# Selective Magnet School in Virginia moving towards a lottery system **URL:** \ **Category:** Great Debates\ **Created:** [October 6, 2020, 3:59pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/selective-magnet-school-in-virginia-moving-towards-a-lottery-system/922347 "2020-10-06T15:59:07Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 11
**Author:** ![BippityBoppityBoo](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/bippityboppityboo/32/5745_2.png) [@BippityBoppityBoo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BippityBoppityBoo)\ **Post date:** [October 13, 2020, 11:31pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/selective-magnet-school-in-virginia-moving-towards-a-lottery-system/922347/201 "2020-10-13T23:31:20Z")
> [@iiandyiiii](#): > > it’s amusing to watch people who hate progressives pontificate on how they imagine progressives think. Indeed it is. ---
**Author:** ![ZosterSandstorm](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/z/e0b2c6/32.png) [@ZosterSandstorm](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ZosterSandstorm)\ **Post date:** [October 14, 2020, 12:14am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/selective-magnet-school-in-virginia-moving-towards-a-lottery-system/922347/202 "2020-10-14T00:14:50Z")
> [@iiandyiiii](#): > > As always, it’s amusing to watch people who hate progressives pontificate on how they imagine progressives think. Luckily we have people like Patricia Hyning on video, linked from this thread, showing us exactly how progressives think: that parents who work for their children’s success are cheating, that Asian immigrants are a plague on real Americans, and that we need to enforce equality by punishing excellence. ---
**Author:** ![iiandyiiii](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/iiandyiiii/32/7924_2.png) [@iiandyiiii](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/iiandyiiii)\ **Post date:** [October 14, 2020, 12:21am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/selective-magnet-school-in-virginia-moving-towards-a-lottery-system/922347/203 "2020-10-14T00:21:30Z")
Who is Patricia Hyning, why should I care what she said, why should I trust that you accurately characterized what she said, and why does your characterization somehow represent the views of every progressive in Earth? ---
**Author:** ![ZosterSandstorm](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/z/e0b2c6/32.png) [@ZosterSandstorm](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ZosterSandstorm)\ **Post date:** [October 14, 2020, 12:27am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/selective-magnet-school-in-virginia-moving-towards-a-lottery-system/922347/204 "2020-10-14T00:27:47Z")
Patricia Hyning is a retired teacher who worked at one of the middle schools that feeds into Thomas Jefferson. Her disgusting racist remarks are on video linked from this thread in this post: [Selective Magnet School in Virginia moving towards a lottery system - #150 by DemonTree](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/selective-magnet-school-in-virginia-moving-towards-a-lottery-system/922347/150). I guess you don’t have to “trust” that the video of her saying these things is real if you want to make baseless allegations that someone fabricated it or whatever. You should acknowledge that these are the actual views of progressives because the actions of progressives in power match those of people who hold those views. ---
**Author:** ![iiandyiiii](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/iiandyiiii/32/7924_2.png) [@iiandyiiii](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/iiandyiiii)\ **Post date:** [October 14, 2020, 12:36am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/selective-magnet-school-in-virginia-moving-towards-a-lottery-system/922347/205 "2020-10-14T00:36:19Z")
I don’t accept that a selectively edited random internet video of a random internet person represents the views of progressives. But then, I don’t hate progressives, so I’m not inclined to reach for whatever random crap is out there just to slander progressives. YMMV. ---
**Author:** ![ZosterSandstorm](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/z/e0b2c6/32.png) [@ZosterSandstorm](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ZosterSandstorm)\ **Post date:** [October 14, 2020, 1:12am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/selective-magnet-school-in-virginia-moving-towards-a-lottery-system/922347/206 "2020-10-14T01:12:26Z")
OK. I guess I can’t make you accept that “a literal video of a progressive explaining her beliefs” or “the actions of progressives” have something to do with what progressives believe. I do dislike progressives, and one reason is because of their racism against Asians, love for racial quotas, and hatred for merit and educational excellence as discussed in this thread. I guess to some people those are good things. ---
