NYC Schools

The main threat to freedom today comes not from tyranny but from equality – equality defined as identity of reward. Related to it is the quest for security.--Pipes


Chris has reconfigured some spreadsheets for the bank and has some very positive feedback.
Liz had a big company dinner celebrating the closure of the quarter.
Ned spent a ski weekend with the old Kyruus people.
I'm discouraged about the Pens.
The moon was huge this morning.

Harvard University is one-third legacies.

As more and more laptops find their way into middle and high schools, educators are using Google Docs to do collaborative exercises and help students follow along with the lesson plan. The students, however, are using it to organize running conversations behind teachers’ backs.(Atlantic)

The Tenth Amendment says quite clearly that the federal government is authorized to exercise only certain enumerated powers, the ones that are listed there and that are specifically delegated to the national government. The Tenth Amendment goes on to say,  if the power is 
not listed there, if it’s not enumerated and delegated to the national government, then it is reserved to the states or, depending on the provisions of state constitutions and state laws, to the people. …No matter how worthwhile the goal, no matter how much Congress thinks that it has identified a really important problem, and no matter how sure Congress is that it knows how to fix the problem, if there’s no constitutional authority to pursue it, then the federal government has to step aside and leave the matter to the states or private parties.--Levy

Just a few years ago, Venezuela produced 2X more oil than North Dakota. Starting 6 months ago, North Dakota now out-produces Venezuela, the country with the world's largest oil reserves.

When Frederich the Great of Prussia built the palace of Sans Souci, which was to be a magnificent rival to Versailles, he found it necessary to post a notice on the great portico requesting the gentlemen of the court not to urinate on the stairs. And one small postscript: The great palace of Schoenbrunn, summer residence of the Hapsburgs, did not have indoor toilets at the outbreak of World War I.--from Berger’s 1986 book, The Capitalist Revolution
 After locking up as many as a million people in camps in Xinjiang, Chinese authorities are destroying Uighur neighborhoods and purging the region's culture. They say they’re fighting terrorism. Their aim: to engineer a society loyal to Beijing. (wsj)

For the ninth consecutive year, the majority (64.49%) of large-cap funds underperformed the S&P 500. The figures highlight that heightened market volatility does not necessarily result in better relative performance for active investing.

According to scholars at the University of Paris, the Black Death was created on this day in 1345, from what they call “a triple conjunction of Saturn, Jupiter and Mars in the 40th degree of Aquarius, occurring on the 20th of March 1345″. At the time this was settled science.


                                        NYC Schools

(The word "test" comes from the Old French "test" meaning, ironically, “pot; melting pot, especially one in which metals were tried”)

New York City's specialized schools are known as some of the finest public schools in the nation. Eight of the city’s specialized schools, including Stuyvesant, Brooklyn Tech and Bronx Science, use the Specialized High Schools Admissions Test (SHSAT) to admit students. A ninth specialized school, the Fiorello H. LaGuardia High School of Music, Art and Performing Arts, admits students based on a talent audition and review of academic records. Black and Hispanic kids account for more than two-thirds of the city school system’s overall student body.  But, in 2019, only about 4% of 4,278 total offers at the top schools went to black students and 6.3% to Hispanic kids. That’s about the same as last year. Now for the really bad news: 65% of the offers went to Asian students, 22% to white. There were significant differences--and it appears that White Privilege was not involved. Indeed a minority soared.

     

     

What to do? Well, first, bluster. Some professor from CUNY said, “The iron hand of inequality isn’t solved by half-measures.” The Iron Hand of Inequality! And city schools Chancellor Richard Carranza said the elite schools’ dismal diversity numbers show that admissions based on the SHSAT exam must end. “We need to eliminate the single test for specialized high school admissions now,” Carranza said.

This, of course, misses the point. Tests, by their very nature, are distinguishing. Tests separate. The very purpose of the test is to discriminate among those being tested. Testing and equality are inconsistent. The purpose of the specialized school is that the school is created for special students. Students separate from the average. Not equal to the rest. So.....who's kidding whom here?  You either want the better student or you don't. 

The problem is that insincerity has become so ingrained in our culture that we don't recognize it when we see it. And when the dichotomies that we want to ignore become unavoidable, we accept the inconsistencies and just babble.

I'm sure we will be treated to discussions explaining how the tests are inaccurate, how they don't really show the superior student, how they are somehow compromised, when the only thing compromised is honesty.
We'll just need to find a less obvious--or less effective--way to discriminate.