Knicks Morning News (2022.12.13)

“Deuce and Grimes, besides being the greatest cop show buddies ever, are FUN to watch.”
LOL. Oh right. Basketball is *entertainment*

This is the key for me. I was depressed at the Knicks because we were playing like sh*t and RJ was a complete disaster, now we’re playing entertaining basketball and RJ is on his way to be where we want him to be. Thibs is playing the young guns and sitting the vets. Randle is not a vet, he’s just a headcase that we fear will go back to let emotions derail his play. He has said that last year he wasn’t getting any sleep with the new born and this year he’s more rested, that can be the difference and not the empty arenas, so i’m hopeful. Let’s enjoy this for now, and check if this is sustainable when we face opponents that are more challenging. I’m also curious to know what can Leon bring in by trading our guys that are on the block (DRose, Fournier and Cam).

A good part of yesterday’s thread captured part of the reason I don’t like to play in the fake-GM ‘Who do we trade today’ discussions. In short, we might have something good right now, but we don’t have enough data to say for sure yet.

A trade that doesn’t distinctively make us better or fill a gaping hole (e.g., stretch 4 with Obi down) just seems to put us in the early Cam situation where we have some new guy and we have to play him to see if he’s useful and our kids have to go back to the bench and our rotations get messed up and our data collection goes back to square one.

So while I get the idea of dumping Rose and Fournier because they’re just rotting on the bench (although Rose may end up being important while Brunson’s down), it just feels counter-productive to trade them because you can.

And I have ZERO belief that the Knicks will just waive players that come in (as in the old Westbrook discussions). Common fans and the media will treat that like a scandal. I think if they get a player, they’ll look at him. And things’ll get messy.

Maybe I’m flat-out wrong, and happy to be told what I’m missing, but it feels like just because the trade machine says the salaries match doesn’t mean it’s a good idea.

I don’t disagree with you, Raven, in the part that i don’t want any of the current rotation players to lose his spot and in the part that i don’t want washed vets (like Russ) playing for us. I’m thinking about young players with potential, that can wait for an opportunity. There’s also our current rotation of only 9-man that includes 3 centers (!?). I think we have at least one position to fill to have a “sane” 10-man rotation. Or maybe two positions, if we have one of the rotation guys injured, like right now in Obi’s case.

As long as we aren’t going to play Rose and Cam, I’ll all for moving them and trying to gain assets. The long range plan is still to try to upgrade a position with a star player via trade. The more excess assets we have, the better our chances of landing someone without gutting the rest of the team.

Thanks for the anecdote, Bo. Just as a follow-up, the plan, a modest step in the right direction, went through, and is now followed up by a lottery system that is almost unanimously supported by the principals in the district.

https://ny.chalkbeat.org/2022/10/17/23409777/district-3-principals-oppose-middle-school-screens-manhattan

I should just mention that I am not opposed to admissions criteria per se, just to those that lead to public schools that don’t “equitably” represent the socioeconomic diversity of the catchment they serve. District 3 had schools, and programs within schools, that did not do so, to say the least. I am proud to say that since its inception in 1983, our school used admissions criteria that were holistic enough to ensure a “representative” community where the needs of all students were met via differentiation of instruction rather than “tracking.”

“I should just mention that I am not opposed to admissions criteria per se, just to those that lead to public schools that don’t “equitably” represent the socioeconomic diversity of the catchment they serve. ”

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Then you’re opposed to them. There are plausible arguments, one supposes, to be opposed to them, but if someone favors something only in a narrow set of circumstances that virtually never obtains in the real world as we find it, the difference between that and “opposition” is so negligible as to be meaningless.

““representative” community where the needs of all students were met via differentiation of instruction rather than “tracking.”

Query whether setting a certain group of kids aside for “different” instruction while all their peers are getting something else is ultimately good for those kids. Hard to see, net-net, how it would be.

And it’s hard to begin to see how something that is consciously different can at the same time be “equal.” That doesn’t equate.

Primary and secondary education is a very fraught subject, to be sure.

I definitely think we should try to trade Rose and Fournier and if including Cam is one of the ways to do that, then bye Cam.

But I want future draft compensation, not vets. Whatever players we get back I would want to either cut or have on the bench for emergency/injury use only.

Like I would be worried if we got back Patrick Beverly because I wouldn’t want Thibs to have him take over McBride’s back up role.

This 9 man rotation is working so well and it’s all young players. Even with Obi out we’re now rolling with Sims and I love it.

But I don’t think Thibs is so vet dependent that he would just insert a vet into our rotation just because they’re a vet. Like Thibs wants to win and right now our young rotation is winning. I don’t think he’s going to upset what works just because we got Pat Beverly now. Maybe I’m wrong but I don’t think Thibs is one to just choose a vet over a young player just because they’re a vet. I think he just wants to win as many games as possible.

Some end of the bench vets for emergency use only would be fine. I guess that’s what Fournier and Rose are now. But if we can clear those dudes from the roster and get back picks, let’s do it.

Honestly, I just want to get rid of Fournier because of the contract. All things being equal, I would hold on to D Rose as our third string point guard. But I think he probably would prefer to go to a team where he would play/compete for a ring and I think Thibs relationship with him would mean we would try to do that for Rose if we can. And sending Rose out might be a way to get rid of Fournier (Cam too).

RE roster moves: I would love to trade DRose and E4 but I agree with Raven that the team is coasting, attitude-wise, so I suspect no move will be made until we start losing, or until a “natural” trading deadline when everyone feels it’s safe to re-set.

RE entertainment: Has anyone read the new(ish) Herring book “Blood in the Garden” about the 90s Knicks. Maybe I missed the discussion. Anyway, it’s on my holiday list, and there’s a comprehensive review over at the Nation which ends with a truism I believe.

“What people want from their team, at least if the team isn’t going to be a perennial winner, is a great story. They want characters who can win them over, and a team that has an identity a person can aspire to and embed themselves in—an identity that can make them feel part of something great, something representative, something with purpose. The Knicks were failures in the sense that they never reached the ultimate glory they aspired to. But failures are often important. The underdog, the hero, doesn’t always have to succeed to end up immortalized. An underdog can become a symbol—a symbol that endures through the changing times.”

Short of winning a ring, this year’s team is now offering us some good stories IMO, so it’s more fun, although I am absolutely willing to concede that crazy-ass-mad-genius fans like us can make “Story” out of anything at all, cf Frank Ntilikina, Kevin Knox, Dennis Smith Jr, Alonzo Trier, Cole Aldrich….

But I want future draft compensation, not vets.

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The only permutation that’s worth that is Cam standing alone and even he isn’t worth that much. If they traded him by himself they might be able to recoup something like the incinerated pick.

(Which would then of course likely be incinerated again, but that’s a different matter altogether.)

@ Z-man — re education: Since you brought it up, I’m curious about your perspective as a professional educator on the article linked below — feel free to ignore if you have better things to do 😉

I’m a lifetime “Leftist”, a product of public schools. I send my kids to one, but they do benefit and have benefitted from exactly the G&T testing “standards” that are being debated v. a lottery system that prioritizes socio-economic equity. The article below comes at the debate in favor of such testing — specifically citing Bronx Science and Stuyvesant — and the data are somewhat alarming to parents who are trying to “do the right thing.” Among my peer group, we all want equity and social justice, but we also want classrooms where our kids can excel to the best of their abilities. It’s a conundrum.

https://www.city-journal.org/nyc-war-on-meritocracy

“What people want from their team, at least if the team isn’t going to be a perennial winner, is a great story.

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Contra the Nation, the 90s Knicks *were* a perennial winner. Zero championships, but a “contender” in the sense that I (and I think everyone else here)(*) is using the term from 1992 through 2000.

(*) “Championship or bust” is a misnomer as it’s being applied to Team Pessimism, at least IMHO. True contention, i.e. a true threat to go deep into May/June, is perfectly fine.

The intractable “problem” with primary and secondary education is that competent parental day-to-day academic involvement is irreplaceable and no substitutes exist. The state can’t take on the role in any serious way, money isn’t a replacement, teachers aren’t a replacement, administrators aren’t a replacement, etc.

There’s no workaround for it.

“Contra the Nation, the 90s Knicks *were* a perennial winner.”

Yeah, my fault for not citing context. That passage was in conclusion, making a larger point that this book and sportswriters in general tend towards hagiography b/c of our hunger for story. And in the case of the 90s Knicks in particular, much of their appeal was a (perceived) position as underdog due to certain players — Starks, Mason — who lacked the pedigree or “breeding” of someone like RJ Barrett. Their “Story” is that they compensated with grit and toughness, which the reviewer flags as qualities Knicks fans enjoyed celebrating. I would say Lin had a similar appeal.

I love a good underdog story and I think it’s why the original Rocky is such a masterpiece. He’s the underdog. He overcomes all sorts of personal and internal issues to get prepared for the fight. Then he goes toe to toe with Apollo all rounds and almost beats him. Apollo whispers in his ear when the fight is over “there ain’t gonna be a rematch” because in that moment Apollo, the champion, knows that if there is one, he will lose because Rocky is in every way his equal. But Rocky loses the fight.

But he gains so much. He gains belief in himself. He gains the love of Adrian. He brings his friends and family and an entire community together.

