Segregation making a comeback.

[Sean Renaud]

...and all of those good ideas produced the abysmal results it did- because?

First, it can be heavily debated if they produced abysmal results. I think taking a joke country and transforming it into a world Super Power, beating the US into space and to this day the remnants of your kingdom remain in the top ten of every important list is far from abysmal.

Second, there are a lot of things that go into every detail. Ishmael (and yourself by backing this up) are pursuing a a logical fallacy. The fact that such and such is something that Stalin or Hitler would be proud of is not a reason not to pursue it. Nor is the fact that George Washington or Martin Luther King would think an idea is awesome a reason why we should pursue it.

 

[gotsnowgotslush]

It is upsetting, to see poverty- stricken minority students get scorn, disrespect, and insults- from the paying students, in a school that was built for the minority students.

The paying students elbow the minority students aside. "Don't brush your cheap, worn- out clothing against my crisp, beautiful, pristine, expensive school uniform.We are dressed for success, loser! Don't touch my expensive new books, or my luxurious school binder, that is emblazoned with my private school's name and shield." We are better than you, even though we go to school in the same building. We are special. You are inferior"

The students get enough rejections from the outside world. Why make them feel lesser-than, inside a place that should be a haven and a refuge ?

 

[Amberchgo]

Chicago is one of the most segregated cities around. The 500+ deaths a year are mostly gang bangers shooting other gang bangers over drug disputes. 95% of it is contained on the West or South sides.

If you stay out of there, you are OK. It's all black on black or Latino on Latino crime. So that why Al and Louie and Barack and big Jesse don't show up and say things like ..."if I had a gang banger son ...."

 

[unregistered]

 

[4est_4est_Gump]

The problem is that it is easier to join a society approved group than work on yourself and become a true individual.

I didn't fail, they doomed me because I am a part-time lesbian, transgender, left-handed Chinese-African-Indian adoptee to a Red-State non-union family, so of course, I was held down by the man and Sarah Palin!

 

[4est_4est_Gump]

Reversity.

The Rev'rund Naught is in the pulpit.

 

[4est_4est_Gump]

In Kansas City, MO, Judge Clark ordered the schools desegregated and it solved nothing.

All he did was export crime and violence to the KC suburbs.

Maybe he should have forced white families to move somewhere other than Johnson County, KANSAS...

 

[Ishmael]

First, it can be heavily debated if they produced abysmal results. I think taking a joke country and transforming it into a world Super Power, beating the US into space and to this day the remnants of your kingdom remain in the top ten of every important list is far from abysmal.

Second, there are a lot of things that go into every detail. Ishmael (and yourself by backing this up) are pursuing a a logical fallacy. The fact that such and such is something that Stalin or Hitler would be proud of is not a reason not to pursue it. Nor is the fact that George Washington or Martin Luther King would think an idea is awesome a reason why we should pursue it.

First of all there was NO teachers union. Each and every student was tested as a child and shuffled off to the 'correct' training based on their aptitude. Oh, and non-Russian children stood very little chance of going anywhere unless they tested in the top 5%.

I will give you some kudos though for at least identifying the real problem........quality education.

I do not subscribe to the notion that merely achieving the "proper" racial and cultural balance is somehow going to translate into a quality education. We've tried that and it just doesn't work. And that is NOT a call for segregation on my part. Merely pointing out that forced desegregation did not translate into quality education.

There is a reason that in the large school districts that the 'for shit' school are staffed mostly with the incompetent and inexperienced teachers.

Ishmael

 

[Bry1313]

The public schools in Washington DC are the most expensive in the country, and they are the majority, yet 83% can't read.

Your post here shows that your reading comprehension s below an 8th grade level. The article did not say that 83% of students couldn't read. Do better.

 

[Sean Renaud]

First of all there was NO teachers union. Each and every student was tested as a child and shuffled off to the 'correct' training based on their aptitude. Oh, and non-Russian children stood very little chance of going anywhere unless they tested in the top 5%.

