The shamefully liberally biased NY Times article on tracking

Steve Sailer has already blogged about the outrageous NY Times article about how Stamford, CT is ending “tracking” in its public schools.

The article demonstrates how HBD-denialism leads to lousy education policy which harms children.

From the left-wing perspective, we all know that there is no difference in intelligence between blacks and whites, so therefore the tests which show that must be biased and not telling us about the true abilities of the black students. Due to the bias in the tests, it would therefore be racist to use these tests to separate children.

The truth, of course, is that there are significant differences in cognitive abilities between children, and it’s impossible to teach all of them in the best manner possible if you mix them all together into the same class, because the instruction will be forced to regress to the ability of the class’s slowest learners. The reason why the slowest classes have the most black students is because the average black child is not as intelligent as the average white child, due to differences in the gene pools of the different races.

Even though the article is full of left wing bias, starting with the headline (everyone knows that separatism is bad), the article admits that there is a problem:

These mixed-ability classes … have also drawn complaints of boredom from some high-performing students who say they are not learning as much.

And the parents of the children see the problem:

More than 300 Stamford parents have signed a petition opposing the shift, and some say they are now considering moving or switching their children to private schools. “I think this is a terrible system for our community,” said Nicole Zussman, a mother of two.

But the sneaky liberals in charge of education policy spin their lies and half-truths:

Deborah Kasak, executive director of the National Forum to Accelerate Middle Grades Reform, said research is showing that all students benefit from mixed-ability classes. “We see improvements in student behavior, academic performance and teaching, and all that positively affects school culture,” she said.

Of course we know the very same liberals usually make sure their own kids don’t attend school where they have to be in the classroom with poor minority students.

The shamefully biased article has quotes from a bunch of people with important-sounding titles defending mixed classes, with no one but some parents complaining about it, leaving the non-critical reader with the impression that everyone agrees that separating children by ability is a really bad thing.

Comments

[as]

When I was in fifth grade, my teacher told me that "research" had shown classes with students of varying levels of ability were best. Even then, at a young age, it made absolutely no sense to me!

In my elementary and middle schools, for some reason, only math class was tracked, and what a tremdendous difference for the better it made!

[Mark]

we need an HBD rapid response team to respond in the comments section of the NYT when they run their willfully ignorant articles.

Each such article should be properly seen as an opportunity to get out the truth!

[APH]

Of all the hypocrisy on the left, only the most radical committed leftists (the true believers) put their kids in schools with lots of NAMs when they could put them elsewhere. You hear about this constantly in NYC. Liberals putting their newborn babies on waiting list for private schools (not an exaggeration) and liberals staging protests when schools get rezoned that has too many NAMs in the racial makeup.

But they loooove diversity and consider people from the South racist.

[The Undiscovered Jew]

Sailer claims in his last column that DNA evidence for IQ being genetic will be, in his words, coming in "Soon".

I wonder once the genomic data has confirmed HBD if it would be constitutional to segregate schools and school districts not by race but by IQ?

Of course, segregating schools based on IQ would obviously be de facto segregating by race, which would be really popular with white parents because they wouldn't have to spend money on private schools to get away from NAMs.

[Anonymous]

These people are never going to stop, ever. No lie is too big, no amount of mendacity is too much and your kids will be the fodder for their shredder unless you get away from Public Ed as fast and as far as possible. And do it now.
If you've got kids in public schools, get them out and get them in a private/parochial or homeschool them. Doesn't matter how nice and white those public schools are either. Busing WILL be back. Count on it. Another disaster in the making.
Undiscovered Jew, ain't now way in hell that schools will be segregated by IQ. The tests will never be given. You can take that to the bank.
Public Ed is another massive train wreck, just like gov't health care will be. Liberals are in control and they will fuck with you and your kid's lives every fucking chance they get. You'll be branded a racist, a bigot, a Nazi, a KKK member if you say a word of protest. You (and me and everyone else who makes a decent living, fuck that only over $250,000 shit, it is a giant lie) pay for it as well. You can definately count on that.

[Meng Bomin]

"I wonder once the genomic data has confirmed HBD if it would be constitutional to segregate schools and school districts not by race but by IQ?"

I wouldn't expect this to happen. Policy makers are very capable of ignoring inconvenient data, and it's not like IQ tests don't exist already. A data confirmation of HBD would not necessarily translate into a policy stance that makes sense in light of it.

[veiny]

DNA evidence will be brushed off as easily as every other kind of information that currently makes "HBD" obvious. The only way it might do anything is if there are literally generations of very effective, fiasco-free consumer genetic engineering of complex traits - but the technology to do human genetic engineering has been around since animal husbandry.

[Peter]

When I was in school, which wasn't that long ago (quill pens were just being phased out), tracking was such an accepted part of education that it never seemed to occur to anyone to question the idea. Students were tracked, and that was the natural order of things. It's quite different today.

