* So, IQ testing can boost the numbers of gifted black and Hispanic children through affirmative action.
Frankly, this spin is a new low even for the New York Times.
* In other words the entire ‘study’ is just a naked, brazen attempt at deceit and deception masquerading as ‘science’.
* 115 points for…FRL [Free / Reduced Lunch] participants
Yikes, do those free lunches contain a neurotoxin that attacks the brain?
That picture of the little black boy as a young Copernicus is precious.
* …if Copernicus thought the heavens revolved around an afro.
Note that the white kids are flatfooted whereas the black kid is striving.
* Additionally, the kids to the left and right of the striving negro are both left-handed (i.e. right brained) while the negro child is right-handed (left brained, purportedly with stronger math and logic skills).
* I love the NYT illustration. Not only does genius L’il Jabari grok planetary motion, but he’s also setting up a visually devastating Yo Momma So Fat joke at the expense of scowling Da’Quan in the back row.
* Anyone notice that the child on the highest stack of the books (ie most privileged) is an Asian girl? Has the NY Times ever before even implied anyone is more privileged than a white male?
This may portend a future where SWPL parents complain that over-achieving Asian kids are in some ways more privileged than their own children.
* It’s also horribly racist in its depiction of black youth as maturing faster physically than white and Asian peers. One more growth spurt and he’ll be able to dunk.
* Black genius child draws a more elaborate solar system than the mere white and Asian peers who draw simple stars. Sort of like Morgan Freeman playing one genius after another in the movies. It’s all fantasy. The reality would more likely be that he’d be in Special Ed.
* Is there some kind of journalistic “Making Excuses For Minorities” award? It seems like these people are always gunning for it.
* It seems that the same people debunk the value of IQ testing believe very strongly in learning disabilities. What is the relationship between IQs and learning disabilities? Is a person with a high IQ score just a person without any learning disabilities?
* With lower standards for black and Hispanic kids, the pool of kids sent for testing is expanded. They found high IQ kids who scored above 115. They would also find high IQ white kids who scored below 130 and above 115 but they never looked for those kids. Those kids are discarded, the range is restricted to white kids who scored above 130.
* The picture seems to be an interesting bit of subtle propaganda. The Asian and White kid stand on books, presumably representing the well stocked home libraries and support they have access to as advantaged children. And despite this advantage, they don’t know what outer space really looks like and represent it with cartoonish stars, whereas the Black kid, without the advantage of standing on books, correctly depicts the Copernican model of the solar system.
* Who are the teachers and administrators that conspire to racially discriminate against the 115-130 IQ white kids?
How can any white parent trust any of them in any capacity?
* How much nuffin could a dindu do if a dindu dindu nuffin?
* The NYT comment section has closed. No NYT comment picked up on how the thresholds and eligibility criteria were manipulated to inflate the number of “gifted” students from “underrepresented” groups.
Score: NYT 1, Knowledge -1.
* You highlight a gap that I think we all agree deserves our attention and resources, the one between individual potential and achievement.
Even if it’s worthwhile to invest in human potential in all segments of the bell curve, I still wonder how we decide how much of our resources to dedicate to the development of very modest potential on its far left tail? Is there a formula that we use to possibly compare the diminishing returns to investment for special ed versus using the resources to develop human potential among normal or gifted populations?
* Clearly, the I.Q. cut-offs are set by state law: 130 points for non-disadvantaged students, 116 points for ELL or FRL students.
Since these cut-offs are set by state law, I think we can assume that they were the same before and after the introduction of universal screening.
The universal screening tested all students with a non-I.Q. ability test. The difference in cut-offs was similar to that of the I.Q. test cut-offs: 130 points for non-disadvantage students, 115 (instead of 116) points for ELL or FRL students.
So, since this program did increase the number of ELL and FRL (or otherwise disadvantaged) students, it seems it worked. Universal screening did what it was supposed to, and caught disadvantaged students that were previously overlooked.
Steve’s basic point seems to be that what “identified as gifted” means in article means very different things for different sorts of students. In my opinion it is journalistic malpractice to not inform one’s readers of this.
Mrs. Dynarski did not do so, and for this she is to blame, especially as a professor at Michigan. She also uses a number of weasel words: “many researchers worry”; “psychologists say they believe to be culturally neutral”; “distinguishing between gifted students and everybody else could lock.”
* If you honestly believe that all peoples have identical abilities, then the world must seem an utterly baffling place. No wonder they cook up all sorts of conspiracy theories to explain differing outcomes! You can’t blame them for reaching for Occam’s Butterknife. If you were a racial egalitarian, what would YOU do?
* It’s impossible for a talented minority to go undiscovered. They’re always on the lookout for this fabled being. A minority with two cents worth of brains is a precious find and they get very excited, promoting them beyond their real capability. Resources wasted chasing the Yeti aren’t available to the regular normal to bright students. White adults mostly pay for this nonsense through their taxes and are being robbed along with the white students.
