Thoughts of the day

With the NAACP lawsuit re Stuy in mind, Minding the Campus on anti-Asian discrimination in university admissions. Inside Higher Ed report. Yahoo article. NY Times article. NY Times article. Dartmouth article. The American Conservative Ron Unz article; summary by Steve Hsu; follow-up by Conor Friedersdorf. Chuck Ross. Princeton Professor Thomas Espenshade's homepage. 80-20 National Asian American Educational Foundation.

A Stuyvesant alumni twitter. Twitter is just like a scrolling headline newsfeed.

The Simpsons captured nicely the unrequited love of awkward lonely boys for mortified girls in the highwater season 4 episode 15, I Love Lisa, two episodes before all-time Simpsons great episode Last Exit to Springfield. The sadness of Ralph Wiggum on Valentine's Day, Lisa's sympathy, I Choo Choo Choose You, the shock of love story turned lie in an instant, and the catharsis of reenacting one of history's great romances with Lisa as George and Martha Washington. Interestingly, and true to life in my experience, the rejection by their love objects transform both Ralph Wiggum and the Phantom of the Opera from awkward misfits into electrically dynamic men, infused with the explosive passion of the dark side.

Génération Identitaire, a French youth nationalist movement, has a slick "declaration of war" on youtube. Interestingly, not all the youth in the video are white, which speaks to more of a cultural and perhaps class-based movement than an ethno-nationalist movement. When I visited France, there was a palpable conscientious sense of French cultural identity, so a strong reaction against invasive non-conforming cultures makes sense. I'm reminded of some of the comments to my first NAACP-Stuyvesant post objecting to the "white privilege" concept, which in turn reminds me of a main reason I want the military ethos of "green" injected into civil society. I've observed that the social nature of people is tribal and competitive. We are part of ancient tribes that bind us with powerful personal, familial, ethnic, and religious ties. A multicultural nation can be torn apart in a microcosmic version of Sam Huntington's Clash of Civilizations if the populace does not also share a powerful national tribe. The United States is a multicultural nation. In college, I learned a tribe that crossed boundaries to bind a community was called a "cosmopolitan identity" - think the diverse but unified crew of Star Trek's Enterprise. I was part of a diverse but unified national tribe as a soldier. My national tribe was the United States Army. I would like to bring the American military's conscientiously shared perspective to civilian America; however, I do not want to repeat Mao's disastrous mistake of trying to forcibly unify heterogenous China with comprehensive social militarization. I haven't figured out yet how to spread the unifying "green" ethos in civil society except for the civil-military movement I tried to foment in college. As Americans, we belong to many different tribes, but it is essential that we all also identify ourselves with the same American tribe: United we stand, divided we fall.

An article by former Barnard professor Thaddeus Russell. It's heartening to see Bad Thad is still beating the contrarian anti-progressive/anti-conservative drum for personal freedom, which I admire. He'd be an MGTOW guru if he wanted to be. Russell taught my favorite and most thought-provoking class (American Civilization after the Civil War) I took at Barnard/Columbia, which was also the last class he taught at Barnard. And yes, I realize my advocacy for a civil-military "green" social ethos contradicts my support for Professor Russell's rebellious countercultural individualist ethos. I haven't thought much yet about how to reconcile the two beliefs.

A comment about military service as American racial unifier.

Dress Gray by Lucian Truscott IV (USMA '69) gives good insight into the West Point life from the perspective of one rebellious, narcissistic graduate. The murder mystery and grand conspiracy plot is contrived and loosely drawn, but the far-fetched plot seems to be only a device for the author to write about his love-hate relationship with West Point rather than the main purpose for the book. A 1979 article on Truscott points to his motivation for writing the book: "Lucian had turned his attention to Dress Gray, encouraged by a $20,000 advance from Doubleday, after deciding, for legal reasons, to forsake a book on his West Point class." I actually would have been more interested in his original concept. He could have changed the names. I wonder if it would have helped had I read Dress Gray and Atkinson's The Long Gray Line before I went to West Point. Looking back, I'm surprised that prepsters weren't encouraged to be more curious and read more about West Point.

Oldie but goodie MilVets press release (that no one actually saw outside of Columbia).

Bookmarked for later comment. Upsetting, angering. Liberals vs Islamists. Drone assassinations and military/security financial aid to the government may be necessary, but by themselves will not advance the liberal narrative in the civilizational war of ideas. A reminder that Afghan women and girls face the same dangers from Islamist radicals as was inflicted on Malala Yousafzai.

Reject Bush-era liberalism/neoconservatism and this is what you get: the Ambassador Stevens assassination in Libya, the fumbling away of post-Surge Iraq, and jihadists feeding on the Syria conflict. I agree that Bush's whole post-9/11 foreign policy was too expensive, but it was a fundamentally better option than Obama's realist foreign policy. Start-up is normally expensive and mistake-filled, but that's just the developmental curve. We should have streamlined, improved, and made Bush's interventionist foreign policy more cost-effective under Obama rather than throw out the baby with the bathwater.

