Great. You’re getting there.

However at the end of the day one still ends up with a number, a score.

Ohhh! Backsliding.

I agree that somehow a choice must be made between two candidates. But except in very rare occasions where you’re really looking for the best at a very specific thing who is “better” doesn’t come down to a number, a score. A variety of criteria have to be used, some of which will be subjective, some less so, some (yes) outright objective. But outside those rare occasions, subjective will be in there.

Is this used by political parties to pander? Sure. In different ways to varying degrees but every party uses it in some way. But just because someone mis-uses a thing in a way you don’t like doesn’t mean it should be eliminated.

The Democrats pander to minorities by supporting the concept of racial discrimination in admissions, employment, etc.

Amused Observer: In the global economy that we live in, a nations most valuable resources are well educated smart people.

Even if one were to agree with the (again, subjective) view that what is “best” for the country is succeeding in the global economy, the most valuable resource may not be the smartest people. Who is the most successful person in the global economy? A business man who made the most money? A movie star who is not quite as wealthy but is far more widely known? The lesser known politician who has had significant influence on events affecting large numbers of people?

And whichever of those, or some other, that you choose the most successful may very well not have had a higher SAT, GPA (or whatever) score than someone less successful. The race doesn’t always go to the swift (or the smartest). Many less-smart people have succeeded because they have been creative, or personable, or some other combinations of qualities which are impossible to measure with a single score.

Note: None of this is looking at any of these people as belonging to a particular class. But you cannot, simply cannot, determine who is “best” for whatever definition you give to what is “best” for the country, based on a single score.

To use the sports analogy, a level playing field does not insure equal results. Ultimately it is up to the individual to prepare himself to compete on that field. Giving weaker candidates more coaching is fine and should be commended. But once upon the field all should be judged equally and ranked accordingly. To do otherwise is to court political patronage and the erosion of meritocracy.

Eventually all apologies fall apart if pushed to far, but lets nudge the sports one just a bit further.
On the playing field for most sports individual performance counts only to the extent is aids the team. An the most effective teams include a diverse group of folks with various talents. Get all the smartest guys on one football team, for example, and they may have the best quarterbacks ever, but nobody to block or kick for them. Perhaps they would have been better served by getting a less smart but bulkier center.

Diversity is often used as a code word for back door quotas. As legistlation outlawing blatent racial discrimination in awarding admissions, employment, and contracts becomes more widespread the idea of diversity gains more currency amongst those who prefer a system that values group identity over individual merit.

If this was not a zero sum game it wouldn’t matter. But it is not a simple case of letting a marginally qualified person in. With the limited space or opportunity available letting in one person means denying another. Rigorous testing winnows out the less qualified and rewards the more qualified. To use subjective analysis of a persons history to deny a higher testing applicant is discriminatory.

Different people have different strengths and weaknesses. It is naive to think that outcomes will mirror demographics.
We are served best by merit not socially engineered outcomes.

To use the sports analogy, a level playing field does not insure equal results. Ultimately it is up to the individual to prepare himself to compete on that field. Giving weaker candidates more coaching is fine and should be commended. But once upon the field all should be judged equally and ranked accordingly. To do otherwise is to court political patronage and the erosion of meritocracy.

I believe you have. And consequently you haven’t stated my position correctly. But I do actually appreciate your making what you thought I said clear as it may make it easier to clarify what you seem to be misunderstanding.

The point I’m trying to make: A single test score is insufficient to represent someone or to adequately compare two people. Relying on a single test score would not guarantee that you either get the most deserving or the most suitable person.

Some colleges are even doing away with testing since raw test scores make it difficult to get the P.C. diversity that acadamia craves, equal outcomes instead of equal opportunity.

If (if) that is actually what academia craves then not going by test scores does make some sense. If you want a diverse student body, for example, you can’t just say you’ll take only those who scored in the top 2% on the SAT. Yeah, there would be some diversity in that group, but not nearly as much as you could get by considering other factors. And since as diverse a student body as possible is what you want…

The country suffers when meritocracy is eroded in the name of diversity and socially engineered outcomes.

Again, depends on what you want to achieve and what, in your subjective opinion, achieves that. You want the “best” country possible? Ok, that’s fine. So do I. Now tell me what makes “best”.

Har.

No, I just meant that Aaron Sorkinland, politicians put country before party. That ain’t how the GOP roll.

This idea is often used as a code for set asides. Some colleges are even doing away with testing since raw test scores make it difficult to get the P.C. diversity that acadamia craves, equal outcomes instead of equal opportunity. The country suffers when meritocracy is eroded in the name of diversity and socially engineered outcomes.

So If I misunderstood your position then is a color blind system without recourse to group identity what you favor?

You mean there wasn’t really a President Bartlet followed by Hispanic President Santos? Gee, I never realized.