Well we aren't going to be shuffling them off to the 'correct' training based on aptitude. That's the Republican plan though they perfer the term "trade school for those to dumb for college. But K-12 given out equally is far from impossible.

I'm not sold exactly that non-white children stand a great chance of going anywhere now if they don't test in the top 5%. There are a lot of reasons around that some "good" others less "good" but either way I'm not seeing anything your pointing to that suggests we can't do it better.

I will give you some kudos though for at least identifying the real problem........quality education.

That was the problem listed in the article. I'm not completely sold that is the true problem and not a symptom but those were the boundaries listed.

I do not subscribe to the notion that merely achieving the "proper" racial and cultural balance is somehow going to translate into a quality education. We've tried that and it just doesn't work. And that is NOT a call for segregation on my part. Merely pointing out that forced desegregation did not translate into quality education.

I didn't make any mention of "proper" racial and cultural balance. That should have at best a minimal effect on education. There is something to be said for giving people of all walks appropriate roll models.

Forced desegregation worked just fine by the by. Our education problems are primarily an issue of funding and prestige not as you so delicately put it of coloreds in the class.

There is a reason that in the large school districts that the 'for shit' school are staffed mostly with the incompetent and inexperienced teachers.

Ishmael

Yeah. They are in piss poor neighborhoods and the better teachers can command better pay and go to better neighborhoods. As you gain the necessary skills you leave those neighborhoods and are replaced with the new low man on the totem pole.

Change the totem pole.

It's of course possible that a new problem will pop up in it's place but that seems to be a good place to start.

 

[Que]

First, it can be heavily debated if they produced abysmal results. I think taking a joke country and transforming it into a world Super Power, beating the US into space and to this day the remnants of your kingdom remain in the top ten of every important list is far from abysmal.

Second, there are a lot of things that go into every detail. Ishmael (and yourself by backing this up) are pursuing a a logical fallacy. The fact that such and such is something that Stalin or Hitler would be proud of is not a reason not to pursue it. Nor is the fact that George Washington or Martin Luther King would think an idea is awesome a reason why we should pursue it.

Labeling something a logical fallacy does not mean that the argument supported in a fallacious manner is invalid.

Pointing out that a system HAS been tried and failed isn't a fallacy.

"joke country' is what sort of a somber assessment?

I think the czars seemed to do fairly well in exploiting the people and resources they had available.. Re-allocating those people and resources did not appreciably raise the standard of living for the average peasant. Ditto China. Ditto Cuba. Soon to be seen: Ditto Venezuela.

Neither the US nor the USSR getting to space on the backs of German Jews really shows the superiority of our peoples or our systems of governance.

The USSR benefited greatly from the US having fairly open to the public manufacturing processes. Their espionage yielded far more cost effective results than their scientific endeavors. They, like any society have had and will continue to have their geniuses.

The fact that they (and most sane educational systems word-wide) chose to test students, and then allocate educational resources towards students with measurable aptitude does result in some efficiencies.

 

[unregistered]

 

[Ishmael]

Well we aren't going to be shuffling them off to the 'correct' training based on aptitude. That's the Republican plan though they perfer the term "trade school for those to dumb for college. But K-12 given out equally is far from impossible.

I'm not sold exactly that non-white children stand a great chance of going anywhere now if they don't test in the top 5%. There are a lot of reasons around that some "good" others less "good" but either way I'm not seeing anything your pointing to that suggests we can't do it better.



That was the problem listed in the article. I'm not completely sold that is the true problem and not a symptom but those were the boundaries listed.



I didn't make any mention of "proper" racial and cultural balance. That should have at best a minimal effect on education. There is something to be said for giving people of all walks appropriate roll models.

Forced desegregation worked just fine by the by. Our education problems are primarily an issue of funding and prestige not as you so delicately put it of coloreds in the class.