**Author:** ![iiandyiiii](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/iiandyiiii/32/7924_2.png) [@iiandyiiii](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/iiandyiiii)\ **Post date:** [October 14, 2020, 1:26am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/selective-magnet-school-in-virginia-moving-towards-a-lottery-system/922347/207 "2020-10-14T01:26:49Z")
Carry on hating these fictional versions of progressives that live on in Sean Hannity’s head. I’ll certainly stand with you against such evil people as these fictional ones you describe (and the motives and actions you misunderstand or mischaracterize). As will the vast majority of the real world progressives I know and interact with. ---
**Author:** ![slash2k](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/439d5e/32.png) [@slash2k](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/slash2k)\ **Post date:** [October 14, 2020, 3:00am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/selective-magnet-school-in-virginia-moving-towards-a-lottery-system/922347/208 "2020-10-14T03:00:13Z")
> [@damuriajashi](#): > > I am more concerned with objective standards that focus on academic merit. Grade point, though, isn’t nearly as “objective” as you seem to believe, because real humans assigned the grades according to the criteria of their own choosing. A number is not objective merely because it is a number. For example, my Algebra 2 teacher assigned homework grades based on how many problems you completed (NOT how many you got right). If he assigned twenty problems and you gave him twenty answers; you got 100% on that assignment, and correct answers were not worth any more than answers pulled out of your rear. (Yes, he was close to retirement.) I received a higher grade in that class than my friend who had a different teacher who actually graded the assignments; what does that tell you about our objective “merit” or grasp of the material? Anything at all? That’s an outlier, yes, but different teachers and different schools have different grading “styles,” varying in how they award partial credit for close-but-not-correct answers, how easy or difficult they make their tests, whether they grade on the curve, how they weight homework versus tests, etc. On what basis can you conclude that Student A who received a 3.8 from one set of teachers is “objectively” better than Student B who received 3.7 from a different set? How far apart do their GPAs have to be before you can safely conclude that there is a measurable difference in their performance, as opposed to random variation in how their teachers assigned grades? What is your “pretty convincing evidence” that a tenth of a point really represents a difference in accomplishment? > [@damuriajashi](#): > > Academic merit is not a meaningless basis for making academic selections. I never said it was. I said that you need to DEFINE what you mean by academic merit to know whether you are making useful selections or not. > [@damuriajashi](#): > > This proposal is aimed at increasing the population of kids that have on average had the exact same access to the same classes as everyone else. How does the fact that some kid might be moving in from an area that doesn’t offer these classes matter? Even within the area, access varies. Fairfax County alone has 23 middle schools and 141 elementaries; the other jurisdictions add more. While they’ll try to offer more or less the same classes, they’re not all cookie-cutters. Look at some of the examples I used earlier: if a middle school has 25 places in the 7th grade algebra class and 30 qualified students, for example, choices will be made. > [@damuriajashi](#): > > The current admitted students can justifiably be called the best 480 students among 3000 applicants. This is true if and only if the current measures really do pick “the best,” as opposed to “the luckiest” or “the ones who had the teachers who graded the easiest” or “the ones who got the most compelling recommendations” or some other metric. > [@damuriajashi](#): > > Do you honestly think that 500 students randomly selected from the top 30% of the entire school system is as good at selecting the “best students” as the one that makes all the students compete along academic criteria and selects the best applicants along those academic criteria? Unless you can show that all of your applicants had equal opportunity to achieve the same academic criteria (such as get the same grades for the same quality of work, never mind the same recommendations), why do you think you really are selecting the best applicants? Why do you think you are even selecting using the correct criteria to achieve the results you want? Is a 4.0 at X School really a better predictor of a student’s quality or merit or achievement than a 3.99 at Y School? > [@damuriajashi](#): > > If union contracts are causing or promoting racism, should the solution be to explain the racist effects of their demands and then addressing the race issue at that level, or to try to correct