Life is full of failure. But if you don’t fucking try ever, that is the real failure and if you try as hard as you can to go after your dreams, you will achieve so much even if you don’t reach the ultimate goal. That is why we root for underdogs and that is why those stories where they almost make it but don’t are so powerful. It’s about the journey, not the destination.

@ Swift – I’m totally with you. So … Go Morocco?! 😉 Or is it finally Messi’s time after his years in the World Cup wilderness? Or are we all ignoring brave Croatia’s bid to repeat as a finalist this year and finally win their first championship?! Decisions, decisions.

It’s all so funny how the narrative is structured after the fact. Remember France’s 1998 World Cup Championship? That story was about how players with all those “funny” names and skin pigments — Zidane! — were the first generation of immigrant kids to represent La France. That “underdog” team became a symbol of global multiculturalism and the “end” of racism. Now those “same” guys — Mbappé! — are the overdogs this year. It’s crazy but I love all of it.

“Championship or bust” is a misnomer as it’s being applied to Team Pessimism, at least IMHO. True contention, i.e. a true threat to go deep into May/June, is perfectly fine.

It’s a complete misnomer. Even a threat to go into May is less than I need to be satisfied.

You know who I am happy with right now? The New York Giants, a team that is squarely in NFL no man’s land, winning games that hurt their draft status. And the reason I’m happy is that I’m confident over the long term Brian Daboll and Joe Schoen will make the most of their opportunities. They may never get great opportunities, and they may never amount to anything. That’s life. No big deal.

What I couldn’t take was knowing that no matter what opportunity presented itself, Dave Gettelman would have squandered it. Watching an elite edge rusher fall into your team’s lap only to see your idiot GM draft a 3rd round QB at #6 because he fell in love with him at the Senior Bowl creates a feeling of emptiness. It sucks the hope out of you knowing that even if good things could happen, they won’t.

That’s what Leon Rose does for me when he punts on draft picks or burns them to dump his most recent bad signing. If we had Jalen Johnson and AJ Griffin on this team, it wouldn’t change our title chances one bit. But my optimism would be 100 times higher just knowing that our GM is capable of making the most out of his opportunities.

There is nothing short of RJ Barrett making the all-NBA team this year that will raise my optimism more than Leon Rose doing two smart things with his two draft picks next summer. This whole season is just about enjoying what we have. It’s a mixed bag, and I’m fine with that. I can be patient with this low-ceiling squad. But if we fuck up another offseason, it’s gonna feel like there’s no point committing to anything until the next administration.

All I have wanted from this team since 2001 is not a championship. I just want to feel like I’m not waiting out the current administration. Donnie Walsh and Glen Grunwald gave me that feeling. They didn’t come close to a title, but we were all happy AF. “It’s a great time to be a Knicks fan”, remember that? They weren’t the 90s Knicks. They won one playoff series. And we never talked shit about either of them. Hell, one of our best posters even named himself after one.

Remember France’s 1998 World Cup Championship? That story was about how players with all those “funny” names and skin pigments — Zidane! — were the first generation of immigrant kids to represent La France. That “underdog” team became a symbol of global multiculturalism and the “end” of racism. Now those “same” guys — Mbappé! — are the overdogs this year. It’s crazy but I love all of it.

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That France team that won the 1998 World Cup and Euro 2000 is my favorite soccer team ever and, as always, that has nothing to do with any of the sociology stories that surrounded it.

We early X-ers who have been sports fans since we were young know nothing *but* multi-racial, multi-ethnic sports (*), but every now and then “deep thinkers” crop up — usually around World Cup or finals time and try to “make sense of it all” and draw big sweeping sociological conclusions, typically around race/ethnicity and propose ties between sport and society that don’t really exist or are highly attenuated.

I don’t pay them much heed.

(*) And thus, as to something like Les Bleus ca. 2000, the racial/ethnic makeup of the side was neither a positive or negative factor, but simply not a factor at all. Essentially unnoticed. Obviously irrelevant.

*** feel free to ignore if you have better things to do***

There’s a joke here waiting to be told, but we’re all supposed to be on good behavior, so… 🙂

(Edit: Whoa, where’d that emoji come from? I’ve never used an emoji in my life before)

“propose ties between sport and society that don’t really exist or are highly attenuated.”

Ooh. This is a much longer discussion, best had over a nice whisky and not here, but the 1998 French World Cup championship absolutely did have a sociopolitical effect in France, just as Jackie Robinson had a sociopolitical impact here, and so on.

As a fellow Gen-X’er, I concede your point that we were raised Free to Be You and Me and in many ways taught “not to see race.” But today’s cultural backlash in which we are often permitted “only to see race” is absolutely connected, if not, perhaps, in the ways we had once hoped.

We are going to have to take back salary to move Rose, Fournier, and Cam. Most likely, their preference would be to get some 2nd rounders back as part of it for Rose and Cam. Then they could use those or similar assets to help move Fournier. Any salary they take back would hopefully be expiring contracts (otherwise why do it) that they could buy out. Maybe there will be some young end of the bench type player (s) included also with a couple of years left.

KBA, I won’t even debate the merits of that article…it is clearly a propaganda piece driven by a speific agenda.

Aside from that, the concept of what constitutes “merit” is at the very root of the debate. Thriving, or even survivng, in a climate of structural racism that has implications even before birth, let alone in pre-school, pre-K, elementary, and middle school life, is a form of merit. Getting thousands of dollars of SHSAT tutoring on top of living an advantaged life from birth is another form.

The Specialized HSs are, in my opinion, a manifestation of institutional racism and elitism, grounded in two myths:

1) students at these schools (and by extension, greater society) would be drastically harmed by attending diverse (both socioeconomically and academically) schools who skillfully differentiated for these students

2) the demographic disparity at these schools is due to some socioeconomic groups being inherently smarter than others (see: The Bell Curve) (if you don’t believe this, you should not accept any admissions framework that doesn’t result in a representative sample of the catchment it serves. If you DO believe it, just come out and proclaim it, stop spinning and deflecting.)

The article makes reference to the Nobel Prize winners these schools have churned out. as if these folks would have become something drastically less had they attended more diverse schools that were well run by educators who knew what they were doing.

These kinds of debates are very triggering, so beyond what I said here, I’ll just leave it with my guiding principle as an educator: “Don’t blame kids for the sins of adults.” If a public school is not good enough for your kid, why is it good enough for “those” kids? Ultimately, the goal should be to make every public school one that any parent would be okay with sending their child to. Even if that goal is unattainable, it should be at the root of public education decision-making.

“The intractable “problem” with primary and secondary education is that competent parental day-to-day academic involvement is irreplaceable and no substitutes exist”
I fully agree and endorse this statement, with this supplement: Parents who instill the virtue of education in their children, even if they are unable to support them academically day to day are still a catalyst for superior outcomes. They tend to find the best schools for their kids and seek academic support where they can.
The G&T equity issue is indeed a thorny one with both the equity and meritocracy sides having valid reasons for their stances. There are creative solutions to meet the needs of both sides ( academic rigor and credentialing), but the issue is so politically charged that they have only been implemented in a half-ass manner.

Warning: If we continue the education arc in this thread, we may provoke a Mike Bunge post.

“Parents who instill the virtue of education in their children, even if they are unable to support them academically day to day are still a catalyst for superior outcomes. They tend to find the best schools for their kids and seek academic support where they can.”

This suggest that our education system is a meritocracy for parents, not kids, which, in my opinion, is perverse.

If a public school is not good enough for your kid, why is it good enough for “those” kids?

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How is the school “worse” if there’s an exodus of the kids whose parents think the former?

An honest answer to that one will self-reveal a lot and perhaps the answers will be a little less mysterious.

Z-Man

I don’t know anything about education, but if I am going to be honest, if I was still young and had children I would make every possible personal sacrifice within reason to make sure my kids didn’t go any schools anything like the Catholic and public schools I went to as a kid in Queens, NY (still open).

I went to a Catholic grade school. There were huge pluses to it that I think helped shape me for the better, but 70 and 80 year old penguins don’t make the best teachers, especially when they have access to yardsticks.

I went to a public high school where the quality of the education was better, but everything else about it was worse (and from what I gather much worse now).

I sure as hell don’t now how to fix any of it.

I don’t envy young parents or teachers.

I just think the goal is to maximize the brightest and most ambitious, make sure everyone has equal access to the best education, and try to correct for disadvantages that have nothing to do with inherent talent.

Given my views on the way things typically get done, that would mean if I was young and had kids I would have to work 2 jobs, give up my hobbies and primary entertainments, and take out loans to hire private tutors.

(Please don’t any of that as personal insult because I know you are sharp and care. I just have zero faith in the system at all)

I went to schools BITD with a bunch of white chuckleheads, sometimes rowdy and violent, and there’s no way in hell I would send my kid to a school like that if I had the ability not to. School is for learning and academics, not bullshit.

So if the NYC public schools could offer me that — which they could under the “old,” pre-woke system — I’m happy with him going there. If they can’t offer me that, then I’m not. It’s that simple and there isn’t cause for even the first bit of guilt about it.

All that is of course separate from the wider issues presented by today’s primary/secondary education, which I still care greatly about as a citizen.

