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Jul 30, 2023 19 tweets 5 min read
I saw Oppenheimer. It's good. Not as good as all the raves. But good.

Since I was attending the movie with students, I dug up some earlier movies to give them as a reference point. What I *wanted* was Day One, which I saw 30 years ago. But it's nowhere to be found. But this led me to the BBC miniseries Oppenheimer, with Sam Waterston, which I'm pretty sure I saw as well. And in retrospect, I'm stunned at how accurate the BBC version is, and how little mention it's been given.
Sep 6, 2021 6 tweets 3 min read
@mattyglesias Given that the vast majority of colleges aren't selective, there's no affirmative action there, and given that test scores are roughly equivalent by gender, it's very unlikely that there's much actual affirmative action going on. More likely, colleges are ignoring grades. @mattyglesias Given that grades are mostly about compliance, that's not a big deal.

Also, as some have observed, this isn't new in liberal arts colleges, which have been dealing with a male deficit for at least three decades.
Apr 29, 2021 13 tweets 3 min read
Podhoretz is, as always, wrong on facts while he's being a smug and arrogant prick.

It doesn't matter at all what the population of the *city* is, but rather the population of the public schools.

Whites and Asians are both 15% of public school children. Image In other words, whites aren't nearly as interested in going to the specialized high schools as Asians are (and the whites who are interested are disproportionately immigrants).

In fact, whites and Asians get accepted at almost identical rates.
Mar 24, 2021 11 tweets 5 min read
My newest piece is an end, FINALLY, to my year-long series on the rise and fall of the Bush/Obama Education Reform era.

I have been working on this ever since @toad_spotted wrote the wonderful Waking from Meritocracy, that included this passage:
americanmind.org/features/the-d… Image Now, if you know anything about the history of Ed reform, you are stunned by the brilliance of the Napoleon metaphor.

My series is for those who don't understand why the metaphor is so apt.
Jul 19, 2020 5 tweets 5 min read
@CandideIII @Steve_Sailer @jbarro Doesn't matter, as I keep saying, as colleges have been weighting grades far more than SAT scores for close to 20 years. And the reason Asians have moved ahead is a combo of things, but major change in test is part of it. @CandideIII @Steve_Sailer @jbarro That is, the issue is grades, not test scores. And elites going to private schools are getting very good grades. There was just a study showing private school grade inflation is greater than public.
blogs.edweek.org/edweek/high_sc…
May 25, 2020 10 tweets 7 min read
@Steve_Sailer @CharlesNegy I still don't think that's quite right, although I agree that Asians did lose a key battle because Napolitano is no longer concerned about white support. But it's grades, more than SAT scores, that hurts whites vis a vis Asians. @Steve_Sailer @CharlesNegy It was the post 1997 change, when the UCs made GPA 75% of the admission decision, that Asians dominated over whites. Meanwhile, blacks and Hispanics in majority minority schools, had GPAs they could never achieve in diverse high schools. educationrealist.wordpress.com/2017/08/01/gpa…
Mar 20, 2020 9 tweets 2 min read
1. Burr, etc, sold their stock, knowing that investors would panic.
2. Investors panicked.
3. Because investors panicked, pressure on fed/states grew even though public less than concerned.
4. Quarantine, creating real econ depression.
5. WSJ--hey, maybe panic was dumb. But panic is what the *investors* did, not the public. No matter how dire the politicians got, no matter how serious the warnings, there are *lots* of people who think this is nonsense.

So it's hideous that Burr lied, but any non-Senator could have sold in January as well.
Nov 25, 2019 14 tweets 10 min read
On my drive up here, I was listening to @JonahDispatch and @smarick on The Remnant. It was very wonky, on things I don't usually fuss about, but there was like a five minute interlude I found very interesting--I mean, the whole thing was fine, but this was revealing. @JonahDispatch @smarick Jonah was going on about how our ed schools present a Zinnian version of the universe, and that this is what teachers are taught and go out and teach their kids.

Andy Smarick pushed back , saying yeah, that's what the top schools do, but teachers are ideologically diverse
Nov 19, 2019 8 tweets 2 min read
The next time all the reform yutzes talk about "getting kids away from failing schools", remember that it's the lawsuits that *prevent* schools from protecting non-sped kids from out of control sped kids that do a lot to create "failing schools", particularly at ES level. I mean, this is basically what Pondiscio's book describes SA doing to kids with far fewer problems, and lots of folks said whoooohooo go Success Academy!