Posted on July 3, 2021

The Left’s War on Gifted Kids

David Frum, The Atlantic, June 29, 2021

The Democratic primary voters of deep-blue New York City delivered a message clearly, firmly, and loudly: “Defund the police” was stupid and is now over. The first tally of the mayoral primary showed the pro-funding and pro-reform ex–police officer Eric Adams atop a large lead. The next day, President Joe Biden urged Democratic cities and states to spend some of their billions in coronavirus-relief money to hire more cops and put them on more streets.

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But as unpopular as “Defund the police” is, local progressive activists have found a cause even more anathema—and are pushing it with even greater vigor. Eighty-three percent of American adults believe that testing is appropriate to determine whether students may enroll in special or honors programs, according to one of the country’s longest-running continuous polls of attitudes toward education.

Yet across the U.S., blue-state educational authorities have turned hostile to academic testing in almost all of its forms. In recent months, honors programs have been eliminated in Montgomery County, Maryland, and Seattle. On Long Island, New York, and in Pennsylvania and Virginia, curricula are being rethought to eliminate tracking that separates more- and less-adept student populations. New York City’s specialist public high schools are under fierce pressure to revise or eliminate academic standards for admission. Boston’s exam schools will apply different admissions standards in different zip codes. San Francisco’s famous Lowell High School has switched from academically selective admission to a lottery system. At least a thousand colleges and universities have halted use of the SAT, either permanently or as an experiment. But the experiments are rapidly hardening into permanent changes, notably at the University of California, but also in Washington State and Colorado. SAT subject tests have been junked altogether.

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But rather than expanding gifted programs, many self-proclaimed reformers are moving to shut them down, public opinion be damned. The intention behind the changes is equity. The result is to ignite a thousand local battles over race, class, and opportunity.

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These are local issues—yet they are reshaping state and national politics. Last year, Californians voted on a proposition that would have allowed the restoration of affirmative action in college admissions, state employment, and state contracting. Proposition 16 was defeated by a margin of 57.2 percent to 42.8 percent in a state where non-Hispanic whites form only slightly more than one-third of the population.

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“Defund the police” was more slogan than policy. It originated on the fringe of the Democratic Party, and did not bring much in the way of real-world change before it got squashed. The academic-equity movement, by sharp contrast, splits the Democratic coalition from top to bottom—Proposition 16 was endorsed by California Governor Gavin Newsom—and it is already affecting millions of families.

Opponents of academic testing as an admissions tool point to its negative impact on African American applicants. As Isabel Wilkerson observes in her book Caste, such tests measure not only the potential of the individual student but also the consequences of centuries of degradation over a dozen generations before the student was even conceived. {snip}

But that argument resonates most strongly with those Americans whose grandparents received the benefit of the harm done to the grandparents of others. It resonates much less with newer Americans and their children, who are on their way to becoming the national majority.

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