[david]

Every school teacher knows this.

[The Undiscovered Jew]

"DNA evidence will be brushed off as easily as every other kind of information that currently makes "HBD" obvious."

I'm still optimistic about HBD simply because it allows the right to go on the attack against equality of outcome doctrine.

But we'll see who is correct in more or less three years when the information comes in.

[BZ]

"The article demonstrates how HBD-denialism leads to lousy education policy which harms children."

The upshot is that the generation of kids affected will be less likely to deny HBD. I'm sure one reason many HBD deniers exist is because they only mix with people from a similar background and ability level to themselves.

[Billare]

The article is so fucking stupid. Did you also retch at the shameless journalism by anecdote when they mentioned the supposed intellectual brilliance of Jamiya, a 2?

[Steve Johnson]

If you think data can make a dent in acceptance of HBD you're dreaming.

Very simple test. Do a google image search for the following two things and compare the results:

"Caucasian skull"
"African skull"

For fun, throw in "aboriginal skull".

If you were to guess IQs from the visual evidence, you'd come up with about 65, 85, 100. Seriously, does racism and test bias cause differences in skulls?

If that data can be ignored, genetic data can easily be ignored. Let's face it, the lies are only going to fall when the whole edifice comes down like the Soviet Union; they're too integral to the whole structure of modern American (and western) society. Based on what happened in the USSR, don't expect any good to come of the collapse.

[ogunsiron]

When I was in fifth grade, my teacher told me that "research" had shown classes with students of varying levels of ability were best. Even then, at a young age, it made absolutely no sense to me!
it made! ...

Posted by: as
___

You were probably smarter AND more knowledgeable than the teacher. I'm barely kidding. Elementary school teachers are dumb as rocks.

[Dan Kurt]

Results of non-tracking:

Just returned from my son's commencement. He received his Ph.D. along with 5 other individuals in Mechanical Engineering. A total of 17 Mechanical Engineers were listed in the program as having received the degree or will receive the degree through 2008 and 2009 and ?2010?.

Three of those 17 are white. Two of the whites are from the USA; one is my son. The third white is a Hungarian from Europe. The other 14 are North Asians mainly from China with a few from Korea, Japan and Taiwan.

This event happened in an American University considered to be in the top 20 of the World for Science and Engineering ( Harvard is number 1. ). Where are the American Ph.D. students? Thanks to the absence of tracking our bright students are not being given a foundation that permits one to "make the grade" and be selected to a Ph.D. program in Science and Engineering unless the American is unusually brilliant given the competition that the North Asians and European educated students exhibit.

Dan Kurt

[Kevin K]

"Where are the American Ph.D. students?"

Making money with their bachelor's and master's degrees. Foreign students, on the other hand, use PhD programs as an "in" to get visas. PhD programs pay a stipend, even though its the equivalent of minimum wage, is more then engineers and scientists get in other countries. Pretty much when a student in India or the PR of China enter a university they are 100% focused on getting into an American university graduate program.

Usually the income increase from having a PhD in engineering is not worth the time spent in graduate school. However, the value of a student visa is huge.

The sciences are a bit different from engineering that most people who go into them have tend to be people thinking about going "all the way" and getting the PhD. I'm a physicist and 50% of the graduate students when I was in grad school were domestic.

I went to a public high school with tracking and I agree with your point, but you have to see the big picture to understand the disparity.

[Michael Anissimov]

I am a self-identified liberal who acknowledges HBD. I guess you could call me center-left.

[OneSTDV]

Even if they didn't track, everyone already knows who's dumb and who isn't. And at the very least, with tracking, the dumb kids are only surrounded by other dumb kids. That way they won't be aware of just how dumb they are on a daily basis.

I posted a recap of this article on my blog (not related to above comment):

www.onestdv.blogspot.com (see "Complacency of American Liberals)

[russ]

When i was in high school some of our classes (social studies, health, etc) were non-tracked. I complained about this to the teacher because it was so dull. The teacher said, "This is a great opportunity because those kids can learn from you." I replies, "Is that really my job?"

[Joe]

Good topic. Of course this same problem permeates every aspect of American society: How do we cope with NAM mediocrity?

I think it's time to be honest with the NAMs and their white/Asian enablers------------

OK, you want to deny reality by eliminating tracking? Fine, we will now refuse to pay the taxes that support your racial agenda.

[The Undiscovered Jew]

"Posted by: Steve Johnson | June 16, 2009 at 01:01 AM"

If Sailer is right about the genome data starting to come in then we'll see who is right in the near future.

[The Undiscovered Jew]

"How do we cope with NAM mediocrity?"

There are lots of ways to handle the NAMs. One way is to collapse their birthrate.

1) We could start by cutting off non-medical welfare benefits to NAM mothers based on how many babies they have.