for the racism by discriminating against asians? How? Union contracts, themselves, are merely a mechanism by which teachers get to choose where they teach; those contracts are not the only mechanisms, and eliminating one path won’t eliminate others or really do much to eliminate the underlying problem of racism and inequality of opportunity. Even within a school, teacher sorting occurs; teachers with tenure and influence get to select their classes, and parents who are more involved or more assertive get to select their children’s teachers; how are you planning to eliminate that kind of politicking? > [@damuriajashi](#): > > I am saying that if the union contract is the source of structural racism, then fix that union contract, don’t discriminate against asian kids because you don’t want to stand up to a teacher’s union that is insisting on perpetuating racism. This is a fundamental misunderstanding of the sources of structural racism. If the union contract is “fixed” to eliminate Fairfax County teachers getting to pick which school or which class they have, but you leave everything else the same, then you are going to find that desirable teachers can find jobs in Loudoun County, or in private schools. There are a lot of reasons why teachers want to be able to pick their schools: some are racist, but some are matters of convenience (“I want to teach at a school within X minutes of home to avoid a long commute”), some are matters of politics (“I don’t want to teach at the school where So-and-So teaches,” or “I want to teach where Jane Doe is the principal”), some are born of familiarity, etc., etc. You can’t neatly untangle just the “bad” motives, and trying to convince desirable and sought-after teachers that they need to put up with a principal they don’t like or problematic coworkers or a school with unfortunate infrastructure in the name of ‘eliminating structural racism’ is a fool’s errand. > [@ZosterSandstorm](#): > > OK. I guess I can’t make you accept that “a literal video of a progressive explaining her beliefs” or “the actions of progressives” have something to do with what progressives believe. What’s your evidence that Patricia Hyning is a progressive in the first place? ---
**Author:** ![damuriajashi](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/ac8455/32.png) [@damuriajashi](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/damuriajashi)\ **Post date:** [October 14, 2020, 3:06am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/selective-magnet-school-in-virginia-moving-towards-a-lottery-system/922347/209 "2020-10-14T03:06:48Z")
> [@DemonTree](#): > > Perhaps what’s really going on is a mentality that divides the world into victim and oppressor. If you mess up this system by working hard and doing well, you can’t qualify as a victim anymore and therefore must be treated as an oppressor by having opportunities taken away from you. To a large extent yes. The primary response by some of the folks in favor of race balancing are that asians are "white adjacent so they are somehow benefiting from the white privilege that white have from centuries of white supremacy in this country. The benefit of proximity to whites is so powerful it allows asians to actually exceed whites in education. There is no other acceptable explanation for asian success. Saying that asians might have succeeded through extraordinary effort gets you accused of calling blacks lazy, saying that asians value education gets you accused of calling blacks bad parents. Anything to preserve the notion that race is the cause of everything. > [@slash2k](#): > > I’m not really talking about who is teaching at TJHSST, though I thought that was exactly what you were talking about. In fact you say exactly this. If you have expanded your thesis to include teachers across the district, then i would simply repeat my argument that you shouldn’t let union contracts perpetuate racism. > [@iiandyiiii](#): > > Carry on hating these fictional versions of progressives that live on in Sean Hannity’s head. That video isn’t going on in Sean Hannity’s head. > [@](#): > > I’ll certainly stand with you against such evil people as these fictional ones you describe (and the motives and actions you misunderstand or mischaracterize). As will the vast majority of the real world progressives I know and interact with. You mean the ones that say that 40 asian kids losing their seats to 40 white kids are an acceptable price to pay so that 25 black kids can take 25 asian seats and 25 hispanics kids can take 25 more asian seats? The fact that you see this as a net positive thing is mind boggling. ---