Fellow Stuy alum Reihan Salam talks about Iraq by piggybacking on a Kimberly and Frederick Kagan article. An anti-OIF reader commented and I responded. I haven't replied to the reader's reply to my response because my comment took a long time to make it past the editors and I had given up on it. I'm very late by now, but I'll get a reply out. (Done.) Add: Washington Post fact-checker calls out Obama's attempt to spin his egregious Iraq failure into a foreign policy success.

Sounds familiar - from Grantland: Burton, in a 1991 interview: "It's about depression and it's about lack of integration. It's about a character. Unfortunately, I always see it as being about those things, not about some kind of hero who is saving the city from blah blah blah. If you asked me the plot of Batman, I couldn't tell you. It's about duality, it's about flip-sides, it's about a person who's completely fucked and doesn't know what he's doing. He's got good impulses, but he's not integrated. And it's about depression. It's about going through life, thinking you're doing something, trying very hard. And the Joker represents somebody who gets to act however he wants."

Bachelor chow: Icy Point canned pink salmon - good stuff. Mix a can of salmon, oil included, with a can of Progresso soup - talk about a rich broth. Eat with pretzels. The fishy smell of the salmon soup gets to be too rich, though - it's not an everyday kind of meal. A Ragu sauce, can of salmon, Ramen mix with a can of Spam on the side is a pretty good meal, too. Dinty Moore Beef Stew - not good.

Reading Terminal Market is a must-visit tourist location in Philadelphia famous for its eateries and stalls selling various foodstuffs. While there are better known eateries in the market such as Dinic's and Carmen's, if you only have the time to sample one Reading eatery, I recommend the very tasty Beck's Cajun Cafe. A bonus is the waiting time for service at the not-famous-but-should-be Beck's Cajun Cafe at meal times should be reasonable. The better known eateries are notorious for their long winding lines at meal time and their food isn't better.

Oh yeah, Pat's and Geno's cheesesteaks are bland and overhyped, but they're both touchstone landmarks, so a tourist to Philadelphia still needs to try them both out one time in order to set a baseline experience for genuine Philly cheesesteaks. Fortunately, you can visit both in one trip since they're across the street from each other. The only sandwich I ate in Philadelphia that lived up to my pre-visit fantasy of Philly cheesesteaks was the Train Wreck PO Boy at Beck's Cajun Cafe.

Les Stroud's pre-Survivorman specials (Winter, Summer, Off the Grid) are better than his Survivorman series, which is still pretty good. Stroud, even as boss as he is, is still no Dick "Alone in the Wilderness" Proenneke, though I admit I haven't finished watching Stroud's Off the Grid.

Businessman blogger Tigerhawk gives his take on the "you didn't build that" argument by Elizabeth Warren.

One for the good things list: WFAN 660 AM on-line. The on-line WFAN sound is clear, which is not the case with my staticky radios. Latenight sports radio does not get better than Steve Summers and Tony Page back-to-back. Bonus: ESPN New York 98.7 FM on-line.

GQ's cover story on Jeremy Lin by Lin-fan Will Veitch. Contrast with the gratuitous hit piece on Lin by Lin-hater Mitch Lawrence. Stats-based prediction by Knickerblogger.net founder and Lin fan, Mike Kurylo. Last season, Lin's play reminded often of a proto-Nash, but also reminded that he didn't play PG in college. I believe the ceiling for Lin is Steve Nash, if he can fully convert to PG and improve his streaky jumpshot, and his floor is Delonte West, if he is unable to convert to PG, loses his intuitive flair, and settles as a servicable combo guard. The niche for Lin between his floor and ceiling is do-everything, game-changing 3rd guard. Much of what Bill Simmons says about James Harden's 3rd guard role with the Thunder could apply to Lin, such as "like Dennis Johnson, Manu Ginobili, Joe Dumars and (going way back) Sam Jones before him, Harden has shown the enviable ability to lay low for 42 minutes, then rise to the occasion when it matters." With the Knicks, Lin could have shifted to the 3rd guard role if starting PG didn't work out. The Knicks need a versatile, clutch, playmaking 3rd guard to fill in the gaps on a team of specialists and poorly matched players, help Carmelo Anthony as a pressure release valve, and bail out the Knicks' clunky offense. On the Rockets, it's starting PG or bust for Lin.

Advice on eliminating fear.

Destruction, one of the Endless siblings in Neil Gaiman's Sandman, is an allegory for a once-passionate, now-burnt-out activist who is repelled by the causes to which he once gave of himself totally. Activism is about destruction in search of creation. In Brief Lives, Destruction lives a self-obsessed MGTOW lifestyle, which is a characteristic of former activists who have turned their light inward.

Warriors, Come out to play-ay! and Somebody to Love.

TLC show Breaking Amish is a fraud according to this interesting ex-Amish blog.

Problem with stocking food in my apartment: I eat it impulsively.

You snooze, you lose: In the morning, I saw that someone in my apartment building had thrown out a desk chair that was dirty and missing the sliders on the left runner, but otherwise looked comfortable and intact. I decided to go down late at night for a closer examination to decide whether to take the chair. But it was gone. Oh well, maybe it was buggy or its frame was cracked somewhere anyway.

Eric

Stuyvesant entrance exam is equal opportunity as an academic competition

For background, see NAACP et al claim Stuyvesant entrance exam is racist.