“The G&T equity issue is indeed a thorny one”

The designation “Gifted and Talented” is the single most perverse way of sorting public education students that could possibly exist under current laws. It is legally a twisted form of Special Education designation. In the vast, vast, vast majority of instances, the students meeting the criteria for this label are neither particularly “gifted” (except with privilege) or “talented” (except at scoring higher than their disadvantaged peers on standardized tests often administered at a tender age). There’s very few future Nobel laureates in this sea of somewhat bright and often advantaged kids that are segregated from their “Ordinary and Talentless” peers.

Z-Man,
I believe every child is entitled to the type of education which gives them the best chance to actualize their potential. That said, in my experience both in the classroom and now tutoring ( maybe a sample size of around 450 students and their families), I have found a causal connection between students getting the most out of their abilities and a positive attitude instilled in their children by their families. Indeed, I have heard educators many times saying ” poor *******, lost the parent lottery. To be clear, kids with non-optimal family circumstances are equally entitled to the best possible education. But unless and until the underlying circumstances that cause these issues are addressed effectively, this hierarchy will endure, however wrong it may be.
Yes, T&G is a shibboleth ( with apolgies to PTMillo and my wife)

@Z — thanks for your thoughts. I always enjoy reading your perspective.

I’ve always thought the simplest solution to cut through all the politics would be a law capping class size at 15 students. It’s a non-starter, I know, but … (in my mind).

Back to our regularly scheduled programming: Is Cam ever gonna play again for us or what?!! 😉

“…..if someone favors something only in a narrow set of circumstances that virtually never obtains in the real world as we find it, the difference between that and “opposition” is so negligible as to be meaningless.”

I would probably hire you E if I could afford you. That is some snappy text.

I did a tour of duty in the education policy trenches in the early aughts and I would rather argue about The Bible than do that again.

One of the basic questions was and is do we spend enough on teachers and schools? At the time, we had tripled the amount of spending on an inflation adjusted basis on public schools over 30 years (1970-2000) and had seen basically no movement on the NAEP results.

The argument people had over this “fact” was really my introduction to how complicated public policy is and come to think of it good preparation for arguing about stats and the Knicks.

I had some strong opinions about it for a while and don’t anymore, which I think is a natural arc.

BTW I should also say that I have zero problem with any parent who advocates for their child in any way, including using every trick in the book to get their kid into whatever program they want. So long as the Stuys and Bronx Sciences and G&T programs exist in their current form, go for it!

My beef is with the advocacy for a system that caters to advantaged parents on the public dole. I would much prefer that these parents find private alternatives than advocate en masse for rigging the system in their favor.

Lots of students at my school could have easily afforded private alternatives or qualify for segregated “gifted” or “honors” programs…and I’m not talking about the woke rich. Yet even with its “representative” demographics, (which BTW have been largely unaffected by the recent diversity initiatives, including the D3 lottery system) they are thankful to attend and their kids do comensurately well in life after moving on, with lots of lessons they would not have learned in a less diverse setting. If you build it, they will come.

At the time, we had tripled the amount of spending on an inflation adjusted basis on public schools over 30 years (1970-2000) and had seen basically no movement on the NAEP results.

Oof. As a parent, this is crushing.

So, Book of J? Yay or nay? 😉

I have been championship or bust since the Bush Administration.

When they changed the lottery odds I was forced to be a little bit more flexible about it. And once the FO puts long term contracts on the book you are of course forced to think about things in a different way. I am going to root for the Knicks to win because it’s obviously better to win 47 than 37. The latter doesn’t help your future at all and the former is clearly more fun.

It’s a bit pedantic to constantly argue that you would have done things differently and I think all of us who are labelled pessimists have come to understand that. But it can also be quite funny at times.

In a totally separate note, I loved this tweet. Ostensibly it’s about the fact that Jaren Jackson leads the league in net defensive EFG on/off but really what it’s about are the secret defensive powers of Immanuel Quickley.

https://twitter.com/NbaInRstats/status/1602666233937235974

It’s interesting that Obi is on that list too and perhaps delegitimizing.

KBA – Like the Dwarves of Moria I delved quite deep and maybe a little too deep at the end. I pretty much lost hope and gave up and things have worked out exactly as I expected, so I feel good about that on some level, thought not good for our education system. It’s a tough job and I am grateful to do those who do it, it should also be said.

For some reason, the same approach did not obtain to my Knicks fandom. (did I use that right? Obtain? Who uses obtain on a sports blog. It’s just insane and awesome like when TNFH used dispositive.)

If it’s any comfort, people challenge that number on many grounds, the most popular being that schools do more, have different student bodies, and that the NAEP hardly measures what schools are trying to produce.

But again, I would advise avoiding this one. It’s like a usage v efficiency debate in the mid-aughts.

I was a legitimately “gifted and talented” kid and spent all of my public school years in G&T classes, and I can assure you that most of the other kids in there were not particularly gifted OR talented, and were in there because they had wealthy parents who didn’t want them in GenPop. It was a form of segregation, and it was obvious.

Owen’s tweet reference is interesting–it is actually in-the-paint net EFG so would have expected someone like Mitch rather than Obi/IQ to be on it. Perhaps with the time Mitch has missed, the Knicks allowing so many 3PA, and Mitch just being in the middle discourages forays to the rim, he has not qualified for the minimum number of 200 attempts. I am sure there is so much other noise in there to make it hard to draw any firm conclusions, but it seems like it must be a good thing to be on the list rather than not on it. Sort of like being good in Summer League may not tell you much but it is better than being bad in Summer League.

Bernie – I agree with all that.

When I watch games I will often have a few possessions where I focus on watching one player rather than the ball. Of late, IQ and Deuce are those guys. IQ is really good on defense. Deuce is obviously good. He made a play two games back that I still can’t get out of my head. He was at the top of three point arc and just slipped down to the foul line for a steal like he was a humminbird sipping nectar. It was unbelievable.

The way he gets over screens is also incredible. You watch people die on screens for years and then you see people who can do better. It’s fun to watch.

Deuce is still awful on offense. But I honestly don’t care. He is the fully realized version of Ron Baker we have been waiting for.

I’m way too busy today to weigh in fully, but Z-Man is right and I say that as a Stuy alum

I read Herring’s book. It’s excellent, couldn’t put it down. Also recommend “When the Garden Was Eden” by Harvey Araton.

Z-Man,

While I agree with your larger point (I think lotteries and indexing student bodies to local demographics are the only fair way to admit students to a school given existing structural inequalities), isn’t arguing for 2) (that is, arguing that some races are less smart than others) deeply out of fashion nowadays, even for those who support things like screens?

Rather, there’s a cultural analogue to 2), let’s call it ‘2*’, that is what those opposed to things like lotteries and criteria-free admissions actually now support, which is something like: the “culture of poverty” precludes impoverished groups (due to poor parenting, poor environmental conditions, etc.) from equal educational achievement to advantaged groups, and this is reflected at the elite public school level in the demographic disparity.

Now 2) can be straightforwardly false (I think it is), while 2* has at least a grain of truth to it (as education doesn’t just happen in schools). Isn’t that a more faithful rendition of what’s being argued by the screeners and anti-lottery folks?

Of course, 2* having a grain of truth to it doesn’t mean we shouldn’t have lotteries or whatever–that simply doesn’t follow–but it does suggest that diversity requirements at schools won’t substantially affect the demographic inequalities in education until the antecedent conditions (i.e., poverty) are fixed. As someone who is only familiar with teaching and administering at the tertiary level, where admissions criteria seem to be a little less stringent than elite public high schools (colleges are freely allowed to select based on “holistic” considerations, which is the source of the current affirmative action lawsuit that’s going to reach SCOTUS), is my view (by your lights) an overly pessimistic understanding of the prospects of educational diversity initiatives that don’t include things like poverty relief?

(Again, to be clear, other things being equal, I support lotteries and the like on fairness considerations alone–in my view any fair policy has to take into account existing inequalities, even if doing so creates “winners” and “losers”, as any policy does. And I totally agree with 1), which is what most NIMBY parents are thinking when protesting diversity initiatives, I think.)

Lady Walsh was driving my car yesterday. When I hit Spotify this morning the podcast she was listening to popped up. It was called Nice White Parents, which sounded fascinating enough, so I hit play and, amazingly, got teleported to Knickerblogger, circa mid-December, 2022. (It’s about the failures of school integration in progressive communities produced by the folks that made Serial)

excellent and interesting discussion on kids/parents/schools/opportunities/inequities…

thanks everyone 🙂

I was a legitimately “gifted and talented” kid and spent all of my public school years in G&T classes, and I can assure you that most of the other kids in there were not particularly gifted OR talented, and were in there because they had wealthy parents who didn’t want them in GenPop. It was a form of segregation, and it was obvious.

On the flip side, I was “G&T” also, but all the wealthy parents in my Catholic school had idiots for kids and they got the G&T program disbanded. I’m pretty sure my ADHD developed while I was sitting around waiting for those rockheads to figure out how to carry the remainder.

Meanwhile, they were all ten times bigger than me, but that didn’t stop my gym teacher from putting us on the same dodgeball court together.

They also spent my whole childhood telling me that being a Foundling was an irrelevant data point for me and that I’m no different from the kids who have parents.

Yeah, my catholic school education sucked royally.

If the Hawks trade for Bogie, that’d be fucking nuts, right?

Remember when the Knicks last played Detroit, and Bogie barely touched the ball? How do you not run your offense through Bogie so long as you have him on your team, if everyone else on your team sucks?

