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TracingWoodgrains Profile picture
@tracewoodgrains
Jun 10, 2023 • 7 tweets • 4 min read • Read on X
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"Berkeley doesn't have affirmative action" is a good example of a technically defensible but straightforwardly false argument that obscures rather than elucidates. As soon as California banned affirmative action, Berkeley openly and urgently looked to circumvent it. ImageImage
This is what "no affirmative action" looks like at Berkeley: "comprehensive review" that happens to weight admissions in much the same way explicit affirmative action did.
city-journal.org/article/elites… Image
The data is unambiguous, such that there can be no substantive dispute. The affirmative action ban never stopped Berkeley from weighing race heavily within admissions. It just required them to get creative. eml.berkeley.edu/~webfac/morett… Image
In absolute terms, you saw a small shift in enrollment by race, followed by a return to baseline as the UC system grew more comfortable working around the ban. Image
UC Berkeley administrators were open about the moral urgency they felt in aiming to circumvent the ban. Their straightforward goal was to re-establish affirmative action while dodging legal action, however they could. Image
There is an argument to be had over the merits of affirmative action. There is none whatsoever over whether Berkeley has been practicing it since the ban, and the only reasons to claim is hasn't are ignorance or deliberate intent to mislead. Image
One who had direct experience crafting Berkeley's policy on this has weighed in—don't miss his (excellent) response. As he indicates, part of this comes down to whether implicit, as opposed to explicit, racial preferences constitute affirmative action.

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More from @tracewoodgrains

TracingWoodgrains Profile picture
Aug 22, 2025
this article — the first time the man building the most fascinating project in education has spoken to the press in decades — is fascinating

what do you do when your school won't teach your child past "grade level"?

bulid a new education system from scratch. Image
the section on learning science was fun for me - interesting to see topics I've focused on for years through fresh eyes. I strongly disagree with the writer that they're intuitive, in part because the takeaway that teachers in front of classrooms are bad is not true at all! Image
Liemandt has a keen grasp of the issues. Note his treatment of AI in classrooms: Chatbots? Terrible idea. Generating personalized lesson plans and tracking kids' knowledge graphs and interest graphs?

That's something. Image
Read 11 tweets
TracingWoodgrains Profile picture
Aug 19, 2025
this is interesting for having been written by Tao, but it doesn't feel attuned to the present day. Tao writes of the scientific ecosystem as basically functional and neutral without grappling with the way his colleagues have eaten the seed corn of expertise. Image
I sympathize with his position. He has spent his life focused almost exclusively on pure mathematics professionally. but around him, universities and many of his fellow researchers became explicitly political actors in a way that was destined to draw a political response.
it is wholly appropriate to argue that this is the wrong response, that there are better ways to address the problems, so forth. but he doesn't seem to accept the idea that there are any problems. and ultimately that makes the essay feel a bit hollow.
Read 4 tweets
TracingWoodgrains Profile picture
Jul 31, 2025
Checking sources is a superpower--you would not believe the stuff people sneak into things.

As one example: the book "Keeping Track" is by far the most influential anti–ability grouping book. Key to its argument is a claimed finding that 90% of students can master course material under the right circumstances to argue that all students should be placed into the same courses.

Where does that footnote - footnote 7 - lead? Benjamin Bloom's "All Our Children Learning." Not to a specific page. Not to a specific note within it. The entire book.

So let's dig in! What does Bloom say?

He notes his belief that around 90% of people differ in rate of learning rather than the level of learning theoretically possible, but that it will take some students more time, effort, and help to reach that level than others (sometimes prohibitively so). Some, he'll note, might take several years on high school algebra, while others can do it in a fraction of a year.

Then he provides suggestions. How do you structure a school so that students can learn at appropriate paces to meet his "90%" goal? He has a few ideas:
1. Give each student an individual tutor.
2. Let students go at their own pace.
3. Guide students towards or away from specific courses.
4. Provide different tracks for different groups of learners.