A mother of NYC specialized public high school students suggests ways to improve the preparedness of black and Latino students for the SHSAT. While she's fine with the SHSAT itself, she takes issue with differences among test-takers during the process. She ends her post with the conclusion that if her suggestions aren't followed, then "the specialized high school admissions process will remain neither merit-based nor equal opportunity." While I think her suggestions are worth considering, I disagree with the framing of her conclusion. The SHSAT test-taking process, as it stands, is fundamentally merit-based and equal opportunity in the context of competition. The SHSAT is an academic competition with a math, reading comprehension, and logical reasoning test where the winners are determined by a simple rank order of test scores. The competition's prizes are the thousands of seats in the 8 specialized public high schools, with Stuyvesant on top. Elite academic competitors, just like top athletes with their abilities, start with natural talent and hone that talent into superior academic abilities with training, practice, and tests of skill over time. In my comment to her post, I compare the equal opportunity of the competitive SHSAT to equal opportunity in competitive sports:

Carolyn,

I agree with you that the "NAACP LDF’s focus on the test – and not the entire process – is misplaced". Your ideas for equitable fixes in the whole test-taking spectrum are worth considering. For the most part, you and I are on the same page with this issue. However, I have a few thoughts and quibbles.

I agree and disagree with your conclusion that "the specialized high school admissions process will remain neither merit-based nor equal opportunity". As it stands now, the SHSAT-based rank-order admission is fundamentally merit-based and equal opportunity.

No party to the complaint, including the NAACP LDF, is disputing the exam itself is race-neutral. The SHSAT's test of math, reading comprehension, and logic reasoning abilities matches the fundaments required of students to successfully engage the exam schools' math and science intensive curriculae. Those abilities are not race-exclusive traits. The 'holistic' admission process requested by the NCAAP LDF to replace the standardized SHSAT is better suited to humanities intensive and arts intensive curriculae, and indeed, we find specialized schools like Townsend Harris and Laguardia already use different admission processes tailored to their programs.

Regarding merit, rank-order placement is a pure, straightforward, transparent form of merit-based selection. (Disclaimer: I use Stuyvesant, Bronx Science, and Brooklyn Tech, which I assume continue to accept students from the top 3 tiers of ranked scores, as reference; I don't know the SHSAT admission formula of the more-recent specialized schools.)

Regarding equal opportunity, I believe the difference is our understanding of the SHSAT's context. The whole process of the SHSAT can be understood as equal opportunity in the context of competition, not in the context with which we normally understand public education as a matter of right. Students must compete for the finite number of seats available at the specialized public high schools. The SHSAT is the arena of competition from which the winners and losers emerge.

The SHSAT provides the equal opportunity of a level playing field. But similar to PSAL competitions, the inequality of the SHSAT stems not from the sport, gym, or the officials, but from the competitors themselves with their unequal levels of natural potential (talent) and preparation (training and practice). When PSAL athletes compete, the opportunity provided to them by the PSAL is equal, although their athletic abilities vary by a lot.

We expect our best PSAL athletes to be naturally talented and to have trained with coaches, intensely practiced on their own, and competed outside of school teams, often starting years before high school. Yet when our best PSAL athletes overpower their competition resulting in disparate impact, we accept the merit of their achievements as a result of fairly won competition. Is it fair then for the NAACP LDF to accuse and degrade the achievements of talented, trained, practiced, and therefore able, public school students on the SHSAT, rather than accept their ranked scores as fairly won in competition?

Food for thought. The NAACP LDF advances the assumption that black and Latino students are not winning seats at Stuyvesant in higher numbers because their families cannot afford test prep. However, lower-income Asian families are sacrificing, scrimping, and saving to pay for test prep, so the financial bar for test prep cannot be unreachable for similarly lower-income black and Latino families. How many black and Latino families who do not invest in test prep are making or would make an equal or greater investment in their children's athletic activities, perhaps from an even earlier age than needed for SHSAT test prep?

To stretch the competitive SHSAT-sports comparison further, the best PSAL athletes must try out alongside their less athletic classmates to join PSAL championship teams. The champion teams are the best only because they accept athletes who demonstrated they were the best in try outs. Stuyvesant and other top schools are only elite because they take students, like your kids, who demonstrated they were academically superior in their SHSAT try-out. If we forced PSAL champions to take lesser athletes to cure disparate impacts in athletic competition, the teams would no longer be PSAL champions. Nor would they provide sufficient conditions for our most talented PSAL athletes to hone their abilities for higher-level competition where the athletes are just as talented but perhaps better trained and prepared. The specialized schools are designed with the same championship concept. Regarding 'holistic' admissions for math and science schools, a try-out that's tailored for baseball would be an inefficient selection device for a championship football coach, despite that the two sports have significant overlap. Athleticism is athleticism, but the two sports are not the same. Smart is smart, and while Stuyvesant has scientists who are creative writers and Townsend Harris has creative writers who are scientists, the two schools still choose their students to match their different curriculae.

