Friday, March 08, 2019



Boston exploring new entrance test for exam schools

"Exam schools" = Selective schools. 

Not everything here meets the eye. Why is the admission exam held on a Saturday at regional sites?  Because regional sites are more convenient for richer families and such families are more likely to make the effort of a special trip on a Saturday.  In other words, poor blacks are subtly discouraged from even applying. 

Is that bad? For most blacks applying would be a waste of time anyway.  They are rightly discouraged from getting into a situation that is too difficult for them. 

The existing system sounds about right for everybody. The schools get students who can handle the work and not others. Any change would probably lead to a lot more frustrated blacks.  The whole point of a good selection system is to keep everybody reasonably satisfied -- not encourage students to enrol in courses they cannot handle

No system will do perfect justice for everyone but being just for most can reasonably be aimed at. 

One change that might be an improvement would be to make a special effort to identify unusually capable black children at the end of grade school and encourage just them to apply to an exam school.



Interim Boston schools Superintendent Laura Perille said Tuesday that her administration is exploring the idea of replacing the controversial exam that has determined the fate of tens of thousands of students vying for coveted spots at Boston Latin School and the city’s two other exam schools.

Perille disclosed the review during a City Council hearing that scrutinized exam-school admission policies. Her comments came six months after a Harvard University report found the school system’s reliance on a test designed for private school admission was blocking thousands of students of color from an education at some of the city’s best public schools.

“We are certainly keeping on the table the possibility of a different exam,” she said, adding that her administration is “basically looking at the different providers on the market.”

Changing the admission criteria for the city’s exam schools has long been a polarizing issue in Boston. Families that know the admission process well — mostly well-to-do ones — often pay for private tutoring in an all-out quest to get what many consider to be a private school education for their children at no cost.

But many civil rights advocates say the frenzy to snare an exam school seat in a city rife with many failing high schools has come at the expense of some of the city’s most disadvantaged students, whose families lack the financial resources or know-how to give them an edge in the admission race. Civil rights advocates have also repeatedly raised questions about potential racial bias in the admission exam.

“It’s high time we start reforming the admission policies of our exam schools,” City Councilor Kim Janey said at the start of the hearing.

In October, Harvard University’s Rappaport Institute for Greater Boston found that the Independent School Entrance Exam presented one of the biggest barriers for black and Latino students to gain admission to Latin School, Latin Academy, and the O’Bryant School of Math and Science. For instance, black and Latino students with MCAS scores similar to their white and Asian peers did not score as well on the ISEE, dashing their chances for admission. They also were significantly less likely to take the ISEE.

One reason for the performance gap was that the ISEE covers material in literature and algebra that is not part of the BPS curriculum and the test is administered on a Saturday. By contrast, if the school system relied instead on the MCAS, which is given during the school day, its exam schools would wind up with greater student diversity, according to the report.

Pressure to change admission criteria has only intensified. Just last week the NAACP, Lawyers for Civil Rights, and other groups concluded nearly two years of public forums on overhauling exam-school admission requirements and proposed their own solutions. They recommended having BPS develop its own admission test, offering seats to top students from each school or ZIP code, or creating a “holistic” approach that could include such factors as a student’s socioeconomic status and accomplishments in sports, the arts, and community service.

Ivan Espinoza-Madrigal, executive director for the Lawyers for Civil Rights, said the school system’s willingness now to explore the possibility of changing the ISEE is a step in the right direction, saying “it is in response to significant community-driven efforts to democratize access to Boston’s elite exam schools.”

“Right now the city’s reliance on the ISEE is completely misplaced,” he said in an interview. “The city should absolutely reconsider the entire admissions process.”

Initially, school officials were cool to the idea of replacing the ISEE after Harvard released its report, preferring instead to focus on efforts to expand opportunities for black and Latino students to take the exam. For instance, starting next year, sixth-graders will be able to take the ISEE during the school day instead of having to travel to a testing site on a Saturday. City students can take the exam for free.

School officials also have been trying to increase the caliber of instruction in the lower grades, although efforts have not been systemwide. A key program, Excellence for All, is in just 16 schools.

Discussions about possibly replacing the ISEE appear to be in the early stages.

In a statement after the hearing, the School Department said no changes to the exam would be proposed for this fall.