* The eligibility requirements do not appear to be language and SES neutral.
Students scoring at 130 or higher on the IQ test meet “Plan A” guidelines. Students below this cutoff are evaluated on a “Plan B” matrix.
Primary language other than English and low SES each contribute a point to a required 10, and an Underrepresented Gifted Students checklist can contribute an additional 2. These are termed “Environmental Factors” in the matrix.
* It refers to admission to the gifted program. There is no way you get a universal test with a high cutoff and admit 8% of whites and 3% of blacks.
A test that admitted the top 8% of whites would be expected to admit the top 0.79% of blacks using a 1 SD IQ gap and 0.61% using a 1.1 SD gap.
The 8% number should be roughly equal between whites and blacks using the lower 115IQ bar for blacks explicitly. However, some blacks were subjected to the higher “white” standard (middle class blacks), while some whites (poor or immigrant whites) got into the program under the lower “black” standard. So in practice, you don’t get the result that most liberal white institutions want. Instead of getting the 125IQ blacks from middle and upper income families, you exclude them in favor of 115IQ whites and blacks from poor families.
The only reason this program “worked” is that there are few NE Asian immigrants in south florida.
If you did this in California, and admitted whites under a 130 non-verbal IQ threshold but ESL asian kids under a 115 non-verbal IQ threshold, you get gifted classes with 50 ESL asians per black and not all that many whites either.
* The higher the intelligence the more likely the person will be blessed with good physical health, good emotional health, good social skills or the ability to catch up in this area, and ability to rise above adversity, among other advantages. Although it’s not often realized, very bright children are often handicapped in educational settings that are unable to provide them the resources that they are able to take advantage of.
* Every study shows the same. It’s always cherry-picking, self-selection, fraud, or a mistake when you get a result like the NYT headlines.
* And yet higher IQ humans (I’m talking from the 110s onward) are way behind lower IQ humans (I’m talking from the 90s downward) when it comes to violent and/or sex crime. Hence, so many Black and Hispanic violent criminals and/or sex criminals in America when put up with Whites and East Asians.
And let’s not forget disparities in earnings. A signifigant amount of millionaires and billionaires (especially in technology) have IQs from the 120s onward. The movers and shakers in STEM fields (which happen to be both one of the higher earning and more respected fields) are also of the higher IQ persuasion. Being a high fuctioning autistic in today’s economy isn’t really that big of a curse when you look at wage gaps between STEM jobs (favor analytical ability, introversion, and concentration) and jobs in the service sector (tend to focus on ”social skills” but pay much less). Other than exceptions like law (which can be a mixture of both) a significant amount of those who are getting seriously rich or famous these days who aren’t entertainers or someone like Tony Robbins are more in the vein of the SJW’s loathed STEMLords.
* In order to avoid the use of prohibited racial quotas, Chicago Public Schools use a weighted multi-factor system that ranks each census tract within the city. Factors include average income, rate of home ownership, whether or not English was spoke, level of education etc in each census tract. Thus there is no need to muck about trying to deal with the topic of IQ in cognitive testing or even the question of giftedness in this system.
Each census tract is then assigned 1 of 4 tiers. Students applying to schools are classified by the census tract they live in, and are grouped by respective tiers.
The first 30% of students that score the highest in absolute terms on the test and are admitted first to their school of choice. Then each of the four remaining tiers are filled with the highest scoring applicants to the school from each of the four tiers. Students with scores too low for their first choice may be admitted to their second or third choices should their score be above the lowest cutoff in these respective schools.
It is too complex to post all the details but if you care to learn about it, here is a start:
http://cpstiers.opencityapps.org/tier-calculation.html
No surprise that with all the tweaking of the socio-economic factors and the respective weights, the overall student body selected for gifted schools (selective enrollment is the term in Chicago) proportionately reflects the racial makeup of Chicago, and the racial breakdown is nearly the same as the prior court ordered selection system that used racial quotas in he first few years. I can’t say for sure what the breakdown is now. This was clearly the intent of its designers.
http://cpsmagnet.org/ourpages/auto/2010/11/18/38613619/BRC%20Final%20Report%209%2022%2010.pdf
These are the score cut offs for admission to selective enrollment highschools by various tiers. Be aware that 7th grade grades are also part of highschool enrollment point totals while grades obviously are not used for student entering elementary schools.
http://cpsoae.org/SEHS%20Cutoff%20Scores%202015-2016.pdf
You can see not all schools viewed as equal, as the cut offs vary widely by school as well as tier. Some schools have better academic reputations, or are located in less or more desirable neighborhoods in terms of safety or access to public transportation.
