TracingWoodgrains Profile picture
Jun 10 7 tweets 4 min read Twitter logo Read on Twitter
"Berkeley doesn't have affirmative action" is a good example of a technically defensible but straightforwardly false argument that obscures rather than elucidates. As soon as California banned affirmative action, Berkeley openly and urgently looked to circumvent it. ImageImage
This is what "no affirmative action" looks like at Berkeley: "comprehensive review" that happens to weight admissions in much the same way explicit affirmative action did.
city-journal.org/article/elites… Image
The data is unambiguous, such that there can be no substantive dispute. The affirmative action ban never stopped Berkeley from weighing race heavily within admissions. It just required them to get creative. eml.berkeley.edu/~webfac/morett… Image
In absolute terms, you saw a small shift in enrollment by race, followed by a return to baseline as the UC system grew more comfortable working around the ban. Image
UC Berkeley administrators were open about the moral urgency they felt in aiming to circumvent the ban. Their straightforward goal was to re-establish affirmative action while dodging legal action, however they could. Image
There is an argument to be had over the merits of affirmative action. There is none whatsoever over whether Berkeley has been practicing it since the ban, and the only reasons to claim is hasn't are ignorance or deliberate intent to mislead. Image
One who had direct experience crafting Berkeley's policy on this has weighed in—don't miss his (excellent) response. As he indicates, part of this comes down to whether implicit, as opposed to explicit, racial preferences constitute affirmative action.

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More from @tracewoodgrains

Jun 7
I find it odd when people frame benefits to advanced students as a negative.

Education is about learning. If someone is prepared to learn more than their peers, teaching them more is good. Aspire to teach students based on their capacity, not the average of kids their age. Image
This was in the context of a (frustrating) claim that G&T programs don't work. The reality is simple and intuitive: they work for the students they're aimed at. You cannot make a kid smart by putting them in gifted ed, but you can help smart kids learn.

My favorite one-stop resource for what works and what doesn't for advanced students is the SMPY. Key insight: virtually every form of academic acceleration is beneficial for students prepared for more than their peers. When in doubt, accelerate.

gwern.net/smpy
Read 5 tweets
May 20
It's easy to forget in the moment how transient much of the internet is. After being bought by Snapchat and abandoned, Gfycat's certification has expired with nobody around to bother to renew it. Just like that, a vast chunk of the internet is gone.

old.reddit.com/domain/gfycat.…
If you value something online, archive it. Digital media dies without warning all the time—never count on something staying up if you cannot personally guarantee it.
Read 4 tweets
Sep 18, 2022
When I asked the author of the viral thread, he replied that he took his wording directly from the reddit story Ritchie mentions, then deleted his acknowledgment a couple of minutes later. Something feels very off in this whole story.
At first, he liked my reply thanking him for his response. Then he hid my question and deleted his acknowledgment that his wording was a copy of the reddit thread. This is the sort of claim that merits a direct, full explanation, not careful hiding of evidence.
Update: The author has now locked down replies to his thread altogether.
Read 5 tweets
Sep 16, 2022
This is obnoxiously phrased and deliberately antagonistic, so the pushback it's getting is unsurprising. Calling it racist and moving on isn't great, though. Engaging arguments on their terms rather than dismissing them as offensive ought to be core to 'heterodox' spheres. 1/
People with specific identities absolutely have an advantage, even in 'antiwoke' spaces, in talking about those identities! @ETVPod is provocative but not wrong in pointing that out. I notice that advantage myself at the rare moments I talk about issues connected to gay identity.
This is partially a defensive tool: people are dismissed and pressured to accept bad ideas with statements like "Listen to X identity". If someone with X identity rejects those ideas, there is no room to hide the dispute behind the identity of the speakers. 3/
Read 5 tweets
Jan 9, 2022
Thoroughly enjoying my read of Smashing the Liquor Machine by @VodkaPolitics (full review soon!), but I found an incongruity. The book is full of fascinating stories about Bill "Pussyfoot" Johnson, a globetrotting Prohibitionist who had adventure after adventure in the cause. 🧵
@VodkaPolitics He seems like a legitimately great forgotten American folk hero! From muckraking American atrocities in the Philippines... Image
to smashing up a bizarre, sketchy sixty-foot by twelve-foot tavern built in a territorial gap caused by a surveying error... Image
Read 12 tweets
May 10, 2021
One zombie idea in education that just won't die: "detracking". Its proponents claim research has established "at least as good or better outcomes for all students". Is that true? Not at all. Let's take a look!
(THREAD)
Johns Hopkins researcher Robert Slavin is among the most-cited "tracking" researchers to make the claim that it has no impact, as he does in this meta-analysis:
journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.310…
Sounds pretty solid?

Well, take a look at Kulik & Kulik's 1992 response (files.eric.ed.gov/fulltext/ED367…). One line in particular should stand out, at the end: "[Slavin] did not examine grouping programs designed for highly talented students." Image
Read 19 tweets

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