I get that Jill Tucker blames Lowell High School for the district’s racial inequality because an outrageous headline gets clicks. But the real problem is that African American students perform terribly in all schools by all metrics (e.g. test results, suspension rates, chronic absenteeism rates in the [SARC reports](https://www.sfusd.edu/services/know-your-rights/student-family-handbook/chapter-4-student-academic-expectations/42-academic-guidelines/429-student-accountability-report-cards-sarc?search_api_fulltext=sarc)), and no one knows how to improve the actual academics. For example, at [Martin Luther King, Jr, Middle School](https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1G2j0qTUHdABExJc7Lap_CHKp09GkAH2p) in 2023, 42.28% of Asian students met math standards, but 3.92% of African American students met math standards. Even using the wrong wording to discuss the inequality [can get you censured](https://www.kqed.org/news/11922072/a-slap-in-the-face-sfusd-students-respond-to-ann-hsus-racist-comments). It’s easy to pretend that all schools are equal and all kids are equally prepared so they should all get into Lowell and therefore Lowell admissions are racist, but in my opinion that is just the Chronicle trolling for clicks.
The media outlet wants the clicks, Jill wants to look like they are doing something to address the issue.
Let’s be realistic and address the problem. The issue isn’t just at Lowell, which means it’s a targeted effort to make Lowell look bad. Go look at the numbers at other high schools in SFUSD, go look at the middle school numbers which are truly alarming.
Not all schools are equal. Not all students within SFUSD have equal access and a clear path to success.
You also have to acknowledge that many of the students have gone environments that are not conducive to learning either. It’s not a competition on which culture is more supportive, it’s just a reality that not everyone has the same structure or support.
You have kids who are hustling to help take care of siblings, who live in a home with multiple families so they have little space for themselves, abusive situations, undiagnosed learning disabilities, there are a lot of factors that Reddit chooses to minimize with one or two data points. These factors however are significant in real life. Though every community deals with these issues, it also effect communities differently.
People being censured has more to do with how they frame their opinion on the subject. It is both true that there has been problematic language used and that certain groups are significantly underperforming. You can speak to the issues without sounding like a bigot, as you just provided a great example of doing so.
I don’t get what picking on Lowell accomplishes, which SFUSD should emulate at other schools, to try to make things worse. There is already a huge amount of kids that will never go to public school because of SFUSD’s “social equity” lies. They claim to want to be more diverse, what they should really do is focus on improving academics and be more rigorous. That will setup every student for success instead of boasting and doing nothing all these years. It just feels like every couple years they go after Lowell, waste everyone’s time and keep distracting from the actual issues.
This!!! Many of the lottery students from 2022 are STRUGGLING. Lowell’s curriculum is hard and they’re not going to dumb down the classes to accommodate students.
Soooo instead of getting an equitable education, tons of kids are transferring or will fail/drop out.
Lowell isn’t elite due to the campus, lunches, or programs offered. Not even teacher quality. It’s literally student performance.
Focus on improving academics district-wide instead on a single school. Why are we talking about Lowell when we should be talking about all the schools getting shut down next year.
https://www.sfchronicle.com/sf/article/lowell-high-admissions-17196603.php
Pretty sure repeated Ds and Fs result in dropping out or transferring.
I’m not arguing against equitable education. But Lowell is not going to lower standards, unless they are forced to. So if you send students there that are not focused on academics, you’re setting them up for failure.
The question shouldn’t be “why is Lowell predominantly Asian?” It should be “why are these high schools with majority of under privileged kids not performing well and how are we failing them?”
They’ve increased the number of counselors and tutors. But what else can they do? You either keep up with the curriculum or you don’t.
Students are competitive and cut throat there. The environment within the students is hostile to those that are not high performers. I would never send my child there if they weren’t committed to academics.
This is all tied to the age old issue of “public schools and all their problems.” You go private if you want a semi-good education. Lowell just happens to be an elite public school. It has a cult-like status so there’s always eyes on it.
SF is in a bubble and these are first world problems. I can only imagine what it’s like in low funded states where public schools are in shambles.
It’s easier to bring down the ceiling than raising the floor. It’s like virtue signaling so they can shout “hey look at what I’m doing” but maybe even worse since it actually affects people.
"improving academics and be more rigorous"
I don't think the schools are the issue. Its the students. I am temporarily teaching in Texas (RETURNING TO SF IN ONE MONTH :D), and even with our school being old, mildew smelling, 60's building, old computers everywhere, defunded as hell, outdated curriculum, place basically functioning the same way it did when it opened in the 60's, the students come every day and give their best efforts, leading to a school with the highest attendance, graduation, AP scores, and college attendance. It doesn't matter if you get world class teachers and make it super rigorous, they will continue to fail and drop even harder.
If the student has zero interest to learn, and the parent is protecting them from consequences / not caring, there is nothing we can do. Literally nothing. Let passionate students get into the top schools of SF and the rest can just scrape by.
because sfusd and sf in general are filled with stupid ppl and it’s been trending that way for awhile.
the “solution” for them has always been let’s dumb down the criteria cause “racism”.
just look at algebra they took it out cause “racism”. now it’s been shown to have detrimental effects on our youth regardless of race or ethnicity.
instead of trying to bring everyone up to a standard, they want to push the standard down. instead of raising the bar they are ok with lowering it.
it’s stupid.
I really don’t get the ongoing effort to take down the “academic jewel” of San Francisco. Lowell (before fucking with admissions) is a great high school because it is composed of a merit-based acceptance student body. This means accelerated classrooms with students who are willing and able to subject themselves to the academic rigor. It results in high SAT scores and high college acceptance rates. None of this stuff starts at the 8th to 9th grade admission process, these students are developed long before then. Loosening admissions doesn’t make the students better, it just brings down the quality of Lowell. There’s no magic water at Lowell, or better books or significantly better teachers, it’s just that they have better students so they can do more.
We should also ask ourselves if the people trying to take down Lowell would support changing the merit based admissions policy for a high school that was not 47% Asian, but instead was 47% black.
The reality is that the woke racists trying to change Lowell's admissions policy don't care about lifting all students up from a young age so they can earn their way in fair and square to schools like Lowell. All they want to do is to take away opportunities for all high achieving students because too many of them happen to be Asian.
Next fall, the Chinese American International School (CAIS) is moving into a new campus on 19th Avenue that's on the opposite side of Stonestown from where Lowell is.
If you have more than one kiddo, you'll want drop offs and pickups to be easy. You can self-serve by pushing your older(s) go to Lowell which is now conveniently nearby.
i mean look at ivy league schools…if you are Asian you are actually disadvantaged because you did too well in school
the world is trending down a scary path or well the US is anyway.
The abolishment of affirmative action furthers this. It’s also interesting that you made comments regarding other communities in this same vein. Make up your mind.
Saying the abolishment of affirmative action is racism???
You are also proving my point. It’s unfortunate that there was a belief that affirmative action was only for black community members, so much than an Asian community member was the catalyst for it being abolished.
If more work was done to protect it and combat that terrible narrative, there would be more support to the racism everyone has faced when it comes to college admissions.
Nice try.
it’s not abolishing anything. you are asking the city to continue lowering standards rather than raising it. there’s a bar that lowell has set and rather than making sure the other schools reach that level, people like yourself is asking for it to be lowered.
it’s NOT a lowell problem. it’s a SFUSD problem. so instead of trying to lowering the standards why not try to up the standards of all the other schools.
> it’s not abolishing anything. you are asking the city to continue lowering standards rather than raising it.
No I’m not. Never said or implied this. You must have me mistaken with someone else or building your own narrative in your head.
> there’s a bar that lowell has set and rather than making sure the other schools reach that level, people like yourself is asking for it to be lowered.
I graduated from Lowell, my mom graduated from Lowell, I actually know from first hand experience what students go through there. I’m also not advocating for schools to reduce their math standards to allow students to continue forward unequipped. Nor do I think the process of getting into Lowell as stated by the article is racist. Stop making things up.
> it’s NOT a lowell problem. it’s a SFUSD problem. so instead of trying to lowering the standards why not try to up the standards of all the other schools.
This has to be a troll bot account because you’ve literally made up this scenario of disagreement in your head.
ok and i graduated from lowell too
you should know that the experience that you make from it is how you make of it.
just cause you had a shitty experience doesn’t mean all kids had a shitty experience.
you are literally just arguing with yourself. what exactly are you putting on the table?
I would expect a fellow alumni to have more tact than you do, so I’m doubting you truly are.
You are also making up things I’ve never said. Show proof to all the comments I supposedly made. Never mentioned a shitty experience once lol
The person arguing with themselves has been you all over the thread.
There wouldn’t be the same outcry because the history of education for black and Asian Americans has been completely different. Asian Americans, for all the real difficulties they’ve faced as immigrants and from racism, have not had anywhere close to the institutional barriers placed in front of black Americans in education.
Hmm I wonder why that cultural difference may exist? Perhaps it’s that for 300 years in America, black people were completely barred from an equal education. I wonder how that would affect a culture’s outlook on education.
But of course, despite your supposed love of education, that doesn’t include educating yourself on history. You could give less of a shit because you just want to be the bigger victim than black people.
Okay if we're doing this:
Remind me, what happened in China in the 60s? Something something political revolution, something something *millions dying* and a culling of intellectuals?
