[zdean]

The aim was to show that in the absence of academic cheating, a meritocracy would emerge. What the researcher realized was that the deck was stacked against poorer students and in favor of richer students...in essence, the cheating/rigging was happening before the kids walked into school...and the academic cheating was a response to level the playing field.

[geppeto]

New York City experienced a similar reality.

They aimed to help poor and disenfranchised groups get into their specialized public schools, by forcing a meritocracy, as disproportionately wealthy and white families were accepted because admittance was previously too discretionary and lots of excuses were made about why (hm sounds familiar).

After the meritocracy was established it became disproportionately asian by a huuuuuge margin (stuyvesant high school being ~75% asian with the city having a ~10% asian population) while poor and disenfranchised groups are still poor and disenfranchised. Just even more apparently now.

This is no comment about meritocracies, it is about illuminating how far off base a governing body will be at promoting a particular outcome.

[wbl]

Have you looked up the incomes of students at Stuy? There are plenty of poor Asians in NYC.

[geppeto]

Just like in Romania, the meritocracy exacerbated realities behind academic advantages and revealed cultural quirks that weren't even considered.

There is a lot of literature behind what those exact quirks in New York City, if you'd like to read about it.

[literallycancer]

Investing time and money in your kids' education is cheating? A curious opinion.

[Spooky23]

That's the problem with this stuff. People go down these crazy roads of thinking.

[mirimir]

Yes, that's basically it, although characterizing wealth as cheating is iffy. But I also suspect that their anti-cheating measures caught blatant stuff, like bribing and secreting answers, but missed stuff like bribing teachers and staff to get exams in advance.

[noobermin]

I wouldn't even say academic cheating "levelled the playing field", it just hid a distributional disparity that had already existed.