NYC General Discussion - You Hear That Giant Sucking Sound?

[Simfan34]

Yeah, that's depressing. Of course, they don't have the gumption to address the root causes so they go for this window-dressing.

[bedstuy]

As far as I'm concerned, 99% of the students at my local high school are functionally illiterate and none of them understand how to do math.  And, those scores are from the studious upper 40% who are graduating in 4 or 5 years.  You and I were more prepared for college when we were 8 than they are at 18.  What's the point of anyone even attending that high school at all?  As far as I'm concerned, every single student would be better off getting a job or learning a trade.

[Simfan34]

The sad thing is that the community "leaders", rather than attempting to rectify the root causes of culture of poverty, instead spend all their time crying "racism!" at the drop of a hat.

[bedstuy]

That really pisses me off as well.  I suppose there's some broad definition of racism that could encompass every reason these kids have no chance.  But, it's sure as heck not because white people consciously hate black people. 

I do volunteer work in this community here in Brooklyn.  To me, the problem is basically just that nobody has a stable family and work life.  There was a generation that grew up in the 50s and 60s which had that and found some success.  But, in my neighborhood, black people have actually gotten poorer and more stuck in poverty as overt racism has diminished considerably.  Kids and their parents and often grandparents never really had that 2 parent income household or even a one parent income household.  These kids grow up constantly on the edge, with horrible economic stress and with parents who are often super young and poorly educated themselves.  Whenever people get the chance to catch their breath, all they want to do is forget the horrible pain and trauma of their lives.  That leads to drugs, drinking and dumb behavior and makes people too wonked out to sit down and plan out educating their kids or engage in behavior where you give up short term pleasure for long-term gain.  There is no thought for the long-term because it's this constant life on the edge. 

That's the basic problem of black poverty in my eyes.

[Simfan34]

That is wholly correct. I'd add that an active hostility to educational achievement, due to its perceived lack of "authenticity", is also a major retardant. It's something I've read of, certainly, but I was truly horrified when I observed it for myself.

[bedstuy]

To me, it's more of a problem of black masculinity.  I think black masculinity sort of developed in America as a way of being proud and confident in what black men could have, as opposed to what they couldn't have.  If you can't realistically go to college, being proud of education is a recipe of feeling bad about yourself.  So, black masculinity prioritized physicality and menace, and a rye sense of humor and artistic creativity, over the traditional markers of American manhood that we denied black men.

[Simfan34]

Well, I mean it is one thing to not take pride in one's own education, it is another thing entirely to denigrate others for doing such.

[jaichind]

I said 600, because I knew it was in the 300s for each and I subconsciously ignore the writing section.

Here's the breakdown:

30% took the SAT
Mean score:

Math: 372
Reading: 377
Writing: 362

Nobody scored well enough for college readiness in math, 1-2% in reading and writing.  That's straight up pathetic.

If the scores are that low I think the kids there are not even trying or do not want to try.  One theory would be what  Simfan34 indicated that it is rooted in culture and what that population takes pride in.  The typical left explanation would be stereotype threat.  I am open to a combination of all these factors. 

Funny you bring up the writing section of the the SAT which many people find to be bogus and ignore.  From what I gather took place, the writing section was added to try to address the imbalance between boys and girls at the very top of the SAT score curve.  Namely, even though boys and girls rough score equally under the old SAT with the boys having a slight advantage, the gender breakdown for very high scores (like 1500+ under the old SAT) was very biased in favor of boys.  This data was not politically comfortable for the SAT administration. This addition of the writing section seems to be a way try to fix this.  My understanding is that this did not "fix" the issue as the breakdown by gender for very high SAT scores (2200+ and 2300+) are biased in favor of boys. Perhaps the new redesigned SAT they are putting into place might "fix" this problem along with other "problems".

[jaichind]

If you read this NY times editorial on the topic of NYC elite public high schools admissions, not once is it mentioned that the real problem is Asians.  Asians are almost 75% of Stuyvesant so it means that Whites are underrepresented in addition to URM. 

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/06/23/opinion/new-york-citys-top-public-schools-need-diversity.html?src=rechp&_r=0

This reminds me of a similar battle around Thomas Jefferson High School in Virgina several years ago.  I grew up post elementary school in the Greater DC area so I was following it especially when I have a bunch of friends that attended Thomas Jefferson HS.  There was a complaint that URM were, well, underrepresented in TJHS.  None of the literature that talked about the problem pointed out that Asians make up 65% of TJHS and that Whites are also underrepresented.   