**Author:** ![slash2k](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/439d5e/32.png) [@slash2k](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/slash2k)\ **Post date:** [October 14, 2020, 3:23am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/selective-magnet-school-in-virginia-moving-towards-a-lottery-system/922347/210 "2020-10-14T03:23:47Z")
> [@damuriajashi](#): > > I thought that was exactly what you were talking about. In fact you say exactly this. If you have expanded your thesis to include teachers across the district, then i would simply repeat my argument that you shouldn’t let union contracts perpetuate racism. I brought up teachers of less experience in response to your earlier question: > [@damuriajashi](#): > > In what way do hispanics have less of a shot at the best schools than asian kids? Schools with large numbers of students of lower socioeconomic status (who are disproportionately black/Latino) tend to have difficulty recruiting the teachers with the most experience and the best credentials. That means black and Hispanic kids are more likely to have to deal with poor teachers than white and Asian kids are (at least in places like Fairfax County where Asian households tend to be well-paid and well-educated). Since teachers aren’t interchangeable, teachers who aren’t as good means their students have less of a shot at a great preparation for seeking entrance to TJHSST. Union contracts, in and of themselves, don’t perpetuate racism any more than any other human system for assigning teachers. What system would you design that takes into account school and student needs while not driving away teachers who have needs and preferences (including needs and preferences based on commuting times and colleagues and other non-racist reasons)? Beyond that, do you think you can take a teacher with racist tendencies (conscious or otherwise), plop them into a majority-minority classroom, and expect to achieve great results? ---
**Author:** ![slash2k](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/439d5e/32.png) [@slash2k](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/slash2k)\ **Post date:** [October 14, 2020, 3:25am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/selective-magnet-school-in-virginia-moving-towards-a-lottery-system/922347/211 "2020-10-14T03:25:44Z")
> [@damuriajashi](#): > > You mean the ones that say that 40 asian kids losing their seats to 40 white kids are an acceptable price to pay so that 25 black kids can take 25 asian seats and 25 hispanics kids can take 25 more asian seats? The fact that you see this as a net positive thing is mind boggling. Why are you so intent on concluding that the Asian kids “deserve” those seats? You haven’t shown any evidence that the existing selection process actually selects the kids most likely to succeed at TJHSST, or to benefit from the programs there, so why do we need to preserve that process, other than it yields racial results you happen to approve of? ---
**Author:** ![iiandyiiii](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/iiandyiiii/32/7924_2.png) [@iiandyiiii](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/iiandyiiii)\ **Post date:** [October 14, 2020, 3:38am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/selective-magnet-school-in-virginia-moving-towards-a-lottery-system/922347/212 "2020-10-14T03:38:02Z")
> [@damuriajashi](#): > > You mean the ones that say that 40 asian kids losing their seats to 40 white kids are an acceptable price to pay so that 25 black kids can take 25 asian seats and 25 hispanics kids can take 25 more asian seats? The fact that you see this as a net positive thing is mind boggling. I thought you were against quotas. But now you see those seats as rightfully Asian. At least you’re flexible! I see as positive this school going from virtually no black and Hispanic kids to a decent chunk. I also see as positive that tons of Asian kids will also have a great opportunity to be in this school, even if those tons aren’t quite as numerous as before. More white kids is not, which is why I’d probably support a different solution that resulted in a fairer breakdown in opportunity. But this is what we got right now, so I support it as superior to the status quo of nil black and Hispanic students. ---
**Author:** ![ZosterSandstorm](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/z/e0b2c6/32.png) [@ZosterSandstorm](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ZosterSandstorm)\ **Post date:** [October 14, 2020, 3:42am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/selective-magnet-school-in-virginia-moving-towards-a-lottery-system/922347/213 "2020-10-14T03:42:30Z")
> [@iiandyiiii](#): > > I see as positive this school going from virtually no black and Hispanic kids to a decent chunk. Is thinking that you, as a progressive, support racial quotas and oppose merit-based admissions still fake news? ---
**Author:** ![iiandyiiii](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/iiandyiiii/32/7924_2.png) [@iiandyiiii](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/iiandyiiii)\ **Post date:** [October 14, 2020, 3:43am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/selective-magnet-school-in-virginia-moving-towards-a-lottery-system/922347/214 "2020-10-14T03:43:10Z")
Huh? I’m not fluent in Trumpese. ---
