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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]Kids from economically-disadvantaged, Asian families were practically nonexistent at TJ before the admissions change. It helped them more than other groups, per the appellate judicial opinion. 
[/quote]

[b]Poor asian kids were about as well represented as poor kids from ANY background.  [/b]

The group that was helped the most were white students.
The year before the the change, 86 white students were admitted.  This year, 140 white students were admitted.  An increase of 54 students.
The year before the change 16 hispanic students were admitted.  This year it was 41.  An increase of 25.
The year before the change 7 black students were admitted.  This year, it was 19.  An increase of 12.
Asian admissions went down by 40 despite a 64 seat increase in class size.[/quote]

Right. There was almost zero representation of kids from low-income families.

Majority opinion: 
"Nevertheless, in the 2021 application cycle, Asian American students attending middle schools historically underrepresented at TJ saw [b]a sixfold increase in offers[/b], and the number of low-income Asian American admittees to TJ [b]increased to 51 — from a mere one in 2020[/b]."
[/quote]
Asian admissions went down.
White admissions went up more than all other groups combined.

50 of the 138 FARM kids were asian.  So?  That is a by product of their attempts to racially balance the entering class.  if they could have figured out how to create a [b]race neutral process[/b] that would have  had all 138 of the FARM kids be URM with no whites or asians, they would have done it.  The intent behind the change was racially driven.[/quote]

That's not how "race-neutral" works. By definition, a process that seeks to attain a specific racial outcome is not "race-neutral" unless that outcome is "representative of the demographics of the applicant pool".

You're just mad because the old process that favored parents who leveraged their resources to tip the scales in favor of their kids doesn't exist anymore. Because interest was higher from Asian families, that meant that the old process significantly favored Asian applicants.[/quote]

The interest is higher from asians because asians are more interested in education generally.  Especially in STEM.
22% of asians get a 750 or higher in math section of SAT, no other major group gets higher than 4%
9% of asians get a 1500 or higher than a on the SAT, no other group gets higher than 2% https://satsuite.collegeboard.org/media/pdf/sat-percentile-ranks-gender-race-ethnicity.pdf
Asians simply value education more and work harder. https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.1406402111

As for the new process...
The process is race neutral, the intent behind the change was racist, the fact that the way they achieved their racist goal was to try to mirror the general population makes it no less racist.
When major league baseball capped the number of black players on the team because blacks wer3e over-represented, that was still racist even though blacks were over-represented relative to the population.

Take a look at page 7 of this report https://go.boarddocs.com/vsba/fairfax/Board.nsf/files/BWE23Y004896/$file/TJ%20White%20Paper%2011.17.2020.pdf
ISTM that the URMs have been URMs for a very long time at TJ
When asians came along asians weren't crowding out URMs, there were never a lot of them to crowd out
They were crowding out white kids.
This change is moving the needle back in the other direction.
This might be what Derrick Bell might call convergence of interests.  
This would never have happened back when white kids were still over-represented.  They would never have sacrificed merit for proportional representation when whites were over-represented.
White kids are coattailing on a policy that is supposed to help black kids, but it is helping 12 black kids white it helps 86 white kids.
This is what it looks like when white people use black people as an excuse to discriminate against asian people for the benefit of white kids.

They could have tailored this to target the benefit at URMs.  Use the 1.5 rule but make the other seats merit based.  The problem is that you would have gotten more poor kids with a large URM bump but the kids that get pushed out to make room for the 1.5% would have been proportionally divided between affluent white and asian kids.  
Of the ~480 kids getting in, 140 would have been from schools that have historically sent 0-2 kids per year and most of them would not have otherwise qualified.
The other 340 would have gotten in under merit and the ratio between asian and white studnents would have probably moved even more in favor of asian kids.  
So instead of 140 white kids we see in this year's entering class, we would have seen about 80.[/quote]

Do you not see that it is racist to suggest that one race is “…more interested in education…” than another? How can people not see how this is racist?
[/quote]

Because it is true?

However, there is a caveat.  People are looking at one subset of a race.  The same race in their home country, the same stereotype doesn't apply.  Many people send kids to work rather than school.[/quote]

Wow, very interesting that you don’t see the problem in this. 
[/quote]

Would you care to define the problem?