As I said, your ideas for equitable fixes to the process are worth considering. However, can the tax-paying public afford them? Does the city have the resources (money, teachers, facilities, etc) to expand programs like SHSI-Dream to encompass all students? I believe the SHSI-Dream program limits acceptance to students with sufficient test scores, not by a quantity cut-off (eg, a lottery). In other words, NYCDOE will provide the training, but only to students who have first demonstrated they have sufficient natural talent to compete on the SHSAT. I can't think of a fairer way to allot public resources for SHSAT prep. By the same token, I wouldn't ask the city to expend the amount of resources that would be needed to train every wannabe PSAL basketball player like Stephon Marbury (he was the best PSAL baller in my time).

The SHSAT is fundamentally competitive. It's well-tailored to the math and science intensive schools. Attending the specialized high schools isn't a civil right like access to the non-specialized schools. Just as in sports, equal opportunity in the SHSAT comes from a level playing field, a straight game. Merit is decided by the winners and losers, and that's the rank order. As with any competition, disparate impact on the SHSAT is inevitable due to the differing talent, practice, and training of the competitors.

I think if the NAACP LDF can accept that disparate impact is an inevitable result of the fundamentally competitive nature of the SHSAT, then we can begin to identify reasonable and fiscally responsible ways to identify and train all of NYC's sufficiently talented students. Many lower-income Asian parents who would otherwise sacrifice to pay for test prep would be grateful for more financial assistance from the city.

I'll make a final comment that's outside the scope of your post. The NAACP LDF harbors the misperception that the exam schools are making the students. As a Stuyvesant graduate, I understand the equation actuallly works the opposite way: just as the best athletes make for the best teams, the best students make for the best schools. The specialized schools are special only due to the quality of their students. Diluting the quality of the students would dilute the specialness of the schools. Stuyvesant's infrastructure, resources, and faculty are not actually substantively better than other NYC public high schools. This was especially the case when I attended Stuy in the old, small, overcrowded, falling-apart building on 15th Street. But even today in the larger (no longer) new building, Stuyvesant's resources and carrying capacity are stretched very thin by the expanded student body (+1000 since I attended in the early 1990s). Stuyvesant and the other exam schools only work because the quality of the students allows for efficient utilization, if not maximization, of the school's resources and faculty, such as they are. If less qualified students are shoehorned into the specialized schools, they won't be helped. Instead, the resulting inefficiencies will drag down qualified students like your kids.

Eric

A comment on the NAACP 'othering' Asians in the Stuyvesant extrance exam controversy

For background, see NAACP et al claim Stuyvesant entrance exam is racist.

I wrote this comment responding to a blogger who supports the NAACP in the Stuyvesant High School entrance exam (aka Specialized High Schools Admissions Test - SHSAT) controversy:

Jose,

A transparent objective admissions standard accessible to all and free of favoritism of any kind has been a major win for minorities and civil rights. The NAACP isn’t contesting the neutrality of the exam. As you say, their claim is based on the result. The problem is the NAACP’s solution calls for race-based disparate treatment, which is a worse civil rights violation than disparate impact.

I’m not angling towards separation. I’m calling out the NAACP for separating Asians. I agree that we should be able to trust the NAACP to guard the interests of Asian children – not ‘other’ and sacrifice Asians in order to favor other minority groups.

You know what’s insulting? Read the NAACP complaint and see how it marginalizes Asians with the rhetorical trick of grouping together “either whites or Asian Americans”. Even your post’s metaphorical premise of a brown cocoa puff in white milk evinced the same utter disregard for Asians in this issue. Distinct from the issue at the [ed: oops] hand, the NAACP’s decision to ‘other’ Asians in their case is troubling: it is a statement by the NAACP of how and where they view Asians in their heiierarchy of minority interests.

Hypothetical. Keep the same verbiage, arguments, and proposed solution to the ‘injustice’ of a 72% Asian majority at Stuy. Now substitute a white advocacy group for the NAACP and portray white children as victims of disparate impact. How does that look to you? From an Asian standpoint, it looks the same, a stronger group using its political muscle to impose biased structural changes to set quotas and take from weaker Asians.

Look, I’m not looking to codify an Asian super-majority at Stuy. I would welcome more diversity at Stuy, but not at the cost of Stuy’s historical equal opportunity and the integrity of the institution. The proper solution is to identify early on the upper-tier black and Latino students with sufficient potential and prepare them for the fundamental academic skills tested on the SHSAT, which is what Stuy parents have been doing on their own. Stuy alums are working on that. The free NYCDOE-provided SHSI-Dream program is working on that. There are no mysteries in the Asian success story at Stuy. I have faith that black and Latino kids can achieve what Asian kids from lower-income, immigrant, often English-poor families have achieved – I don’t understand why you don’t have the same faith.

Finally, I doubt the compelling need for the NAACP’s campaign. Stuy has added more seats since moving to Tribeca from the original old cramped building on the LES – 2000 seats when I attended; 3300 now. I don’t know whether the other specialized schools have expanded since I was in HS. As is, Stuy’s resources are spread thin. There are no magic doorways to Harvard at Stuy (quite the opposite, actually) – it’s always been the quality of the students that made the school special. And, as the NAACP notes in their own complaint, Stuy and indeed the whole group of NYC’s exam schools aren’t the only specialized HSs in NYC. First, several private schools (that typically don’t give Asians scholarships and Asians can’t afford) siphon off upper-tier white, black, and Latino students. Other NYCDOE specialized schools already use multi-measure (eg, Townsend Harris) or alternative (eg, Laguardia) admissions processes. That Stuy continues to be regarded as the crown jewel among NYC specialized public schools that use varied admissions processes only speaks to the real-world-tested validity of the SHSAT.