**Author:** ![ZosterSandstorm](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/z/e0b2c6/32.png) [@ZosterSandstorm](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ZosterSandstorm)\ **Post date:** [October 14, 2020, 3:55am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/selective-magnet-school-in-virginia-moving-towards-a-lottery-system/922347/215 "2020-10-14T03:55:58Z")
If you can look at a video of someone saying something and continue to deny that the thing was said, or write a panegyric to racial quotas after denying you support racial quotas, then it seems that you have in fact mastered Trump-like rhetorical tactics quite well. ---
**Author:** ![iiandyiiii](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/iiandyiiii/32/7924_2.png) [@iiandyiiii](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/iiandyiiii)\ **Post date:** [October 14, 2020, 4:03am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/selective-magnet-school-in-virginia-moving-towards-a-lottery-system/922347/216 "2020-10-14T04:03:03Z")
Indeed! I haven’t done any of those things, though. I haven’t denied any particular video exists, I haven’t denied supporting racial quotas, and I haven’t written anything in support of racial quotas either. This specific policy in which I favor over the status quo involves random selection based on a GPA minimum, in case you weren’t aware. But continue with your fantasies! They’ve been amusing so far. ---
**Author:** ![damuriajashi](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/ac8455/32.png) [@damuriajashi](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/damuriajashi)\ **Post date:** [October 14, 2020, 4:19am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/selective-magnet-school-in-virginia-moving-towards-a-lottery-system/922347/217 "2020-10-14T04:19:01Z")
> [@slash2k](#): > > Grade point, though, isn’t nearly as “objective” as you seem to believe, because real humans assigned the grades according to the criteria of their own choosing. A number is not objective merely because it is a number. I agree, gpa is not a very objective measure of academic merit and as I stated above, i much prefer an exam or a battery of exams to make this determination but gpas have the benefit of being at least related to academics, a lottery is not. > [@slash2k](#): > > What is your “pretty convincing evidence” that a tenth of a point really represents a difference in accomplishment? I never said i had pretty convincing evidence that a tenth of a point in gpa represented a difference in accomplishment. I said that if you are choosing someone with lower academic accomplishments, you need pretty convincing evidence to choose the one with lower accomplishment over the one with more and in this case we are talking about a kid with a 3.5 gpa getting in over a kid with a 4.0 gpa. I think there isa real difference between those two gpas in almost all cases… > [@slash2k](#): > > Even within the area, access varies. Fairfax County alone has 23 middle schools and 141 elementaries; the other jurisdictions add more. While they’ll try to offer more or less the same classes, they’re not all cookie-cutters. Look at some of the examples I used earlier: if a middle school has 25 places in the 7th grade algebra class and 30 qualified students, for example, choices will be made. I have not heard of anyone being ready for algebra and not being placed in a class. These middle schools have thousands of students, there are hundreds of students taking algebra. Noone is getting squeezed out of algebra. There are hundreds of students taking geometry, I don’t think anyone is getting squeezed out of geometry. There might not be enough students taking algebra2/trig, I am not sure but my impression is that both of these are offered at most schools. You are trying to create the impression of unfairness by talking about kids moving in from outside the district or kids getting squeezed out of algebra, etc. that’s not happening here. They are not changing the process to help those kids coming from outside the district, they are not changing the process because kids do not have adequate access to algebra or geometry. They are changing the process explicitly to change the racial balance of the admitted students. > [@slash2k](#): > > This is true if and only if the current measures really do pick “the best,” as opposed to “the luckiest” or “the ones who had the teachers who graded the easiest” or “the ones who got the most compelling recommendations” or some other metric. If you are saying that subjectivity muddies the merit, I agree. I think we should base the whole thing on a single test like stuyvesant (or perhaps on a battery of tests) but even subjective evaluations of academic merit beats a lottery. The current tjhsst process isn’t perfect but once again, it’s better than a random lottery assuming there isn’t bias or bigotry at play. > [@slash2k](#): > > Unless you can show that all of your applicants had equal