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0 pointsUncleMeat5y ago0 comments

I went to TJ too. Asra loves to make this argument but it is BS. TJ can engage in precisely the same systems that have historically excluded everybody but white people while still ending up dominated by south and east asian students. The article you linked is gruesomely biased.

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rayiner5y ago· 2 in thread

> TJ can engage in precisely the same systems that have historically excluded everybody but white people while still ending up dominated by south and east asian students

You’ve got it exactly backward.

“Historically” “white people” didn’t need to use standardized tests to exclude non-whites. They just did it. Standardized testing was used to distinguish among white people (just as it’s been used in China since 650 CE to distinguish among Chinese people).

In fact, the opposite is true. Standardized testing is pretty much the only thing that has allowed non-white groups to advance in white societies. There’s only a handful of societies where ethnic minorities have come to out-earn the majority population. Almost without exception it’s been the result of standardized testing creating level playing fields for people who lack the social capital that would otherwise be necessary for advancement.

UncleMeatOP5y ago

The proposals that Asra and friends decry as racist are random lotteries. How can a standardized test level the playing field more than that? The proposals further eliminate features that are either largely unrelated to academic capability or are tightly bound to access to wealth or attending the right gifted programs.

rayiner5y ago

Performance in standardized tests is not “tightly bound to wealth.” Most of the Asians at the NYC test-based schools, for example, are lower income: https://www.theatlantic.com/education/archive/2019/03/stuyve.... It’s true most people at TJ are solidly upper middle class, but so are most families in Fairfax County (the median family income of the whole county is $150,000). It’s not like families at TJ are richer than those at McLean, Great Falls, Langley, etc.

Random lotteries don’t level the playing field, they eliminate opportunities for people to distinguish themselves. Societies that eschew objective metrics don’t just have radically flat mobility, they have rigid social frameworks based on non-objective indicators. Imagine the “holistic admissions” factors colleges use to exclude Asians (“leadership personality” or whatever) applied on a wider scale.

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