Given that everything the NAACP is demanding is already practiced somewhere else in the school system, I wonder what their complaint targeting Stuy and the other exam schools is really about?

Add: Something you said has been nagging at me and I think I finally put my finger on it …

Jose: “Standardized testing does not by any study in the last century show any fairness or demand real equity. It just distinguishes between those with the resources to prepare for such a test and those who don’t.”

You’re restating the NAACP contention that the math-and-language fundamentals-based SHSAT that has qualified Stuyvesant (and Bronx Science and Brooklyn Tech) students for many decades lacks in actuality any predictive value that’s applicable to the requirements and demands placed on Stuy students. To wit, you claim the SHSAT “just distinguishes between those with the resources to prepare for such a test and those who don’t.”

The first logical inference of your contention is that the generations of Stuy students, myself included, who have passed the SHSAT have not actually been academically qualified for Stuyvesant. Which is to claim that for many decades, the SHSAT-based selection of Stuy students has been as equally predictive as a random selection of NYC 8th graders. Or alternatively, for many decades, Stuy students have been admitted based on a sole criterion (“those with the resources to prepare for such a test”) that has low-to-no correlative value with subsequent academic achievement at Stuyvesant.

The second logical inference, if the SHSAT is not a valid predictor and therefore has not actually selected qualified students for the exam schools, is we would expect to find that the histories of student achievement at Stuyvesant, Bronx Science, and Brooklyn Tech are no better than the academic histories of typical non-specialized public high schools. But that’s simply not the case. Stuy students and students from the other exam schools have collectively accrued exceptional records of academic achievement that exceed the academic records of the non-specialized public high schools.

The third logical inference, given Stuy students consistently produce superior academic achievement despite the assumption that Stuy students are effectively randomly selected or selected based solely on a criterion (again, “those with the resources to prepare for such a test”) that is invalid as an academic predictor, is we need to look outside the unqualified Stuy students for an explanation of their long record of exceptional academic achievement.

This is where the NAACP and others have followed this logical inferential train to a myth version of Stuyvesant. They have convinced themselves that since “white or Asian American” Stuy students aren’t responsible for their own success, then Stuyvesant must be privy to a secret educational alchemy that has for many decades consistently transformed unremarkable students into exceptional students. Reality check: if you believe Stuy has some secretly hoarded academic elixir, there isn’t any. Based on my experience, especially at the old Stuy on 15th street where the majority of Stuy’s history took place, the school’s infrastructure, administration, faculty, and educational resources aren’t different in kind than any typical NYC public school. Stuyvesant isn’t Hogwarts on the Hudson. There’s no magic water coming out of the water fountains, no magic cafeteria food, no magic science labs, no magic library, no magic textbooks. No magic teachers either (at least no more magical than teachers at any other NYC school; I had a few egregiously bad teachers at Stuy). The essential difference between Stuyvesant and non-specialized schools is the SHSAT selection device.

Based on my experience, Stuy students aren’t given more or better resources than students at other public schools; Stuy students simply maximize the resources they do get. I’ve heard that the expansion from 2000 to 3300 students since I graduated has stretched Stuy’s resources and carrying capacity very thin. But the students continue to do their best with their own ability and what they’re given.

As I said, it has always been the quality of the students that made Stuy special, and that speaks to the time-honored, time-tested validity of the SHSAT as a selection device. The SHSAT works. It’s worked for a very long time. Trust it. Any black or Latino student who earns his or her seat on the SHSAT will deserve – more importantly, be qualified – to be a Stuy student. Shoehorning unqualified students of any race into Stuy at the expense of qualified students won’t help anyone.

Jose,

You’re right: I do place stock in my personal experience as a Stuyvesant student. My personal experience is my schoolmates, selected exclusively by their rank order on the SHSAT, were high-ability students, regardless of their race. Are you really contending that “actual research” has disproven my experience? Or, setting aside my experience, are you really contending “actual research” proves the venerated and consistent historical record of academic achievement by SHSAT-selected students is an anomaly or a mere coincidence of impossible magnitude that somehow has been repeated annually for decades?

As a teacher, you’re closer today to high school students than I am. Does your position really tell you that that there is no significant academic difference between the thousands of Stuyvesant and other present-day SHSAT-selected students and the NYC students who fell below them on their respective SHSAT rank orders?

Obviously, I don’t dispute that research matters, but not all research is proof. When your research tells you to disbelieve both your lying eyes that apples fall from trees and generations of memories of falling apples, perhaps more doubt should be cast on the research.

The SHSAT is race neutral and so the demographics at the exam schools have changed over the years. The demographics can just as easily change again without corrupting the admissions process: there is no race-based regulating mechanism in the SHSAT that bars black, Latino or any other group of students improving and becoming, as you say, winners on the test. If there was such a regulating mechanism built into the SHSAT, Asian students would have been barred.

