As far as I know, my children do not read this website regularly, so I am going to share some information about them. I raised three daughters. Each is successful in their own field. Each finished college and two have advanced degrees, but they all went in totally different directions. The oldest has an art degree with an associate degree in architecture. The middle child is an electrical engineer with a masters degree in marketing. The youngest child is a lawyer (having passed the bar in two states). Each child handled academics differently. Putting the lawyer in an advanced physics class would have been a disaster. The electrical engineer didn’t love English literature. The artist got all A’s in art classes and any math she could draw. They are different.
On Saturday The Daily Wire reported that the Boston Public Schools were suspending testing for enrollment in advanced classes.
The article reports:
New fifth and sixth graders will not be accepted into advanced classes in Boston for the next year, the entry test being suspended due to the pandemic, while at the same time the school district has raised concerns about racial “equity” problems, noting a vast majority of students in those classes are white or Asian.
Has it occurred to anyone that maybe we need to do something to change the culture in the non-white and non-Asian communities to encourage the children in those communities to do better in school? I am sure there are many academically gifted children in these communities that are simply not encouraged to do well in school. The exceptions to this rule are people like Allen West, Dr. Ben Carson, and Justice Thomas. These are very intelligent men, and I am sure there are many more like them. We need mentor programs for children without fathers that encourage these children to do well in school and teach them what success in school can mean for their future.
The article notes that one Boston-area school system changed it’s advanced class qualification to a random lottery. That makes no sense at all.
The article quotes a GBH report:
“The program was open to all students in the Boston Public Schools who took a test known as Terra Nova in the third grade and received a high score. Those students were placed in a lottery conducted by the central administration office, and lottery winners received letters inviting them to apply to the program. Last fall, 453 students received invitations, 143 students applied and 116 enrolled this year, officials said.
Students in the program have the opportunity to study subjects in greater depth and are offered more schoolwork than the traditional curriculum requires.”
GBH added that “District officials have launched a working group to determine the long-term future of the program and are expected to make a recommendation in May.”
The suspension of the program comes as schools across the country have begun teaching radical critical race theory, creating more classes insisting white supremacy can be found everywhere and denouncing merit-based systems as racist. In San Francisco, for example, the competitive Lowell High School will no longer include a merit-based admissions program, opting instead for a random lottery.
A random lottery will result in a greater failure rate within the program and will accomplish nothing without extensive tutoring and mentoring. If that tutoring and mentoring is provided, it might work.