Thread by @wesyang

People want this conversation to be about certain approved things and not about other forbidden things

https://twitter.com/jordylancaster/status/1373323333090050051

Q: Is the reason Stuyvesant High School was more than 70 percent Asian and that Lowell High School in SF was 56 percent Asian before the SF school board dismantled its admissions test "white supremacy"?

Virtually everyone authorized to answer this question will tell you "yes", since the "model minority myth" is used to make Asians a "wedge" to justify continued oppression of blacks and Hispanics

Alternative explanation: airdrop in a group of people from cultures that have been deciding the fate of our their children on the basis of high stakes competitive examinations since the 7th century A.D., and they will do become predominant in schools that use admission tests

And that's fine. That's diversity!

We should be making high quality schools for everyone, and using other useful admissions schemas -- such as the top 7 percent from every middle school proposal in NYC -- for other kinds of schools. No need to wreck something with a track record of success.

Schools like Stuyvesant and Lowell have the general run of public school teachers and the same resources as other schools in the system. The students make the culture what it is. Test based admissions schools are not for everyone -- but they are good for some.

These test based schools are one successful part of a public education system that works. Most of the rest of it doesn't work. Getting rid of what makes them distinctive will definitely hurt some without helping anyone else.

The effort to do so is based entirely on a manufactured crisis based on a reified and unreal understanding of general demographic figures and the desire for people to have a crusade where none is needed that will result in worse outcomes for everyone