Did you catch that?

Bloom says: obviously kids learn at different paces, so if you want them to master the material, either let them rush ahead individually or group them by ability. If we do that, everyone's level will improve.

Oakes takes that, strip-mines the entire book down to a claim she paraphrases as "under appropriate learning conditions, more than 90 percent of students can master course material," and then uses it to argue that we should not let kids rush ahead individually or group them by ability.

This book has been cited more than 10000 times. It is by far the most influential single thing ever written on ability grouping. And it cites sources it knows nobody will examine to argue for the polar opposite of what those sources advocate.

Check sources.Image
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oh, for crying out loud. I meant to quote tweet this! this is what I was responding to

For more educational malpractice, see our latest post at @CenterforEdProg, on how North Carolina schools keep many of their most capable students out of upper-level math, and how the state school board subverted the intent of law to keep it that way.

Read 5 tweets
TracingWoodgrains Profile picture
Jul 30, 2025
and I’m proud to be an American, where at least I know that even if my country’s president is now suing and pressuring people over all sorts of lawful speech and corporations are bending the knee like cowards, it’s still better than dystopian UK law Image
I know I’ve been UKposting a lot lately but like

aaaaaaaaaa

brusselssignal.eu/2025/07/new-uk…
I'm not going to say I feel like things are great in America right now

but in this day and age, we have to grade on a curve

Read 8 tweets
TracingWoodgrains Profile picture
Jul 28, 2025
The Anatomy of Ideological Capture: How Wikipedia Whitewashes Mao

Recently, I posted a passing aside making fun of how Wikipedia frames Mao's legacy, assuming that what I saw was self-evident. I got predictable pushback from Maoists and tankies, which didn't surprise me. What surprised me was the number of generally good-faith left-leaning people in my circles who treated my assertion as absurd, asserted that the article was fine and balanced, and accused me of just wanting propaganda for my side.

Now, I should be clear—brace yourself for controversy—I am no fan of Mao. I toss him in a bin alongside Hitler and Stalin as one of the three most catastrophic leaders of the twentieth century, one who had such an extraordinary combination of malice and will to power that he killed more people than perhaps any other one individual in history. As far as I'm concerned, his name is mud, and the good that has come to China should be recognized as a result of Deng Xiaoping, a man he purged twice, doing everything possible to reverse his policy short of undermining his own claim to rule.

But I digress. That's not what I'm objecting to. I'm not asking Wikipedia to make a prosecutor's case against the man; I can do that myself. I'm upset because the section looks precisely how I would approach a statement were I Mao Zedong's defense attorney.

First: start with glowing praise, every word technically defensible. Lead with all your good facts, looking for every convenient data point or stock line. Phrase them in ways that most everyone reading will instinctively parse as good. He's important, influential. He's a political intellect, a theorist, a military strategist, a poet, a visionary. He drove imperialism out of China, he unified China, he ended civil war (don't press too hard on the details of that war!). Find reforms you can claim for him, find a sympathetic survey or two, note that he reduced poverty. Spend a whole paragraph laying out nothing but praise for him.

But people know he killed people! What do you do with that? Well, any lawyer whose client has some bad facts will tell you precisely what you do with it. You don't hide it—that just lets the other side bring it up. Makes you look dishonest. Be upfront about it, but massage it a bit. Tell the story from your protagonist's view. Make it land smoothly. You start by sandwiching it between good facts, naturally. Everyone's just had a paragraph about how great this guy is. Now you're ready to slide in that tens of millions of people died.

But wait! Mostly, you can add, it was starvation (probably unintentional!), but also mumble mumble mumble executions etc. But he didn't usually give direct orders to kill! And according to one sympathetic writer, most deaths were unintentional, and the rest were "necessary victims in the struggle to transform China." Use his voice! Then, yes, yes, it's been described as autocratic and totalitarian, and people called him a tyrant. Yada yada yada, we know this. Anyway, he was compared to the first emperor of a unified China. Isn't that neat?