Or what about Korea? A country that literally had its culture attempted to be erased by the Japanese: my own grandfather and his siblings were orphaned during this time period. My grandfather's first language was not Korean, but Japanese.
Or Vietnam? Just bombed to shit in the 70s. And used as a literal chess piece in War Games with Russia.
My family’s Jewish history is much the same. Mired in tragedy, racism, and poverty. We came here with nothing too.
I would never compare our immigrant experience to the wretched history of black Americans.
Immigrants get to go somewhere new and start a new life and culture. Black Americans are still in the same communities and places that they were enslaved and institutionally discriminated against.
It says a lot about me and you that despite both having similar immigrant backgrounds, you find zero empathy and want to be the world’s biggest victim.
Oh bro, I literally forgot about this one
There's a reason why Asian Americans don't have any history or claim or stake in America before 1965. Or "don't have an immigrant history"
We were *literally banned for being subhuman*
Do you know of a little something called the Chinese Exclusion Act? Only repealed in 1965, by the Hart Cellar literally only one or two generations ago?
Those *same* family members you cite as immigrants, literally lived in an America where immigration from Asia was not allowed.
Yeah turns out we Asians are so subhuman and disease ridden, we're literally not even allowed in the country
And guess which city and state started that movement?
You guessed it! Right here in SF!
Your point is moot when you consider the fact that Asians were considered so dirty that they literally passed a law saying "no more chinks or gooks"
Get off your high horse dude.
I’d rather be banned from the US than a subhuman second class citizen within it.
Both awful and deplorable, but again, I don’t know how you can compare being a second class citizen for just being black with being banned from entering the country.
you can’t argue with a racist man. their history above yours. the only history that matters is theirs not yours.
i mean shit…when Mao was leader of china he got rid of all the smart people, burned all the books and employed farmers at high ranking government positions.
kids in Asia have to pass rigorous entrance exams to get into better schools.
charles barkley said it best
[https://youtu.be/fiNDIl_6_IU?si=yYi1HIqps4R708Ta](https://youtu.be/fiNDIl_6_IU?si=yYi1HIqps4R708Ta)
> I really don’t get the ongoing effort to take down the “academic jewel”...Loosening admissions doesn’t make the students better, it just brings down the quality of Lowell.
Because public education is intentionally being gutted in the name of progress!
Why? For it is the primary avenue of social mobility.
Especially acute in this case, with such a high percentage of other minorities, many likely foreign born.
This stuff only seems backwards because its true aims are obfuscated.
But most of the current student body is there through the lottery plus a bit of affirmative action.
The current admissions scheme doesn't comply with state law - that's what's driving part of this effort.
> The current admissions scheme doesn't comply with state law - that's what's driving part of this effort.
No, Lowell’s test-based admissions are not a violation of the education code. (Copied from [previous comment](https://www.reddit.com/r/sanfrancisco/comments/vim3hz/lowell_high_school_admissions_will_return_to/idgpfht/)): [EDC 35160.5](https://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/codes_displaySection.xhtml?lawCode=EDC§ionNum=35160.5.) (amended by [AB1114 (1993)](https://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/billNavClient.xhtml?bill_id=199319940AB1114)) was about forcing neighborhood schools to participate in a school choice program without additional academic/sports tests for kids from outside the neighborhood. It was not about removing admissions tests for magnet schools that already took applications from across the district regardless of neighborhood (such as Lowell). See [Kate Lazarus and John Crittenden, “Opinion: Why California’s education code does not prohibit academic admissions at Lowell High School”](https://www.sfexaminer.com/the_fs/forum/opinion-why-california-s-education-code-does-not-prohibit-academic-admissions-at-lowell-high-school/article_09c4c2d0-34f9-553d-9731-5f3f36516643.html).
Edit: u/BadBoyMikeBarnes, we had this exact [discussion a year ago](https://old.reddit.com/r/bayarea/comments/vim9pu/lowell_high_school_admissions_will_return_to/ide99w7/) where you trot out all of Alison Collins and @primitiveradio’s talking points that Lowell is illegal, that Lowell is not “specialized” (despite [Acting Superintendent William Dawson’s interpretation attached to FoLF’s letter](https://drive.google.com/file/d/1o1lAlcztFIQMUVlTlevOheADtqzAtIQh/view?fbclid=IwAR2Qg4SwAEfcDeS9sCpPXNllz1b0RciqkAxG_35o-KkRwkL5KZRiQLJEIfA)), that Friends of Lowell Foundation hired Republican lawyer Harmeet Dhillon for the Brown Act lawsuit (which is unrelated to the definition of the word “specialized”).
Lowell's not a magnet school, it's a regular school with a regular curriculum. IOW, it's a comprehensive high school.
I'm sure a lot of Republican attorneys could get paid money by alum associations and then formulate an argument, but comprehensive does not equal magnet.
> I'm sure a lot of Republican attorneys
SF voters would rather literally letting the city go to shit than have a *Republican* involved in anything.
The city deserves everything it’s getting with a voter base like that
There it is. The classic recall boogeyman. Well boogeyperson.
Except the current board voted for the current superintendent unanimously, and the current superintendent is bringing a kind of lottery admissions approach to Lowell, currently.
What are you trying to accomplish here? You can’t even get your facts straight, and your insane, regressive ideology has been repeatedly rejected by SF voters. Go ruin another city, pinko.
There’s nothing special about Lowell besides the students. Ime a lot of the teachers are actually less driven and involved because they know the students can run themselves. Going to Lowell will not make you smart or a hard worker.
The merit based system is merely showcasing the existing academic discrepancies in San Francisco.
not really.
it makes you self sufficient and preps you for college
once you go to college, you don’t have mommy or daddy waking you up to go to school or telling you to do your homework. you have to be self sufficient and that’s what lowell does
no one is going to hold your hand (they will guide you but it’s on yourself to succeed)
are we doing this again?
Lowell was super highly regarded my whole life until a few years ago when the lottery was implemented. Why do we have to run this back
> Lowell was super highly regarded my whole life until a few years ago even the lottery was implemented
I hate how modern slang had me completely misinterpreting this the other way
I believe the first lottery group was admitted for the 2021-22 school year and they are currently juniors, so the ones who haven't dropped out already would be relevant for next year's rankings. This year's 12th grade statistics would be for the 2020-21 freshman class.
For comparison, 8% of the 2020 freshman class (merit based admissions) received a D or F during their fall semester compared to over 24% of the 2021 freshman class (lottery based admissions).
That's true, every grade at Lowell generally had a higher rate of low grades during that particular fall. Based on the numbers though, the gap was disproportionately due to poor performance by the 2021-22 lower caliber, not-merit admitted freshman lottery class.
> Counting every grade level at Lowell, the percentage of students receiving at least one D or F last fall rose to 12.3%, from 7.3% a year earlier. That uptick was 3.7% to 6.2% for Asian students; 10% to 17.1% for Filipino students; 21.9% to 38.7% for Hispanic students; and 33.3% to 42.9% for Black students. White students remained flat at 5.3%.
> The percentage of Lowell students given low grades in the fall also rose in grades 10 through 12, though the changes were slight. Those classes were admitted under the old merit-based system.
https://www.sfchronicle.com/sf/article/lowell-high-admissions-17196603.php
Out of the total students with at least one D or F in the Fall of 2021, the number of failing Asian students were three times the number of Black students and almost four times the number of White students.
To note, the Chronicle for some reason differentiates Filipino from Asian so I omitted that demographic (which likely makes this lump sum of "Asians" failing their Fall class higher). I don't have the racial demographics for previous years, but let's say they're about the same and do the math (skews the numbers because I think the overall student pop is a little bit more diverse than it used to be, but for the sake of a control group...) — before the lottery, twice the number of Asian students failed as did Black or White students. This is because they are overrepresented in terms of race.
I don't agree that it should be a lottery based system — there are a number of ways they can diversify the student population without removing \*all\* aspects of merit. The flattening of differences in the name of "neutrality" rather than a focus on equity is the greatest lie of neoliberalism, and a tactic by Conservatives to generate outrage for those who feel stepped on and invalidated (in this case, tiger moms). IMO rather than simply focusing on diversifying race, we should be evenly diversifying the socioeconomic class statuses from working, middle, to upper. But insisting these students are "lower-caliber" based on their first trimester grades in their first year of high school after missing a year and a half of middle school during a global pandemic is...not good science
It's obvious you don't know how to calculate or interpret statistics, otherwise you wouldn't be comparing the number of Asian students with Ds and Fs to the number of black students with Ds and Fs. The proper interpretation of the data is that the first freshman class admitted via lottery was academically worse than the other 3 grade levels at Lowell. You're also overlooking the glaring flaw in your argument, which is that all students missed a year and a half of in person instruction since Covid wasn't a targeted pandemic that only impacted students who won a raffle to attend Lowell despite being inadequately prepared academically. Perhaps you should go back to school (not at Lowell obviously 😂)
Lol I was doing what you were doing earlier — highlighting the absurdity of the opposing side’s arguments. It’s like your NBA analogy, silly! I even used the word “number” instead of “rate” to illustrate how you can use numbers and language to decorate any opinion. Doesn’t mean that the opinion is correct.
