And the charge towards mediocrity accelerates

ABA council vote 20-1 to advance proposal permitting law schools to go test optional

For decades, budding law students have had to stare down the Law School Admission Test, or LSAT, a rigorous test of abilities in logic, analytical reasoning and reading comprehension.

Those days might be coming to an end.

An American Bar Association panel that accredits law schools issued a proposal Friday to make standardized tests optional for admission, a move that would follow a trend seen in undergraduate admissions offices and give schools more flexibility in how they select law students.

The accrediting council voted overwhelmingly to seek public comment on the proposal, which would eliminate the mandatory use of tests such as the LSAT or the GRE, which has been allowed at some schools in recent years.

Only one person on the 21-member body voted against advancing the proposal.

And this: Woke Medicine: A Prescription for Disaster

Free Beacon reviews “Take Two Aspirin and Call Me by My Pronouns” by Dr.Stanley Goldfarb, a nephrologist and associate dean for curriculum at the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania. I doubt Dr. Goldberg is long for that role, but before he goes, it’s worth noting this:

Goldfarb is at his best when he tackles two disturbing trends in medicine: the dumbing down of standards for entrance into medical schools and the capitulation of medical school curricula to woke posturing at the expense of rigorous clinical training. He sees how even the American Medical Association has engaged in an institutional effort to appear more equitable by attacking the very idea of merit. The AMA's recent master plan, for example, decries the "myth of meritocracy and other malignant narratives."

This is all about admitting and, worse, graduating, unqualified black students; no one is talking about lowering standards to accommodate Asians or Middle Eastern students. So maybe we should look beyond the “systemic racism” that seems directed solely at blacks, and look to that groups’ entire culture that’s producing an 85% illiteracy rate and a 75% illegitimacy rate among its student population. But those are difficult, perhaps intractable problems; it’s so much easier to attribute the failure to a single cause.

Goldfarb notes the irony of claims that medical schools and hospitals are awash in white supremacy; these are the same institutions that for decades have pursued affirmative action policies that hold minority applicants to lower standards than their white peers. "The inarguable reality is that Blacks are preferentially admitted to medical school. Once admitted, they are virtually guaranteed to graduate. And once graduated, they are likely to find training programs more than eager to accept them in the name of diversity," he writes. "Black students with a middling GPA in college and a 50ish percentile rank on the MCAT had a ninefold greater chance than White students. In other words, while only 20 percent of White applications with such mediocre grades and scores were admitted to medical school, 85 percent of comparable Black applicants were."

When minority students fail to achieve at levels considered "equitable" to students of other races, the standards are simply changed or dropped to achieve the desired outcome. When black medical students failed to qualify for Alpha Omega Alpha (the medical school society equivalent of Phi Beta Kappa, which inducts entrants based on academic achievement), woke scholars like Dr. Catherine Lucey at UCSF attacked the standards, claiming the "systems we use [for student evaluation] fail to take into account the extra work minorities are doing." What extra work is this? She cited, without evidence, "stressors" such as "low levels of racism that exist in our patients." As Goldfarb puts it, "If extra work and stressors were the criteria, young women who give birth during medical school would be automatic inductees."

Once accepted into medical school, students encounter far less rigorous training than in previous eras. Citing equity goals, many medical schools have moved from issuing grades to pass/fail assessments. A longtime educator himself, Goldfarb is concerned that "the science content of student education has been dramatically reduced. So has the range of clinical experience," which has "diminished the practical value of medical education."

And whatever you do, don’t fly, or you may end uo in a hospital staffed by pilot school dropouts

When a passenger realizes their 220,000 lb aircraft is barrelling toward the side of a mountain, they aren’t hoping the pilot occupying the cockpit is a diversity hire. Americans expect the best person for the job regardless of skin color or gender, but the Woke revolutionaries want consumers to focus on race and gender first.

Woke ideologues are requiring entire industries to commit to the three pillars – diversity, equity, and inclusion – for their hiring practices. Their plague-like manifesto (pushing racial and gender equity) is thrust upon workers and consumers, often to the detriment of both.

The New York Times published “The End of the All-Male, All-White Cockpit,” a piece focused on the emerging diversity among pilots in the U.S. commercial airline industry.

“Few women and people of color aspire to fly planes because they rarely see themselves in today’s flight decks. The cost of training and the toll of discrimination can be discouraging, too,” the outlet stated. “Pilots are in short supply, and if airlines want to make the most of the thriving recovery from the pandemic, they will have to learn to foster lasting change.”

The New York Times argued that the airline industry should use the pilot shortage to increase the diversity in their hires because historically, “airlines felt little pressure, from consumers or anyone else, to make it a more hospitable work environment.”

“Now there’s urgency for the industry to act,” the outlet stated.