The fact that left does not want to talk about Asians in these discussions makes it clear to me what their agenda is.

[Simfan34]

The proposal by the author of that piece is truly terrifying. It's literally a call for a caste system:

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[jaichind]

What De Blasio and gang is talking about as the "solution" to the URM minority problems seems to be to make family income a greater factor in the admission process.  This is actually the right wing opponents, including myself, have advocated as an alternative to affirmative action.  But thinking about it I think this solution might be worse than affirmative action as we know it today.   We actually have several models of elite admissions

1) Stuyvesant/Cal Tech.  Obviously this is the model that I support.  This is purely based on test scores and results are pretty clear looking at the demographic breakdown of these schools.  One possible concern is that one test being the sole determining fact might be too arbitrary.  One solution is to use a combo of various AP/SAT II like tests to determine admissions.  Problem with that is what is good about the SAT is that it is a proxy for IQ test.   Someone with very high IQ but in a backward school district can still do well on the SAT whereas this is not the case with AP/SAT II.  So all in all I think SAT is superior despite all its drawbacks.
2) HYP "holistic" approach.  This is just double speak for affirmative action with some soft quotas based on race once one looks at the results this "holistic" approach actually produces.
3) Class based approach advocated by De Blasio.  I argue this is even worse than 2) because the real agenda is still to get a certain ratio of URM in the admissions process.  So whereas 2) gets the highest scoring URM (although the scores are still a good deal lower than Whites and Asians) which usually are from wealthy high income backgrounds, approach 3) would put this group at a disadvantage given their family income.  So to get "correct" URM balance once would have to put such a "bonus" to family income that the White and Asians this process would enroll would also be a lot less qualified than approach 2) let alone 1).

[Simfan34]

Squeegee men are back terrorizing NYC streets

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[Simfan34]

Bratton vows to crack down on ‘squeegee men’

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[jaichind]

Good thing I almost never drive in NYC. 

[jaichind]

New York City Pension System Is Strained by Costs and Politics

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/08/04/nyregion/new-york-city-pension-system-is-strained-by-costs-and-politics.html

Bascially the NYC pension assumes a 7% annual return after it assumed a 8% annual return and clearly under-performed.  It seems to me that 7% is too high as well and the only solution to come to grips with this and reduce benefits to match this basic reality.  I, for example, assume 5% return on my assets for when I retire and that is matched with an assumption of a 3.5% inflation (most likely too high.)  So I am really assuming a 1.5% real rate of return using a 40/60 Equity/Fixed Income allocation.  I can see the NYC pension system using a more aggressive asset allocation model but 7% is too high especially they are most likely assuming that inflation is around 2.5%-3%.

[Lief 🗽]

Thank goodness!

http://ny.eater.com/archives/2014/08/shake_shack_ditches_freshcut_fries_that_no_one_liked.php

[Simfan34]

Oh thank God! This is very important. Shake Shack totally turned around my views on crinkle cut fries, before they were soggy pieces of misery served in the school cafeteria, it was a true tragedy that they tried to take that away. Hopefully they'll return as nice and crispy as ever. I mean the new ones were pretty mediocre, I had them just last week.

[Lief 🗽]

GROUNDHOGHAZI???

[True Federalist (진정한 연방 주의자)]

GROUNDHOGHAZI???

The real scandal is that the zoo thought the public wasn't ready to accept a female groundhog as a weather prognosticator. #glassshadow

[dead0man]

Well no, the REAL scandal is that politicians still do this sh**t and the press still covers it and some people seem to actually care.  It's stupid enough in that hick PA town, but that's all those guys have, it's super stupid in NYC.

[True Federalist (진정한 연방 주의자)]

So you think we pay too much attention to celebrity hedgehogs?  Better hedgehogs than celebrity people.

[memphis]

The real scandal is that anybody considers Staten Island part of NYC.

[dead0man]

So you think we pay too much attention to celebrity hedgehogs?  Better hedgehogs than celebrity people.

I think you forgot the smiley

[Stand With Israel. Crush Hamas]

#Justice4Charlotte

[Starbucks Union Thug HokeyPuck]

Thank goodness!

http://ny.eater.com/archives/2014/08/shake_shack_ditches_freshcut_fries_that_no_one_liked.php

I don't get the "fresh-cut" fad.  Either way you are eating fried starch with little to no nutritional value.  Just make 'em crispy and tasty.