[bloooop]

It's important to realize that the program is segregated by intent and by design. The segregation is NOT accidental.

That's true of many of the gifted-and-talented programs in the US. That's not fundamental, and not true of many of the gifted-and-talented programs worldwide. Worldwide, such programs are meritocratic pathways to socioeconomic mobility. In the US, the story is much more complex.

Most such programs were explicitly structured to keep African Americans and immigrants out. This was structured in admissions exams (which were often designed, for example, around mastery of one dialect of English, even in contexts like math, where that's irrelevant), in geographies of such programs, and in many other elements.

That this intent is no longer present today is irrelevant. Those structures remain, perpetuate, and in many ways, become self-reinforcing.

The current politically popular fix? Throwing the baby out with the bathwater and nuking the programs from orbit. At that point, no one without wealth can get ahead.

We need something more nuanced, but we're not going to get that if we don't first acknowledge the issue.

Refs: You can look at documents like this one, from over two decades ago, citing references well before then, talking about how to reduce some of the intentionally segeregatory impacts of gifted-and-talented admissions testing: https://www2.ed.gov/offices/OCR/archives/pdf/TestingResource... (and it's worth noting how little has happened in the intervening decades)

[darthvoldemort]

This is completely BS. The activists have been trying for decades to bump up the percentage of Blacks and Latinos, and yet it's dominated by Asians. Asians are "stealing" spots from White, Blacks, and Latinos and it makes it hard to justify racism, especially when Asians are not only 40% of the G&T but also the poorest demographic in NYC.

[bloooop]

You called this BS, but you haven't refuted anything in it...

Can you be a little more precise, please?

[JoeAltmaier]

If poverty is not a distinguishing factor, then what is left but racism? I'm confused.

[bloooop]

Quite a lot. Social capital. Culture. About a hundred other things.

A set of concepts popularized goes under the names of cycle of poverty, culture of poverty, and generational poverty. Simply being poor seems less predictive of outcomes than multiple generation being poor. If your parents, your grandparents, and your great grandparents were poor, it's very difficult to break out.

In this case, "culture" isn't a euphemism for laziness or something crass like that; for example, there's a certain body of knowledge that goes with knowing how to move into the middle class. If no one in your family has that, it's very, very hard. That goes for everything from knowing what's required to apply for college, to knowing how much you're expected to learn when, to having the background to know how to support your kids' schooling.

Intervention programs which provide that background are effective. Even something as simple as letting parents know to read to little kids, how to make sure kids do homework, what supports are available, etc. Beyond that, having a guidance counselor who can let you know what schools you're likely to get into, what you need to apply, and what is and isn't appropriate to have in an admissions essay. These things aren't rocket science, but if neither you nor anyone around you has done them, they're very, very hard.

[JoeAltmaier]

Exactly. Then the current system that has vast racial imbalance, is unfair. Because those things brand a child as 'not smart'. So it needs reworking

And to say "Well, my kid is winning now so don't touch the system" is a weak argument.

[threatofrain]

Under your perspective, were NY gifted and talented programs designed to exclude blacks but include Asians (among the poorest demographics in NYC) as the largest plurality? And why?

[bloooop]

No. They were designed from a lineage of decisions intended to exclude blacks and to include whites. That's not my perspective; that's a historical fact. That's why I referenced a Dept. of Education OCR report, which in turn references National Academies publications and similar sorts of credible references, all predating the current social justice political climate.

How decisions made in the eighties and sixties impact families in 2020 is sort of complex. Now, I move away from fact to my perspective. My perspective is that many Asian immigrant families are more likely to:

- Come from a culture which values education, and especially measurable outcomes in education (e.g. math, rather than creativity)

- In some cases, come from cultures with 2000+ year histories of civil service exams and meritocracy

- Often lack the same sorts of wealth or support networks as American families, which puts a lot more pressure on having kids become self-supporting and independently successful

- Are less likely to be successful in fields which rely on having strong US-based social networks than white families, which also pushes towards areas like STEM.

... a plethora of effects like these leads to immigrant (and especially Asian immigrant) families being heavily over-represented within the system which was resulted.

On the other hand, if my family was on the Mayflower, and my uncle can get my kid a job at his law firm, my aunt can hook him up with a management position in her marketing firm, and if neither does that, at least we own the house and he can always live here, there's a lot less pressure. I have a lot more incentive to let kids be kids, let kids play more, and school less.

So immigrants, and especially Asian immigrants, now tend to do well in this system. It continues to discriminate against blacks, though.

Why is this hard to accept?

[threatofrain]

> Now, I move away from fact to my perspective.

I mean, the majority of your prose comes after your description of facts, and details your pet theory on how advantageous Asian culture and parenting is an adequate explanation for the effect sizes we're seeing — that a very poor demographic in NYC would come to fulfill the plurality of NYC's gifted and talented program.

And something about how Asians come from 2000 years of test taking, so they're really good at tests (but not necessarily "good")?

[bloooop]

You asked for my perspective. Now you're offended that I moved from facts to perspective. I think I'm done here.