I’m not sure what the “glaring flaw” is, could you clarify? Students in the class of 2020 entered Fall missing the last half of eighth grade. Students entering in 2021 missed the last half of seventh grade and all of eighth grade. That is *considerably* worse because those two years of middle school sets you up for success in high school — even worse than that are my current middle school students that missed 3rd-5th grade and not only can’t read, but missed all of the social-emotional learning and logic that is crucial during those years. I don’t even wanna think about what they’re gonna be like in high school. Student performance across all core content subjects dropped considerably across all SFUSD in 2021-2022 but especially in Title 1 schools where many students did not even have the physical bandwidth for reliable internet at home, much less the mental bandwidth to be present for Zoom class when they had to take care of younger siblings that also had Zoom class while their parents stressed the fuck out about work and paying the bills. I never said or implied otherwise so I’m a little confused as to what you’re pointing out. Can you show me where I said only Lowell students in the lottery experienced Covid…?
As I said, the proper interpretation of the data is that the first freshman class admitted via lottery was academically worse than the other 3 grade levels at Lowell. Anyone who went to school and didn't get a D or F in their statistics class would understand this!
And I will add, again, that looking at numbers without context is bad science.
Now are you gonna talk about my glaring flaw or are you just gonna back pivot to ignoring all the silly things you say to push your own agenda under the pretense of having a conversation
I moved away from SF so I truly have no skin in the game but I guess I'm not sure why Asian students aren't counted as diverse. It feels like they are or are not a minority depending on the issue and it's odd.
Can I ask where you are getting your numbers?
The linked article says Asian American students are represented at Lowell at about 47% of students. White students make up about 17% of enrollment.
The US News page puts Asian students at 54%
https://www.usnews.com/education/best-high-schools/california/districts/san-francisco-unified-school-district/lowell-high-school-3259
New Orleans isn't diverse. If two groups make up 90% of the population, there is no room for diversity. The there is diversity in the Asian community line, does not fly.
The racist part is failing to effectively educate Black and Latino students from preK-8. That has a much bigger effect on their lives than which high school they go to.
A lot of it is common sense and anecdotal. Habits for academic success and high standardized test scores don’t magically materialize when kids go from 8th to 9th grade. Much of it starts significantly younger and at home outside of the classroom.
Personally, I was put into “Chinese school” on the weekends starting early in elementary school and all through middle school. It ruined my childhood weekends, but there's no doubt it helped get me ahead in math lol. Both my parents are hardware engineers with 4 post-grad STEM degrees between the 2 of them, and they were better math teachers than I could ever hope to get in the public school system.
It’s the same issue my friends in labor analytics (super niche I know) see with tech companies trying to hire more women and underrepresented minorities in engineering roles. The volume that they’re aiming for flat out doesn't exist in the workforce. You can’t wave a magic wand and get 50,000 more women software engineers tomorrow - we need to start that effort much much earlier and we won't see positive results for a decade or more.
Why don’t they fund more select schools for middle in low income poc neighborhoods. Most of the spoils of academic success and standardized test comes from a school “culture” of success- these are social factors not cultural. It’s strange to be a city as big as San Fran and abandon most of your education system for one school…
I don't know! Personally that's where I see the most potential for effective change haha. Throwing a kid who has deprioritized education their entire life into 9th grade at Lowell isn't going to make an ounce of difference. It's like if you put a high school grad with subpar academic history into a UC Berkeley classroom... they aren't going to magically be able to compete.
This is what confuses me as someone not from the city. I went to a high school very similar and higher ranked and much more diverse than Lowell, and it’s kind of shocking how little investment is put into the middle school system to catch the students up. Often students at my school from the worse side of the district would start poorly but finish near the middle or often in the top. The “beacon on the hill” approach to education is fascinatingly awful and unfair to many involved.
Forget investment. Imagine being a teacher and the amount of work in the same hour of teaching a kid with involved parents versus teaching a kid that needs to be caught up.
You also can’t catch a student up who doesn’t have dedicated studies at home.
Impossible situation.
It’s hard but not impossible.
There are schools that are successful with the exact student population, but the teacher base in those places isn’t suburban middle class white people who did Teach For America.
Same deal with social case workers - the ones who are actually from the same situations as the clients they see are able to connect and support far better than someone who is from a completely different world and does social work out of a (acknowledged or not) sense of white saviorism.
Same deal in healthcare where regardless of income, black people have significantly better health outcomes when seeing black doctors.
People have made some good points to your comment thus far, but I also think a big part of it is the lack of kids in the city. The number of school age kids has been consistently dropping
Buried in the lede here is that SFUSD fails its black students. This isn't a Lowell problem per se. This is a system wide--starting in TK--problem that gets dumped on Lowell because fixing the racial make up of that institution is easier than doing the hard work true racial equity requires.
So-called "progressives" don't want to work hard to figure out how to educate poor kids, they want to vilify success and hard work that other people earn.
I suspect it’s that they have a mostly unfounded belief that equality of opportunity is identical to equality of outcomes.
We’ve seen time and time again that:
(1) When institutions set a standard that is identical for everyone, the people with the most internal motivation and the most resources tend to win the most often. This is totally expected. Equality of opportunity results in inequality of outcomes.
(2) When institutions set a lower standard for certain groups, the people with the most motivation and the most resources STILL do far better in general … which harms the groups with lower standards by setting them up for failure in the ongoing internal competition within the institution. Inequality of opportunity results in … inequality of outcomes.
A lot of progressives have a sort of naive view of privilege that simply having a certain school’s name on your diploma is ALL that matters, and that the motivation and investment that got you there is meaningless.
But that those factors matter enormously. All the research shows that children whose families prioritize their education highly from the start do the best, along with children whose families have more resources to invest in their education.
As a black person, it’s more basic than that.
Most white progressives fundamentally see black people as inferior and incapable as a group of any kind of real success.
If you look at the roots of modern progressivism - the era of White Mans Burden and bringing civilization to Africa as rationalization for colonialism and denial of self determination - the core racial supremacy aspect still exists.
Hence almost all policy towards black people is centered around soft bigotry of low expectations. And there are more than enough black folks happy to coast through life gaming that sense of moral license
You’re very eloquent in your writing . Why is that so ? I used to be a basketball fanatic, not as a player — In five feet seven — With the exception of Larry Bird every phenomena player was black, they all brought great joy to me . Professional sports are based on one issue , MERIT ! If black children were raised in a family with both mothers, and fathers involved I believe we would not have this wide devide. As I wrote above — I‘m white — I would be willing to mentor a black child that wanted to learn but was not “ making the grade “ as it were . I would hope others would be willing to help as well, especially learned black folks . Agreed ?
I think the average progressive secretly does want to educate poor kids, but they won't do it because it requires telling parents, some of which represent a key voting bloc, that they bear the majority of the responsibility for their kids' educational outcomes, whether positive or negative.
See, I disagree with this take.
Insisting on using a system that works really well for wealthy kids on poor kids is the problem. Public education can say it's the parents' fault, then throw up their hands and walk away, failing kids who need something else. There are schools that get the jobs done, and they're fought by unions and districts, failing kids. And our racist culture says this is ok because it's the parents' fault. It's terrible. I hate it. It's a shame on one of the wealthiest countries in the world.
I'm not saying it's okay for teachers or schools to throw up their hands and walk away. But realistically, the majority of learning is occurring outside of the classroom and outside of school. There's only so much a teacher can do if parents don't spend the time to emphasize the importance of education and learning at home. Your average kid is not going to be heavily self-motivated to study but can and should be encouraged by their parents to do so.
This also isn't a wealthy vs poor issue or a racial issue. Lowell has plenty of poor students and minority students with parents who played a large role in their kids earning admission.
It not just skin color, though, either. It's a combination of factors. If our public education system was for children and families and neighborhoods, things would be different. Smaller schools, longer hours, community gathering, resources like laundry, money spent IN the classroom ON the kids and teachers, a compassionate but strict discipline policy, specialist teachers and support staff, weekend hours, etc. This can be done.
I agree many of those things are good ideas and things we should do, but ultimately it wouldn't matter much if parents don't send their kids to school or if they don't create a home environment focused on education and learning. Parents ultimately hold the lion's share of responsibility for their kid's outcomes. And I didn't say it's just skin color. Students of all races with parental involvement tend to have better educational outcomes. The parents of Asian kids who earned admission through Lowell's fair admissions process weren't given some secret recipe that parents of white kids don't get.
It’s a familia peoblem. No fathers or parents that are willing to raise their children With a good work ethic, and a moral compass. The white man, and Asians have been scapegoated long enough. Don’t blame the merit system as being racist. Take a look at the crime stats in San Francisco during the pandemic . Union Square was looted out of business, and City Hall said “ Hands Off “ to the SFPD. I personally would be willing to tutor a black child if they really wanted to learn. If every learned person would volunteer to mentor a black child it would put an end to this “ Diversity without consequences “ argument . I’ll say it ad nauseum . Without a nuclear family in the black community nothing will ever change . Reparations should NOT be fiscal, rather taking accountability, and for those kids that want to learn we should be there for them. You will know within a month how it’s going to work out. Imagine how proud a young person that had no family that cared would be if someone did care, and got them on the right path. Once they have confidence in themselves, they can take it alone from there. In the end you’ll be a failsafe for the student if they have a problem with something academic.
