[quote=ucodegen][quote=ocrenter]While fairness is important, the point is promoting someone with lesser ability (IQ or academic) into an environment they are not equipped to excel in ultimately leads to their undoing.
It is the law of unintended consequence.
As long as Hispanics are underrepresented compared to their proportion in the overall population, this admendment will be used to extract extra rights.[/quote]
And this is how education spirals to the lowest common denominator. The real fix is to address the cause, at the cause. That is fix how public education is run. Jaime Gutierrez proved it could be done. The fix needs to be applied before college. Public schools don’t want to admit to their failure, so they push the ‘fix’ onto Colleges.
We can’t compete against other nations if we are teaching to the lowest common denominator.[/quote]
I don’t think they want us to teach to the lowest common denominator. They honestly believe that many (not all!) of these disadvantaged students can rise to the occasion of given the opportunity.
Again, IQ is fairly fixed — it can be affected by environment by a few points, but you can’t take someone with a 90 IQ and turn them into someone with a 130 IQ. What do we do with those who have low or average IQs? Do we change our system to be more like the European systems where students are tracked according to ability, and their futures are basically determined by the time they are ~14 years old (or younger!) as they are shunted to either the university track or the vocational track ? (FWIW, I like their system because it truly prepares students for good occupations, but many think it’s incredibly unfair, especially for those who are “late bloomers.) It is incredibly controversial.
I’m guessing that you’re referring to the story about Jaime Escalante and the inner city AP calculus students. That’s a fantastic story, but you also have to realize that very few of the students who started with him actually finished with him. Not only that, but the students and parents had to sign contracts agreeing to do a TON of work at home, on weekends, and during after-school hours in order to remain in his program.
If every teacher could be assured of this type of environment, the sky would be the limit, indeed. He worked with AP students (AP classes that he insisted on and started) who are a very different set of students than the “traditional” students in basic math (self-selection bias). And he had control over the teachers and classes that fed into his classes, as well as cooperation from a local junior college that offered these students intensive math courses over the summer.
Could we learn a lot from his work? Absolutely. But don’t think this is an easily workable process. It took him many years to develop this program, and it was too dependent on too few people. As important as the teacher is, it is every bit as much about the students, parents, and the system created around the teacher.