Also, just to chime in with my anecdote (in order to procrastinate grading final exams):

Growing up, I was from a working class family with no college education who managed, by sheer geographic luck, to attend an elite public high school in my area, where I was promptly tracked into AP courses. What I noticed is that the students in the AP courses didn’t seem measurably “smarter” than their counterparts in the less prestigious tracks. There were a few examples of that, to be sure, but largely, the students in the AP classes came from wealthier backgrounds, had more parental involvement, and were a bit more diligent. Their “soft skills” (in the form of personality, socializing, studying etc.) were better, while their intellectual skills were largely the same. I sort of had the opposite upbringing. My parents emphasized education in the sense that they wanted me to go to university, because working concrete sucks, but they didn’t really teach me anything–not how to socialize, not how to study, did not pressure me in any way to be a doctor, a lawyer, whatver. And that’s because they never went to college, and were always working, so they weren’t really in a position to do so. I was incredibly lazy during high school, but was an autodidact, and so largely taught myself. I had little to no soft skills, but lots of aptitude, so was able to fake it until I made it, so to speak.
Fast forward to now, I teach at UIC (finishing up my Ph.D. next year, I think), which is largely a first-gen commuter school for the Chicagoland area, and to a lesser extent Illinois generally. It is, as far as I can tell, one of the most socially and economically diverse universities in the country. The student rolls of my courses have reflected that. The students in my courses cut across the high school tracking groups (that is, there’s some AP students, some honors students, some remedial students, etc.)

What I notice, again, is that most of the good students simply have better soft skills: if they’re doing poorly, they contact me early and ask me what they can do to do better; the worse-off students think that you literally cannot email an instructor, on pain of death. But, when faced with a logic problem (among other things, I teach intro to logic, about as abstract a subject matter as you can get), it’s rarely the students with the excellent soft skills that first get it. Those students are good at memorizing the rules and submitting the homework and performing tolerably well on exams, but they don’t understand the material, really. The students that understand the material–the students with, for lack of a better word, aptitude–seem to come equally from wealthy or poorer backgrounds. Likewise, some of my best students–like I’d like to think I was in undergrad–have gotten B’s or C’s rather than the A’s they likely could have gotten because they had a full-time job, or mental health issues (my case–in fact, I failed out of university the first go-round), or simply had trouble adjusting to a more rigorous academic environment despite being very bright.

All of these considerations lead me to believe, with Z-Man, that 1) is just straightforwardly false, and that even if 2* is true, it is orthogonal to the idea of ‘merit’, for which test scores and GPAs are extremely coarse-grained proxies. This is not to say that test scores and GPAs don’t matter–they do (in fact, I support more, rather than less standardized testing, though I think the SATs and ACTs and the like need substantial reform)–but it’s important to remember that they’re more measuring soft skills and background than ‘intellect’, pure and simple (which even IQ tests, the closest measure we have, don’t really measure). And as such, it can’t ground a ‘merit-based’ argument against lotteries and screening abolition, because any sensible conception of aptitude is normally distributed across demographics.

The Hawks want to add Bodgan Bogdanovic to a roster with Bojan ?

Clyde will be so happy he didn’t end up back in Atlanta.

“Remember when the Knicks last played Detroit, and Bogie barely touched the ball? How do you not run your offense through Bogie so long as you have him on your team, if everyone else on your team sucks?”

Because running your offense through Bogey rather Cade and Ivey would hurt the loss column 🙂

And, of course, you have to “develop the kids”.

The Hawks want to add Bodgan Bogdanovic to a roster with Bojan ?

Clyde will be so happy he didn’t end up back in Atlanta.

Exactly why it would be nuts!

” They also spent my whole childhood telling me that being a Foundling was an irrelevant data point for me and that I’m no different from the kids who have parents.
Hubert, a sincere 2 part question. Do you believe that being a foundling gave you a grittiness that you otherwise might not have developed and if so, do you think that grittiness has been an important factor in the outcome of your life thus far?

The degree to which academic ability/achievement is a measure of moral worth or standing is an *entirely* separate question. (Answer — it isn’t a measure at all).

A big reason these are such fraught issues is because we’ve become such a credentialized society. If you’re just an average schlub who gets through high school, or even some amount of college, and you don’t get in too, too much trouble, society should be set up such that you’re just fine. But of course it isn’t. Make that so, and then a lot of these arguments about schools go away.

TNFH thanks!

Owen: “…and that the NAEP hardly measures what schools are trying to produce…”

Exactly. In fact, it’s counterproductive to view school efficacy solely, or even largely, through this very narrow and biased lens.

Without getting to much in the weeds, I think that for all students, particularly those that are significantly disadvantaged by poverty and other cultural/societal factors, the most important goal is to get students to love the school environment, and to want more of it, hopefully well into adulthood. That starts with schools being a safe place for students to be themselves and to feel good about who they are right now.

Accomplishing this without watering down the learning experience, i.e. excessively pandering to their impulsivity and the fashion of the day as viewed through their lives, is a delicate dance. THAT’S where the professional craft of educators is at its most demanding. And that’s where, sadly, we as a society fail most miserably, and not just for the disadvantaged. See: “Affluenza”

Test scores are a blunt instrument, and when carelessly thrown around as measures of “merit”, they cause a lot of blunt trauma to kids. When kids get slapped around by these metrics, and the structures and curricula are grossly tilted to slap them around even more, the metrics become a grotesquely distorted images of what should really matter.

Kids are inherently vulnerable to “validating” messaging. In crafting such messaging, schools compete with lots of forces outside of their control. As a principal, I had to grapple with a) the reality that the efficacy of my school would be evaluated via standardized test score results, and b) the reality that student’s HS admissions outcomes would also depend on those metrics, as well as course grades.

Yet I was fortunate to have lucked into a great school where I could pick up the messaging where my predecessors left off. I would literally tell parents during tours that while grades and scores were “important”, what was far more important to me is that their child loved school and felt safe and welcome without feeling the need to be someone who they weren’t, or that they needed to meet ELA and Math standards to be highly valued members of their community. I would tell them that it was our job as educators to adapt to our students, whoever they were, more than it was their job to adapt to us.
But most of my colleagues either did not have the job security to push this messaging as I did, or simply weren’t on board with it. Many are quick to define their success as school leaders primarily via ELA and Math scores.

Sadly, many bright-eyed educators go straight from graduate school (or alternative programs like Teach for America) into a dysfunctional high-needs mess of a school with incompetent administrators and leave shortly thereafter, overwhelmed by problems they feel powerless to solve. That certainly could have been me. I got lucky from day 1, and never felt otherwise.

@ Knicksiness of Being — your comment tracks well with my own anecdotal experience. I taught for seven years at Columbia and two at Cornell. As such, I dealt with a student population rich in soft skills and also, well, rich. Soft skills really set the kids apart as 1st years in my Intro classes. Some were exponentially better at acclimating to college life, finding resources, parroting back first principles of subjects, etc. But I was also the thesis advisor for 4th years. In my opinion, when it came time to be pro-active, choose a thesis topic, do the research, and actually write the damn paper, it was the autodidacts and the kids from more challenging backgrounds who really shined. Many of the most privileged kids just could not make that next leap. Maybe it’s true as Herman Blume once opined, “They can buy anything, but they can’t buy backbone.”

@JK — As for G&T, everyone (or at least every parent) thinks their kid is the “legitimately gifted and talented” one in the group, no? ;-). But seriously, I have two of them, and I totally get that the entry tests are ridiculous and basically measure which kids have attentive parents to begin with. But the thing is, those kids with the most attentive parents tend to be the ones who can focus best on learning, and I want my kid in that classroom, especially in grades K-12. Anecdotally, I can say that behavioral issues are by far the biggest problem throughout all the grades my kids have completed to date.

To be sure, there are a host of systemic challenges affecting most kids who act out, but maybe those are the kids who need the more specialized curriculum. Maybe instead of creating G&T cohorts to do algebra in fifth grade, more school resources should go to help the troubled kids find their footing. Then maybe all the other kids can just get on with the damn book lernin’.

IDK the solution, but, as a parent, I hated the NYC Public school system, everything about it, even though we “successfully” navigated it for a while. And I now hate the Austin, Texas public school system. To be sure, I respect a lot of the people I meet, but all of us — teachers and parents alike — remain disappointed. Like with the Knicks, maybe that’s the point of life.

I don’t think there’s any question that the “Ovarian Lottery” plays a role in outcomes.

My father didn’t finish high school. My mother did, but she didn’t push me to get good grades or think about my future. It was all in my hands. I had no direction. I voluntarily dropped out of the Honor Program (despite strong pressure from guidance councilors) to spend more time handicapping horse races.

If I had more educated parents with more money (we were not poor, but barely above it) it’s close to 100% I would worked harder at school and probably wound up on Wall St. It was for the best though. If I wound up on Wall St, I’d probably hate myself even if I was good at whatever job I was doing.

Maybe it’s me or the way I was brought up, but I was always taught that life is not fair. We are all dealt a hand. Some hands are better than others, but the only thing that matters is that you play your hand well.