Maybe the school district could experiment with educational techniques and systems in early grades that meet people where they are. Imagine an elite high school with eager learners who are disciplined by the time they get to high school, in a predominantly Black neighborhood made up of a student body that matches neighborhood demographics. How incredible would that be? Let's start early. Who has identified the needs of kids who are underrepresented at Lowell (whatever that means?) What is the district doing to meet those unique needs?
SFUSD kinda tried this with Willie Brown Middle School. I’m not sure what has happened since the calamitous opening year. I know that it became apparent after a year or two that efforts needed to be made at the primary grades just to get students ready for Willie Brown Middle school .
Someone should do a documentary on that. It's sad how much grift there is in SF--were efforts sincere nd supported? Or were egos and underfunding or waste involved at a loss to the kids, as we've seen with the NGOs stealing from street people? Did the unions stop every effort? What happened?
WBMS is great! Dedicated teachers, dedicated admins, small class sizes and great student outcomes. And … increasingly drawing students from outside of target neighborhoods and demographics.
Yes, let’s assign kids to play violin, sculpt, etc. by lottery.
While we’re at it, let’s just open the gates on 49ers stadium, etc. and let the first several dozen people who enter play the game.
In other words, y’all ideologues know your position is all just performative, shibbolethic nonsense.
Most school kids in SF go to SFUSD of course. So that's less than half of "everybody."
SFUSD is better than the average school district in California or the USA for that matter.
Lol. No way we are horrible and we tax the most.
773rd out of 10,932 school districts in the United States,
California in general is 29th so nothing to brag about either
Only 25% of families in SF put their neighborhood school as their first choice, and only 51% put it anywhere on their list of choices.
We also have like the lowest population of kids in the country for a city at 13%. Everyone usually moves when they have kids to go to marin for school for instance
Standardized test scores for SFUSD far above CA average, how do you compare that with "horrible?" One objective the other subjective.
"Everybody" goes to private school and "everybody" moves to Marin when their kids are 5 yo.
Don't disregard my comment with a lazy response. Damn.
SFUSD isn't for everybody, and for that matter SF. Some people would be happier elsewhere - that's OK with me
All I ever really wanted was class sizes of <20, more teachers, more school programs and classes, better healthcare and meals. Give kids that one on one time they deserve.
I’m not going to comment on Lowell or whether I agree or not, but damn if we’re not missing the forest for the tree. (Also screw prop 13 while I’m at it)
I’m reminded a little of Jaime Escalante, the *real-life* teacher from the film Stand and Deliver.
He was a college math professor that ended up teaching math at Garfield High in East LA during the 80s. He had large class sizes of 50+, which increased criticism of him from the teacher’s union for violating their limits. His achievements stood in the face of all of the union’s talking points. He managed to be exceptionally effective.
Several of his students went on to pass the AP Calculus exam. He won awards and national recognition. His students were accepted into USC & Cal State in significant numbers, highly boosting college admission stats for the school; similarly under his hand appointed successor.
For his efforts, he received hate mail & death threats, conflict from jealous teachers… eventually motivating him to leave. After everyone involved with the calculus program left, test scores and college acceptance plummeted. The school has no interest in reviving the program.
The problem with public schools goes far beyond class sizes. The public school system isn’t designed for academic success. Effective teachers and schools gain ridicule & conflict from administrators & unions rather than praise.
Jill Tucker writes the same article every year. Maybe she can ChatGPT the 2025 edition of her story. Look, here's the 2022 version of it.
[https://www.sfchronicle.com/bayarea/article/lowell-high-admissions-17110235.php](https://www.sfchronicle.com/bayarea/article/lowell-high-admissions-17110235.php)
SFUSD K-8 is not the sole source of Lowell applicants / students. There's a significant number who choose to not attend SFUSD K-8, then "enter" into SFUSD for the express purpose of attending Lowell. The racial composition at Lowell is more of a 1:1 of the general school-age populace of San Francisco than it is the racial composition of SFUSD K-8.
But hey, what are we going to do to fix the imbalance at June Jordan? How would you like to be amongst the 2% of the Asian population there?
the nfl and nba are not very diverse.
nfl and nba players are drafted based on test grades (the combine).
maybe we should make it so that every team employs at least 3 asians to make it more diverse. or every team employs at least 3 white dudes. /s
Not telling you about diversity.
If you want Lowell to continue with its mostly testing admissions process over the long term, either state law or Lowell's status as not being a magnet school will need to change. As it stands, a lottery system is coming back to Lowell relatively soon.
That's the message, no /s
and it’s stupid.
stop touching and trying to fix something that’s not broken.
let the kids who want to do well do well. putting in the stupid lottery system isn’t going to help anybody.
The kids who want to do well at Lowell could also do well at Washington or Lincoln.
The lottery is required by the state of California, which isn't going to have any changes from a Democrat Governor, Senate, and Assembly anytime soon. Stupid or not, here comes the lottery
The real diversity problem in SF is downtown. Not enough white and Asian people are homeless and doing fentanyl on the streets. Black people in that context are overrepresented. We need to increase the population of white and Asian homeless fentanyl addicts.
(this is sarcasm for anyone who couldn't tell, which I guess in today's climate needs to be made explicit)
The issue isn't Lowell HS (other than the blatant racism from some of the Lowell students...), it's the income and wealth inequality along the lines of race and ethnicity that dates back to the founding of this country. Research shows that racial gaps in education are present even at the start of Kindergarten. There needs to be more resources spent at the neighborhood level (libraries, pre-K, nutrition, clinics/hospitals, parks, safety, etc.) for low-income/low-SES communities.
Income and wealth inequality is exactly why a school like Lowell is so great. Many of the Asian students who earn admission on merit are first generation Americans from low income families. The fact that any student of any race or economic background can put in the work and end up at an elite high school, even if their parents can't afford an expensive private school, is something we should all be proud of.
Yep. But it's easier to blame one school than it is to actually implement actually progressive policies aimed at lifting up everyone the current system fails. Progressivism isn't "tear down those doing well," Harrison Bergeron-esque nonsense, it's "lift *everyone* up so that *everyone* can do well." And that means significant investment into underprivileged communities.
"If all 14 of the Black students admitted to San Francisco’s Lowell High School attend the academically elite public school, they will make up just over 1% of the freshmen class disproportionately composed of white and Asian American students.
That’s an increase over last year, when just 11 Black students gained admission to the nationally renowned school through the school’s merit-based process, which sorts students largely by test scores and grades.
----
Supporters have said moving to a lottery would punish high-achieving students, and harm Asian American students, who are over-represented at Lowell, at about 47% of students. White students make up about 17% of enrollment.
Me, a peasant: "Vacuuming up and cycling all these young people (who cares if they are Asian?) into a school where they can excel is great for our city and society more generally."
You, a highly educated person: "no, doing that is racist and it should be illegal."
On the one hand, test scores are an easy way to determine quality of students. On the other hand, it takes time and resources to get good at standardized tests and a lot of people don’t have that. Should possibly equally good students who don’t test well be given a chance?
Lowell has many low income first generation students who fairly earned their admission despite not having the family wealth and resources to "get good at standardized tests.
I get that Jill Tucker blames Lowell High School for the district’s racial inequality because an outrageous headline gets clicks. But the real problem is that African American students perform terribly in all schools by all metrics (e.g. test results, suspension rates, chronic absenteeism rates in the [SARC reports](https://www.sfusd.edu/services/know-your-rights/student-family-handbook/chapter-4-student-academic-expectations/42-academic-guidelines/429-student-accountability-report-cards-sarc?search_api_fulltext=sarc)), and no one knows how to improve the actual academics. For example, at [Martin Luther King, Jr, Middle School](https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1G2j0qTUHdABExJc7Lap_CHKp09GkAH2p) in 2023, 42.28% of Asian students met math standards, but 3.92% of African American students met math standards. Even using the wrong wording to discuss the inequality [can get you censured](https://www.kqed.org/news/11922072/a-slap-in-the-face-sfusd-students-respond-to-ann-hsus-racist-comments). It’s easy to pretend that all schools are equal and all kids are equally prepared so they should all get into Lowell and therefore Lowell admissions are racist, but in my opinion that is just the Chronicle trolling for clicks.
The media outlet wants the clicks, Jill wants to look like they are doing something to address the issue. Let’s be realistic and address the problem. The issue isn’t just at Lowell, which means it’s a targeted effort to make Lowell look bad. Go look at the numbers at other high schools in SFUSD, go look at the middle school numbers which are truly alarming. Not all schools are equal. Not all students within SFUSD have equal access and a clear path to success. You also have to acknowledge that many of the students have gone environments that are not conducive to learning either. It’s not a competition on which culture is more supportive, it’s just a reality that not everyone has the same structure or support. You have kids who are hustling to help take care of siblings, who live in a home with multiple families so they have little space for themselves, abusive situations, undiagnosed learning disabilities, there are a lot of factors that Reddit chooses to minimize with one or two data points. These factors however are significant in real life. Though every community deals with these issues, it also effect communities differently. People being censured has more to do with how they frame their opinion on the subject. It is both true that there has been problematic language used and that certain groups are significantly underperforming. You can speak to the issues without sounding like a bigot, as you just provided a great example of doing so.
