NO EXCUSE LEFT BEHIND: It's money and test prep, Mara Gay says!

THURSDAY, APRIL 4, 2019

The Others rob us blind: Why do so few black kids get admitted to Gotham's Stuyvesant High?

You're asking a very important question. In our view, if you want to know why Donald J. Trump may well get re-elected next year, we'll suggest that you consider the way Slate chose to approach this important question last week.

Last Tuesday, Slate published a 19-minute discussion between its own Mary Harris and the New York Times' Mara Gay. Why are so few black kids admitted to Stuyvesant High? Through this pair of headlines, Slate chose to frame this question in the most inflammatory possible way:

New York City’s School Segregation Problem
Why the inequities at one elite high school resonate across the country.

According to Slate, the situation at Stuyvesant High is an artifact of "school segregation."

There aren't more black kids at Stuyvesant because of "inequities" at the school. Indeed, these "segregation"-based inequities "resonate across the country," the exciting Slate headlines said.

If you want to know why Donald J. Trump still has a good chance of being re-elected, we suggest you consider the childishness of such low-IQ tribal cries. You might also consider the ugly behavior of Harris and Gay as they explain why New York City's Asian-American kids dominate the enrollment at Stuyvesant.

Please understand! We're sure that Harris and Gay are good, decent people. We're sure it never crossed their minds that their behavior during those 19 minutes came so close to echoing Trump's approach to the unauthorized immigrants from the south who are currently conspiring to rob us of our jobs.

We're sure it never crossed their minds that they were behaving in any such way. But all across the United States, Trump voters, helped by Fox, are able to see the way such "bleeding heart liberals" behave. Let's take a look at the ugly behavior Harris and Gay unleashed on New York City's Asian-American parents and kids.

On the most basic factual basis, why do so many Asian-American kids get into Stuyvesant High? On the most basic factual basis, it's because they outscore every other demographic group on Gotham's Specialized High Schools Admissions Test.

That said, Asian-Americans kids outscore every other group on every type of educational test all across the country. More specifically, on the Grade 4 and Grade 8 Naep, but also on New York State's annual Grade 3-8 exams, they outscore black kids by a very wide margin.

Those achievement gaps represent a major American problem. Rather than attempt to come to terms with that major problem, Harris and Gay spent their time sliming Asian-American families concerning the ways their their high-performing kids are able to score so well.

In particular, Gay painted a familiar portrait of the scheming, inscrutable Oriental who has come to our shores to take our children's seats at our elite high schools away.

How do these Asians do it? In Gay's account, it's very simple—they do it through money and test prep! As a result, Gotham's most "accomplished and enthusiastic learners"—the ones who might find the cure for cancer—get "unfairly" turned away from Gotham's Stuyvesant High.

This portrait of the fiendish Asian pops up early and often as this pair of "bleeding heart liberals" advocate for the interests of the groups they prefer. Three minutes into their brain-dead discussion, Gay starts to lay the foundation for this stupid, reductive portrait:

GAY (3/26/19): We saw with, a couple of weeks ago, the indictments that came down, in which you had wealthy Americans buying their way, buying their children's way, into these Ivy League schools, we saw that clearly education is in a sense a commodity, or has become one, that people are hoarding for their kids.

Wealthy Americans had been buying their children's way into Ivy League schools! As the Slate discussion ground on, it turned out that New York City's Asian-American parents had been playing a similar game.

Moments later, Gay introduced a basic theme about the situation at Stuyvesant. The situation is fundamentally unfair, she said:

GAY: If we aren't allowing every kid from every school and every background the same opportunity to attend these schools, then something's broken.

Presumably, everyone would agree with the claim that we ought to give every kid the same opportunity to attend a school like Stuyvesant. But in what way are Gotham's black and Hispanic kids being denied that opportunity?

Throughput the course of the 19 minutes, Gay never quite explained that basic point. But at the 9-minute mark, she did start saying that Gotham's Asian-American families have been gaming this system:

GAY: The [Specialized High Schools Admissions Test] is charged. It's not this perfect test that came down from heaven. Now, there are plenty of communities who have managed to get around that. And we all want the best for our kids, so there's no blame there. But I think when you have a public school, it's a public good, and so there's a bigger responsibility.

The SHSAT isn't a perfect test, Gay said. But the Asian-American community "has managed to get around that."

Gay says there's "no blame" to be assigned here, but the music of her opera flies in the face of its lyrics. Moments later, she and Harris engage in this exchange:

HARRIS: In the last week, since these new admissions results have come out, you've seen a lot of Asian families coming forward, because these families are often poor, don't have a lot of resources, and scrimp and save so their kids can cram for this one exam, and have seen results. And they've made this argument that, "We're working really hard, and everyone should work this hard."

What do you say when you get into a conversation with a family like that?

GAY: ...I don't think that the onus is on these parents to stand down and kind of roll over and take whatever changes the rest of the city comes up with. I don't blame them for being upset. But I would say that, just because a group of people is benefiting from an unfair system doesn't mean that that unfair system should continue.

According to Gay, these Asian families—the ones who "scrimp and save so their kids can cram for this one exam"—are "benefiting from an unfair system."

Once again, she doesn't explain where the unfairness (the inequity) lies. But Harris' description has started to tell us:

According to the portrait here, these fiendish Asian-American kids have "crammed for this one exam!" It isn't that they're actually more accomplished academically. According to this portrait, their devious parents have scrimped and saved so they can "see results" on this one exam.