I’m not so sure you can or even should correct for things like this other than in extreme cases. Sometimes there are upsides to having to work harder to just to stay with the advantaged pack or from learning from your mistakes.

i went to stuy and i can tell you that there wasn’t anything privileged or advantaged about the kids there.. the only privilege that they had was that they had parents who cared a whole lot about their education… a lot of parents will pay lip service and might even get offended that someone might care more than them but when these parents are making 45k a year and spending almost half that in the HOPE of sending their kid to a not so terrible public high school… then yes they do care alot more than you…

these kids are generally not wealthy… i certainly was not… my dad was making that 45-55k a year growing up….i paid reduced for lunch.. these kids are generally first generation asian immigrants with parents who are militant about them going to good schools… just look at the hoards of test prep and after school programs lining bayside and flushing…. or ‘wealthy’ neighborhoods like sunset park and chinatown….

diversity is a problem in education but the problem goes far beyond there’s not enough x, y, z kids in a,b,c place…. and the podcast Donnie Walsh mentioned goes into it abit… hell there’s not enough women in programming… or sports… or a number of other fields… that’s a problem but how much of that can you solve no matter how draconian you get in whatever change you want to make?

these simplistic views like… SHSAT is some sort of structurally racist institution.. is not it… if that’s the case then school grades themselves are racists too aren’t they? we can talk about the problem without having to demonizing anyone… which is the only reason this conversation comes up and why it never goes anywhere….

Wow, very interesting education discussion. I’ve seen a bit of all of it as a child and later high school English teacher. Homeschooled my first year (Arizona), Catholic school for a year then public school (Massachusetts).

Placed in a trial gifted program when set up at our local elementary school. I was a bit of an artistic prodigy. I drew all the time. What was weird is they started it during the school year. About 30 of us were pulled out of the genpop and placed in a classroom together…kind of unsettling at the time. It was all the “smart” kids. Seemed elitist to me, even then.

Moved to Tennessee for 10th grade…culture shock. As a HS teacher I taught and loved teaching AP English to seniors. It did seem to be mostly the higher socioeconomic kids, FWIW, overwhelmingly “good” kids who cared. Some were very intelligent, too, but not the majority.

I am generally a proponent of “leveling” in public schools, but the devil is in the details.

@djphan — +1. Make every test as fair as possible, but you still gotta test, fully knowing it can never be perfect.

And all this pecking order chaos in our relatively tiny cul de sac on planet earth is due to the increasing and debilitating anxiety we parents feel about the future for our kids.

Interesting question, Bo Nateman.

It gave me a premature ego. A defense system that was very strong but too easy to activate. And a general sense everything good in the world was for kids who have parents, not me.

One thing it did that I didn’t even realize it had done until reading Unbearable Knicksiness’ post above is that I didn’t develop the soft skills he described until I was about 30 years old. It never occurred to me as a child that help was available to me, and subsequently I missed on quite a lot.

I can think of two positive things that came from it:

1) Extremely high level empathy that was caused by preverbal suffering.

2) A unique point of view that developed from existing in isolation, watching the crowd from afar and noticing how easily influence can override logic when people identity with a group.

Luckily I found a career that values those two things, and I’ve done well enough to afford as an adult the services I needed as a child.

PS — as a more uplifting aside that conflates our digressions on education with those on music, I’m very much enjoying the memoir “Every Good Boy Does Fine” from Jeremy Denk, classical pianist. Denk went through the G&T public school thing, winning every accolade and being prodded at every step by problematic parents to be the genius he now is. Anyway, by chance, he has an interesting perspective on all of the above. He also plays a mean piano concerto and has written a book that is breezy on the eyes.

TUKOB, the “soft skills” of which you speak could also be called “elitism” or “wealth disparity” at play.

Look, our schools are just a reflection of our late capitalist society as a whole, which is irrevocably broken.

I’m glad many of you are out there fighting the good fight, but nepotism and croneyism probably won’t ever be stopped without bloody revolt, and in schools in no exception. Z-Man’s desire to isolate it to private schools is probably smart, but who knows what the future holds.

But that being said, my kids go to a public IS in Bushwick, where they are white minorities and aren’t in any G&T program, and I would say it’s mostly excellent.

I think choosing not to “teach to the test” is a massive benefit for most schools because those resources can be diverted to teaching students actual, useful stuff.

Most teachers really care about their kids and their subjects (with a few exceptions) and usually they just need the basics—decent class size, solid admin staff, caring disciplinary structure—to shine.

Yes, that leaves more discretion in the hands of each school administration and its teachers, but that’s just life. Schools will vary. It’s ok.

And despite numerous complaints from all sides, today’s schools sound way better than the Catholic schools of the 90s (yikes!)

And all this pecking order chaos in our relatively tiny cul de sac on planet earth is due to the increasing and debilitating anxiety we parents feel about the future for our kids.
KBA, sadly I would add that the anxiety you refer to is also transmitted to the kids.

As I said, the G&T/SHSAT system is grounded in a meritocracy for parents, and there’s some false choices and harmful racist tropes at play. I’d rather not engage, since these topics are highly volatile.

I will just ask for folks to imagine a world without schools whose admissions depended on the score of a single test. What would happen to those students and families if they had to attend HSs like Beacon, or ElRo, or Lab, or Clinton, or Manhattan Center, or iSchool, or many others that screened in a way that was not an all-or-none test result. I’m not sure what broad societal purpose the test-in schools serve that justify their continued existence. This is an especially valid question in terms of access to advanced coursework, which in the era of distance learning and HS-College partnerships is easily attainable.

djphan I agree that replacing the SHSAT with a more “holistic” process would only do so much, if anything at all.

I think the question we have to ask is what exactly are we trying to achieve via screening at all at the primary level? I’ve become pretty cynical about efforts to separate students from one another by “merit.”

Even if ascertaining true “merit” wasn’t a fool’s errand in the face of systemic racism, poverty, and the like, my interpretation of the literature, my own experience, and common sense leads me to the conclusion that it would be beneficial to all for student bodies to simply reflect their municipalities (and not hyper locally, because due to residential segregation localities too narrowly defined are also unrepresentative).

I have a lot more to say on the matter and I don’t begrudge parents who want their kid to go to a specialized/G&T etc. school. It’s also true that some “merit” based separation necessarily occurs at some point. But it’s worth asking what exactly we’re trying to accomplish when we do it as early as middle and high school, and whether the costs (quite substantial IMO) outweigh the benefits (overstated based on my review of the literature).

Has anyone read Of Boys and Men by Richard Reeves? While managing to avoid the obnoxious culture war, it examines the growing gender gap in education — the one where girls have blown past boys. According to his research, the gap between girls and boys is wider now than it was 50 years ago, we just switched the dominant gender. Helping women break through in sports, technology, engineering, etc has not been matched by helping men find homes in healthcare, education, and administration, ultimately leading to a higher education gap that IIRC shows 60% of college degrees going to women.

‘Twas a wee bit concerning as a father of a 4 year old boy. But he also made a great case why it’s concerning for everyone.

“Z-Man’s desire to isolate it to private schools is probably smart, but who knows what the future holds.”

This is not the point that I am trying to make. As I said early on, I am not opposed to ALL forms of screening, or a proponent of a lottery system. I am opposed to screening that results in obvious segregation, i.e. extreme underrepresentation of a particular catchment’s diversity.

Some modifications have been proposed to the current SHSAT system that would go far in addressing this issue without abolishing the test. These include:
-expanding the number of seats by creating new ones (this has already been done several times) and expanding the current schools’ capacity.
-eliminating the hierarchy between the several schools, so that your score on the SHSAT did not entitle you to chose a specific school, e.g. Stuy, but a seat in one of several schools
-making a percentage (say 60%) of acceptances based solely on the test, and the other 40% based on being in the top percentage of grades (say top 5%) from whatever middle school you attended.

These measures, along with fostering advanced distance learning and college collaboration opportunitues, would maintain all of the benefits that test-takers seek (mainly access to advanced coursework that can provide an advantage in the college admissions process as well as entering these elite colleges prepared to excel there) without the need to be kept away from those kids not fortunate enough to have parents who spend vast sums of of their time and income preparing them for the test.

Z-Man, I am solely referencing this statement of yours with what you quoted from me:

“My beef is with the advocacy for a system that caters to advantaged parents on the public dole. I would much prefer that these parents find private alternatives than advocate en masse for rigging the system in their favor.”

I wasn’t saying only private schools should test or something like that, just referencing the system rigging.

Maybe one could look at testing through the “eye test versus numbers” argument in sports, although I would say “testing” alone is probably too small a sample size to be impactful. 😉

RIP Stuart Margolin. He played the hilarious con artist Angel on The Rockford Files and had a memorable guest role on MASH as a psychiatrist obsessed with Hot Lips Houlihan.

Some disheartening news via Hoopshype:

“ Before Reddish’s recent benching in New York, the Knicks originally engaged the Lakers to see if they’d have interest in swapping Evan Fournier for Patrick Beverley and Kendrick Nunn, league sources told HoopsHype. Beverley and Nunn will both become unrestricted free agents after this season.

Since then, the Knicks have reportedly looked to package Cam Reddish with Fournier in various trade talks, per The Athletic’s Fred Katz.

It’s worth noting the Lakers have checked in several times on the availability of Reddish over the past year, league sources told HoopsHype. However, it’s unlikely the inclusion of Reddish alone would move the needle for the Lakers to take on Fournier’s contract, which includes $18.8 million on the books for next season.”

I guess we aren’t getting picks
unless we move Cam on his own, and even then it’s probably just a 2nd rounder. Sucks for Fournier.