But, yeah. I’m sure once Obama is in office we’ll be hearing a lot about how the unary executive isn’t really how it is supposed to work.

Sure. No problem. There’s a lengthy reply caught in the approval queue in which I provide a couple of sources for each of those things. Took all of 5 minutes to find half a dozen places each for ancient textbooks, gangs in schools and why social promotion doesn’t do any good.

I tried to avoid having the links recognized as such so that it wouldn’t get held up but, alas, that didn’t work. Hopefully Oliver will clear it soon. If it doesn’t show up after a while, I’ll try to repost.

In the meantime, perhaps you could provide “a tiny bit of evidence” that kids in the US are all getting a good education. Or even elaborate on how “non – minority children can graduate in greater numbers than minority children in any schools at all” doesn’t suggest something isn’t being done right where minorities are involved.

Which is fine. But you would admit, I’d hope, that those who can provide support for their views have a greater credibility than those who consistently refuse to do so.

I saw an episode of The West Wing just last night in which the Democrat President invoked the 25th Amendment and passed power to the Republican Speaker of the House (there was no VP at the time). When it was pointed out to the Speaker that he had to resign (one can’t serve in two branches at once, apparently) the Speaker immediately agreed that was the case and asked for paper and pen. When it was pointed out his resigning as Speaker means he can’t just go back to the House when the President resumes power but would have to run for office in 2 years the Speaker simply noted that he’d have to run for office again in 2 years anyway.

I would probably disagree with that particular Speaker on the majority of political issues. But I had a great deal of respect for the way he did not for an instant hesitate, or hem and haw, or try to come up with a way around the rules. I would probably disagree with him on the majority of issues but I don’t doubt that his views would be the result of thought and that he’d be able to provide support for them, and not simply echoes of things he’d been told.

I would have thoght the first part of that would have suggested the answer to you final sentence. But unravelling your brand of logic is, I will admit, beyond me. So let’s just stick with the first part and provide the “tiny bit of evidence” you asked for.

Ancient textbooks
http://www.aboutmyjob.com/main.php3?action=displayarticle&artid=1438

I asked “where are the current reading, math, and science books because all I see are books printed at least a decade before the students were born.” Let me explain, in my district … teachers/students must make do with out of adoption (read reallllly old) textbooks. It’s very difficult to find a complete set of books for an entire group of kids.
…students really need hands-on experience to learn (like many of us do). Well I was given nothing except a two broken flashlights, a test tube stand (with no test tubes), and a large box of….you got it….textbooks that were signed by students in 1988!

http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_qa3617/is_/ai_n8905336

Though I’d been hired to teach sixth grade language arts. I ended up teaching several sections of seventh and eighth grade social studies and language arts.
To complicate my challenge, I discovered that the seventh grade social studies text was copyrighted before these students had been born!

Gangs in schools and effect on education
http://www.nypost.com/seven/09072007/news/regionalnews/gangs_rule_schools.htm

More than one in four students reported gang activity most if not all of the time at their schools, more than one-third reported frequent fights in school, and more than half said kids don’t treat their teachers with respect.

http://www.safeyouth.org/scripts/facts/gangs.asp#gangs_schools

When gangs exist in a community, they can seriously impact schools, using them as recruitment centers and claiming them as gang territory. A report issued by the U.S. Departments of Education and Justice found that the percentage of students reporting gangs at school nearly doubled between 1989 and 1995. This report also found a strong correlation between the presence of gangs and both guns and drugs on campus.

http://www.ncjrs.gov/html/ojjdp/jjbul2000_8_2/page3.html

Thus, this analysis suggests that the school environment makes a unique contribution to the criminal victimization of adolescents. This observation, together with other findings reported in this Bulletin, suggests that gang presence is an important contributor to overall levels of student victimization at school.

Gangs are clearly present in some schools. As to whether they “have prevented other kids from getting educated”, are you really going to claim “frequent fights” and “the presence of… drugs” are conducive to learning?

“social promotions” are a bad idea
http://www.4children.org/news/999socpr.htm

It’s obvious that “social promotion” is bad for kids. The catch is that just making the kid repeat the grade is also harmful. Research shows that repeating a grade doesn’t usually help kids learn—and students who are held back are more likely to drop out.
Since both “social promotion” and “grade retention” are bad for kids, “We need something qualitatively different, something tailored to meet the needs of the kids found to be deficient, and we need to be sure to dedicate enough resources to make that happen,” says Cecelia Mansfield, the California PTA’s legislative advocate for education.

