prof_xi_o
1yr ago
It makes sense to me that by integrating the honors classes with the regular classes the regular classes will then more closely approximate baseline racial makeup. Like if your goal is to reduce (explicit) racial biases, this seems like an effective strategy. Isn’t it? Like, if we ignore the side-effects, this does accomplish that goal, right? How would you steel-man the policy change?
Do you expect those to change in a generation?
I hope that our biases have evolved by that point to be around things like how much money you have, or how you score on tests. It’s certainly not guaranteed to happen, but I think it’s more likely than not that we will change our biases away from skin color/narrowly-defined race in like 20-40 years (maybe this is wishful thinking)
prof_xi_o
1yr ago
Sure, I’ll admit that general intelligence is a factor for some students when they choose to take honors classes.
I’d argue that for most students (middle of the Bell curve) the choice is related to other factors like signaling to colleges, their work ethic, their family dynamics (pressure from family, support from family), and their desire to challenge themselves and not be bored.
Edit: I forgot to add that which class a students’ cohort takes is probably a huge driver as well
prof_xi_o
1yr ago
I’m inclined to agree, but do you also agree that having a different racial makeup of these honors classes relative to baseline is a problem? If so, how do other ideologies (non-woke) solve it in a productive way?
The actual effects of these actions are: parents that can afford it remove their kids from the district and send them to private school or move the entire family to a new district.
Yes, it also occurred to me that motivated/resourced parents will get their kids in with better teachers at the same school (even though they are all non-honors now).
prof_xi_o
1yr ago
I was hoping that the culture war roundup would be that place (where current happenings get a little bit more wiggle room), but based on the feedback I’m getting it sounds like the community expects more effort out of top-level posts.
If you have any specific suggestions or some top-level posts you really like I’d love to hear/see them
prof_xi_o
1yr ago
Right, I am imagining that rather than having an explicit inequality (honors classes vs non-honors classes) you end up with a gray area where some teachers are better than others and then skillful/determined parents are the only ones that can get their kids in the right classes.
Love the koan, thanks for the thoughts.
prof_xi_o
1yr ago
I’ve been watching a lot of YouTube (and by extension twitch), and this idea (that bad content can generate good content) certainly fits the meta there.
prof_xi_o
1yr ago
I apologize since you asked us to >be nice
No need to apologize, appreciate the criticism.
Not trying to troll, just looking to flesh out my own knowledge. Seems reasonable to expect more effort out of top-level posts, but what does that look like?
A timebox for research beforehand (you must spend 10 min researching and 10 min writing about the topic before posting)?
What are the characteristics of a good top-level post? Do you have some examples of your favorite top-level posts?
DSL seems to have a much >broader number of topics to >discuss.
What is DSL?
prof_xi_o
1yr ago
Not trying to troll, just haven’t been a part of the community for very long. Don’t know the norms and can’t reproduce the normative top-level comment yet.
Hey! First time poster here. Please be critical.
I saw this article last week and am not sure how to think about it. https://www.wsj.com/articles/to-increase-equity-school-districts-eliminate-honors-classes-d5985dee
The TL;DR is that honors classes in this subset of all honors classes had a clear bias in terms of racial makeup relative to baseline. So they stopped offering honors classes.
On the one hand this seems super effective— with a strategy like this maybe in a generation or so when they start offering honors classes again there might be less bias.
On the other hand my intuition says that in general it’s okay to allow students to self-select (or students and whoever is telling them what to do) and decide how much schoolwork they want to do.
It seems relevant to the school-flavor culture war stuff.
Any links to previous threads on similar topics would be appreciated.
Curious to know more.
Edit: not bait, genuine curiosity. Got some good criticism about low-effort top-level-posting, would appreciate suggestions/pointers to excellent top-level posts.
Continued edit: Also curious what about this post codes it as bait? A few people saw it that way.
Here's the quote from the article, it seems like you're misrepresenting it (or being flippant, maybe I am misunderstanding?):
If you're quibbling with the word choice of "bias" that's fine, what I meant to say was:
There was a clear disparity in the racial makeup of honors classes relative to baseline (student body) (according to the article)
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