2) Pay criminals and juvenile delinquents a few thousand dollars to have vasectomies or use RISUG* injections.

3) Garnish the welfare benefits of NAM women if they have babies out of wedlock in order to financially encourage them to use either birth control or have an abortion.

None of these proposals would be difficult to implement and they would benefit society tremendously by crashing NAM birthrates.

The problem is not our inability to "manage NAMs" the problem is that we don't *want* to do it.

* http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RISUG

[The Engineer]

Tracking doesn't just benefit smart kids in otherwise low performing districts.

My son just made the cut into the high performing track. Even at this largely white school (with a nice Indian, Korean, and Jewish contingent), top 10 in the entire state, the non-achiever track is full of mediocrity. Not criminals, like in Bridgeport, but a smart kid is definitely going to be wicked bored.

Back when I was going to school, I was in the high achiever track in math, social studies, and science, and average track in English. Again, there was just a huge difference, the difference between the kids going to really good schools (Low Ivies, MIT, Caltech) and those going to community college. It was that stark a difference. The difference between enthusiasm and total indifference to education. Hostility to education, even.

God help the kids in the retard classes. You were rubbing elbows with future stoners, alcoholics, and criminals. And this was Baldwin, New York. The inner city is going to have a much larger contingent of criminals.

[sabril]

"only the most radical committed leftists (the true believers) put their kids in schools with lots of NAMs when they could put them elsewhere."

I actually knew a Jewish guy who did this. Without going into details, he admitted to my wife that it did not work out very well.

[Flan]

"I actually knew a Jewish guy who did this. Without going into details, he admitted to my wife that it did not work out very well."

Another Ashkenazi with that legendary high IQ. He must be more guilty than ever.

[GreySwan]

It does seem that the US is trying to do what we can do destroy ourselves in every way possible:

Retard our brightest minds
Destroy the economy with big government and regulation
Snub our allies and befriend evil villains
Demographically replace our sort-of-indigenous white people with Hispanics
the list goes on
----

Seems like we are headed to becoming a tyrannical empire like Austria-Hungary. As we get more diverse, the more free speech and liberties will be trampled on to keep our country from disintegrating.

----

Anyone thinking about leaving this country so there children will have a better life?

[HS: Leave and go where?]

[Flan]

---Anyone thinking about leaving this country so there children will have a better life?

[HS: Leave and go where?]---

You're right. There is nowhere to go. People had better be prepared. Remember how the Austro-Hungarian Empire ended up.

[S]

"How do we cope with NAM mediocrity?"

Agreed. Crash the birthrate. Here's a non-evil method:

PAY NAM young women age 12-22 NOT to get preg.
EVERYBODY agrees that teenage preg is bad, right? Yet, NAMs have very high rates of teen preg.
If the teen preg rate were decreased, the tfr would decrease.

The idea goes like this: IF, and only IF, the NAM teen's mother was ever on welfare, the teen girl can go to a center where: she's given a preg test -- if NEG, she gets a check. In 3 months she can return. Give preg test - if neg, she gets a check.
We can also provide her with free b/c methods if she wishes.

End the program at 22, because by then most women will have figured out "what's causes it." Also, she's more likely to have gotten some education and be more able to support herself and her illegitimate offspring.
This program would ONLY be avail to NAMs whose mothers took welfare. The stated purpose would be to "break the generational welfare cycle." But it would have the added benefit, to the rest of us, of lowering NAM total lifetime fertility.

[Flan]

Posted by: S | June 16, 2009 at 12:27 PM

S,
I've got yo be honest with you. Those are great ideas,. I'm sure they would work. They aren't cruel and they offer incentive and would help everyone. BUT THEY WILL NEVER HAPPEN. The NYT article is all the evidence that you need.

[Capital R. Rob]

This stuff is just disgusting, and it's the main reason I care about HBD at all. No amount of lying is too much for these "educators" with their social engineering plans. Meanwhile, East Asia is training real engineers, and their homegrown technology surpasses us more every year in everything but defense. And defense will follow, because mass production is the driver that allows working out the kinks in everything from toolmaking to distribution.

[GreySwan]

The only possible place to emigrate to right now seems Australia, and maybe New Zealand. Australia is a reasonably sized (population) country, the language is English, the people are fine, and the policies are reasonable.

Of course, given great national will we could probably still save America. But I don't see any such national will. So I am pretty doubtful that we will remain a first rate nation forever.