Z-man — The awkward thing in that article about the SHSAT, which I referenced way above, is that the scores on the test were highly predictive of students’ success at the schools themselves (unless I read the data wrong). Those who scored better on the test (at the original threshold for acceptance) achieved almost a full letter grade better in the actual classes compared to those students who were admitted using the so-called “lesser” criteria favored by DeBlasio. Now, of course, one can argue that the same advantages/disadvantages still exist once school starts, but the data counters the argument that these tests are merely arbitrary gatekeeping devices, which have nothing to say about potential academic achievement. I get the complaints when kids are taking “tests” with building blocks to get into “special” kindergartens, but at some point students must be evaluated and ranked, no? How early is too early?

I think the question we have to ask is what exactly are we trying to achieve via screening at all at the primary level?

I can give you my answer to that. It’s biased, but enlightening, I think.

I was reared in a nunnery as an infant, went back and forth between foster parents, no parents, and adopted parents.

I struggled in school because I was bored by it and I had deep emotional issues that no one was paying attention to. I had no extra help, no tutors, nothing.

But every time I took a test, I did great on it. I loved standardized tests. To me, it was a raw, unbiased examination of how well I could instinctively understand words and numbers.

School was the bullshit. I was never in the top of my class because I didn’t have rich parents lobbying for me all the time. I won every single academic competition I was part of, but I was excluded from most of them so that these other kids could win. And on top of it all, I got the shit beat out of me because they were all a year older than me because their parents held them back.

To me, the test was the one unbiased thing I had access to. No politicking could get other kids a better grade, and no prejudice* could reduce mine. From my perspective, the test was there to bust through privilege and elitism so that I could identify myself to educators upstream. And that’s precisely what I did.

* my last name is the name of my adopted parents, who are Polish. Polish are presumed to be stupid in the Long Island Catholic community, which is dominated by Irish and Italian (which, ironically, is my actual ethnicity).

as someone who has resided at the bottom of the bell curve…maybe we can just do away with grading altogether…

i was so happy to get out of school and actually start working, where passion and perseverance can overcome most academic deficiencies, the soft skill stuff i guess…

things in new york city are confusing…out here opportunity for good education for kids is mostly determined by the demography of the zip code they live…

I’m curious about your perspective as a professional educator on the article linked below

The article:

In his announcement, de Blasio cited the familiar woke mantra that achieving the all-important goal of “equity” would not compromise excellence.

This seems like a well balanced sentence in his first paragraph. I’m sure there’s no hidden agenda by the author here…

“it would be beneficial to all for student bodies to simply reflect their municipalities (and not hyper locally, because due to residential segregation localities too narrowly defined are also unrepresentative).”

and this diverse but not that kind of diverse is the crux of the public school problem…. people will organize themselves with likeminded and like situated people…. and if parents of people who prioritize schools goto schools with parents who don’t prioritize schools… the result is not some perfect diverse harmony… it is chaos.. and eventually winds up with parents who prioritize schools moving to communities where they do prioritize education as much as them and hence you have places like syossett… westchester.. and new jersey… places where their schools score consistently better than nyc….. this is exacerbated in a place like nyc where the only thing separating districts is a street and some rules that change year to year….

and you’re still left with underperforming schools because so much effort goes towards this diversity problem and not on academic performance… much of academic performance being tied to uncontrollable factors notwithstanding….

re SHSAT rigging – stuyvesant once had 12% of the student body black which wasn’t too far off the overall black population of nyc at the time (mid70s)..

diversity is not a fake problem… but what’s fake is blaming the test for that diversity problem… the test hasn’t changed much since its inception but a whole lot of other things have changed…. and for whatever reason those things NEVER get talked about even though nobody can really point to anything about the test that is actually racist…. and we’re supposed to accept it as fact…

went to a parent/teacher thing the other day…one thing that really does stand out to me in today’s education – the number of seats in the classroom, 36, great teacher, classroom looked great – still 36 seats, my goodness…

that’s for a 6th grade classroom…even up through high school (Sachem out on long island) i don’t think any of my class sizes went over 20 students per instructor…

ess, glad you are reading my posts again! 🙂

I’m only trying to say that I don’t fault individual parents for doing whatever it takes to ensure a “private school” style (i.e. segregated) experience for their child within the public school system. I fault large parent interest groups with outsized political clout (e.g. the parents I was arguing with) for promoting structures that work to their kids’ advantage to the disadvantage of other students and families. And I fault politicians that cater to these groups because they are afraid of the political consequences, or about economic consequences such as a decrease in real estate valuations or allure to businesses looking to attract the best workers and markets. I think there are creative solutions that would effectively address most of the concerns of these parents/politicians in more equitable ways.

And personally, I am proud to have witnessed first hand how ALL students benefit from greater academic diversity and heterogeneous groupings in a school setting, including the higher achieving students. There is ample research supporting this notion. And equally important is reinforcing in students that intelligence and ability manifests itself in many ways, and “merit” is not something that should be defined even before someone is born.

“To me, the test was the one unbiased thing I had access to.”

@H hits exactly on the irony surrounding standardized tests. Z-man prolly knows better, but the SAT, for example, was originally intended/designed to help “striver” students without connections to elite prep schools get into Ivy League colleges. I think working class Asian New Yorkers believe the SHSAT has long served a similar purpose for them at Stuyvesant. The results are more complicated than the intentions for both those tests, but this reversal is interesting to consider. Now both tests are derided as tools of bias.

“the number of seats in the classroom, 36, great teacher, classroom looked great – still 36 seats, my goodness…”

Agree, and I still think this is the main problem regardless of politics. Just cap all classes at 15 across the board. People can whine about budget and say that back in the day classes were fine at 30, but studies show there is much more soft parenting that has fallen to the schools. Why not set them up better to succeed at it.

PS — Messi is going to the final.

@Z —

And personally, I am proud to have witnessed first hand how ALL students benefit from greater academic diversity and heterogeneous groupings in a school setting, including the higher achieving students. There is ample research supporting this notion. And equally important is reinforcing in students that intelligence and ability manifests itself in many ways, and “merit” is not something that should be defined even before someone is born.

+1

Hubert, thanks for sharing. I wasn’t saying we should get rid of all standardized tests, that’s a separate can of worms and there are some compelling arguments I think advocates for that position ignore. Lord knows “holistic” evaluations are hardly a panacea when it comes to eliminating bias and discrimination.

My question is what is achieved by warehousing students who excel at standardized tests and/or traditional grading?

Again, at some point this is going to happen (i.e. the college application process) and obviously some differentiated instruction will be necessary when students have clearly different knowledge levels.

But a lot is lost when this happens so early in a kid’s life. To get into my middle school (Delta on the upper west side for the curious), I had to excel on a series of standardized tests. In other words, at 12 years old I was put into a school with a student body deeply unrepresentative of the city as a whole, owing to the achievement gap. The same process happened three years later when I went to Stuy.

To be sure, I’m sure I benefitted in some ways by being surrounded by other high-achieving students…but are the benefits this confers on high-achieving students worth what this kind of warehousing does to the rest of the student body? Furthermore, are we sure these benefits aren’t counterbalanced by the loss of a more representative environment as well as pretty insane levels of stress placed on pre-teens?

I don’t have all the answers, but as a product of the screening system who was put through all kinds of hell starting when I was literally 10 to get into the “best” schools only to get to college and law school and find that my peers who simply went to the school closest to their damn house were every bit as smart and able as me, I think these questions are worth asking.

This Nice White Parents podcast I happened upon via serendipity is actually quite good. I’ve listened to about 1.5 hrs of it and it is pretty great companion listening the KB discussion today. Deals with gentrification vs integration specifically in the NY public school system.

Also, I’ve mentioned this before but it bears repeating: Z-Man was almost my principal.

I went to public school in Florida, which is to say I went to shitty schools. I had some unbelievably shitty teachers, including a biology teacher who eventually got canned for showing banned Creationist propaganda in class. There was a chemistry teacher who never even attempted to teach chemistry and would just regale us with shaggy dog anecdotes every single day. Every kid in the school got a 1 in AP Chem every single year and this guy never got fired. I had teachers that were flat out racists, and were comfortable being racists because the school was effectively segregated. At the end of my senior year I got suspended for calling one of them out.

I did have one legitimately great teacher in high school who probably legitimately changed the course of my life in retrospect: my Algebra II teacher, who saw the potential in me, made me sit in the front row and stop doodling Van Halen logos on my notebooks, and actually taught me Algebra. There was a lot of Algebra II on the SAT at that time, and I did well enough on the SAT to get an academic scholarship to ‘Cuse.

I don’t really have a point here, other than Fuck Florida.

“ess, glad you are reading my posts again!”

Well, if it’s something you have a clue about (unlike Obi’s value as a player), I’ll pay attention. 😉

“and find that my peers who simply went to the school closest to their damn house were every bit as smart and able as me, I think these questions are worth asking.”

******************************

They are, but we need full understanding. In the rest of the country, yes kids go to the school “closest to their damn house” but that’s sorted out by how much it costs to buy the house that gets you into that school district.(*) Port the Bronx kid to DC, LA, SF, Detroit, Chicago and he ain’t getting into the good schools because his parent(s) won’t have the money to pay the de facto entry fee — a house in the district.