Unfortunately and misguidedly, the NAACP is trying to inject race-based regulating mechanisms into an admissions process that is race neutral. They’re inviting unintended consequences. The SHSAT should be protected in fact and, just as importantly, in principle as a race-neutral selection device.

The Asian success story in NYC’s specialized public high schools is a success story for all minorities. In the past, Asians have benefited from the progress made by other-minority pioneers. This time, on the SHSAT, Asians are the minority pioneers – if Asian kids can do it, so can black and Latino kids. Asian progress on the SHSAT provides a proven model that can be emulated by other minorities. What the NAACP is trying to do isn’t progress for anyone.

What academic message and life lesson do you think the high-profile NAACP campaign is projecting to impressionable young students of all races? To the young kids who work their butts off to master the academic fundamentals of the SHSAT … AND to the young kids being told that meeting the basic math/reading/logic standards of the SHSAT – again, the intrinsic neutrality of which the NAACP is not contesting – in order to merit a seat at a specialized high school is hopelessly out of reach due to the immutable fact of their skin color? As adults, we know the world is too often cynical, greedy, and selfish, but in this case, the SHSAT is a preciously rare genuine level playing field. I like to hope that we – you especially as a teacher – would try to teach our children, at least in school, that earning what they deserve is a better way of life than taking what they covet.

Eric

NAACP et al claim Stuyvesant entrance exam is racist

The Specialized High School Admissions Test (SHSAT), encoded in New York State law by the Hecht-Calandra Act of 1972, has historically offered an equal opportunity to New York City students from all backgrounds to earn a seat at one of New York City's famed specialized public high schools, including my alma mater, Stuyvesant High School.

The NAACP's Legal Defense and Educational Fund (or NAACP LDF) and other advocacy groups have filed a complaint, perhaps timed to capitalize on Stuyvesant's cheating scandal, requesting a radical alteration of the exam-based admissions process in order to increase black and Latino enrollment. Their case is modelled on the lawsuits against exam-based admission to white-majority city agencies such as the police and fire departments, except in this case the NAACP LDF is objecting to the Asian majority (72%) at Stuyvesant. Would a judge find that Stuyvesant's exam-based admissions process violates Title VI of the 1964 Civil Rights Act? Well, the lawsuits against the city agencies used disparate impact to shift the burden of proof from the plaintiffs to the defendants. The NAACP LDF is not contesting the racial neutrality of the SHSAT. Rather, the NAACP LDF case argues disparate impact, challenges the equity of the test-taking process and predictive validity of the objective exam, and recommends a subjective multi-measure admissions process with the goal of redistributing seats at Stuyvesant from Asian students to black and Latino students.

To replace the racially neutral SHSAT, the NAACP LDF proposes the university admissions model that discriminates against Asian applicants. A subjective admissions process that intentionally favors black and Latino students over Asian students would be racially discriminatory disparate treatment. The United States, New York State, and New York City Departments of Education are reviewing the NAACP LDF complaint.

Read the NAACP LDF complaint and press release. More here, here/here/here (study authors), here, here, here and here (re test prep), here, here, here, here, here, here (history lesson), here, here, here (Stuy Spec), here, here, here, here, here, and here (Stuy teacher).

The coveted success of Asians at Stuyvesant is a source of great pride - and hope - for Asian families in New York City. Asian parents believe the key to their children's future is academic achievement, and therefore hold Stuyvesant in extraordinarily high esteem, even reverence. The Asian students who earn seats at Stuyvesant typically are not rich. Lower-income immigrant Asian families in particular rely on their children testing into Stuyvesant (and the other elite exam schools) as an accessible and affordable avenue of upward mobility. In a society where Asian Americans are denied the advantages of white privilege and affirmative action, the SHSAT is an indispensable opportunity for Asian students to compete on a level playing field with a fair, color-blind, straightforward transparent standard. No disparate treatment. No suspicious subjectiveness. No white privilege. No affirmative action. No favoritism for wealth, connections, siblings, or legacy. No Asian-suppressive quota. Every Stuyvesant student from any background is qualified according to objective merit on the same standard. *

(* Yes, Rachel Kleinman, "You could win the national spelling bee. None of that matters." We're proud that even the Rebecca Sealfon '01 had to qualify on her SHSAT to go to Stuy, same as the rest of us.)

Among other troubling aspects, the NAACP LDF lawsuit is anti-Asian. I would welcome more diversity in the Stuyvesant student body, but only if each student's SHSAT score qualifies him or her for a seat at Stuyvesant. However, the NAACP LDF intends to take from Asian students the seats they would earn on the SHSAT and give those seats to unqualified students according to a predetermined ethnic division. The NAACP LDF tries to disguise its anti-Asian goal with the straw-man argument that rich white families are gaming the system with exclusive, expensive test prep courses that box out hopelessly disadvantaged minorities, when in fact, the typical Stuyvesant student is not a wealthy scion of white privilege, but rather from a lower-income immigrant Asian family without the benefit of wealth, white privilege, or affirmative action. Asian success at Stuyvesant belies the NAACP LDF's vision of minority helplessness. To marginalize Asians, the NAACP LDF resorts to the rhetorical trick of grouping together "either whites or Asian Americans".