opportunity to achieve the same academic criteria (such as get the same grades for the same quality of work, never mind the same recommendations), why do you think you really are selecting the best applicants? So unless I can prove that every single potential applicant has had the exact same environment in which to achieve their grades, I can’t make determinations about their academic merit? That’s insane. I don’t have to actually succeed in getting the 500 best students, but the process has to be reasonably geared to at least try to find the best students. If you require perfection from your selection method then nothing will suffice. Even with a single perfect test, you can complain that someone might have not been feeling well that day so you missed all the kids who weren’t feeling well that day. And a 4.0 student at school x is really better than a 3.5 student at school y at least in this school district. > [@slash2k](#): > > How? By law. Just make all that shit illegal. If teacher’s unions are the source of actually disparities in opportunity between races and insist on perpetuating the white supremacist architecture of society, then be merciless about it. A teacher’s union depriving blacks and hispanics of good teachers is as much of a crime as a policeman’s unions depriving black and hispanic neighborhoods of law and order. > [@slash2k](#): > > This is a fundamental misunderstanding of the sources of structural racism. If the union contract is “fixed” to eliminate Fairfax County teachers getting to pick which school or which class they have, but you leave everything else the same, then you are going to find that desirable teachers can find jobs in Loudoun County, or in private schools. If Fairfax does it, so will every other district in Virginia. in fact, lets make it a state law that all the other states emulate because everyone hates racism. > [@slash2k](#): > > You can’t neatly untangle just the “bad” motives, and trying to convince desirable and sought-after teachers that they need to put up with a principal they don’t like or problematic coworkers or a school with unfortunate infrastructure in the name of ‘eliminating structural racism’ is a fool’s errand. I don’t have to untangle the good motives from the bad motives. I simply don’t care about the motives. If there are disciplinary issues then we deal with them. We have teachers driving in from Front Royal to teach in fcps. Our average teacher makes about $80K. I’m not trying to convince the teachers of anything. If their preferences are perpetuating racism, why the fuck would you tolerate that? > [@slash2k](#): > > What’s your evidence that Patricia Hyning is a progressive in the first place? I don’t know if she is a progressive but she certainly seems racist and that racism seems to be one of the driving factors behind her support for the proposal. So lets not label her a progressive, lets just call her a supporter of the proposal. > [@slash2k](#): > > Schools with large numbers of students of lower socioeconomic status (who are disproportionately black/Latino) tend to have difficulty recruiting the teachers with the most experience and the best credentials I told you how we fix that. > [@slash2k](#): > > Asian households tend to be well-paid and well-educated That’s not really true. The asians in centreville on average have lower than average incomes for the county. Your cite earlier shows that asians have lower incomes than white or middle eastern folks. Their income is a lot closer to black incomes than it is to white incomes. > [@slash2k](#): > > What system would you design that takes into account school and student needs while not driving away teachers who have needs and preferences (including needs and preferences based on commuting times and colleagues and other non-racist reasons)? Why do you insist on letting teacher’s unions perpetuate racism? Racism does not rely on racist intent, it can be the result of people doing what is convenient for them. > [@slash2k](#): > > Beyond that, do you think you can take a teacher with racist tendencies (conscious or otherwise), plop them into a majority-minority classroom, and expect to achieve great results? I can expect them to be revealed as a racist and be driven out of the profession. I don’t think racists should be teachers. > [@slash2k](#): > > Why are you so intent on concluding that the Asian kids “deserve” those seats? You haven’t shown any evidence that the existing selection process actually selects the kids most likely to succeed at TJHSST, or to benefit from the programs there, so why do we need to preserve that process, other than it yields racial results you happen to approve of? It’s a shit ton better than a random lottery. > [@iiandyiiii](#): > > I thought you were against quotas. But now you see those seats as rightfully Asian. At least you’re flexible! First of all, those asian kids are getting in based on their academic merit. That is the opposite of quotas. Second of all, when did