The idea that you’d open NYC high school admissions to all comers, regardless of geography is a vast *improvement* on that geographic sorting by property values system. It’s not worse, it’s way better. You wind up with some schools that don’t “look like the city,” but that’s only because the city is way bigger, population and geography wise, than the comps in other places. Your typical high-achieving suburban school in Chicago only “looks like” its suburb because that suburb is tiny and has already sorted itself.

And in NYC, that’s really only at the high school level anyway. The elementary schools follow the “closest to your damn house” model — to get into PS 87, you have to live in the PS 87 defined area and if you do live in that defined area, you’re automatically into PS 87. The middle schools don’t really deviate much from this model either, only the city is so big that the districts contain a lot more middle schools and you have to figure out who goes to which. But Delta (father of an alum!) is a District 3 school; it’s not open to kids outside D-3. (with I’m sure, tiny exceptions for special education and the like.)

Then we get to high school and it changes, but for the better compared to other places. Making a smart Bronx kid go to a crap school “close to his damn house” just because it’s “close to his damn house” would be a big step down, not up.

(*) The apartment renting by talented people that is the routine in NYC isn’t done anywhere else in the country to any significant degree. You pretty much can’t rent your way into the Stuys of other cities. (That’s a zoning and property use and NIMBY issue, which everywhere but NYC has a major impact on school demographics.)

“To be sure, I’m sure I benefitted in some ways by being surrounded by other high-achieving students…but are the benefits this confers on high-achieving students worth what this kind of warehousing does to the rest of the student body?”

yes this is a problem… but the science high schools admit about 6000 kids a year compared to the million of kids in the nyc public school system and the tens of thousands in the charter school system…. this warehousing effect.. if it has a problem.. is probably not that large of a problem… and if it is then the focus shouldn’t be on the science high schools… there’s all the other schools….

“To be sure, I’m sure I benefitted in some ways by being surrounded by other high-achieving students…but are the benefits this confers on high-achieving students worth what this kind of warehousing does to the rest of the student body? Furthermore, are we sure these benefits aren’t counterbalanced by the loss of a more representative environment as well as pretty insane levels of stress placed on pre-teens?”

there’s a lot of research on the topic and a lot of is mostly bunk or unclear but what is clear is that good studious students may or may not benefit from other good students (k-12) but that absolutely do benefit from not being with disruptive students…. meaning disruptive students from a social aspect do a lot of damage to the student body…. from creating a hostile environment… let alone learning environment… to actually causing harm to students… and disruptive students usually come from disruptive or inattentive homes….

so yes success can come from anywhere…. but i bet a lot of success gets lost at a lot of these other public schools just due to the environment…. what you’re seeing is survivorship bias and you don’t see the trail of tears that get left behind….

“i was so happy to get out of school and actually start working, where passion and perseverance can overcome most academic deficiencies, the soft skill stuff i guess…”

Interesting perspective.

IMO, the “soft skills” that people have been speaking of here can be more important in the corporate world than school sometimes.

I think that’s partly why I was so attracted to gambling in my youth (obviously still am) and eventually into investing. When you are totally on your own as you are when make a wager or an investment, it’s all you. There are no teachers, incompetent bosses, corporate politics, getting stabbed in the back, management that can’t even understand why you are right etc.. You sink or swim on YOU. It’s way easier for me to live with failure when I am wrong than if politics or some non meritorious factor caused it.

TNFH, I had pretty much the opposite experience. I had a rough upbringing, went to a rough zoned elementary school, then a rough zoned junior high school, then a rough zoned HS. I was in a program in my HS called “college bound” which was a group of very diverse group of free/reduced lunch students who showed some kind of a a spark. We took the same classes as everyone else, no AP classes. My guidance counselor alerted me to a program at a prestigious liberal arts university that was looking for such students to add diversity to its student body. To my shock and amazement, even though I did not meet the school’s published GPA/SAT criteria, I was accepted and offered something close to a free ride. My academic performance in college was nothing notable, to say the least. But I am forever thankful to them for seeing “merit” in me and others through the hardships we faced growing up, including a lack of parental advocacy. Not that I needed it to feel that I made good on their investment in me, but’s pretty cool that 40 years later, that university listed me in their recruiting publication as a “distinguished alumnus” because of what Bo brought up yesterday.

I’m glad to be on the same side of this debate with you, which is way more important than how we feel about Dolan’s Knicks. And also glad that you had a different middle school principal so you can’t blame any of your problems on my incompetence as an educator!

I went to public school in Florida, which is to say I went to shitty schools.

Hubie 2.0 is definitely not getting educated in Florida. I figure I can only move him once, and it has to be within 1-3 years. That’s partially why I’ve been spending so much time in SoCal. It seems like the schools are good there. Your thoughts?

I’m lucky that his mother is an educator and knows this stuff very well, but I still want to canvass opinions.

E you kind of ignored the very important “ … and not hyper locally, because due to residential segregation localities too narrowly defined are also unrepresentative” thing I said earlier

Hubie 2.0 is definitely not getting educated in Florida. I figure I can only move him once, and it has to be within 1-3 years. That’s partially why I’ve been spending so much time in SoCal. It seems like the schools are good there. Your thoughts?

The school system in Florida has only gotten worse, gets worse results than ever, pays worse than ever, has massive teacher shortages. I’m not going to get into the politics of it lest MBunge be summoned but rest assured it’s rough sledding.

My wife is a special ed teacher here in California, works for the Paramount district which she loves. She mostly had negative experiences working at LAUSD schools, but we’re big believers in public education and we’re sending EK47 to the public school down the street here in Long Beach. He is also four years old, starts school next fall. The neighborhood school gets high marks for diversity and academic achievement so we feel pretty fortunate. LAUSD schools vary wildly in quality, there are some really good ones and some not-so-great ones, and it’s always competitive trying to get your kid into your school of choice, probably not a lot different from NYC.

I’m very impressed by Brunson’s toughness. He might not even miss tomorrow’s game!

“I’m very impressed by Brunson’s toughness. He might not even miss tomorrow’s game!”

He’s a beast.

I saw Reeves on Maher and listened to him on a podcast. It dovetailed nicely with the SC oral argument where one of the justices pointed out that on merit, however defined, 65% of the college student body should be women.

It’s an interesting fact.

Certainly with a boy a girl I have thought about the issue. It is staggering how far girls are ahead of boys at a young age in so many ways. It does seem that that early advantage compounds, just like in other areas of life.

One thing that I found particularly offensive in arguing with UWS folks was when terms like “disruptive students” and “parents who don’t care as much about their kids’ education” were thrown around to defend “selective” admissions policies. As if one couldn’t find enough Black and Hispanic kids who aren’t disruptive and whose parents are deeply invested in their children’s education in a city that is over 50% Black and Hispanic to diversify these programs. I’ve heard lots of eloquent versions of this kind of code that reeks of racist stereotypes. To me, it’s just a “liberal” version of the same coded language used in the Deep South back in the ’60s and ’70s (and obviously still today.)

It all boils down to the same mentality: “I don’t give a shit about where THEIR kids go to school, or how good those schools are, as long as they (and their harmful influence) are kept away from MY kids.

Per RealGM:

The NBA has announced that it has renamed its Most Valuable Player trophy after Michael Jordan.

Jordan won the award five times in his career.

The award was previously named after Maurice Podolof, who was the first commissioner of the league.

The NBA also announced the following name changes:

The Hakeem Olajuwon Trophy – Awarded to the NBA Defensive Player of the Year
The Wilt Chamberlain Trophy – Awarded to the NBA Rookie of the Year
The John Havlicek Trophy – Awarded to the NBA Sixth Man of the Year
The George Mikan Trophy – Awarded to the NBA Most Improved Player of the Year
The Jerry West Trophy – Awarded to the NBA Clutch Player of the Year (New Award)

that’s so funny about the florida stuff…spent about six months in tampa and a few years later another six months over in orlando…

i truly believed florida was where i was supposed to be (could have been that 12 monkeys movie that i loved so much at the time)…growing up though seemed like every kids dream to go to florida or california…

no doubt though after some months living there – you get the very distinct impression that that school system sucks…hmmm, some of that new york elitism maybe – naw, that’s just one big academically challenged place…

i certainly did not excel in school, but so much of the success i’ve enjoyed in life resulted from having access to a good education and one good parental figure…

That’s a shrewd move changing the name.

One certain sign women are more intelligent: I can’t remember more than one or two posters over the years who identified themselves as female Knicks obsessives. Always been interesting if not surprising to me how monogendered this community is.

The student who I am helping to write the Brown v Board of Ed essay showed me 6 pictures of him with Julius Randle, including two with Ju and his older son.

awww, that’s so cool Bo 🙂

E you kind of ignored the very important “ … and not hyper locally, because due to residential segregation localities too narrowly defined are also unrepresentative” thing I said earlier

******************

I didn’t ignore it. You’re just presenting a problem and not permitting any of the things that might “solve” it.

NYC’s way of solving it, as I noted, is better.

“Always been interesting if not surprising to me how monogendered this community is.”

It’s indisputable evidence that women are inherently smarter than men.

“but the science high schools admit about 6000 kids a year compared to the million of kids in the nyc public school system and the tens of thousands in the charter school system…. this warehousing effect.. if it has a problem.. is probably not that large of a problem”

The specialized high schools and the charter schools are hardly the only schools that screen. As of 2019, 15% of NYC students in public high schools and 18% of students in public middle schools attended schools with some form of screening (http://www.centernyc.org/screened-schools).