The test prep factor is overrated, too. See here and here. Asian families sacrifice, scrimp, and save to pay for test prep, a course of action that is equally available to black and Latino families. As well, affordable and even free test prep targeted at minorities are readily available. Stuyvesant alumni are actively involved in those efforts. (In my experience, taking a test prep course isn't necessary to qualify for Stuyvesant anyway; I prepared for the SHSAT with a book I borrowed from my local library.)

Given the harm to Asian children should the NAACP LDF succeed and in light of the racist mentality driving the lawsuit, eg, "We're saying something wrong if we're saying New York City's brightest students are almost all Chinese or Korean", I am surprised and dismayed that several Asian advocacy groups have endorsed the NAACP LDF complaint. Any advocacy group or politician that supports the NAACP LDF is acting in direct contravention of the interests of Asian families.

For Asian families, Stuyvesant represents the hope that America can be a race-neutral level playing field where success is earned with discipline, ambition, and self-improvement. The NAACP LDF lawsuit undermines that hope and threatens Asian students with a different kind of America.

Also see:
A comment on the NAACP 'othering' Asians in the Stuyvesant extrance exam controversy
Stuyvesant entrance exam is equal opportunity as an academic competition

Eric

Thoughts of the day

Still not a fan of the new Blogger editor.

For Democrats, politics is personal (or tribal) before principle. Ralph Nader called Obama a "war criminal" with the most damning accusation from the Left, "he's gone beyond George Bush" on the issues that the Democrats used most stridently to lambaste Bush's presidency. What has been the Democrats' reaction to Nader's criticism of Obama? Those issues, which were horrible transgressions with Bush, are now non-issues with Obama. When there is a response from Democrats to Nader, it's shut up and go away.

The Dems exhort voters to reject Romney if they disagree with the GOP on 1 (usually identity-based) issue but agree on 9 issues, while asking us to choose Obama if we agree with the Dems on 1 (again, usually identity-based) issue but disagree on 9 issues. I guess the GOP does the same thing, but it's not nearly as pronounced.

Activism 101: Defining the problem frames the solution.

A politician gives us what we want. A leader gives us what we need.

DIY or do-it-yourself 3D printers open up new areas of granular technological sophistication. Global Guerillas applies the concept to DIY weapons.

Soldiers go to war, but the military institution continues to run on peacetime procedures. What would the military institution at war look like?

A cool exchange about the US role in the Middle East between an IR undergrad and IR grad student at Andrew Exum's blog. Grad student: "And the situation in Iraq was not in a permanent equilibrium... something was going to have to give there, and it was likely going to be very bad whether the US was involved or not." I pointed out there was no "or not" choice for US involvement - since 1991, the US was inextricably entwined with Iraq.

I've written plenty on the justification for Operation Iraqi Freedom on this blog, but I'll just jot down this difference between Clinton's and Bush's public arguments justifying military enforcement against Iraq. Clinton: We know Saddam has or had WMD, and we don't know what he did with them. Bush: We know Saddam has them.

From 2010, an informative discussion in a blog-post's comments, apparently involving Iraqis and Iraq scholars, about partitioning Iraq. Generally, they're against it, but the issue is complicated.

Guileless pixie Rose Conlin (Nora Zehetner), the love interest of Herman Spooner (Matthew Lillard) in subdued indie rom-com Spooner, is a fantasy girl, like Traci was. Her eyes say yes.

Nora Zehetner looks like Da Vinci Code french actress Audrey Tautou. Dark hair, youthful looking, pixie type, and those eyes.

The story of Paul Wayment and his son Gage reminds me of the the fine line between culpable criminal negligence and non-intentional accident we discussed in CrimLaw. Indie movie Angels Crest is based on the Wayment story.

Annie Dookhan, WHAT DID YOU DO?! What a nightmare for law enforcement in Massachusetts. I don't understand from the accounts why Dookhan felt her actions were necessary, since there was no apparent resulting self-benefit or even self-preservation.

Looking forward to it: Warner Brothers and DC Comics are releasing a two-part animated version of Frank Miller's Dark Knight Returns. Peter Weller, not Kevin Conroy, will be voicing Batman. Early reviews say it's faithful and good to the source material.

Gangnam Style by Korean pop-star PSY is the next Party Rock Anthem by LMFAO. Catchy. The making-of is fun. PSY, who went to college in the US, did his compulsory military service twice. Though not, as far as I can tell, as a KATUSA, despite his advanced English. Whatsupelle's mom-and-baby parody of Gangnam Style is fun. Elle seems to have an enviable young family. West Point does Gangnam Style, blowing away Annapolis's version. Colorado Springs (Air Force) chimes in.

Cargo cult is a useful metaphor for sensing a thing and trying to duplicate it without accurately understanding what the thing is. It's a reminder to learn the 'why' and 'how', not just the 'what'.

HISHEdotcom (How It Should Have Ended) on youtube is funny.

The inimitable Rebecca Sealfon interviewed at Columbia in April 2012. Her twitter account. Her May 2012 reflection on the spelling bee.

