

To Be Black at Stuyvesant High - rdl
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/02/26/education/black-at-stuyvesant-high-one-girls-experience.html?hp

======
snikolov
I went to Stuy and have always believed that requiring people to score high on
an exam that tests verbal and mathematical reasoning skills is a good thing.

Now, a score on a single exam is not a particularly great way to admit people
for many reasons, but if we accept that it is an objective test of
mathematical and verbal reasoning skills, why not help minorities score high
enough (or let people know that there is an exam in the first place)?

In college admissions (at least in theory), affirmative action takes effect
only after all the candidates have passed some minimum bar in terms of
quantifiable things like SATs, grades, etc. Admission to Stuy is based only on
a test so one can apply the same principle: Look at people holistically only
after they've passed the minimum bar.

I think we should help minorities make the cutoff and _then_ take a closer
look at those applicants who scored high enough (though perhaps not using a
hard threshold). Of course this is easier said than done, but I think ignoring
such a test completely and relying on GPAs or interviews or other things alone
would not be a good idea. Most people haven't "done" many things in middle
school the way people do things in high school that distinguish them when they
apply to college. Please correct me if I'm wrong on this. (And I actually
think one of the goals is to make sure that kids have a lot more opportunities
and encouragement to distinguish themselves by the time they finish middle
school)

Now, perhaps the current cutoff for getting into Stuy is analogous to getting
above a 2300 on the SAT, and elite institutions seem to agree that a 2300 is
no more predictive of success than a 2200 or a 2100. So it would be
interesting to measure how scores on the admission exam correlate to various
metrics of success in college and later in life in order to determine a
similar threshold above which the score doesn't matter anymore.

~~~
rdl
I'm curious how it should work if you measure two separate scores (math,
verbal) -- would you go for the people who have the highest combined score,
the highest score in either, or the highest score in either but meeting a
minimum standard in the other?

~~~
snikolov
That's a good question. I'm not sure how I would design it. The current test
uses a combined score but there's a subtlety. The curve is such that you're
better off getting 350 on math and 250 on verbal (or vice versa) than 300 on
each. People have suggested that this leads to accepting a many people who are
"pointy" rather than "well-rounded." There are people who take differential
equations freshman year as well as people who will end up publishing books by
the time they graduate.

------
leephillips

       I attended Stuyvesant in 1973-76, which I learn from this article was
       the era of the highest black enrollment. I have a few quibbles: the
       article states that admission was solely by test score. In fact, one of
       my best (black) friends at Stuyvesant sheepishly told me that he
       scored somewhat below the cutoff but was admitted as part of a
       program to admit students from “disadvantaged” backgrounds with lower
       scores. He was sheepish because he knew that I knew that he was in
       fact quite wealthy and was from a privileged background. His
       father was a famous radio personality. But the system treated him as
       a member of a “disadvantaged” group because of his complexion.
    
       The article says “Students take the exam in October of their eighth-grade
       year”. Many students who will wind up at Stuyvesant never go
       to eighth grade. Like me, they are placed in an accelerated
       junior high program that consists of seventh and ninth grades only.
       Also, the article refers repeatedly to “middle school”. The first
       time I heard this term was after I moved away from New York.
    
       The article refers to “free preparatory programs”. Never heard of
       them, nor any other type of test preparation or practice. The test
       resembles an SAT. If you know English and your junior high math, it’s
       not that difficult to get in to Stuyvesant, frankly. I know this
       because I was not very good at taking tests, and was somewhat
       surprised that I got in.
    
    
       A bigger obstacle is the desire to go there. Most American students
       don’t want to face a year each of physics, biology, and chemistry,
       math up to (and optionally including) calculus, and much more,
       including economics, metal shop, and drafting. It might not sound
       like much to the Germans and Japanese, but it does not resemble the
       typical American highschool curriculum. I was shocked to meet people
       in college whose mathematical knowledge seemed to stop at what I had
       learned in 10th grade and who had never heard of mitochondria.  All
       this, and the nerd stigma, was what kept my siblings, for example,
       from taking the test and settling for our abysmal neighborhood
       school. Note that most of Stuyvesant’s population consists of the
       offspring of immigrants, who seem to appreciate the importance of
       education.

------
rdl
This is how you end up with startup founders being more diverse (which is good
in a lot of ways -- including making it politically easier to support
immigration and startup-friendly business policies).

Start early (earlier than high school -- they went down to grades 6-8 to get
qualified applicants), devote extra resources to identifying and mentoring
early on (when it can still do some good), etc. It's a long pipeline, and you
don't want it to stall early on.

~~~
camz
I'm not sure how I feel about this article because I was a student that attend
NYC's specialized high schools such as Stuy and Tech. I can understand a lot
of what was said in this article on a personal level because I've been through
it.

Especially, the line where she states that shes heard enough about blacks
having an easier time getting into schools.

I'm Asian and as someone who's seen affirmative action effect my life in the
past 10 years. I can say that its fair for them to say that because that's the
reality.

America has been obsessed about being diverse. Diversity for the sake of
diversity is a failure in the country. Diversity born of necessity and natural
selection is what we should be seeking out.

I say worry less about making sure we have blacks, yellows, white and
bullshht. Worry more about helping anyone who's willing to learn at an early
age. The single greatest determinant in whether we're successful is how
curious and willing we are to learn. Our focus has been skewed toward things
that just aren't as important to success.

*obviously, Im biased as these are my opinions but I've always been results orientated and less focused on ethnicity. I've traveled around a lot as rdl has as well and I've noticed that most countries don't put an emphasis on race as much as Americans do.

~~~
rdl
Right, the big point is "work with younger kids", not "work with disadvantaged
racial minorities". It just happens that rich white or asian younger kids are
a lot more likely to have parents, schools, etc. already helping them. (within
math/science, this might apply to women as well)

I'm with you on being against "lowering the bar" style affirmative action --
it's unfair to everyone, including the high achieving members of the protected
group. The problem is the cultural and family structures don't exist to help
intelligent and otherwise-likely-to-succeed people from certain groups
progress through the very long pipeline to being successful startup founders.
I'm just saying trying to apply late-stage correction (pushing for
proportional representation in startup incubators, colleges, etc.) is the
wrong place to work -- you can get by with much less expensive, much more fair
interactions by starting a lot earlier. KIPP will probably do more for
minority representation in the startup world than anything at the incubator
level, but it will take 15 years.

One of the things the military has done pretty well is racial (and geographic)
integration, through treating everyone basically the same (after integration),
and aggressively getting rid of organizational or structural racism. That's
different from startups, but does seem to support the idea that it's possible,
given enough time.

Actually, most of the countries I've visited care more about ethnicity/race
than the US, especially more so than silicon valley. Possibly selection bias.

Malaysia is, in my experience, one of the most racist and weirdly political-
about-race countries I've ever visited. Thailand and other areas with an
ethnic Chinese population often have really weird race based politics. I'm
also not really sure how you count tribalism in places like
Iraq/Afghanistan/Central Asia. Then there are places in the middle east where
an Indian family who has lived there for 150 years is still not "local".

Race and socioeconomic class are maybe more tied in the US than in the other
places (where it's more political), but it would be just as valid to say rural
poor white kids from West Virginia have little exposure to quality
math/science education early on, too.

