RealClearInvestigations' Picks of the Week
June17toJune23
Featured Investigation Where's the line between hard work and unfair advantage? Is it harder to see and draw that line in this era of identity politics? Richard Bernstein calls attention to such questions in an article for RealClearInvestigations that looks at a case in point: Asian Americans who excel on academic tests. Such diligent exemplars of America's melting pot have come to the fore since New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio announced plans to abolish the current race-blind, test-only system used to determine admission to the city's elite public schools, calling it a "monumental injustice." Right now only about 10 percent of the students earning places at top schools like Stuyvesant High School, the Bronx High School of Science and Brooklyn Tech are black and Hispanic, even though they make up two-thirds of the public school population. On the other hand, Asians, who make up 16 percent, earn about half the slots at the top schools. City schools Chancellor Richard A. Carranza has specifically focused on the widespread use of test prep classes as a symbol of the system's overall "unfairness." In fact, a majority of New York's test prep schools, Bernstein reports, are located in Asian neighborhoods. But many of these children come from modest means, Bernstein reports. They are not children of privilege gaming the system, but newcomers working to realize the American dream. Nevertheless, he writes, they do have one crucial advantage: … an intimate familiarity with what might be called the test culture. In their native countries, high-stakes standardized tests and assiduous, long-term, almost obsessive preparation for them are part of the national culture. In China today, the test is known as thegaokao, or the high exam. It's a national ritual, a rite of passage. Every year tens of millions of high school seniors take thegaokaofollowing years of preparation. Only the highest scorers will be admitted to the most prestigious institutions, like Peking University or Qinghua University in Beijing, or Fudan University in Shanghai. Similar tests also exist for entry to special elementary schools and middle schools. Chinese kids, in other words, take these tests starting when they are about 6 years old, and Chinese parents send them to special schools, tutors and coaches to prepare for them. … Chinese history is filled with lore of exceptionally bright poor boys from small villageswhopassed the exams, bringing glory to their families and home towns. Sometimes, according to these stories, the whole village would contribute to what would now be called the youngman's test prep. It's the Chinese equivalent of the American Horatio Alger legend, the born-in-a-log-cabin,rags-to-riches story. And today in New York, when the daughter of a nail salon worker and a restaurant dishwasher living in two cramped rooms in Chinatown gets into Stuyvesant or Bronx Science, she is in a sense reincarnating both the American and the Chinese dreams.
Read Full Article The Trump Investigations: Top Articles Republicans Suspect FBI Efforts to Set Up Trump Figures Washington Examiner Anti-Trump FBI Agent Strzok Says He's Willing to Testify WashingtonPost Does Obama-Clinton Email Misuse Explain Russiagate? AmericanGreatness Strzok Escorted Out of FBI Building, but Still Has Job Daily Mail Steele Visited State Dept. Shortly Before 2016 Election Daily Caller Meet Russian Web Guy Trying to Sow Discord in America McClatchy Other Noteworthy Articles and Series VA Hides Poor Nursing Home Ratings
USA Today/BostonGlobe
Nearly half of Department of Veterans Affairs nursing homes nationwide received the agency's lowest rankingin quality care reviews. The VA has long resisted disclosing this information,which shows its nursing homes scoring worse on average than their private sector counterparts on nine of 11 key indicators last year, including rates of anti-psychotic drug prescription and residents' deterioration. Company Donations of Overdose Antidote Were Close to Expiring
Stat
Remember the "Seinfeld" episode where Elaine sold the tops of muffins and, making a virtue out of ditching less-than-desirable inventory, donated the bottoms to the underwhelmed homeless? This article doesn't quite repeat the sitcom, but it rhymes. It reports on a company thathas donated more than 330,000naloxoneauto-injectorsused totreatopioid overdosessince 2014. The injectors have a shelf life of two years but, it turns out, many of the injectors donated to police, health workers, and nonprofits were four to 11 months from their expiration date. That, of course, does not mean the drug is suddenly ineffective. Yet people who receive medication from a charity program deserve, as one expert put it, "the same quality as anybody else." Overlooked Children Working America's Tobacco Fields
Atlantic
Advocacy groups estimate that between 300,000 to 400,000 children work in U.S. agriculture. This article focuses on migrant families laboring in the tobacco fields of North Carolina. Performed by children as young as seven, the work often leads to an array of health problems and educational deficiencies. It features a woman named Ingrid, who "began working in the fields when she was 13 in order to provide for her six-week-old son." Interior Secretary, Halliburton Boss Tied in Realty Deal
Politico
A foundation established by Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke and headed by his wife is playing a key role in a real-estate deal backed by the chairman of Halliburton, the oil-services giant that stands to benefit from any of the Interior Department's decisions to open public lands for oil exploration or change standards for drilling. States Ask Teens to ReportEach Other'sSuspicious Behavior
Vice
Less than a month after the mass shooting at a high school in Santa Fe, Texas, the state has unveiled a new app,iWatch, thatencourages students to report each other's suspicious behavior - online or offline - with just a few taps of a button. The tips are sent to the Texas Department of Public Safety's Intelligence and Counterterrorism Unit. Texas is part of a trend, as states across the country embrace smartphone technology, apps and social media surveillance in a bid to stop mass shootings before they happen. Study: No Proportional Race Disparity in Police Shootings
Washington Free Beacon
Black Americans are less likely to be shot by cops than white Americans in proportion to each group's rate of interaction with the police, according to a new study. Using each racial group's rates of homicide, violent crime, and weapons violations rather than each's percentage of the overall population, researchers found that whites are more likely to be shot. In what the study's authors called their "most damning result," they found "nonsignificant" anti-black disparity for cases where the victim was holding an object. Young Female Fundraisers Harassed by MenWithMoney
Huffington Post
The fundraisingprofession is dominated by young women blamelessy trying to get their hands on money from powerful men who often want to get their hands on them. About half of fundraisers in all fields reported experiencing sexual harassment, mostly at the hands of donors. And they often feel they have little recourse, since rebuking a benefactor in person risks losing access and money. Chain Migration Comes to Hazelton
City Journal
During the past two decades, poor Hispanics have fled New York City for the relative safety and comfort of Hazelton, Pa. This article documents of host of negative impacts including diminished tax revenues, plummeting real-estate values and a surge in demand for services. Last year the schools faced a $6 million deficit to fund a system whose high school registered a failing academic score for the 2016-17 school year. The Dark Side of the Orgasmic Meditation Company
Bloomberg
OneTaste is a sexuality-focused wellness education company based in the Bay Area that's best known for classes on "orgasmic meditation." Business took off after it was featured on the cover page of the New York Times Style section in 2009. But many who've become involved in its upper echelons describe a cult-like organization built on predatory sales techniques pushing members to ignore their financial, emotional, and physical boundaries in ways leaving them feeling traumatized. | 
