I assume Steve would refer to them as "melatonists."

Illegitimi non carborundum.

Loved their music.

Didn't they do a cover of A White Shade of Pale?

It's the end of the world as we know it, and I feel fine

"you would be hard put to tell someone with 110 IQ from someone with 100, and someone with 100 from someone with 90 IQ. "

Often in social interactions, that's true. But the NCLB test results reflect the gaps.

"and anyone within that range should be able to learn to read well"

Why do you think someone with 90 IQ should be able to learn to read "well"? "Well" isn't the standard here, people with 90 IQ's are being expected to read the same as people with IQ's above average IQ's.

"shouldn't be denied the opportunity to achieve mastery of the skill.  Murray is essentially claiming that 100 IQ is already hopelessly stupid."

Murray doesn't want to deny opportunities to anyone, and he isn't calling anyone, let alone people with 100 IQ's, stupid.

people with 90 IQ's are being expected to read the same as people with IQ's above average IQ's

Are they expected to write as well, too?

Anyway, that's an artifact of NCLB being designed to fail.  Setting the standard too high, and then insisting that even those with mental disabilities should meet them is hardly reasonable.

Someone with 90 IQ is down at the lowest edge of normal intelligence, but they aren't so stupid as to be ineducable.  

he isn't calling anyone, let alone people with 100 IQ's, stupid.

Murray just thinks we shouldn't waste any effort on them.

He calls the idea that educational outcomes can be improved "romantic."  The kindest interpretation of that statement is that right now, we are at the optimum point, and every child is receiving exactly enough (or perhaps too much) education.  The less kind interpretation is that effort spent on education is wasted, since children's educational performance can't be improved by it.  Both are absurd positions.  Some school systems do better than others, so obviously, there is something that can be done, either right or wrong.  Children cannot be educated above their ability, but the can be educated below their ability, and it's obvious that there are places in the United States where that is happening.

""Murray just thinks we shouldn't waste any effort on them"

He doesn't go into it in this essay, but he actually thinks more should be done for lower IQ students, just not more of the same.

"The kindest interpretation of that statement is that right now, we are at the optimum point, and every child is receiving exactly enough (or perhaps too much) education."

He doesn't think that at all. If you might try reading the linked essay. Murray writes:

"For the good of our children, educational romanticism needs to collapse, and quickly. Its effects play out in the lives of young people in devastating ways. The fourth-grader who has trouble sounding out simple words and his classmate who is reading A Tale of Two Cities for fun sit in the same classroom day after miserable day, the one so frustrated by tasks he cannot do and the other so bored that both are near tears. The eighth-grader who cannot make sense of algebra but has an almost mystical knack with machines is told to stick with the college prep track, because to be a success in life he must go to college and get a B.A. The senior with terrific SAT scores gets away with turning in rubbish on his term papers because to make special demands on the gifted would be elitist. They are all products of an educational system that cannot make itself talk openly about the implications of diverse educational limits."

When I went to school, we had student tracking by ability.  I find it implausible that it is no longer practiced, except in school districts that are too impoverished to afford it.

I agree, I even thought about putting the observations you make in the diary.  

Well, that's the thing. Whatever way you cut it and whatever magic political labels you put on it, the American public educational system is an utter failure over the past generation. But where is Murray going with this relatively un-controversial observation?

It is easy to buy small plaster models of what you think life is like.

...the American public educational system is an utter failure over the past generation

That's like saying there's no such thing as the internet, there's just a bunch of computers that talk to each other.

It is easy to buy small plaster models of what you think life is like.

There is no national network of schools in the US. Each state has its own standards for curricula and each city and town runs its own schools.

It's silly for you to claim that "the American public educational system is an utter failure" when there are many, many excellent schools around.

Your refusal to accept a larger understanding of the concept of a system is odd but not surprising I suppose.

It is easy to buy small plaster models of what you think life is like.

There is no monolithic system. What, did you go to public school?

No, zyx, there was no monolithic system...

...until the NCLB legislation de facto created one. Now since the success or failure of each school is basically measured by the same fucked up standards nationwide, curriculum standards (aka "teaching the test") are becoming remarkable similar state to state.

{Insert amusing quotation here}

Now since the success or failure of each school is basically measured by the same fucked up standards nationwide, curriculum standards (aka "teaching the test") are becoming remarkable similar state to state

Also, The idea that all schools are performing badly is absurd. (That's the only thing that can be meant by "the American public educational system is an utter failure.") Somehow, for instance, the local schools  where I live are doing a fine job - turning out a student body that has higher SAT scores than ever, and sends 90% + to college. That despite NCLB and whatever other systemic calamity that you can dream up.

From our long-ago days in plastic chat, I think I used used to know where it is you are located, but memory fails me.

Wherever it is, your comment about 90% of the high school kids going on to college leads me to believe that it it must be someplace far more socio-economically - and perhaps racially - homogeneous than where I live in the fringe 'burbs of Charlotte, NC. The public schools are doing fine here too - for white middle class kids. But 35% of the students in my school system are poor, and the vast majority of that percentage is either black or latino. And nearly 60% of those kids are not meeting even the ridiculously modest standards of NCLB.

So what is happening here is that an incredibly disproportionate amount of time and resources are being spent on trying to improve the scores of 20% of the students as a whole, while the other 80% literally sit around and twiddle their thumbs, wondering what all the fuss is about.

There are practice tests and pre-tests and incentives given out for tiny score improvements and pep rallies for god's sake. My youngest was scared to death the first time he was tested. He saw all the hype and build-up and still having that near total trust in the truthfulness of adults, he figured the tests he was about to take must be nightmarishly hard. He was utterly shocked when he actually took them, finishing each part in less than a third of the allotted time.

I don't have any hard data, zyx, but I have tons of anecdotal evidence from elementary and middle school teachers I know who all say that they do not have any flexibility any more. They teach the tests. That's all.

Murray's main point - and mine - is that a lot of the kids that fall in that 20% (in the case of my district) simply are not going to do any better because they cannot. Regardless of what Shrub and Congress mandated, we can't all move to Lake Wobegon.

{Insert amusing quotation here}

The idea that all schools are performing badly is absurd. (That's the only thing that can be meant by "the American public educational system is an utter failure.")

So you acknowledge, then, that the manner in which the various local communities in America educate their children can be collectively referred to as a "system" in a discussion about the nature of childhood schooling in our society?

It is easy to buy small plaster models of what you think life is like.

The idea that all schools are performing badly is absurd. (That's the only thing that can be meant by "the American public educational system is an utter failure.")

Now that was an easy takedown, wasn't it?  If there's one good public school, you can award yourself the victor's laurel.

Romanticists have romantic outlooks, meaning "without a basis in fact, fanciful, fictitious, or fabulous; not practical; visionary or quixotic; as a romantic scheme." Therefore I don't find "edcuational romanticism" or calling education reformers "romantics" vague, or deceptive (why must turning an original phrase mean a "focus group" was involved? I find that an odd criticism, and most of your complaints seem to be more about things which exist in your head, and not with what Murray wrote). The reason he talks of teachers and politicians is that both are complicit. Should he have only criticized teachers, and left Bush's NCLB out of it? Again, that's an odd complaint. It's true Murray often discusses "natural intellectual limits", but this is only because no one else is willing to address this important aspect of reality.