Finally, tie it off with a neat bow: Forget about the deaths, the population grew! His strategies continue to be used; his ideology is popular and influential today!

It's a picture-perfect defense. Would it be made stronger by omitting the killings? No! You've given people just enough to say that you're being honest, presenting a nuanced, thorough picture of a complicated man.

Enough about Mao. People objected to my Hitler comparison because we're supposed to treat mass murderers who win and whose ideas remain popular as fundamentally different to mass murderers who lose. Very well. Commenters proposed Franco. Let's see what happens when you have a mix of defense and prosecution on a case, with the prosecution winning out.
How do you start out this time? He's controversial. He ruled for a long time, he suppressed opposition, he ran propaganda campaigns. Hard to evaluate in a detached way—and look, his citizens were subjected to constant messages that he was good. You can't trust their objectivity! When you praise him, note that he's "significant"—who can deny that! but it's not Good, per se—and a successful counter-revolutionary—good if you hate revolution!

None of the glowing praise to start things off. None of the fawning. Mao ran propaganda campaigns as well, Mao suppressed opposition as well—but it only merits mention with Franco.

Onward! Note again that he's controversial and divisive. Present the supporter's case, making sure to frame it in ideological terms rather than the absolute-good terms used for Mao's positives. Good if you like anti-communism and nationalism, good if you hate socialism. And supporters credit those ideological stances for Spain's economic success! Add a bit about who praises and supports him and who opposes him.

Next, find someone readers will have particularly divided opinions about, and be sure to contextualize him. While Philip Short is just Philip Short, William F. Buckley, Jr. is an American Conservative Commentator. Be sure to note that he praised Franco in explicitly divisive ideological terms, and recontextualize his statement: Franco wrested government "from the democratically elected government of the country."

Then present the critics' case unsparingly and directly, using examples everyone will agree are bad things: thousands of deaths,political repression, complicity in Axis crimes.

(The legacy section continues for many more paragraphs of minutia, most of it negative.)

---

Do you see the difference? Do you see the shape of each? Franco is presented unsparingly, his crimes understood, with most praise presented in divisive ideological terms and criticism presented in universal terms. Mao's entry is practically a coronation speech for a paragraph, followed by carefully mitigated bad facts before ending strong.

Maybe it's obsessive or neurotic or what-have-you to write all of this, but—to use the internet's erstwhile favorite term of abuse—I genuinely feel gaslit. You guys are reading the same article as I am, aren't you? You're seeing the same paragraphs I am. It's propaganda! It's clearly propaganda! You're not reading a thoughtful, nuanced, balanced take on a complex individual, you're reading propaganda for a mass murderer and then telling me I'm being silly and ideologically captured when I point out it's a bit weird.

Propaganda does not stop being propaganda because it acknowledges bad facts. A defense attorney does not stop being a defense attorney when they let some criticism slip in. Glowing praise followed by a concession to reality does not a balanced portrait of a mass murderer make.Image
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Look out for people like this. They think you are stupid, they think words are a game of “I’m-not-touching-you,” they see truth only as another tool to use when convenient.

This quip is as true for commies as it is for antisemites

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The Mainstream Consensus as put onto the page transformed beyond recognition between 2011 and 2025.

It's fine, though! Why are you making such a big deal?

Read 4 tweets
TracingWoodgrains Profile picture
Jul 27, 2025
thank you Wikipedia for helping me understand Mao's legacy as a political intellect, theorist, military strategist, poet, and visionary who drove imperialism out of China, improved literacy, and significantly reduced poverty

very enlightening Image
always heartwarming to see austere religious scholars get the recognition they deserve Image
x.com/mhqbwidqv5kz/s… x.com/mhqbwidqv5kz/s…
Read 5 tweets

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