...I had questioned myself about the ways in which a book can be infinite.
I could think of nothing other than a cyclic volume, a circular one.
—Jorge Luis Borges, "The Garden of Forking Paths"
The most significant ideological development since the Enlightenment does not have a poetic self-name. For a short while, some of us were nerdily hoping for the epic "JEDI" to stick, but it swiftly self-rejected. The widely accepted "Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion" or "DEI" does not cut it: it is too dry, repetitive, and uninformative. Suitably, while the principles of the movement have been stated, its tools remain unclear. Attempts to uncover them, or impulses to question them when uncovered, or just instances of being oblivious to their existence were met with resistance. In it, the movement showed features of both conventional Puritanism and an entirely new religion.
To convey the uncertainty stated above, we will use the capital sigma (Σ) as a substitute for "DEI": the former is the only letter of the Greek alphabet that never had an alternative meaning as a number, and it was conjectured that in ancient Greece, Σ was a symbol for an unknown quantity.
And, instead of decoding the inner workings of the Σ movement, we will try to directly foresee the outcome of its policies. To this end, we will perform a case study, where one focuses on a particular object and, in doing so, attempts to infer the common features among a broader class of similar objects. Under our microscope, we will place the Specialized High School Admissions Test (SHSAT) that has been used as the entrance exam at the Bronx High School of Science (New York City, NY) for decades, and it is in place today. Currently, the Bronx School of Science features 8 Nobel Prize winners among its alumni and counting. We will also briefly look at the admission procedures at the John D. O'Bryant School of Mathematics and Science (Boston, MA); those undergo reforms as we speak. Both schools are specialized high schools with concentration in STEM (science, technology, engineering, and mathematics).
Here is what we found:
Σ policies endanger national security. The US is currently executing a transition to a mathematical-knowledge-based defense. The latter includes quantum technologies, artificial intelligence, and quantum artificial intelligence at their intersection. It is conceivable that in twenty years or so, artificial intelligence brains with, potentially, quantum nodes will be given full strategic control over military conflicts. We better have one of these brains by then. However, if the current situation with the technologically simpler and, hence, better developed quantum communications is any guide, we are not in good shape: while the US can send a quantum-encrypted signal over only a dozen kilometers, our adversaries can already quantum-communicate between the space and the Earth.
Why is that?
In the latest available Mathematical Literacy assessment, a part of PISA 2018 assessment, the US is measurably below 30 countries worldwide and its results are lower than the OECD (Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development) average. The percentage of high performers in the US is 8%, against 44% in China. The past and recent, Σ-inspired K-12 reform proposals, those that call for suppression of gifted and talented programs, acceleration, and tracking, don't help.
Reforms in the world of specialized high schools are more recent, but they are no less consequential. In 2019, the New York City Independent Budget Office performed a simulation for the outcome of the Σ-inspired reforms of the admission rules, proposed by the previous[*] New York City administration. The simulation showed that if in 2017 the SHSAT admission had been abolished, none of the lowest 500 mathematics proficiency scoring incoming students (i.e. 9.5% of the total enrollment) would have been proficient in mathematics. This is to be compared with the 98.2% mathematics proficiency rate for the same subgroup of the actually admitted 2017 class. The Bronx High School of Science (remember 8 Nobel Prizes?) is one of these schools.
Had the New York City its way, could the incoming class of 2017 fully contribute to our quantum artificial intelligence capability?
Unlike the previous administration, the new[*] NYC Mayor emerged as an unequivocal supporter of the SHSAT tests and the strictly merit-based selection procedures in general... incidentally, concurrently and in unison with the Nobel Prize decision body. And yet, will they last? To our knowledge, New York City is the only place in the country where specialized schools are guaranteed to maintain merit-based admission rules. Elsewhere, the entrance exam procedures have been, recently, altered, all the way to being replaced by a lottery.
