Is the article wrong on the facts? That is the only thing that matters.

Many Hacker News readers are in the same demographic that would be in contention for National Merit honors, so it seems pretty “on brand” for HN.

This line in particular made me do a double-take:

> with most TJ students in a protected class of “gifted” students, most of them racial minorities, many with disabilities, and most coming from immigrant families whose parents speak English as a second language.

That is, at best, incredibly misleading, if not outright wrong. The "racial minority" here is Asian, which makes up ~70% of the school population (whereas the school district as a whole is 30% Asian; the population of blacks and Latino are collectively ~4%, whereas the school district is 30%). This aren't disadvantaged poor families--at least some of the Asians come from families specifically moving to the high-cost-of-living area to try to place their kids at TJ, and I suspect a household income of $200k would put you in the bottom socioeconomic half at TJ. Note that none of the students are in ESL classes, and only ~2% are on reduced-price lunches, whereas the school district as a whole skews more like 20% and I think 30% for the latter.

So, in short, the student body at TJ largely isn't comprised of poor people who need every leg up they can get; it's comprised largely of people at the top of the socioeconomic ladder who are already walking on water.

(Disclosure: I did in fact attend this school.)

Um what. Last I checked Asians were definitely a racial minority in America. Saying they're not minorities because they're a majority of TJ is like saying Blacks aren't minorities because they're a majority in Harlem. It denies their lived experiences outside a very specific bubble.

I'm not saying that they're not a minority; I'm saying they're not a disadvantaged minority. And, in the larger context of TJ, there's an ongoing battle over the extremely low level of black and Hispanic population (which are largely disadvantaged) versus the extremely high level of Asian population.

Again, extremely narrow definition of advantage.

Are you serious? What do you know about the families? And what right do you have to dismiss our families as "advantaged" and thus deserving of having awards kept secret from us. This is the kind of two-faced callousness that has gotten the school into this trouble. Let me guess? You're also a member of the TJ Alumni Action Group, which has targeted our Asian families with racist stereotypes like the kind you are perpetuating.

This is the kind of racist, anti-Asian irrationality that made this principal think she could play God with kids' lives.

The conclusions drawn from the facts are the horseshit part.

This comes across as ad hominem-ish. Do their argument and allegation stand on their own or do they not?

The argument doesn’t stand on the merits.

They begin their article with the thesis that the school is “withholding awards” from Asian families.

When you read what actually happened, the school gave certificates to all student in mid November.

One parent is mad because the school didn’t separately notify the parent separately, and they didn’t do it “fast enough” so their kid could list it on an early college admission.

On its merits, the argument falls apart under analysis of the data.

I did not think that the point of the article is to complain about award withholding from Asian students.. although the attribution of race seems misplaced.

I thought the point was about the loss of meritocracy and the redefinition of what it means to fail. And grading work on a 50-100 scale.. you really don't think that's weird?

The focus of the article is on a parent complaining they didn’t get notified about a certificate their kid received.

No it's not. It's about a pattern of withholding merit information from parents and students for years.

How is it about the loss of meritocracy if the PSAT didn’t change and the awards didn’t change?