I ever say I was against quotas? Your ideas and impressions are well divorced from reality. > [@iiandyiiii](#): > > More white kids is not, which is why I’d probably support a different solution that resulted in a fairer breakdown in opportunity. But this is what we got right now, so I support it as superior to the status quo of nil black and Hispanic students. White kids are also under-represented at tjhsst, why is their form of diversity not important? > [@iiandyiiii](#): > > I support it as superior to the status quo of nil black and Hispanic students. You are going to end up without a tjhsst as we understand it. If that is your goal them… mission accomplished. You are going from 8 black students and 12 hispanic students at a highly competitive, highly selective tjhsst to 33 black and 37 hispanic students at a tjhsst that is slightly better than a good charter school. > [@ZosterSandstorm](#): > > If you can look at a video of someone saying something and continue to deny that the thing was said, or write a panegyric to racial quotas after denying you support racial quotas, then it seems that you have in fact mastered Trump-like rhetorical tactics quite well. The far left is almost indistinguishable from the far right in it’s reasoning and logic. They don’t really have much use for it. They know with almost religious certitude what the right answer is and any means are justified in achieving their goals. > [@iiandyiiii](#): > > But continue with your fantasies! They’ve been amusing so far. Your posts would be mildly amusing too if the racist ideas you supported didn’t cause so much harm. ---
**Author:** ![DemonTree](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/demontree/32/8646_2.png) [@DemonTree](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DemonTree)\ **Post date:** [October 14, 2020, 7:39am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/selective-magnet-school-in-virginia-moving-towards-a-lottery-system/922347/218 "2020-10-14T07:39:41Z")
> [@iiandyiiii](#): > > As always, it’s amusing to watch people who hate progressives pontificate on how they imagine progressives think. Is this meant to be ironic? People on this site who loathe conservatives are **constantly** pontificating on how they imagine conservatives think. At least there are actual progressives around to dispute their characterisation. Most of the conservatives have been banned or got tired and left. ---
**Author:** ![DemonTree](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/demontree/32/8646_2.png) [@DemonTree](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DemonTree)\ **Post date:** [October 14, 2020, 7:52am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/selective-magnet-school-in-virginia-moving-towards-a-lottery-system/922347/219 "2020-10-14T07:52:12Z")
> [@slash2k](#): > > Why are you so intent on concluding that the Asian kids “deserve” those seats? You haven’t shown any evidence that the existing selection process actually selects the kids most likely to succeed at TJHSST, or to benefit from the programs there, so why do we need to preserve that process, other than it yields racial results you happen to approve of? This is disingenuous. He doesn’t have to show it selects the best candidates, just that it selects better ones than the proposed replacement. Since the proposed replacement is a lottery from among students with not-very-high GPAs, that should be bloody obvious. ---
**Author:** ![DemonTree](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/demontree/32/8646_2.png) [@DemonTree](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DemonTree)\ **Post date:** [October 14, 2020, 8:14am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/selective-magnet-school-in-virginia-moving-towards-a-lottery-system/922347/220 "2020-10-14T08:14:40Z")
> [@damuriajashi](#): > > To a large extent yes. The primary response by some of the folks in favor of race balancing are that asians are "white adjacent so they are somehow benefiting from the white privilege that white have from centuries of white supremacy in this country. The benefit of proximity to whites is so powerful it allows asians to actually exceed whites in education. There is no other acceptable explanation for asian success. Saying that asians might have succeeded through extraordinary effort gets you accused of calling blacks lazy, saying that asians value education gets you accused of calling blacks bad parents. Anything to preserve the notion that race is the cause of everything. This explains the rise of CRT. When the evidence doesn’t support your theory, abandon the evidence. It won’t actually help anyone, but it’ll sure make you feel better about yourself. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/selective-magnet-school-in-virginia-moving-towards-a-lottery-system/922347.md?page=10) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/selective-magnet-school-in-virginia-moving-towards-a-lottery-system/922347.md?page=12)