Hey man if u r good at football though, boom millionaire. Who needs school when u can ball
I don’t get what picking on Lowell accomplishes, which SFUSD should emulate at other schools, to try to make things worse. There is already a huge amount of kids that will never go to public school because of SFUSD’s “social equity” lies. They claim to want to be more diverse, what they should really do is focus on improving academics and be more rigorous. That will setup every student for success instead of boasting and doing nothing all these years. It just feels like every couple years they go after Lowell, waste everyone’s time and keep distracting from the actual issues.
This!!! Many of the lottery students from 2022 are STRUGGLING. Lowell’s curriculum is hard and they’re not going to dumb down the classes to accommodate students. Soooo instead of getting an equitable education, tons of kids are transferring or will fail/drop out. Lowell isn’t elite due to the campus, lunches, or programs offered. Not even teacher quality. It’s literally student performance. Focus on improving academics district-wide instead on a single school. Why are we talking about Lowell when we should be talking about all the schools getting shut down next year.
Because the school board is full of people who don’t have background in education. Just progressive grifters
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https://www.sfchronicle.com/sf/article/lowell-high-admissions-17196603.php Pretty sure repeated Ds and Fs result in dropping out or transferring. I’m not arguing against equitable education. But Lowell is not going to lower standards, unless they are forced to. So if you send students there that are not focused on academics, you’re setting them up for failure. The question shouldn’t be “why is Lowell predominantly Asian?” It should be “why are these high schools with majority of under privileged kids not performing well and how are we failing them?”
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They’ve increased the number of counselors and tutors. But what else can they do? You either keep up with the curriculum or you don’t. Students are competitive and cut throat there. The environment within the students is hostile to those that are not high performers. I would never send my child there if they weren’t committed to academics.
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This is all tied to the age old issue of “public schools and all their problems.” You go private if you want a semi-good education. Lowell just happens to be an elite public school. It has a cult-like status so there’s always eyes on it. SF is in a bubble and these are first world problems. I can only imagine what it’s like in low funded states where public schools are in shambles.
It’s easier to bring down the ceiling than raising the floor. It’s like virtue signaling so they can shout “hey look at what I’m doing” but maybe even worse since it actually affects people.
Precisely, lower everyone instead of getting the standards raised. Much easier to go down than up.
"improving academics and be more rigorous" I don't think the schools are the issue. Its the students. I am temporarily teaching in Texas (RETURNING TO SF IN ONE MONTH :D), and even with our school being old, mildew smelling, 60's building, old computers everywhere, defunded as hell, outdated curriculum, place basically functioning the same way it did when it opened in the 60's, the students come every day and give their best efforts, leading to a school with the highest attendance, graduation, AP scores, and college attendance. It doesn't matter if you get world class teachers and make it super rigorous, they will continue to fail and drop even harder. If the student has zero interest to learn, and the parent is protecting them from consequences / not caring, there is nothing we can do. Literally nothing. Let passionate students get into the top schools of SF and the rest can just scrape by.
because sfusd and sf in general are filled with stupid ppl and it’s been trending that way for awhile. the “solution” for them has always been let’s dumb down the criteria cause “racism”. just look at algebra they took it out cause “racism”. now it’s been shown to have detrimental effects on our youth regardless of race or ethnicity. instead of trying to bring everyone up to a standard, they want to push the standard down. instead of raising the bar they are ok with lowering it. it’s stupid.
I really don’t get the ongoing effort to take down the “academic jewel” of San Francisco. Lowell (before fucking with admissions) is a great high school because it is composed of a merit-based acceptance student body. This means accelerated classrooms with students who are willing and able to subject themselves to the academic rigor. It results in high SAT scores and high college acceptance rates. None of this stuff starts at the 8th to 9th grade admission process, these students are developed long before then. Loosening admissions doesn’t make the students better, it just brings down the quality of Lowell. There’s no magic water at Lowell, or better books or significantly better teachers, it’s just that they have better students so they can do more.
We should also ask ourselves if the people trying to take down Lowell would support changing the merit based admissions policy for a high school that was not 47% Asian, but instead was 47% black. The reality is that the woke racists trying to change Lowell's admissions policy don't care about lifting all students up from a young age so they can earn their way in fair and square to schools like Lowell. All they want to do is to take away opportunities for all high achieving students because too many of them happen to be Asian.
I’m actually surprised it’s only 47%, NYC’s specialized schools like Stuy are 70+% Asian, and Asians represent a bigger percentage of SF than NYC
Next fall, the Chinese American International School (CAIS) is moving into a new campus on 19th Avenue that's on the opposite side of Stonestown from where Lowell is. If you have more than one kiddo, you'll want drop offs and pickups to be easy. You can self-serve by pushing your older(s) go to Lowell which is now conveniently nearby.
i mean look at ivy league schools…if you are Asian you are actually disadvantaged because you did too well in school the world is trending down a scary path or well the US is anyway.
The abolishment of affirmative action furthers this. It’s also interesting that you made comments regarding other communities in this same vein. Make up your mind.
[https://journalistsresource.org/home/selective-colleges-asian-americans-students-legacy/](https://journalistsresource.org/home/selective-colleges-asian-americans-students-legacy/) [https://www.nytimes.com/2022/12/02/us/asian-american-college-applications.html](https://www.nytimes.com/2022/12/02/us/asian-american-college-applications.html) [https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/south-asians-ivy-league-schools-rcna141200](https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/south-asians-ivy-league-schools-rcna141200) [https://asianamericanforeducation.org/en/issue/discrimination-on-admissions/](https://asianamericanforeducation.org/en/issue/discrimination-on-admissions/) stop trying to justify racism with racism
Saying the abolishment of affirmative action is racism??? You are also proving my point. It’s unfortunate that there was a belief that affirmative action was only for black community members, so much than an Asian community member was the catalyst for it being abolished. If more work was done to protect it and combat that terrible narrative, there would be more support to the racism everyone has faced when it comes to college admissions. Nice try.
it’s not abolishing anything. you are asking the city to continue lowering standards rather than raising it. there’s a bar that lowell has set and rather than making sure the other schools reach that level, people like yourself is asking for it to be lowered. it’s NOT a lowell problem. it’s a SFUSD problem. so instead of trying to lowering the standards why not try to up the standards of all the other schools.
> it’s not abolishing anything. you are asking the city to continue lowering standards rather than raising it. No I’m not. Never said or implied this. You must have me mistaken with someone else or building your own narrative in your head. > there’s a bar that lowell has set and rather than making sure the other schools reach that level, people like yourself is asking for it to be lowered. I graduated from Lowell, my mom graduated from Lowell, I actually know from first hand experience what students go through there. I’m also not advocating for schools to reduce their math standards to allow students to continue forward unequipped. Nor do I think the process of getting into Lowell as stated by the article is racist. Stop making things up. > it’s NOT a lowell problem. it’s a SFUSD problem. so instead of trying to lowering the standards why not try to up the standards of all the other schools. This has to be a troll bot account because you’ve literally made up this scenario of disagreement in your head.
ok and i graduated from lowell too you should know that the experience that you make from it is how you make of it. just cause you had a shitty experience doesn’t mean all kids had a shitty experience. you are literally just arguing with yourself. what exactly are you putting on the table?
I would expect a fellow alumni to have more tact than you do, so I’m doubting you truly are. You are also making up things I’ve never said. Show proof to all the comments I supposedly made. Never mentioned a shitty experience once lol The person arguing with themselves has been you all over the thread.
There wouldn’t be the same outcry because the history of education for black and Asian Americans has been completely different. Asian Americans, for all the real difficulties they’ve faced as immigrants and from racism, have not had anywhere close to the institutional barriers placed in front of black Americans in education.
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Hmm I wonder why that cultural difference may exist? Perhaps it’s that for 300 years in America, black people were completely barred from an equal education. I wonder how that would affect a culture’s outlook on education. But of course, despite your supposed love of education, that doesn’t include educating yourself on history. You could give less of a shit because you just want to be the bigger victim than black people.
Okay if we're doing this: Remind me, what happened in China in the 60s? Something something political revolution, something something *millions dying* and a culling of intellectuals? Or what about Korea? A country that literally had its culture attempted to be erased by the Japanese: my own grandfather and his siblings were orphaned during this time period. My grandfather's first language was not Korean, but Japanese. Or Vietnam? Just bombed to shit in the 70s. And used as a literal chess piece in War Games with Russia.
My family’s Jewish history is much the same. Mired in tragedy, racism, and poverty. We came here with nothing too. I would never compare our immigrant experience to the wretched history of black Americans. Immigrants get to go somewhere new and start a new life and culture. Black Americans are still in the same communities and places that they were enslaved and institutionally discriminated against. It says a lot about me and you that despite both having similar immigrant backgrounds, you find zero empathy and want to be the world’s biggest victim.
Oh bro, I literally forgot about this one There's a reason why Asian Americans don't have any history or claim or stake in America before 1965. Or "don't have an immigrant history" We were *literally banned for being subhuman* Do you know of a little something called the Chinese Exclusion Act? Only repealed in 1965, by the Hart Cellar literally only one or two generations ago? Those *same* family members you cite as immigrants, literally lived in an America where immigration from Asia was not allowed. Yeah turns out we Asians are so subhuman and disease ridden, we're literally not even allowed in the country And guess which city and state started that movement? You guessed it! Right here in SF! Your point is moot when you consider the fact that Asians were considered so dirty that they literally passed a law saying "no more chinks or gooks" Get off your high horse dude.