“Boston Public Schools will continue to review the exam school entrance assessment for planning purposes, but there is no timeline for any potential changes at this moment,” the statement said. “Any changes to the exam provider would likely include an opportunity for public input and a request-for-proposal process.”

During the hearing, Perille said that if the BPS switched to the MCAS, legal issues may need to be worked out. For instance, state rules may need to be changed to allow the MCAS, which was designed to measure public school performance, to be given to private-school students hoping to win a place at the city exam schools.

City Councilor Annissa Essaibi-George, chair of the council’s Education Committee, said she was unsure about the MCAS.

“As a former teacher, I’m not a super fan of using the MCAS,” said Essaibi-George, whose children attend Latin School and Latin Academy.

One data point released by school officials during the hearing struck a nerve with City Councilor Michael Flaherty. Officials said that about 40 percent of black and Latino students who registered for the ISEE exam the last two falls did not show up, which officials blamed in part on the exam being held on a weekend at regional sites. That, they said, can create transportation barriers.

But Flaherty argued that parents bear some responsibility. He said he understands that many families lead complicated lives, but he doubted assertions that many families lack awareness about the exam school and the admission process.

“Where are the parents in this discussion, and why does the BPS let them off the hook?” Flaherty said.

The Rev. Willie Bodrick of the Boston Network for Black Student Achievement later leaped to the defense of the system’s parents, especially those in marginalized communities.

“The parents in our communities are strong, they are resilient, they care, they love, and they work hard, sometimes two jobs, sometimes through language barriers,” he said. “They want what’s best for their kids.”

SOURCE 






Lest we forget:  The story below is from 2002

Skin color is no substitute for intellectual ability

Dr. Patrick Chavis is dead. Will the liberal politicians and gullible media who made him a poster boy for government-imposed affirmative action shed a single tear, or will they continue to ignore what a shameful tragedy his life became?

According to a Los Angeles County Sheriff's detective I spoke with last week, Chavis was murdered on the night of July 23 in Hawthorne, an economically depressed neighborhood on the southern edge of Los Angeles. Three unknown assailants shot him during an alleged robbery at a Foster's Freeze. They remain on the loose. The news has yet to be reported anywhere else, but sources told me it was the buzz of the Los Angeles medical community last week.

Seven years ago, Chavis became the toast of the media elite and the racial preference crowd when he was profiled lavishly by New York Times magazine writer Nicholas Lehmann. Chavis, who made the cover of the magazine, was a black physician admitted to the University of California-Davis medical school under a special racial-preference quota. In 1978, the U.S. Supreme Court later struck down the program after a landmark challenge by white applicant Allan Bakke. Lehmann contrasted what he considered Bakke's unremarkable career following the lawsuit with Chavis' noble and booming ob-gyn practice in the ghetto of Compton.

Three months later, Jane Fonda's ex-husband, left-wing California politico Tom Hayden, heaped praise on Chavis in defense of affirmative action. "Bakke's scores were higher," Hayden wrote in an article for The Nation, "but who made the most of his medical school education? From whom did California taxpayers benefit more?" Sen. Ted Kennedy picked up the banner a year later, calling Chavis "a perfect example" of the need for lowering admissions standards in the name of racial diversity. The doctor, Kennedy crowed, was "making a difference in the lives of scores of poor families."

What the New York Times never got around to reporting, as JWR columnist Jeff Jacoby first noted and journalist William McGowan later chronicled in his award-winning book Coloring the News, is that the "difference" Chavis made in the lives of several young black women involved gruesome pain-and death-as a result of botched "body sculpting" operations at his clinic.

An administrative law judge found Chavis guilty of gross negligence and incompetence in the treatment of three patients. Yolanda Mukhalian lost 70 percent of her blood after Chavis hid her in his home for 40 hours following a bungled liposuction; she miraculously survived. The other survivor, Valerie Lawrence, also experienced severe bleeding following the surgery; after Lawrence's sister took her to a hospital emergency room, Chavis barged in and discharged his suffering patient-still hooked up to her IV and catheter-and also stashed her in his home.

Tammaria Cotton bled to death and suffered full cardiac arrest after Chavis performed fly-by-night liposuction on her and then disappeared.

