companies?

That same 6% figure shows up with startup founders, venture capital bros, angel investing bros, etc.
According to this creaming system - these Asian dudes are the "best of the best" - but "merit" keeps them out of the REAL conversations.

That's their system. That's what Asian Americans want for their children. They are moving heaven and earth to make this happen. 6%!

The current system does not work. So y'all squabbling about losing AP Biology is some BS. The same thing happens in Medicine and Law.

At least with a lot of Indians, Asians, and Arabs - the first generations runs businesses (often in our community, I might add), and Washout Vijay can run his family's Days Inn franchise.... But even with white kids - they go to school, come back to Plano or Fairfax - and they have all this education and their actual best alternative is starting a Youtube Channel or a Podcast.

So in my mind, if we want to solve Black Education for the mass of Black People - we need to change the focus of what kinds of black people we are trying to produce.

Instead of the Salutatorian talking about going to Howard or Harvard next semester - they're doing something that doesn't depend on being the right kind of Black person to get money from White folks and others. And this is not some kufi-ism, unapologetically black nonsense. I'm talking about jobs and money. We need to create institutions where we hire our own. (we don't even have that in sports and entertainment!!)

For me, if I know that I want Keisha and Tyrese to be able to start a business at 18 - business plan, how to hire employees, customer service, expanding the company, debt, inventory, hr - etc - to not rely on white dollars/defend themselves from racism in the marketplace

So how does that change what we teach in Pre-K? 1st grade? In the 5th grad, as seniors.

That's the perspective I take.

And a lot of y'all are saying that Black people can't start businesses - and get mad when they don't give you enough duck sauce for your wing dinner at the Chinese spot.

"Not everyone has the dog in em", "That's LLC babble" and other such anti-black intelligence nonsense.

We learn helplessness in these very schools that you guys want to teach you black history. Going back to the standing in line, raising hands, and not raising our voices. That's what it takes to do well at school (the submissiveness required to do well in school is why women tend to do better in school, but again, another conversation) -

To do well in these grades, you have to learn that you have zero agency and you have to follow their program.
To get un-pc, that's why the Asians are so good at it, and tend not to understand why despite 5.0 Gpas on a 4.0 scale, they can't get into Cornell.

Imaging using STATE money to create and educational system that creates Black business people?

If we're talking local government money - Either by creating magnet schools or charter schools that dispense with the notion of college prep or vocational prep, and start with the idea of self sufficiency at 18 - things drastically change in terms of staffing, curriculum, expectations, etc. So instead of looking at the themes of The Bluest Eye by Toni Morrison, sophomores are reading Why Should White Guys Have all the Fun by Reginald Lewis.

You could probably get away with this in Jackson MI or Washington DC.

Now if the students that gradate from Daymond Johnson HS want to go to college - they can take their philosophy and African American studies along with Business Classes. If they are math and science folks - they're not angling for entry level jobs at 3M and Intel, but trying to do start ups.

If it's an private money/Umar Situation - and he can actually get tuition fees that could actually fund the school - That goes even further in my eyes.

That's my take.

But respectfully, continue with the mockful tone.