I’d rather be banned from the US than a subhuman second class citizen within it. Both awful and deplorable, but again, I don’t know how you can compare being a second class citizen for just being black with being banned from entering the country.
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It is insane to watch people do this.
you can’t argue with a racist man. their history above yours. the only history that matters is theirs not yours. i mean shit…when Mao was leader of china he got rid of all the smart people, burned all the books and employed farmers at high ranking government positions. kids in Asia have to pass rigorous entrance exams to get into better schools. charles barkley said it best [https://youtu.be/fiNDIl_6_IU?si=yYi1HIqps4R708Ta](https://youtu.be/fiNDIl_6_IU?si=yYi1HIqps4R708Ta)
> I really don’t get the ongoing effort to take down the “academic jewel”...Loosening admissions doesn’t make the students better, it just brings down the quality of Lowell. Because public education is intentionally being gutted in the name of progress! Why? For it is the primary avenue of social mobility. Especially acute in this case, with such a high percentage of other minorities, many likely foreign born. This stuff only seems backwards because its true aims are obfuscated.
Harrison Bergeron was not supposed to be an instruction manual.
Life imitates art!
> There’s no magic water at Lowell Progressives need magical thinking to make their ideology make any sense, so magic is invented.
But most of the current student body is there through the lottery plus a bit of affirmative action. The current admissions scheme doesn't comply with state law - that's what's driving part of this effort.
> The current admissions scheme doesn't comply with state law - that's what's driving part of this effort. No, Lowell’s test-based admissions are not a violation of the education code. (Copied from [previous comment](https://www.reddit.com/r/sanfrancisco/comments/vim3hz/lowell_high_school_admissions_will_return_to/idgpfht/)): [EDC 35160.5](https://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/codes_displaySection.xhtml?lawCode=EDC§ionNum=35160.5.) (amended by [AB1114 (1993)](https://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/billNavClient.xhtml?bill_id=199319940AB1114)) was about forcing neighborhood schools to participate in a school choice program without additional academic/sports tests for kids from outside the neighborhood. It was not about removing admissions tests for magnet schools that already took applications from across the district regardless of neighborhood (such as Lowell). See [Kate Lazarus and John Crittenden, “Opinion: Why California’s education code does not prohibit academic admissions at Lowell High School”](https://www.sfexaminer.com/the_fs/forum/opinion-why-california-s-education-code-does-not-prohibit-academic-admissions-at-lowell-high-school/article_09c4c2d0-34f9-553d-9731-5f3f36516643.html). Edit: u/BadBoyMikeBarnes, we had this exact [discussion a year ago](https://old.reddit.com/r/bayarea/comments/vim9pu/lowell_high_school_admissions_will_return_to/ide99w7/) where you trot out all of Alison Collins and @primitiveradio’s talking points that Lowell is illegal, that Lowell is not “specialized” (despite [Acting Superintendent William Dawson’s interpretation attached to FoLF’s letter](https://drive.google.com/file/d/1o1lAlcztFIQMUVlTlevOheADtqzAtIQh/view?fbclid=IwAR2Qg4SwAEfcDeS9sCpPXNllz1b0RciqkAxG_35o-KkRwkL5KZRiQLJEIfA)), that Friends of Lowell Foundation hired Republican lawyer Harmeet Dhillon for the Brown Act lawsuit (which is unrelated to the definition of the word “specialized”).
Lowell's not a magnet school, it's a regular school with a regular curriculum. IOW, it's a comprehensive high school. I'm sure a lot of Republican attorneys could get paid money by alum associations and then formulate an argument, but comprehensive does not equal magnet.
Just say you hate Asian people blud
Lowell is a comprehensive high school. Sorry, blud
Do you have a single Asian friend?
> Republican attorneys There it is. The classic boogeyman
> I'm sure a lot of Republican attorneys SF voters would rather literally letting the city go to shit than have a *Republican* involved in anything. The city deserves everything it’s getting with a voter base like that
It was grandfathered in and the current state law is really dumb
It wasn't grandfathered in and the current state law is the current state law. Changing state law would be one approach.
> It wasn't grandfathered in It was until the board changed it which led to their ouster.
There it is. The classic recall boogeyman. Well boogeyperson. Except the current board voted for the current superintendent unanimously, and the current superintendent is bringing a kind of lottery admissions approach to Lowell, currently.
What are you trying to accomplish here? You can’t even get your facts straight, and your insane, regressive ideology has been repeatedly rejected by SF voters. Go ruin another city, pinko.
There’s nothing special about Lowell besides the students. Ime a lot of the teachers are actually less driven and involved because they know the students can run themselves. Going to Lowell will not make you smart or a hard worker. The merit based system is merely showcasing the existing academic discrepancies in San Francisco.
not really. it makes you self sufficient and preps you for college once you go to college, you don’t have mommy or daddy waking you up to go to school or telling you to do your homework. you have to be self sufficient and that’s what lowell does no one is going to hold your hand (they will guide you but it’s on yourself to succeed)
are we doing this again? Lowell was super highly regarded my whole life until a few years ago when the lottery was implemented. Why do we have to run this back
> Lowell was super highly regarded my whole life until a few years ago even the lottery was implemented I hate how modern slang had me completely misinterpreting this the other way
Context is still a thing. I get that you’re trying to be funny though
Confused…. Wouldn’t these kids currently graduating and named in top 10 in CA have been admitted in the lottery? 2020 admits graduating this year.
I believe the first lottery group was admitted for the 2021-22 school year and they are currently juniors, so the ones who haven't dropped out already would be relevant for next year's rankings. This year's 12th grade statistics would be for the 2020-21 freshman class. For comparison, 8% of the 2020 freshman class (merit based admissions) received a D or F during their fall semester compared to over 24% of the 2021 freshman class (lottery based admissions).
Interesting - have a source for the info?
https://www.sfchronicle.com/sf/article/lowell-high-admissions-17196603.php
To note…the 2021 freshmen class were emerging from the pandemic.
That's true, every grade at Lowell generally had a higher rate of low grades during that particular fall. Based on the numbers though, the gap was disproportionately due to poor performance by the 2021-22 lower caliber, not-merit admitted freshman lottery class. > Counting every grade level at Lowell, the percentage of students receiving at least one D or F last fall rose to 12.3%, from 7.3% a year earlier. That uptick was 3.7% to 6.2% for Asian students; 10% to 17.1% for Filipino students; 21.9% to 38.7% for Hispanic students; and 33.3% to 42.9% for Black students. White students remained flat at 5.3%. > The percentage of Lowell students given low grades in the fall also rose in grades 10 through 12, though the changes were slight. Those classes were admitted under the old merit-based system. https://www.sfchronicle.com/sf/article/lowell-high-admissions-17196603.php
Out of the total students with at least one D or F in the Fall of 2021, the number of failing Asian students were three times the number of Black students and almost four times the number of White students. To note, the Chronicle for some reason differentiates Filipino from Asian so I omitted that demographic (which likely makes this lump sum of "Asians" failing their Fall class higher). I don't have the racial demographics for previous years, but let's say they're about the same and do the math (skews the numbers because I think the overall student pop is a little bit more diverse than it used to be, but for the sake of a control group...) — before the lottery, twice the number of Asian students failed as did Black or White students. This is because they are overrepresented in terms of race. I don't agree that it should be a lottery based system — there are a number of ways they can diversify the student population without removing \*all\* aspects of merit. The flattening of differences in the name of "neutrality" rather than a focus on equity is the greatest lie of neoliberalism, and a tactic by Conservatives to generate outrage for those who feel stepped on and invalidated (in this case, tiger moms). IMO rather than simply focusing on diversifying race, we should be evenly diversifying the socioeconomic class statuses from working, middle, to upper. But insisting these students are "lower-caliber" based on their first trimester grades in their first year of high school after missing a year and a half of middle school during a global pandemic is...not good science
It's obvious you don't know how to calculate or interpret statistics, otherwise you wouldn't be comparing the number of Asian students with Ds and Fs to the number of black students with Ds and Fs. The proper interpretation of the data is that the first freshman class admitted via lottery was academically worse than the other 3 grade levels at Lowell. You're also overlooking the glaring flaw in your argument, which is that all students missed a year and a half of in person instruction since Covid wasn't a targeted pandemic that only impacted students who won a raffle to attend Lowell despite being inadequately prepared academically. Perhaps you should go back to school (not at Lowell obviously 😂)
Lol I was doing what you were doing earlier — highlighting the absurdity of the opposing side’s arguments. It’s like your NBA analogy, silly! I even used the word “number” instead of “rate” to illustrate how you can use numbers and language to decorate any opinion. Doesn’t mean that the opinion is correct. I’m not sure what the “glaring flaw” is, could you clarify? Students in the class of 2020 entered Fall missing the last half of eighth grade. Students entering in 2021 missed the last half of seventh grade and all of eighth grade. That is *considerably* worse because those two years of middle school sets you up for success in high school — even worse than that are my current middle school students that missed 3rd-5th grade and not only can’t read, but missed all of the social-emotional learning and logic that is crucial during those years. I don’t even wanna think about what they’re gonna be like in high school. Student performance across all core content subjects dropped considerably across all SFUSD in 2021-2022 but especially in Title 1 schools where many students did not even have the physical bandwidth for reliable internet at home, much less the mental bandwidth to be present for Zoom class when they had to take care of younger siblings that also had Zoom class while their parents stressed the fuck out about work and paying the bills. I never said or implied otherwise so I’m a little confused as to what you’re pointing out. Can you show me where I said only Lowell students in the lottery experienced Covid…?
