Comment on Does the USA have gifted schools or was Spider-Man Homecoming lying?
queerlilhayseed@piefed.blahaj.zone 1 day ago
They definitely still exist: https://magnet.edu/
I don’t have much firsthand experience with them but there’s a known stereotype that, if an influential person wants their kid in one, they can find a way, even though it’s supposed to be strictly merit based. I believe most of them accept a certain percentage of poor kids, whether because there are some people in the school system who believe in what they’re doing, or to maintain the illusion of fair play I couldn’t speculate. I’ve known some people who went to one and they didn’t seem to have benefited immensely from the privilege, though they generally seemed positive about them, the few times we discussed it.
Grail@multiverse.soulism.net 1 day ago
My girlfriend’s girlfriend says that link is rich neoliberal propaganda, and 100% of the spots go to rich kids. She actually said there’s overwhelming evidence against the idea that a poor person could go to a magnet school through smarts alone, and that the only reason I was continuing to disagree with Her is to save face for earlier having been wrong about Spider-Man Homecoming’s plausibility.
queerlilhayseed@piefed.blahaj.zone 1 day ago
Well, I won’t deny that that site is 100% propaganda, I was just checking that they were still around. I don’t know how evidence that a poor person couldn’t go to a magnet school would be validated, but that doesn’t comport with my limited experience. I have been aware of children being at magnet schools whose parents didn’t strike me as particularly wealthy or influential. Mostly fringey-artsy types whose kids wanted to go to the artsy school, or perhaps whose parents wanted that. We weren’t close enough friends that if they’d been secretly wealthy I’d have known about it, necessarily, but they really don’t strike me as the type to be able to arrange a backdoor deal to get their kid into a magnet school.
IDRK, but my observations lead me to believe that it’s more similar to what elite colleges do, i.e. bring in enough rich kids to keep the gravy train running but also just enough poor kids to prove their equality bona fides, rather than being 100% a paper mill.