Implications of the educational Σ policies for the national defense are already visible. An unofficial survey that we conducted in March of 2021 showed that a typical proportion of US high school diploma holders among scientists in a quantum startup ranges from 10 to 20%. This figure is even lower for the engineers. Should a tilt of one or another geopolitical axis occur, 80–90% of our quantum workforce may disappear overnight. And then, the aforementioned mishap with the quantum communications will transmogrify from the unexpected into the inevitable; the progress in development of the quantum brains will suffer no less.
Σ policies discriminate. According to the New York City Independent Budget Office simulation, described above, if the plans of the previous NYC administration had been brought to effect in 2017, 51.4% of the Asian students who were actually admitted that year, would have been denied admission. Not unrelatedly, a similar trend exists in higher education. Both phenomena have a potential of making the US unattractive for foreign talent. Given the fact that in 2015, foreign students comprised 55% of the US STEM PhD student body, the "discrimination" item may soon be safely merged with the "national security" item above.
Σ policies hurt the very minorities they purport to protect, for three reasons at least. One is obvious: for many African-American applicants to the Bronx School of Science, the school constitutes the only affordable path to solid, deep, and rigorous science and mathematics knowledge. Students in poverty, those who could not afford a private school or enrichment after school programs, constituted 50.4% of the students of the 2017 incoming class in the NYC specialized schools. However, if the SHSAT had been abolished, the program of study would have had to be adjusted, to accommodate about 10% of the class who did not know mathematics at all: the quality of instruction would have been jeopardized as a result. The possibility of students in poverty being lost to our future quantum artificial intelligence workforce may also soon push the "hurt, not protect" item towards the "national security" point above, similarly to the "discrimination" item before it.
Another reason Σ policies work against the minorities is somewhat unexpected. One would think that a specialized school where admission test preparation program is so strong that admission demographic figures come close to the city-wide numbers would be supported by the Σ movement. Wrong. At the John D. O'Bryant School of Mathematics and Science in Boston, the incoming class of 2017 had 35% of African-Americans against 32% in the Boston Public School system. Every single student was selected via a merit-based city-wide competition, many benefitting from the intense, city-funded preparation classes. And yet, starting from 2022, Boston Public Schools will introduce ZIP-code-based quotas that are expected to interfere with the merit-based admission process. This not just trying to fix a thing that is not broken: it is breaking a functioning, merit-based, high-standards, demographically balanced system that was there for everybody's benefit.
The example above brings us to the third reason Σ policies are hurtful. Scientific knowledge and science per se, in all their strength and beauty, belong to every race and any gender. SHSAT tests are not an instrument of segregation. Mathematics is not a Western invention. Gaussian distribution is not racist. Stating otherwise signals to the members of the underrepresented groups that science is not for them. These children will then risk being deprived from the joy of the scientific pursuit and the discovery that follows... And "yes", you guessed it, they will also be lost for the national defense.
...
Back to New York, its new Mayor's plan regarding the Bronx High School of Science and other NYC specialized schools is to open new selective schools and affordable SHSAT preparation programs in the underserved communities, while upholding the rule of merit in admissions and maintaining the high standards in instruction. As the title of a piece cited several times above says: "Don't Scrap the Test, Help Black Kids Ace It".
...
There are other special letters out there. The first letter of the Hebrew alphabet, Aleph (א) was also used as a numeral 1; besides, it is the first letter in the Hebrew word for "truth". Likewise, there are other, boringly traditional sets of principles out there, the framework of " Merit, Fairness, and Equality" or "MFE" in particular. א could stand for those. But should it? The old-fashioned "Enlightenment" may just suffice.
[*] (as of midnight on January 1, 2022)
Maxim Olchanyi is a Professor of Physics at the University of Massachusetts Boston, a Fellow of the American Physical Society, and a recipient of the UMass Boston Chancellor's Award for Distinguished Scholarship. Alioscia Hamma is an Associate Professor of Physics at the University of Massachusetts Boston.
Yes!