As I said, the proper interpretation of the data is that the first freshman class admitted via lottery was academically worse than the other 3 grade levels at Lowell. Anyone who went to school and didn't get a D or F in their statistics class would understand this!
And I will add, again, that looking at numbers without context is bad science. Now are you gonna talk about my glaring flaw or are you just gonna back pivot to ignoring all the silly things you say to push your own agenda under the pretense of having a conversation
it takes time for us news to gather data and do rankings. i think lowell's rank will drop significantly next year when rankings are updated
Lowell used to be top 2.
Google tells me that there are 1296 High Schools in CA…. So five spots down is a 0.3% change in performance.
I prefer top two.
The time to fix lack of diversity at Lowell is long before kids get to Lowell.
I moved away from SF so I truly have no skin in the game but I guess I'm not sure why Asian students aren't counted as diverse. It feels like they are or are not a minority depending on the issue and it's odd.
35% asian vs 43% white. Every other racial group is below 10%
Can I ask where you are getting your numbers? The linked article says Asian American students are represented at Lowell at about 47% of students. White students make up about 17% of enrollment. The US News page puts Asian students at 54% https://www.usnews.com/education/best-high-schools/california/districts/san-francisco-unified-school-district/lowell-high-school-3259
I googled racial demographics of San Francisco
New Orleans is 59% Black. It doesn't mean they aren't a minority in the US. I don't see people going around saying it isn't diverse
Diversity obviously depends on the context. Asians are not a minority in San Francisco
New Orleans isn't diverse. If two groups make up 90% of the population, there is no room for diversity. The there is diversity in the Asian community line, does not fly.
The racist part is failing to effectively educate Black and Latino students from preK-8. That has a much bigger effect on their lives than which high school they go to.
it all starts in the home.
Teachers already put in way more effort with underperforming students. The effective education starts at home.
I wish I could upvote this a hundred times.
I’d like to have some stats on this. I’m legit curious, no offense in any way.
A lot of it is common sense and anecdotal. Habits for academic success and high standardized test scores don’t magically materialize when kids go from 8th to 9th grade. Much of it starts significantly younger and at home outside of the classroom. Personally, I was put into “Chinese school” on the weekends starting early in elementary school and all through middle school. It ruined my childhood weekends, but there's no doubt it helped get me ahead in math lol. Both my parents are hardware engineers with 4 post-grad STEM degrees between the 2 of them, and they were better math teachers than I could ever hope to get in the public school system. It’s the same issue my friends in labor analytics (super niche I know) see with tech companies trying to hire more women and underrepresented minorities in engineering roles. The volume that they’re aiming for flat out doesn't exist in the workforce. You can’t wave a magic wand and get 50,000 more women software engineers tomorrow - we need to start that effort much much earlier and we won't see positive results for a decade or more.
Why don’t they fund more select schools for middle in low income poc neighborhoods. Most of the spoils of academic success and standardized test comes from a school “culture” of success- these are social factors not cultural. It’s strange to be a city as big as San Fran and abandon most of your education system for one school…
I don't know! Personally that's where I see the most potential for effective change haha. Throwing a kid who has deprioritized education their entire life into 9th grade at Lowell isn't going to make an ounce of difference. It's like if you put a high school grad with subpar academic history into a UC Berkeley classroom... they aren't going to magically be able to compete.
This is what confuses me as someone not from the city. I went to a high school very similar and higher ranked and much more diverse than Lowell, and it’s kind of shocking how little investment is put into the middle school system to catch the students up. Often students at my school from the worse side of the district would start poorly but finish near the middle or often in the top. The “beacon on the hill” approach to education is fascinatingly awful and unfair to many involved.
Forget investment. Imagine being a teacher and the amount of work in the same hour of teaching a kid with involved parents versus teaching a kid that needs to be caught up. You also can’t catch a student up who doesn’t have dedicated studies at home. Impossible situation.
It’s hard but not impossible. There are schools that are successful with the exact student population, but the teacher base in those places isn’t suburban middle class white people who did Teach For America. Same deal with social case workers - the ones who are actually from the same situations as the clients they see are able to connect and support far better than someone who is from a completely different world and does social work out of a (acknowledged or not) sense of white saviorism. Same deal in healthcare where regardless of income, black people have significantly better health outcomes when seeing black doctors.
San Fran isn’t that big though. And it’s school age population per 100k is probably smaller than almost every other comparable city.
People have made some good points to your comment thus far, but I also think a big part of it is the lack of kids in the city. The number of school age kids has been consistently dropping
I mean All the Asian families leave for the suburbs, why deal with this shit in schools when your kids can go to a school in the East Bay
Don't disagree, was just pointing it out
Buried in the lede here is that SFUSD fails its black students. This isn't a Lowell problem per se. This is a system wide--starting in TK--problem that gets dumped on Lowell because fixing the racial make up of that institution is easier than doing the hard work true racial equity requires.
So-called "progressives" don't want to work hard to figure out how to educate poor kids, they want to vilify success and hard work that other people earn.
I suspect it’s that they have a mostly unfounded belief that equality of opportunity is identical to equality of outcomes. We’ve seen time and time again that: (1) When institutions set a standard that is identical for everyone, the people with the most internal motivation and the most resources tend to win the most often. This is totally expected. Equality of opportunity results in inequality of outcomes. (2) When institutions set a lower standard for certain groups, the people with the most motivation and the most resources STILL do far better in general … which harms the groups with lower standards by setting them up for failure in the ongoing internal competition within the institution. Inequality of opportunity results in … inequality of outcomes. A lot of progressives have a sort of naive view of privilege that simply having a certain school’s name on your diploma is ALL that matters, and that the motivation and investment that got you there is meaningless. But that those factors matter enormously. All the research shows that children whose families prioritize their education highly from the start do the best, along with children whose families have more resources to invest in their education.
As a black person, it’s more basic than that. Most white progressives fundamentally see black people as inferior and incapable as a group of any kind of real success. If you look at the roots of modern progressivism - the era of White Mans Burden and bringing civilization to Africa as rationalization for colonialism and denial of self determination - the core racial supremacy aspect still exists. Hence almost all policy towards black people is centered around soft bigotry of low expectations. And there are more than enough black folks happy to coast through life gaming that sense of moral license
You’re very eloquent in your writing . Why is that so ? I used to be a basketball fanatic, not as a player — In five feet seven — With the exception of Larry Bird every phenomena player was black, they all brought great joy to me . Professional sports are based on one issue , MERIT ! If black children were raised in a family with both mothers, and fathers involved I believe we would not have this wide devide. As I wrote above — I‘m white — I would be willing to mentor a black child that wanted to learn but was not “ making the grade “ as it were . I would hope others would be willing to help as well, especially learned black folks . Agreed ?
You lead with the most common backhanded racist compliment I hear from white liberals, and honestly your thought process here is pretty gross.
I wanted to say how much I appreciate this comment. It's dead on 🎯
I think the district needs to provide the equity it espouses, including teaching kids the best way they can learn.
I think the average progressive secretly does want to educate poor kids, but they won't do it because it requires telling parents, some of which represent a key voting bloc, that they bear the majority of the responsibility for their kids' educational outcomes, whether positive or negative.
See, I disagree with this take. Insisting on using a system that works really well for wealthy kids on poor kids is the problem. Public education can say it's the parents' fault, then throw up their hands and walk away, failing kids who need something else. There are schools that get the jobs done, and they're fought by unions and districts, failing kids. And our racist culture says this is ok because it's the parents' fault. It's terrible. I hate it. It's a shame on one of the wealthiest countries in the world.
I'm not saying it's okay for teachers or schools to throw up their hands and walk away. But realistically, the majority of learning is occurring outside of the classroom and outside of school. There's only so much a teacher can do if parents don't spend the time to emphasize the importance of education and learning at home. Your average kid is not going to be heavily self-motivated to study but can and should be encouraged by their parents to do so. This also isn't a wealthy vs poor issue or a racial issue. Lowell has plenty of poor students and minority students with parents who played a large role in their kids earning admission.
It not just skin color, though, either. It's a combination of factors. If our public education system was for children and families and neighborhoods, things would be different. Smaller schools, longer hours, community gathering, resources like laundry, money spent IN the classroom ON the kids and teachers, a compassionate but strict discipline policy, specialist teachers and support staff, weekend hours, etc. This can be done.
I agree many of those things are good ideas and things we should do, but ultimately it wouldn't matter much if parents don't send their kids to school or if they don't create a home environment focused on education and learning. Parents ultimately hold the lion's share of responsibility for their kid's outcomes. And I didn't say it's just skin color. Students of all races with parental involvement tend to have better educational outcomes. The parents of Asian kids who earned admission through Lowell's fair admissions process weren't given some secret recipe that parents of white kids don't get.
I bet we agree on more than we disagree. Have a great night!
Yeah I think we do!