In 1998, the Medical Board of California suspended Chavis' license, warning of his "inability to perform some of the most basic duties required of a physician." In a statement filed by a psychiatrist, the state demonstrated Chavis' "poor impulse control and insensitivity to patients' pain." A tape recording of "horrific screaming" by patients in Chavis' office revealed the doctor responding callously: "Don't talk to the doctor while he is working" and "Liar, liar, pants on fire."

If Allan Bakke, the white doctor, had engaged in such disgraceful behavior and met such an ignominious end, you can bet the Left would never let us forget it.

But Ted Kennedy and Tom Hayden, who spoke so voluminously about the poor black patients who supposedly benefited from medical affirmative action, had nothing to say about the poor black women who were brutally victimized by the incompetent Chavis. As for the New York Times, Bill McGowan wrote: They "ran nothing to amend their false portrait of an affirmative action hero, or question the legitimacy of the race-conscious social policy that had made him a doctor. A riveting, nationally newsworthy story central to the country's discussion of racial preferences somehow ended up completely falling through the cracks."

Will the Times editors bother to run an obituary about their fallen affirmative action hero? Will Ted Kennedy send his condolences?

Don't hold your breath. 

SOURCE

Dr Bakke, the white man Chavis initially displaced from medical school, went on to live a competent and blameless life as an anesthesiologist in Minnesota.  After retirement, he went into the medical devices industry. The harm done by Chavis was directly traceable to the racist policies of UCD







College Dean Refuses To Stand by After School Bans Chick-fil-A on Campus

Exclusion in the name of inclusion?

A dean at New Jersey’s Rider University will no longer be in a position of leadership next fall after resigning her post to protest the school’s decision to ban Chick-fil-A because the Christian fast-food chain is supposedly at odds with the university’s values of “inclusion.”

According to Campus Reform, students were sent a survey last spring to determine which restaurant they wanted to bring to campus — Chick-fil-A was the No. 1 choice, but the school decided to ban the restaurant anyway.

In November, the university sent an email to students claiming that Chick-fil-A’s “values have not sufficiently progressed enough to align with those of Rider,” adding that the school was trying to promote “inclusion for all people.”

That’s a ridiculous position on its face, because banning a restaurant over its Christian values is the opposite of “inclusive.”

The university is using the typical liberal trick of being exclusive of Christians under the guise of “inclusiveness.”

Thankfully, someone is taking a stand against the madness. Rider’s College of Business Dean Cynthia Newman decided she wouldn’t stand by while the university pushed an anti-Christian agenda.

The dean announced her resignation last month, though she will remain at Rider in a teaching position. She cited her faith as her reason for no longer being part of the school’s administration.

“As some of you already know, I am a committed follower of Jesus Christ,” Newman said in her announcement, according to Campus Reform.

“As such, I endeavor every day to do exactly what Chick-fil-A puts forward as its overarching corporate value: to glorify God by being a faithful steward of all that is entrusted to me and to have a positive influence on all who come into contact with me.”

Newman told Campus Reform on Monday that she felt like she was “punched in the stomach” by the university’s decision because she’s “a very committed Christian.”

Check out her interview with Campus Reform below. It’s an eye-opening view of what life in the academic bubble looks like, but it was about the 8-minute mark, where Newman was asked what advice she had for other academics, or anyone in a similar situation, that Newman summed up the situation perfectly:

“You’re the one that has to live in the world that’s around you,” she said. “If you feel something is not right in that world, you have an obligation to stand up and to say what your perspective is on that.”

Chick-fil-A has been under relentless assault from liberals after its CEO, Dan Kathy, said that marriage is between a man and a woman in 2012.

But liberals conveniently ignore the restaurant’s track record of helping those in need, such as paying its workers for community service while a store was being remodeled.

The company is also known to help out when devastating natural disasters strike.

Chick-fil-A isn’t the evil boogeyman liberals want it to be — it’s simply a company that is run on Christian values, and as we already know, the left doesn’t like Christians.

Rider University’s decision is deeply insulting to Christians because there would be no reason to ban the restaurant unless the school was intentionally targeting Christians and their faith.

Newman’s resignation as dean becomes effective Aug. 31, according to Campus Reform. She will remain on campus as a marketing professor, but she will no longer be party to the university’s administration.

“I am not willing to compromise my faith and Christian values and I will not be viewed as being in any way complicit when an affront is made to those values,” Newman said told Campus Reform.

That shouldn’t be a choice anyone has to make.

SOURCE 



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