By now, Harris and Gay have journeyed deep into la-la land. At no point do they inform their misused audience about the vast size of the achievement gaps between Asian-American and black kids, in Gotham and all across the country, on a wide array of educational tests.

At no point, for example, do they tell their propagandized audience about the painful realities of a data set like this:

Percentage scoring at Advanced level, Grade 8 math
New York City Public Schools, 2017 Naep
Black students: 0.9%
Asian-American students: 27.3%

Those painful results obtain on the Naep, the federally-run "gold standard" of domestic testing, a set of exams for which no specific test prep exists. This second painful data set obtained in that same most recent Naep testing:

90th percentile scores, Grade 8 math
New York City Public Schools, 2017 Naep
Black students: 299.75
Asian-American students: 355.63

Applying a standard through very rough rule of thumb, the 90th percentile Asian kid scored more than five years ahead of the average black kid on that most recent Naep testing! Those very large gaps also obtain, nationwide, on the Grade 4 Naep, at a grade level where very few kids have engaged in any sort of test prep at all.

Having said that, so what? Despite these painful statistics, Harris and Gay give the impression throughout that Asian kids are getting admitted to Stuyvesant High because they've scored well on "this one exam" for which their devious parents have "scrimped and saved" so they can load up on test prep. These are the types of attacks which were directed in earlier epochs when the children of Jewish families began to outperform their non-Jewish peers.

As it was then, so it is today! Soon after telling us that Asian-Americans are benefiting from "an unfair system," the benevolent Gay added this:

GAY: I do think that the concerns of Asian parents, who have spent thousands of dollars that, frankly, I don't think they should have had to spend, helping their kid prepare for this test which by the way, the curriculum on this test is not taught in New York City public schools. So they're essentially being given the same unfair hand, and the communities there have organized a way around it, and they should not be blamed for that.

We're told the same old story again. The Asian families have "organized a way around" the unfairness of Stuyvesant's admission procedures. They've done this by spending "thousand of dollars" on test prep per child!

Behaving like a benevolent Ole Missus, Gay says it isn't fair that these families should (allegedly) have to spend all that money. Benevolently, she's going to let these families keep their (alleged) thousands of dollars, even as their high-achieving kids are forced to surrender their seats at Stuyvesant High!

At this point, we badly need to offer two caveats:

We've been told that these Asian families have been spending thousands of dollars per child on test prep. It's been implied that this test prep explains their students' high scores on the admission exam.

Warning! We've been given no information about the actual amounts these (mainly low-income) families are actually spending. Nor have we been given any reason to believe that test prep actually works. (We'll touch on that question tomorrow.)

At any rate, demonization works this way, even at Slate and the Times. What Donald Trump does to immigrants from Central America, Harris and Gay do to this alternate group of Others. They're reciting an ugly, ridiculous story—one which flies in the face of a wide array of punishing facts.

We've now reached the 12-minute mark in this appalling discussion. We're being told that Asian families have found a way around an unfair system—a method in which thousands of dollars are spent so each individual kid can do well "on this one test."

You have to have the brains of a gnat to be convinced by this familiar old tale. But starting at the 15-minute mark, Gay really turns the bullroar on:

GAY: At the end of the day, what do we want our specialized high schools, or any of our high schools, to do?

Do we want them to find the kids who are best at taking this exam? Or do we want them to find the most enthusiastic, accomplished, passionate learners around the city?

[...]

What I can't stop thinking about is, How many black and Hispanic kids are sitting somewhere in a middle school in East New York or in the South Bronx right now who have great grades, who come to school and are going to—you know, they could cure cancer!

And how many of them are going to be languishing in schools that are not going to get them there, because we are insisting on defending the indefensible?

In this passage, the admission system at Stuyvesant moves from "unfair" to "indefensible."

Once again, we're told that the high-achieving Asian kids are just "the best at taking this exam." We're told that it's really the black and Hispanic kids who are the "accomplished learners"—the ones who will even find the cure for cancer if we just kick the Asian kids out of Stuyvesant and admit these kids instead.

Let us remind you, once again, about those 90th percentile scores on the Naep. These scores define a major American problem, one this pair of propagandists are determined not to discuss:

90th percentile scores, Grade 8 math
New York City Public Schools, 2017 Naep
Black students: 299.75
Asian-American students: 355.63

That represents a gigantic gap among two of New York City's groups of highest-achievers. Gay and Harris will never tell you that this gap—that this major American problem—actually exists.

You really have to hate black kids to insist on hiding this problem—to ensure that no one will ever discuss the ways we might attack this problem. Displaying a bit of egalitarian spirit, Harris and Gay are willing to slime Asian-American parents and kids, in a time-honored way, to keep this problem buried.

That 19-minute discussion at Slate is one of the dumbest and most appalling we have ever heard. At Slate as at the New York Times, it's "No Propaganda Left Behind" as this pair of upper-end journalists—one from Michigan, one from Penn—behave like accomplished street-corner hustlers.

Tomorrow, we'll show you the brilliant "solution" Gay endorsed during this gruesome discussion. But if you don't know why Donald J. Trump may well win re-election next year, we'd only suggest that you learn to see these numbingly stupid "liberal" discussions in the way Those People are trained to do at Fox.

Tomorrow: The seven percent "solution"