R.A. Dickey won his 20th game. He was at 18 wins with 5 starts left, lost the 1st 2 of the 5 starts, then buckled down and won the 3rd and 4th starts to reach 20. Mission accomplished. Good for him. Dickey is the front-runner for the 2012 NL Cy Young award. He just needs to pitch respectably in his last start of the season and improve his numbers to burnish his case for the Cy Young award.

Back in the day, I wanted Timberwolves free-agent Kevin Garnett to join the Spurs to replace David Robinson as Tim Duncan's front-court partner. They were both very smart and versatile, dedicated leaders and competitors, their strengths and personalities complemented, and they both were in their young prime. KG and TD would have formed an all-time big-man partnership. On a lower level but similar kind of expectation, I had hoped Luis Scola would join Dirk Nowitzki on the Mavs after the Rockets amnestied Scola. The cagey versatile Fs Scola and Nowitzi playing together would have been fun. Their games complement. But the Mavs had already picked up Elton Brand so didn't bid high enough for Scola. Oh well.

Necessary/Sufficient. As in, smarts and fundamental academic skills are necessary to earn straight As in high school, but smarts and fundamentals are not sufficient to earn straight As. Or, the qualities tested by the SHSAT are necessary to succeed at Stuyvesant, but are not sufficient in and of themselves to succeed at Stuyvesant.

What can be made of the phenomenon of smart sophisticated prognosticators who strongly supported the goals of the Iraq mission while acknowledging it would be a long difficult process, but then withdrew their support of the Iraq mission and abandoned its goals once it became in reality a long difficult process? I think their temperament may lag behind their unbounded imaginations. The theoretical constructions of professional thinkers may not be robust enough to endure the blunt psycho-social and economic drag of real life. Or, the world is moved by primitive forces that are incompatible with their finely evolved minds. The same prognosticators may also underestimate, over-simplify, or skip over potential obstacles while bridging various points of their overarching theories. Stanley Fish articulated a similar gulf in his essay about the difference between faculty and administrators (all of whom come from faculty): "[Administrators] have come to appreciate a form of activity that is at once intellectual (albeit in another tone) and productive of real results. They are pleased that they have learned to work together in a coordinated effort to solve extraordinarily complex problems."

Steve Hsu on Bounded Cognition: "Many people lack standard cognitive tools useful for understanding the world around them. Perhaps the most egregious case: probability and statistics, which are central to understanding health, economics, risk, crime, society, evolution, global warming, etc. Very few people have any facility for calculating risk, visualizing a distribution, understanding the difference between the average, the median, variance, etc. A remnant of the cold war era curriculum still in place in the US: if students learn advanced math it tends to be calculus, whereas a course on probability, statistics and thinking distributionally would be more useful."

Eric

An irresponsible exit from Iraq

Michael Gordon reports in the New York Times that despite the insistence by Obama supporters that he responsibly ended the mission in Iraq and their touting of our Iraq withdrawal as a foreign policy success for Obama, in fact, President Obama fumbled away the Iraq mission at a critical turning point.

Washington Post fact-checker Glenn Kessler also calls out President Obama's attempt to spin his egregious failure with Iraq as an intentional foreign policy success.

We forget now that the 'shock and awe' war to oust Saddam's regime was a resounding success. The high cost cited by anti-Iraq critics has mostly occurred in the post-war occupation, ie, the security and stabilization, nation-building, and transition phases.

With the Petraeus-led COIN 'surge', we paid dearly for a second chance but we successfully won another opportunity to secure our gains, win the post-war, and build the peace on our terms in Iraq. President Bush handed President Obama a hard-won turnaround success in strategically critical Iraq to build upon. Iraq could have been headed the way of Germany, Japan, and South Korea with our partnership, except President Obama fumbled away the possibility.

As Walter Russell Mead notes, it's unseemly, even shameless, for the Obama campaign to tout our Iraq withdrawal as a foreign policy success when it is actually a failure with long-term consequences. Gordon's report of Obama's poor leadership with the Iraq mission contrasts sharply with Gordon's report of historic leadership by President Bush with the COIN 'surge'.

The history of Iraq after Saddam could have been very different. Based on what I've heard, there was a 'golden hour' in the immediate post-war in 2003 when our leverage and control in Iraq were at their maximum and the Iraqi people hoped for and expected us to deliver on our promises of liberal reform. However, the Coalition Provisional Authority, while intellectually capable, proved practically insufficient for the mission. The enemy seized the initiative and we lost the 'golden hour'. Michael Gordon reports that a faction of officers and diplomats pushed for a rudimentary COIN strategy years before the COIN 'surge', but were rejected in favor of giving more time to the civilian-led Coalition Provisional Authority. In other words, counterinsurgency was the emergency back-up plan for Iraq when it should have been the starting strategy for the post-war occupation. President Bush eventually approved the COIN 'surge' over strong opposition to COIN within the military and even his administration. We can only speculate the difference counterinsurgency could have made in Iraq had it been implemented from the outset of the post-war. I fear we will also speculate in the future whether we left Iraq too early to cement a constructive course for our charge.

Eric

New Blogger Interface now THE Blogger Interface

I preferred the old/classic Blogger interface, but that option was removed today. Bloggers complain here. Shit.

Eric