If the racial achievement gap is news to you, then you are ignorant.
If you choose to ignore the racial achievement gap because you think it says something that you find uncomfortable, then you are intentionally ignorant.

Culture matters.  If you are from a culture where education has been the primary means of social mobility for thousands of years then you have an almost religious faith in the power of education.  You don't get nearly universal buy-in into that concept because every parent thinks their kid is going to go to harvard.  You get universal buy-in because parents have faith that their c+ student will have significantly a better life if you can turn them into a B+ student and if that means a few tears because they can't play with their friends or making sacrifices for your kid's education, you do it.  Sure you try to be smart about it but you do it.

How do you contend with that as a society?  
Do you punish that fervor by applying tougher standards to them?  
Do you handicap the beneficiaries of that culture to bring their results in line with members of cultures that don't value education as much?
Do you keep moving the goalposts to give them the fewest opportunities you can manage to the point where the goalposts become meaningless?
How do you contend with that as a society when you see such large racial achievement gaps (that are really cultural achievement gaps)?[/quote]

Do you not understand that children cannot choose the parents they are born to? All children deserve opportunities, not just children of families that value education and/or have more money than others.

Children of families that value education, especially if the families also have a decent income because of their value of education, will always do well. Those kids have parents who can make sure they’re pointed in the right direction. Children from families with lower income and less education are the kids who will benefit the most from a school like TJ. It was wrong that in the past, kids from advantaged families got all the opportunities while kids from less advantaged families were almost entirely shut out from TJ. It is better now that that more kids from less financially/educationally advantaged families are getting the opportunity to go to TJ. 
[/quote]

It's one thing to say that we should make allowances for kids with fewer resources.  It's another thing to say we should also make allowances for kids who don't study because their parents don't value education.
We know how to build in preferences for poor kids but that wouldn't accomplish the racial goals because you would simply be replacing a bunch of middle class asian and white kids with a bunch of poor east asian kids.

There are enough problems with the notion that we should disregard actual academic ability and base admissions on the academic achievement we think someone might have reached if they had more resources.  
[b]But what you are saying is that rather than reward a dedication to education and the sacrifices made by these families, you want to counteract their effort and sacrifice by randomly picking students for TJ?[/b]

What exactly do you think TJ offers to kids that are not at the top end of academic ability other than shitty grades?  Going to TJ and getting shitty grades doesn't help you get into college.  It doesn't improve your SAT scores.  The primary benefits of TJ do not exist if you don't have the ability to succeed academically AND succeed at a crapton of other stuff.  I you don't have the ability to navigate the extremely competitive environment AND have extra time to do other things that you can only find at TJ then there is no real advantage to attending TJ.  TJ is not an opportunity that makes sense for the vast majority of kids.  It might make sense to some bureaucrat that wants to pretend that they have achieved racial parity in some artificial contrived way.

You can select for poverty while still selecting for merit but once again, this would not get us any closer to the stated goal of racial balancing.
Let's not pretend that FCPS did this to get economic diversity.  They did this to get skin color diversity.
You're fooling noone.[/quote]

The bolded is a big part of the problem. TJ is not some kind of “reward” for hard work and sacrifices. It is an opportunity for a particular kind of education for kids who need it. 
[/quote]

Well, that was poor phrasing on my part.  I don't mean that TJ is an end in itself.  It is basically special ed for kids who would not develop good learning skills because they would not be sufficiently challenged at their base school.  And THAT is the problem.

There is this notion that a TJ degree does something for you even if you aren't that smart.  The only thing it does is stress you out and tank your GPA.  
There is some evidence that a harvard degree helps URMs even if they have poor grades.  The reputational effect of a harvard degree just goes further for blacks and hispanics, in part because it is a signalling device to the "market" that these are "best in class" black and hispanic prospects if you want to have black and hispanic employees.  
But a good high school degree does not have the same benefit except in college admissions, but even then it is only if the admissions process is merit based.  For example stuyvesant/bronx science/brooklyn tech are majority FARM students.  They send a lot of kids to ivy+  Getting into and graduating with a decent GPA from these schools tells college that these poor kids are smart and are ready for academic rigor.

If these schools started admitting students based on a lottery, colleges would no longer see the value of a degree from these places.[/quote]

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