NYC General Discussion - You Hear That Giant Sucking Sound?

[jaichind]

http://newyork.cbslocal.com/2014/06/17/mayor-bill-de-blasio-admissions-process-at-elite-schools-needs-change/

"Mayor Bill de Blasio says the admissions process at the city’s most selective public high schools needs to be revamped."

Sigh.  Here we go again.  Fortunately it seems Albany will not let De Blasio tinker with this system.  If he does manage to change this I can see this having an impact of another slice of high income population moving out of NYC to the suburbs.  To be fair this will hit Asians a lot more than Whites.  Most of my friends (almost all of them high income) both in NYC and in the suburbs are mostly White but a few Asians.  I can see the Asian friends of my having kids coming up on school age getting pretty upset at this if it goes through.  Its not like the economic impact of this section leaving NYC will be that huge, but it will all add up if De Blasio gets his way on this and other stuff.

[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.

[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).

[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%.