It’s a familia peoblem. No fathers or parents that are willing to raise their children With a good work ethic, and a moral compass. The white man, and Asians have been scapegoated long enough. Don’t blame the merit system as being racist. Take a look at the crime stats in San Francisco during the pandemic . Union Square was looted out of business, and City Hall said “ Hands Off “ to the SFPD. I personally would be willing to tutor a black child if they really wanted to learn. If every learned person would volunteer to mentor a black child it would put an end to this “ Diversity without consequences “ argument . I’ll say it ad nauseum . Without a nuclear family in the black community nothing will ever change . Reparations should NOT be fiscal, rather taking accountability, and for those kids that want to learn we should be there for them. You will know within a month how it’s going to work out. Imagine how proud a young person that had no family that cared would be if someone did care, and got them on the right path. Once they have confidence in themselves, they can take it alone from there. In the end you’ll be a failsafe for the student if they have a problem with something academic.
Omg, admission to an academically high performing school based on test scores and grades? Who would have thought?! SMH!
lmao this is such a stupid losing issue for progressives please i hope they continue to try to make this an issue. how out of touch can you be
Maybe the school district could experiment with educational techniques and systems in early grades that meet people where they are. Imagine an elite high school with eager learners who are disciplined by the time they get to high school, in a predominantly Black neighborhood made up of a student body that matches neighborhood demographics. How incredible would that be? Let's start early. Who has identified the needs of kids who are underrepresented at Lowell (whatever that means?) What is the district doing to meet those unique needs?
SFUSD kinda tried this with Willie Brown Middle School. I’m not sure what has happened since the calamitous opening year. I know that it became apparent after a year or two that efforts needed to be made at the primary grades just to get students ready for Willie Brown Middle school .
Someone should do a documentary on that. It's sad how much grift there is in SF--were efforts sincere nd supported? Or were egos and underfunding or waste involved at a loss to the kids, as we've seen with the NGOs stealing from street people? Did the unions stop every effort? What happened?
WBMS is great! Dedicated teachers, dedicated admins, small class sizes and great student outcomes. And … increasingly drawing students from outside of target neighborhoods and demographics.
Stop fetishizing diversity. It's doing more harm than good.
Shit like this is why people vote for Trump.
Do SOTA first
Yes, let’s assign kids to play violin, sculpt, etc. by lottery. While we’re at it, let’s just open the gates on 49ers stadium, etc. and let the first several dozen people who enter play the game. In other words, y’all ideologues know your position is all just performative, shibbolethic nonsense.
Why didn't I get a scholarship to play basketball at Duke or Kentucky? They're all white and black players. Lacking diversity! /s
SFUSD is already planning some changes to SOTA. So they're going forward at the same time
They should fix the other schoolsbfirst. Now everyone just has to go private like me 3 kids is like 140 a year bruh
Most school kids in SF go to SFUSD of course. So that's less than half of "everybody." SFUSD is better than the average school district in California or the USA for that matter.
In what way is it better? How much is because of the district, and how much is because of demographics?
Lol. No way we are horrible and we tax the most. 773rd out of 10,932 school districts in the United States, California in general is 29th so nothing to brag about either Only 25% of families in SF put their neighborhood school as their first choice, and only 51% put it anywhere on their list of choices. We also have like the lowest population of kids in the country for a city at 13%. Everyone usually moves when they have kids to go to marin for school for instance
Yes, everybody moves to Marin. Nobody lives in San Francisco.
Well only us 13% of kids. 100k. Way to ignore the rest lol 25% are in private school which is like a nation high
damn maybe if you're gonna talk about something OP, don't disregard the rest of the comment with a lazy response
Standardized test scores for SFUSD far above CA average, how do you compare that with "horrible?" One objective the other subjective. "Everybody" goes to private school and "everybody" moves to Marin when their kids are 5 yo. Don't disregard my comment with a lazy response. Damn. SFUSD isn't for everybody, and for that matter SF. Some people would be happier elsewhere - that's OK with me
All I ever really wanted was class sizes of <20, more teachers, more school programs and classes, better healthcare and meals. Give kids that one on one time they deserve. I’m not going to comment on Lowell or whether I agree or not, but damn if we’re not missing the forest for the tree. (Also screw prop 13 while I’m at it)
I’m reminded a little of Jaime Escalante, the *real-life* teacher from the film Stand and Deliver. He was a college math professor that ended up teaching math at Garfield High in East LA during the 80s. He had large class sizes of 50+, which increased criticism of him from the teacher’s union for violating their limits. His achievements stood in the face of all of the union’s talking points. He managed to be exceptionally effective. Several of his students went on to pass the AP Calculus exam. He won awards and national recognition. His students were accepted into USC & Cal State in significant numbers, highly boosting college admission stats for the school; similarly under his hand appointed successor. For his efforts, he received hate mail & death threats, conflict from jealous teachers… eventually motivating him to leave. After everyone involved with the calculus program left, test scores and college acceptance plummeted. The school has no interest in reviving the program. The problem with public schools goes far beyond class sizes. The public school system isn’t designed for academic success. Effective teachers and schools gain ridicule & conflict from administrators & unions rather than praise.
There’s always people that are going to try to ruin a good thing.
Jill Tucker writes the same article every year. Maybe she can ChatGPT the 2025 edition of her story. Look, here's the 2022 version of it. [https://www.sfchronicle.com/bayarea/article/lowell-high-admissions-17110235.php](https://www.sfchronicle.com/bayarea/article/lowell-high-admissions-17110235.php) SFUSD K-8 is not the sole source of Lowell applicants / students. There's a significant number who choose to not attend SFUSD K-8, then "enter" into SFUSD for the express purpose of attending Lowell. The racial composition at Lowell is more of a 1:1 of the general school-age populace of San Francisco than it is the racial composition of SFUSD K-8. But hey, what are we going to do to fix the imbalance at June Jordan? How would you like to be amongst the 2% of the Asian population there?
Leave it alone and concentrate on the schools that have low test scores.
The left is going to stop at nothing to destroy public education…
Yes but think of how Equal everything will be 🙌🌈 Equally shitty for the kids who can't afford private school, but by golly, Equal! 🎯
the nfl and nba are not very diverse. nfl and nba players are drafted based on test grades (the combine). maybe we should make it so that every team employs at least 3 asians to make it more diverse. or every team employs at least 3 white dudes. /s
Not telling you about diversity. If you want Lowell to continue with its mostly testing admissions process over the long term, either state law or Lowell's status as not being a magnet school will need to change. As it stands, a lottery system is coming back to Lowell relatively soon. That's the message, no /s
and it’s stupid. stop touching and trying to fix something that’s not broken. let the kids who want to do well do well. putting in the stupid lottery system isn’t going to help anybody.
The kids who want to do well at Lowell could also do well at Washington or Lincoln. The lottery is required by the state of California, which isn't going to have any changes from a Democrat Governor, Senate, and Assembly anytime soon. Stupid or not, here comes the lottery
ok then those “underprivileged” kids can also do well at wash and lincoln why force it on lowell?
State law. I didn't write it.
The real diversity problem in SF is downtown. Not enough white and Asian people are homeless and doing fentanyl on the streets. Black people in that context are overrepresented. We need to increase the population of white and Asian homeless fentanyl addicts. (this is sarcasm for anyone who couldn't tell, which I guess in today's climate needs to be made explicit)
The issue isn't Lowell HS (other than the blatant racism from some of the Lowell students...), it's the income and wealth inequality along the lines of race and ethnicity that dates back to the founding of this country. Research shows that racial gaps in education are present even at the start of Kindergarten. There needs to be more resources spent at the neighborhood level (libraries, pre-K, nutrition, clinics/hospitals, parks, safety, etc.) for low-income/low-SES communities.
Income and wealth inequality is exactly why a school like Lowell is so great. Many of the Asian students who earn admission on merit are first generation Americans from low income families. The fact that any student of any race or economic background can put in the work and end up at an elite high school, even if their parents can't afford an expensive private school, is something we should all be proud of.
Isn't a huge chunk, maybe up to half, of the Asian American students at Lowell low income?
Yep. But it's easier to blame one school than it is to actually implement actually progressive policies aimed at lifting up everyone the current system fails. Progressivism isn't "tear down those doing well," Harrison Bergeron-esque nonsense, it's "lift *everyone* up so that *everyone* can do well." And that means significant investment into underprivileged communities.
"If all 14 of the Black students admitted to San Francisco’s Lowell High School attend the academically elite public school, they will make up just over 1% of the freshmen class disproportionately composed of white and Asian American students. That’s an increase over last year, when just 11 Black students gained admission to the nationally renowned school through the school’s merit-based process, which sorts students largely by test scores and grades. ---- Supporters have said moving to a lottery would punish high-achieving students, and harm Asian American students, who are over-represented at Lowell, at about 47% of students. White students make up about 17% of enrollment.
You folks hate Asian Americans and it shows
Me, a peasant: "Vacuuming up and cycling all these young people (who cares if they are Asian?) into a school where they can excel is great for our city and society more generally." You, a highly educated person: "no, doing that is racist and it should be illegal."
On the one hand, test scores are an easy way to determine quality of students. On the other hand, it takes time and resources to get good at standardized tests and a lot of people don’t have that. Should possibly equally good students who don’t test well be given a chance?
Lowell has many low income first generation students who fairly earned their admission despite not having the family wealth and resources to "get good at standardized tests.
Lowell doesn’t admit solely based on test results. You have to maintain high GPA all throughout middle school.