To: Nicholas Stix <add1dda@aol.com>
Sent: thursday, january 11, 2024 at 02:01:21 p.m. est
subject: "top of mind: the sobering lesson of the Claudine Gay ouster"
"free speech, fafsa, and more
top of mind:the sobering lesson of the Claudine Gay ouster
"free speech, fafsa, and more"
Dear Nicholas,
"Gay. it's the unfortunate last name continuing to dominate headlines. there has been enough ink spilled on her, some deserved and some not. So, let's turn to another topic—standardized testing.
I was surprised to learn that an article in the new york times defended standardized testing. senior writer for times, David Leonhardt, writes:
Without test scores, admissions officers sometimes have a hard time distinguishing between applicants who are likely to do well at elite colleges and those who are likely to struggle [N.S.: english translation: fail]. researchers who have studied the issue say that test scores can be particularly helpful in identifying lower-income students and underrepresented minorities who will thrive [Liar! Besides, "lower-income students" is just a euphemism for black and hispanic students. Thus, we are dealing here with stealth redundancy: researchers who have studied the issue say that test scores can be particularly helpful in identifying black and hispanic students, and black and hispanic students. It sounds bad enough when racial socialists do it, but it's even worse when "conservatives" are guilty parties. This indicates why it is that academic "conservatives" have achieved absolutely nothing, when it comes to reforning the antiversity.]
"these students do not score as high on average as students from affluent communities or White and asian students. but a solid score for a student from a less privileged background is often a sign of enormous potential.
Is Leonhardt saying what I think he's saying? He is, isn't he?
"he is saying that ditching standardized testing actually hurts underprivileged students—a far stray from the left-wing narrative that emphasizes the need to ditch testing in order to boost 'diversity, equity, and inclusion' (die).
but the data suggests that testing critics have drawn the wrong battle lines. if test scores are used as one factor among others—and if colleges give applicants credit for having overcome adversity [cheating]—the sat and act can help create diverse classes of highly talented students. restoring the tests might also help address a different frustration that many Americans have with the admissions process at elite universities: that it has become too opaque and unconnected to merit.
"the word 'merit' used by the times? crazy!
"as crazy as that may be, it might be a sign that people on the fringes of the die movement are migrating to a place of reason. or, maybe some people are just accepting that, as my colleague Kali Jerrard put it, '[t]here must be some way to measure and assess student readiness for college.
[N.S.: This is not a return to merit, but rather a return to pre-die affirmative action. Prior to affirmative action, the college board (sat) was not a way to find poor but intelligent kids whose scores were lower than those of the well-to-do. The sat was a way to find poor kids whose scores were HIGHER than those of the well-to-do. The poor Jews who attended the City College of New York during the late 1930s and early 1940s--Nathan Glazer, Irving Howe, Daniel Bell, Irving Kristol--weren't given a favor by the bosses at Harvard, in spite of lower test scores. They were admitted due to HIGHER test scores.
This publication is by the national association of scholars (nas), which is a "conservative" outfit.
Full disclosure: The NAS published my 5,000-word report on politicized grading, "Making Up the Grade: Notes from the Antiversity" in the Spring 1998 issue of its scholarly journal, Academic Questions, under the pseudonym, Robert Berman. It set the standard for years on its topic. I then delivered a paper on remedial college education at an NAS conference on said subject at Assumption College in Worcester, Mass, in May, 1999, "Remedial Education, Language Rights, and Progressive Pedagogy," for which Gary Crosby Brasor, the number 2 or 3 man at the NAS had sent me a letter, which functioned as a contract, promising to publish my paper. Brasor welshed.
On the eve of my paper, Brasor spoke with me on the phone. At the nas' annual conference in Chicago in Apil, 1999, he'd mentioned that there was still a slot available at the conference the next month, and I'd expressed an interest in delivering a talk. I sent him my big exposes on ebonics, but instead of persuading him as to my fitness, they had disturbed him. He had me speak with the brilliant researcher, Sandra Stotsky, who was then working on (or who had finished) her book, Losing Our Language. Stotsky cleared me.
Self-styled conservatives like Brasor are no more virtuous than anyone else.]
"onto this week's articles."
"article of the week"
"the sobering lesson of the Claudine Gay ouster"—J. Scott Turner, 1/10/24
"'much ink and many gigabytes have been spilled on the topic of Claudine Gay's defenestration from the presidency of Harvard university. the commentary ranges from the tedious and predictable gnashing of liberal teeth that racism and sexism somehow were the cause, orchestrated—naturally—by republicans, who have made plagiarism a 'weapon' in their 'war on education.' more sober voices have laid out the objective case for Gay's ouster: the plagiarism, the absence of moral clarity, her scholarly mediocrity, and her vigorous advocacy of a destructive ideology. and, it must be said, there is an air of unseemly triumphalism wafting through the air—'TWO DOWN.' understandable, maybe, but still."
"Read More"
"other articles"
"saving free speech"—Wenyuan Wu, 1/11/24
"Noah Webster, known as the father of American scholarship and education, wrote in 1788:
"It is an object of vast magnitude that systems of education should be adopted and pursued which may not only diffuse a knowledge of the sciences but may implant in the minds of the American youth the principles of virtue and of liberty and inspire them with just and liberal ideas of government and with an inviolable attachment to their own country."
"but how can young Americans aspire to 'the principles of virtue and of liberty' if they are too afraid to share, even in private, their opinions on important topics of our times?"
"Read More"
"FAFSA SNAFU, but Not FUBAR"—Andrew Gillen, 1/10/24
"Millions of potential and current college students fill out the Free Application for Federal Student Aid (FAFSA) every year. In 2020, Congress passed a law updating the FAFSA and the aid formulas for 2024, but the department of education's (ed) release of the new FAFSA has been a fiasco."
"read more"
"mtc roundup"
"a weekly digest of articles that mtc writers have published elsewhere. have a publication to share? email Jared Gould at (gould@nas.org)."Harvard will reap the damage caused by Claudine Gay" — Dr. Peter Wood, the spectator world, 01/03/24
managing editor, minding the campus
3 comments:
The lesson is,blacks don't believe Gay should have resigned--I'm shocked she did.They(sharpton,obama etc.) don't think she did anything wrong.But then NO CRIME is thought of as "wrong"--or punishable--in the black mindset,which is where "black law" lives.
--GRA
SAT numbers speak for themselves.I wrote a few times about SAT scores,for each high school in West Michigan,used to be printed in the Grand Rapids Press.This was over a decade ago.From the rural,all White cities-where scores were high(not affluent either),to the Grand Rapids city schools that blacks attended,where scores were 40% lower than all White districts.The Press discontinued the annual printing of these scores for obvious reasons(they made blacks look bad).
There was an experiment where Whites were transferred to black schools and blacks to White schools.The result--and subsequent stoppage of the experiment- showed that blacks did not improve by going to "White schools",but dragged down the SAT score for that "White school'.
--GRA
“lower-income students" is just a euphemism for black and hispanic students
Usually don’t they use for tracking purposes those students that are eligible for and receive a hot lunch. Hot lunch is very important and minorities spoken as if it is all one word HOTLUNCH.
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