When I read that Milan Kundera died, I looked over at my barrister bookcase with the intent to re-read his novels. His works are on my modern authors shelf, along with Jim Harrison, Umberto Eco, McCarthy, Marquez, and Vonnegut.

Although Putin’s invasion of Ukraine gives extra relevance to Kundera, I lingered over Kurt Vonnegut. I pulled out Welcome to the Monkey House because the short story, “Harrison Bergeron,” seemed more timely still for an American – and less of a time commitment.

If you have never done so – please read the story. Vonnegut (I assume) intended it to be satirical, but it has become prescient.

The plot devise is simple – In the year 2081, the Constitution is amended to dictate that all Americans are fully equal and therefore not allowed to be smarter, better-looking, or more physically able than anyone else. Uniform equality through the elimination of excellence! A government agency polices equality laws and the Handicapper General’s agents force citizens to wear “handicaps” to offset any above-average advantage: masks for the too beautiful, earpieces that force the too intelligent to listen to noises meant to disrupt thoughts, and weights that burden the athletic. When he wrote the story in 1961 it must have been comical, ludicrous in its satire.

No longer.

As reported by The Economist, May 18, 2023:

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San Francisco’s “woke maths” experiment

How the pursuit of racial equity provided a lesson in unintended consequences

San Francisco’s school district was in trouble. Only 19% of tenth graders had passed the state maths exam and were not required to repeat a maths course. That number dropped further, to 1%, among black pupils. And so, in 2014 San Francisco decided to move Algebra I from eighth grade (about 13 years old) to ninth grade for all pupils, hoping that an extra year of maths would leave pupils better prepared.

Nearly ten years later, after much controversy, the first evaluation of the change was released in March by researchers at Stanford University. Disappointingly for both enthusiasts, who had hoped to improve racial equity, and detractors, who regarded the scheme as yet another attack on excellence by woke educators, it showed the programme had almost no effect.

“Our students…are most definitely not being served equally,” said Richard Carranza, San Francisco’s school superintendent at the time, back in 2015. “That will stop!” In response to a rhetorical question asking why no other district was doing something similar, he replied: “San Francisco always goes first, the rest eventually catch up.”

The research provided bad news at a bad time—a lawsuit was filed against the policy on the same day of the study’s release. In the class of 2018—the last class untouched by the reform—37% of pupils enrolled in calculus and statistics Advanced Placement (ap) courses, which allow pupils to earn college credit. In the next class, only 32% enrolled (a 15% reduction). Asian-American and Pacific Islander pupils were the most affected—and for the worse.

Some might interpret these results, and the subsequent backlash, as a reason to go back to square one. But the Stanford researchers caution against such conclusions. After the district offered accelerated courses and summer school, ap enrolment rebounded. Looking beyond ap maths also helps to see the bigger, and less gloomy, picture. More pupils earned advanced maths credits just below ap level, such as pre-calculus. And while all pupils earned more credits in probability and statistics after the reform, black pupils saw the largest gains. Offering ap maths in all of the city’s high schools would be a good next step as San Francisco sorts through the mess.

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Note that the logical conclusion is drawn by The Economist. I am sure the petty tyrants in SFO will conclude otherwise. The war on excellence is expanding!

The ugly truth is simple – promoting excellence (offering AP classes – and extolling them) will exacerbate achievement disparities. There will be greater gains by some – and the school board namby-pambies will construe that this disparity results from structural inequities that can be solved by better policies. Nonsense.

The goal was never to promote equality or even equity. Vonnegut showed you the only way to achieve universal equal outcomes. The goal should be to promote and encourage personal excellence so that each individual becomes “the best that they can be.” The end result will not be the same for everyone: Individual Results May Vary.

[And worse still for those equal outcome pundits: exceptional people tend to lead more meaningful lives. Shudder at the horror – unequal distribution of happiness!]

[And even more problematic, contra Rawls, in the United States, behind the veil of ignorance, people chose greater inequality. We vote our aspirations – our prospects are always better. But Sowell was always a better thinker than Rawls.]

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Amplifying the need for pressuring students to excel in academics is the Supreme Court Ruling that affirmative action – preferencing race as a criterion for admission to college – is no longer legal. Bravo! However, there is a concurrent drive by admission offices to no longer require standardized test scores. Admission offices tossing out the best equalizing and predictive tool?! The belief was that standardized tests structurally discriminated and therefore should be devalued in lieu of grades, extracurricular activities, and letters of recommendation. Typical soft-brained thinking since the wealthy will always have greater social capital and access to connections that amplify those “soft” skills. The best tool to “level” the admission process were the standardized tests.

Adjusting for the value-added of the colleges that students attend, the three key factors that give children from high-income families an admissions advantage are uncorrelated or negatively correlated with post-college outcomes, whereas SAT/ACT scores and academic credentials are highly predictive of post-college success.

Teach students to excel in those areas that can reliably improve outcomes on these tests. Maintain rigorously objective standards. I find myself firmly agreeing with Steven Pinker on this point. (Perhaps Pinker read >this< to solidify his position.)

The challenge is to find credibly competent teachers, which the Praxis tests are designed to screen for – and do so in a non-discriminatory manner (or stated less polemically, which equally prepared takers perform equally well on regardless of racial identification). Of course there are conflicting (less rigorous) studies that conclude otherwise and are being used with political expediency to reduce standards. Don’t look at the payouts or dumbing down of competency tests in New York – or one might conclude that Gibbon need not look terribly hard at the cause of our fall…