Gyroscopic Investing

Here's what the Virginia state board of education actually did. It looked at students' test scores in reading and math and then proposed new passing rates. In math it set an acceptable passing rate at 82 percent for Asian students, 68 percent for whites, 52 percent for Latinos, 45 percent for blacks and 33 percent for kids with disabilities.

http://www.nwpr.org/post/firestorm-erup ... tion-goals

This seems silly to me, but for different reasons from I imagine the ones that outrage upper-middle class white liberals. If the school board is trying to acknowledge and adjust for differing current racial outcomes, this seems like a terribly backwards way to go about doing it. In the real world, math is math; a black student who passes despite only getting a 46% isn't going to do better on real-world tasks than an Asian who fails with 81%. The solution is not to tell the black kid that he did fine despite getting less than half of the questions right; it's to help him achieve as high as the Asian kid!

Pointedstick wrote: The solution is not to tell the black kid that he did fine despite getting less than half of the questions right; it's to help him achieve as high as the Asian kid!

I was an engineer in college (minor electrical engineering) and over half (perhaps it was 2/3) of the people in the electrical engineering classes were Asian.  I'm not totally sure why, but suspect it is because they worked their asses off, and their parents and I think culture encouraged that.  Sorta the opposite of the entitlement mentality.  People are individuals, but there are cultural influences.

Benko wrote:

Pointedstick wrote: The solution is not to tell the black kid that he did fine despite getting less than half of the questions right; it's to help him achieve as high as the Asian kid!

I was an engineer in college (minor electrical engineering) and over half (perhaps it was 2/3) of the people in the electrical engineering classes were Asian.  I'm not totally sure why, but suspect it is because they worked their asses off, and their parents and I think culture encouraged that.  Sorta the opposite of the entitlement mentality.  People are individuals, but there are cultural influences.

I was an engineer in college as well and even though it is school-dependent, the two schools I went to (Penn State and Georgia Tech) had a high population of east asian and indian students, even though the schools themselves were demographically much different.

This whole controversy is overblown and is simply a way for people to interject race into every conceivable discussion.  My understanding is that the RATE of improvement was fairly consistent across all "race" groups.  Some groups are just starting much lower than others.  To expect black or hispanic students to make astronomical gains relative to their peers simply to reach an arbitrary metric should strike everyone as ridiculous.  Minority students have been underachieving relative to their white peers for a very long time (the exception being Asians, but that's such a diverse group so as to be meaningless).  To expect or demand parity over night is unfair to both the teachers and students.

Benko wrote: I was an engineer in college (minor electrical engineering) and over half (perhaps it was 2/3) of the people in the electrical engineering classes were Asian.  I'm not totally sure why, but suspect it is because they worked their asses off, and their parents and I think culture encouraged that.  Sorta the opposite of the entitlement mentality.  People are individuals, but there are cultural influences.

There was a good story on NPR just the other day about the messages parents convey to their kids about education and the differences between American parents and Asian parents.  The Americans tend to tell kids that success in school happens because they are smart (and struggle is seen as a lack of success), whereas Asian parents tell their kids that success in school is a result of a successful struggle to learn.  I may not have that 100% correct, but the point is that Asian culture emphasizes the struggle and the hard work necessary to get through it.  In American culture, you've either got it or you don't, and most parents shy away from making their kids struggle.

flyingpylon wrote:

Benko wrote: I was an engineer in college (minor electrical engineering) and over half (perhaps it was 2/3) of the people in the electrical engineering classes were Asian.  I'm not totally sure why, but suspect it is because they worked their asses off, and their parents and I think culture encouraged that.  Sorta the opposite of the entitlement mentality.  People are individuals, but there are cultural influences.

There was a good story on NPR just the other day about the messages parents convey to their kids about education and the differences between American parents and Asian parents.  The Americans tend to tell kids that success in school happens because they are smart (and struggle is seen as a lack of success), whereas Asian parents tell their kids that success in school is a result of a successful struggle to learn.  I may not have that 100% correct, but the point is that Asian culture emphasizes the struggle and the hard work necessary to get through it.  In American culture, you've either got it or you don't, and most parents shy away from making their kids struggle.

Never tell your kids, "you're so smart!" It screws them up and makes them less motivated. Much better to tell them, "you worked hard! good job!"

http://www.lifetimemoms.com/family-pare ... -are-smart
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/08/05/opini ... ldren.html
http://www.parentingscience.com/praise- ... gence.html