[Flan]

Posted by: GreySwan | June 16, 2009 at 12:54 PM

Seriously, if you want to get into Australia or NZ, you'd better hurry. Because when the US starts to sink (and idiot liberals like the Ms. Kasak are rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic), those nations will pick and choose who they want in. It will be a buyer's market. I hope you have big $ or some crazy skill/ability that they need. Of course that assumes that those nations will be taking people at all.
And you are correct, there is no "national will" at this point. But sooner than most think, the US will be the kind of place where the NYT worrying about school IQ tests will be a "secondary concern." Look at it this way. When the commie media tells us that "only" 600,000 people lost their jobs last month and that that is a positive development, plotting the next points on the graph doesn't require an advanced degree.

[Alex]

The problem with putting students on academic tracks is that those tracks are more determined by what they did in Elementary school rather than their intelligence.

When I was in middle school, I was placed in the high track for math, but not English because I hated it and never put in any effort. When I got into high school, I stayed in the advanced track for mathematics and in the low/below average track for English. Even in my senior year, I was taking Calculus and DiffEq while taking very easy English classes.

Well, as it turns out I did much better on my verbal SATs then my math SATs. Even after I studied hour after hour for the math exams, only my verbal score increased (this is probably because I plateaued, since the SAT is a hard test to teach for).

So, you might be wondering, why didn't I get knocked down to a lower math group and sent to a higher verbal group? Simple, I didn't spend any time on English because I thought that I was bad at it. Perhaps if they had used diagnostic tests instead of inertia to determine placement...

[sabril]

[HS: Leave and go where?]

Actually, if I were younger, I would seriously think about moving to Israel as a returning Jew. Despite all the problems there, the Israelis have one huge advantage, which is that they believe they have a right to exist as a Jewish state. This is reflected in their restrictive immigration policies and their healthy Jewish population growth rate.

Other possibilities are Australia and New Zealand.

Switzerland would also be a decent choice, but it costs big bucks to get Swiss citizenship.

Fundamentally, most white western populations do not believe they have a right to exist. This is reflected in their suicidal immigration policies and their negative population growth rates.

[GreySwan]

Alex:

I was in the same boat as you -- excellent at math, science, econ. Very good at history, and not so good at english. I was also equally surprised when I scored dramatically higher on my verbal IQ test than on performance IQ. I think there are two factors at play here:

1) Writing is a more trainable skill then solving complex math equations. Every activity requires some combination of talent and hard work. But the mix changes. E.G. Piano requires tons and tons of training, and you will not be able to play at all without practicing unless even if you are the most talented person in the world. So basically your 'experience' curve is pretty steep and you start at zero. Running is an example of the opposite. If you are the most talented runner in the world and never train, you will STILL be faster then most people. So you do not start at zero, and your improvement curve is much steeper, and the improvement comes with much less training. Of course, it always takes a lot of hard work to be the best at something, but not necessarily to be good.

2) (I'm much less sure about this:) Lower level math, up until diff-eq, and maybe even a little higher, is mostly verbal skills. Its logic and reasoning. When you get to higher level math with really abstract stuff, it becomes more non-verbal.

[The Undiscovered Jew]

GreySwan,

Doesn't the SAT verbal section correlate more strongly with an individuals actual IQ than the math section?

[HS: Yes, I'm pretty sure the verbal section is more highly g-loaded.]

[The Engineer]

Alex, they used an IQ test to place my kid in the advanced track. Ditto for me back in the day. I took "The California Test" and "The Iowa Test", my kid took something similar. It's not all about how you perform in elementary school.

Although I would guess that the correlation between verbal ability and grades in English us extremely high, like 0.8 or 0.9.

If I could just boast a little bit, my kid scored 146 on IQ. He must get that shit from his mom, I'm not that smart.

[Fugly]

"If I could just boast a little bit, my kid scored 146 on IQ. He must get that shit from his mom, I'm not that smart."

Hope he didn't get your looks.

[FWQ]

Looks like mom and dad don't want to end tracking. In fact they even got petitions out! Oh, well. What do you think this is, a democracy?

Ignoring the parents while lecturing the world on freedom, is even worse then HBD denialism.

[dearieme]

"I am pretty doubtful that we will remain a first rate nation forever." No nation has ever stayed first rate "forever".

[Nobody]

I feel really bad for the children in these classes. I was one of those advanced kids when I was in elementary and middle school (late 80s and early 90s in a prominent wealthy American suburb). My father had gone to a private "country day" school after they started racial busing in his town in the 60s, but my mother fanatically supported public education and compelled me to go only to public schools. I even begged her to relent and send me to a private school because I wanted to learn and not rot at my desk, but she refused.

For me, middle school was absolutely the worst. In elementary and high school there was some degree of tracking tolerated (I went to a magnet high school with an International Baccalaureate program), but in my middle school there was virtually no tracking except in math, which meant I learned almost nothing and it was a complete waste of three years of my life.

[Tom V]

It's not just high schools:

http://blog.vdare.com/archives/2009/06/16/diversity-in-the-us-naval-academy/

(It's Vdare, so hopefully HS can get past dismissing the writer as a loser or some such.)