That article is from 1999, BTW. So much for your claim social promotions are “suddenly” a bad idea.
http://www.ericdigests.org/2001-3/policy.htm

FINDINGS FROM THE RESEARCH
Overall, neither social promotion nor retention leads to high performance. If the goal is to bring low-performing students up to the higher standards now being asserted across the nation, neither retention nor social promotion is effective. …
Critics of social promotion argue that it frustrates promoted students by placing them in grades where they cannot do the work, sends the message to all students that they can get by without working hard, forces teachers to deal with under-prepared students while trying to teach the prepared, gives parents a false sense of their children’s progress, leads employers to conclude that diplomas are meaningless, and dumps poorly educated students into a society where they cannot perform. Some early evidence from districts that have eliminated social promotion supports this indictment, and even opponents of “no social promotion” policies do not defend social promotion so much as say that retention is even worse.

http://www.ed.gov/pubs/socialpromotion/intro.html

Working to give students the opportunity to reach high standards of learning demands that educators and state and local leaders take responsibility for ending the practice of social promotion–where students are allowed to continue to pass through school with their peers without satisfying academic requirements or meeting performance indicators at key grades.
Research indicates, and common sense confirms, that passing students on to the next grade when they are unprepared neither increases student achievement nor properly prepares students for college and future employment.

And thanks for providing yet another clear example of your dishonesty.

I never said that, never suggested anyone be judged as a member of any group to which they belong. On the contrary, I’ve been arguing for exactly the opposite. That someone’s particular individual circumstances should be taken into account.

Show me one place where I’ve said person B should be advantaged over person C just because they belong to a particular group. I’ll wait.

That’s what you call attacking the messenger? Your circular logic seems flawed.

No, I call attacking the messenger the quote of yours that I provided. But don’t let that stop you from selecting a completely different quote and trying to claim that’s what I was pointing to.

Not really expecting you to debate honestly.

If test scores were the only deciding factor, that might have merit. But there are always other mitigating circumstances.

Are you still on Medicare, Frank? VA benefits? Social Security? Have you forgone all of that because it doesn’t help?

Did you really call minority children “feral”? Really? That just ain’t right.

If you were to look more closely at the “hits” referring to “equality versus liberty” you would see that they refer to books, articles, columns and blog entries in the hundreds, if not thousands, without repeats. The idea that conservatives lean toward liberty, while liberals tend towards equity of outcome, is so well known that it defies imagination to believe that anyone with even the slightest interest in politics has never heard of it.

Acknowledging that inequalities exist is not the same as admitting that only affirmative action can resolve those inequities. It is certainly a far cry from calling someone a racist for assuming that blacks and whites have the same potential for success in our society.

As for the difficulty in graduating from high school, surely you can not be saying that kids in the United States receive a poor education? Let’s see a tiny bit of evidence that textbooks are 10 years out of date, some evidence that gangs wandering the halls of our high schools have prevented other kids from getting educated, or that, suddenly, “social promotions” are a bad idea, shall we? While you’re at it, you can explain why non – minority children can graduate in greater numbers than minority children in any schools at all… You can’t make stuff up, like Zython saying I have said something that can’t ever, ever be found*, or that I have beaten imaginary grandchildren with an imaginary switch.

Every one is entitled to their opinion, and I am not a stickler for demanding that people provide some source of some kind for their comments, but let’s not wander into the fields of fiction, and claim we are making an argument.

The important thing being discussed here, as far as I am concerned, is whether or not Republican policies of any or all types are good for the general population, regardless of race, creed, color, etc.

Secondly, are policies aimed at purportedly “correcting historical inequities” a) efficacious, or b) actually deleterious to the well – being of the people they are aimed at helping.

Obviously, asserting that such legislative and executive policies may be ineffective, if not harmful, hardly constitutes racism, and to keep insisting it is so, is a waste of time and type.

* Since we are blaming Oliver’s failure to archive for Zython’s inability to document his accusation, I will recall what I said, as best I can: Back around 1993 or 1994, I predicted that if we didn’t do something about homeless single parents, and fathers failing to support their children and their children’s mothers, we would be turning loose a generation of feral children on an unsuspecting society. (Please note the use of the words “if” and “would be”). That is what I said a few years ago, in this blog, referring to a paper I wrote in 1993 or 1994, which simply reported the parenting problems encountered by homeless single mothers. The report contained exactly one prediction, which was supported by peer – reviewed journal articles which discussed many studies of those behaviors by respected professionals. It was a simple “if this goes on” speculation, and not a characterization of any group or members of that group. Reaching for such straws to charge someone with being a racist is merely more evidence that liberals not only evade any mention of personal responsibility (an attribute which most intelligent people perceive as varying from person to person, not race to race), they will not even admit the possibility that unintended consequences have played a great role in the failure of so many minorities to make headway in today’s society.

“The more objective and the less subjective the process the less likely discrimination can play a role and the more fair it is.”

That’s what you call attacking the messenger? Your circular logic seems flawed.

There are inequalities in the world, not everyone has the same skills and abilities. Perhaps Obama can provide a positive role model and teach a new generation of kids that education is cool.

It certainly appears that you are unwilling to put racial discrimination aside and let individual applicants be judged on thier ability alone without reliance upon group identity or membership.