Getting rid of screening altogether would certainly be a drastic step, and one I might not favor in a world where we could somehow totally separate student ability from the effects of racism, poverty, etc. (or better yet, in a world where those things didn’t exist).

In the world we live in, I think the case for screening is quite dicey.

“what is clear is that good studious students may or may not benefit from other good students (k-12) but that absolutely do benefit from not being with disruptive students…. ”

Again, I don’t deny that high-achieving students benefit from only being among other high-achieving students. I would counter that Z-Man raised a good point earlier that I don’t think is grappled with enough: what exactly is the case for somewhat arbitrarily conferring this benefit upon students in the *public* system, knowing it comes at the direct expense of a much larger group of students? If we all pay into the system, isn’t the imperative to get the most utility out of it for the maximum number of students?

I’ll add an anecdote. Some of you may recall that prior to going to law school I was a public school teacher in Miami via Teach for America (pretty wild that this conversation has basically touched upon every important event of my life).

With the important caveat that much of what is called “disruption” etc. is racially coded, I have no problem admitting I felt bad for the high-achieving, eager learner types in my class who often found themselves patiently waiting out me dealing with some kind of unrest. It’s a real problem that can’t be hand waved away, but it’s a problem *exacerbated* by screened admissions.

A selective charter school had recently opened up just a few blocks from the school I taught at, which was a traditional zoned public school in a very low-income neighborhood. That school was able to siphon off high-achieving students without taking on the challenges associated with, well, everyone else. They were of course happy to collect public funds from the families of those students, though.

All teachers and administrators should know full well they’ll need to get through to students who for a variety of reasons aren’t immediately inclined to excel in school. The system we have now allows some schools to basically wash their hands of these students despite getting taxpayer money. It’s just not designed well if the goal is to benefit the largest number of students.

*** I can’t remember more than one or two posters over the years who identified themselves as female***

One of those “females” was reub in drag, wasn’t it?

I have the memory of a goldfish and make extra efforts to block the Reub era out.

Kawhi had a night last night. Guy is so good. Imagine what he could have done fully healthy for most of his career.

Wish the Knicks were on but apparently there is a decent game on TNT. Giannis!

We never talk about the Bobby Portis Julius Randle alternate history but you know, maybe it’s not that ridiculous?

Some fun, mostly meaningless Deuce McBride stats:

Points per shot attempt: 0th percentile

Defensive on/off: 100th percentile

God Gianni’s is good. Just went full court like there was no one else on it. As the announcers pointed out, take foul makes a big difference

One of those “females” was reub in drag, wasn’t it?

Yes. Giana Dani, or something like that. I cracked that case when “she” said she was so upset she threw her “loubitin” (sic) heels at the screen.

“In the world we live in, I think the case for screening is quite dicey.”

it really all depends on what you’re screening for but what i’m saying is the SHSAT is not an example of that… charter schools and other screening systems you allude to have way more numbers than the science high schools and have way WAY more impact yet get a fraction of the attention….

“With the important caveat that much of what is called “disruption” etc. is racially coded, I.”

it can be racially coded for some ppl.. in most inner cities it’s blacks and latinos but just about everywhere else it’s very much a white problem also because if you look at education in america and underperformance it’s not exclusively a poc problem.. not by a long shot and rich white suburban america is also not free from this either… and if you goto places like houston where my wife grew up there’s plenty of majority latino and majority minority schools succeeding… if you take a wide lens on america’s problem with education. which is what i’m referring to… this is not at all a racially coded word….

and yes i totally agree charter schools in nyc and around the country are siphoning off public funds and taking children en masse from the public school system…. that’s a problem… but that problem will always exist as long as you have shitty school districts and if you have parents who care about their kids education you can’t just force them to attend.. that’s why communities and neighborhoods generally organize themselves around these school districts everywhere but in cities like nyc it’s a garbled mess…

one genius and studious kid cannot raise the school level all by himself.. and all the research points to a shitty school will wind up doing way more damage to that kid than any benefit that kid could derive… the jhs friends i left behind… there was a heroin addict.. a teen pregnancy… a suicide… a fairly large percentage wound up not going to college…. and i went to one of the better jhs’s in the city…. if i didn’t make it to stuy i would have put myself as a coin flip to succeed…

it’s a meat grinder and having little exposure to it yourself.. i have no doubt that’s probably why you think the way you do…. the people you’re meeting in law school who came out the other side they were lucky.. where you came from it was expected and all your peers probably wound up in similar spaces whereas their peers probably didn’t… that’s the difference.. and that’s the benefit to these programs….

the problem isn’t screening itself… that will exist no matter what whether overtly or through property taxes…. the problem is why do you have shitty schools that are turning away normal people? that’s a tough question to answer no doubt…. but that’s the problem.. not some test that hasn’t changed for 30 years…

you know who else is underrepresented at stuy? white people! every group is underrepresented except the poorest demographic in the city… asians…. and not just asian americans.. these are mostly first or second generation asians… and what does that tell you? it tells you that americans as a whole don’t prioritize these tests nearly as much as they do… that’s the problem… not that the test has some institutional racial component….

This Kornet thing is funny: https://www.espn.com/nba/story/_/id/35240700/luke-kornet-contest-effective-boston-celtics

One of those “females” was reub in drag, wasn’t it?

And there was nothing fabulous about it :/

The Kornet thing is great. It’s amazing to think he might end up with a basketball move named after him

https://nypost.com/2022/12/13/knicks-julius-randle-technical-foul-relapse-selfish-of-me/

Hey, Andrea Bargnani was jumping at balls he wasn’t close to a decade ago

I am here for the Korner kontent

Well you don’t see Mikal post a 4-24 shooting performance very often….

The Suns starting lineup was 18-73 from the field.

Man could the Lakers use Fournier and Reddish…

Celts not missing from 3, contested or not…

Most Clutch Player Award is a bonkers idea for an award.

You know it is a debate award. It will attract countless hours of “debate” and “analysis” and help them generate content. It cheapens the product by enriching its owners. But that’s just my opinion. Joe Sportstalkradio is going to love this shit.

“It’s indisputable evidence that women are inherently smarter than men.”

….but we’re still better drivers…

Lakers just came roaring back at the end of the third, cut a 20-pt lead to 6.

And now Lakers up by 4, a 24-pt turnaround in 10 minutes…

Make it 33…

Oh shit, LeBron with the bonehead inbounds pass to Smart for a layup after a made Grant Williams 3, Celts stop the bleeding and cut the lead to 8.

What a game! Smart with the big 3 to cut it to 2…

OT…Tatum abuses LeBron and then Lebron clanks a 3

LeBron and AD are gassed.

Westbrook gets to the rim twice, looks unstoppable

follows it up with a clanked 3

pure Westbrook

update: deja vu all over again

purer than pure Westbrook

i’m not sure which i like more – The Kornet Contest or The Eclipse…

hmmm, gonna go with the kornet contest…

lakers ran out of gas…they need fournier and reddish…

Yes they do need Fournier and Reddish, but a deal is going to be difficult.

And it was a bad night for the Western conference. The Kings, Warriors and Lakers were beaten by the 76ers, Bucks and Celtics.

It shouldn’t surprise me, since A. Anthony Davis has begun to play like Anthony Davis again (while Lebron always plays like Lebron) and B. Austin Reaves has taken a huge step forward out of nowhere, but it still surprises me how good the Lakers look now. As noted, AD and Lebron looked like they got tired from carrying the team by the end, so the Lakers really do seem primed for a trade for another good player and then they’d be very scary in the playoffs. I don’t think Reddish and Fournier are those guys, but at the same time, I do agree that even Reddish and Fournier would improve the Lakers.

Celts look scary good, even without Horford and RWIII. Like a team on a mission.

I don’t think Reddish and Fournier are those guys, but at the same time, I do agree that even Reddish and Fournier would improve the Lakers.

Looks like the Lakers want a pick to take on Fournier. No, thank you. Let’s wait for more desperate times among contenders, closer to the deadline, to ship him without having to attach a pick. I don’t agree with the move, but if we’re going to waste a pick getting rid of him, giving a pick to a contender would be doubling the stupidity. A rebuilding team will do that in a heartbeat.

I think in the end the Lakers will send a pick to Indy to get Hield and Turner. A starting 5 of Schroder, Hield, Lebron, AD and Turner looks very good to me. Fournier and Cam would save them a pick, but for a much worse starting 5.

Maybe the Lakers want a pick to take on Fournier because his salary extends past next year. They want to have cap room next summer so a long contract is a real negative for them.

[Going to put this here now while I still remember to do it, and then port it over to the new thread in an hour or so]

My company had its holiday party last night, the first time we did it since 2019. I went because I wanted to see everybody (some of whom I also haven’t seen since before the pandemic). But I’m also kind of terrible at making small talk — or, at least, initiating small talk — so parties can be dicey for me. At this one, I discovered that the secret to getting through conversations with the people I didn’t know as well was to bring up your New York Knickerbockers. It turns out one of my editors grew up with Robert Silverman! I met a Cam Reddish stan who is furious that the team is not giving him a shot! Several people love RJ! And I just nodded and smiled a bunch. A good time was had by all.

Amazing story Alan. I enjoyed it

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