Yeah. They are in piss poor neighborhoods and the better teachers can command better pay and go to better neighborhoods. As you gain the necessary skills you leave those neighborhoods and are replaced with the new low man on the totem pole.

Change the totem pole.

It's of course possible that a new problem will pop up in it's place but that seems to be a good place to start.

Well herbal boy jr., way to partition. I can actually figure out which part of anything I post you are referring to without the 'barracks lawyer' parsing.

Close but no cigar on the teachers thing. They get more money because they are senior in the union and get to bid on their teaching assignments based on that seniority. Except for the incompetent teachers, the parents that actually care about their child's education get together and run those teachers out of the school on a rail.

Oh, and getting back to your "nationalization" of the nations schools. Just how would you achieve that? I can tell you up front that it won't be by any act of congress of any constitutional amendment. And any president that tried to pull that off with an executive order would start a revolution. His/her days in office would be numbered. And would it involve banning the teachers unions? It'd pretty much have to if you were really serious about getting results.

Ishmael

 

[Bry1313]

Yes, let's pick some more fly shit out of the pepper. For all practical purposes they can't read worth a shit.

Again, you are wrong. You don't know what "proficient" means regarding the test. You are again demonstrating your own inability to think at a high level.

 

[Que]

Your post here shows that your reading comprehension s below an 8th grade level. The article did not say that 83% of students couldn't read. Do better.

Scoring in the 50th percentile on a reading proficiency test means exactly what to you?

Student Dictionary (6th grade level)

pro·fi·cient
Pronunciation: prschwa-primarystressfish-schwant
Function: adjective
: very good at doing something especially through practice
synonym see SKILLFUL
- pro·fi·cient·ly adverb

So if your score is below F for reading skillfully, I would say you are NOT a skillful reader.

 

[Sean Renaud]

Labeling something a logical fallacy does not mean that the argument supported in a fallacious manner is invalid.

Pointing out that a system HAS been tried and failed isn't a fallacy.

"joke country' is what sort of a somber assessment?

I think the czars seemed to do fairly well in exploiting the people and resources they had available.. Re-allocating those people and resources did not appreciably raise the standard of living for the average peasant. Ditto China. Ditto Cuba. Soon to be seen: Ditto Venezuela.

Neither the US nor the USSR getting to space on the backs of German Jews really shows the superiority of our peoples or our systems of governance.

The USSR benefited greatly from the US having fairly open to the public manufacturing processes. Their espionage yielded far more cost effective results than their scientific endeavors. They, like any society have had and will continue to have their geniuses.

The fact that they (and most sane educational systems word-wide) chose to test students, and then allocate educational resources towards students with measurable aptitude does result in some efficiencies.

Yes it does. Your argument has no merit.

I did ask specifically by what measure precisely was it a failure?

Joke country is a fairly accurate discription of what Russia was up till that point. Similar to China until recently when they proved again that these practices can produce at least some degree of success.

I'm not sure what your point is about the average peasant but whatever.

Considering they didn't get there solely on the backs of German Jews of course it does.

Wow, funny how you see the quality in the soviet system.

I don't think that plan is entirely without merit either it's more a matter of at what point should these tests be given, what steps should be taken prior to tossing them in the shit bin yadda yadda are important as well.

 

[Que]

This shouldn't be necessary, but since I know which nit-pick is coming next:

No I didn't use the definition of "proficiency".

Because:

pro·fi·cien·cy
Pronunciation: prschwa-primarystressfish-schwan-semacron
Function: noun
Inflected Form(s): plural -cies
: the quality or state of being proficient

Was not very illuminating.

 

[Bry1313]

Scoring in the 50th percentile on a reading proficiency test means exactly what to you?

Student Dictionary (6th grade level)

pro·fi·cient
Pronunciation: prschwa-primarystressfish-schwant
Function: adjective
: very good at doing something especially through practice
synonym see SKILLFUL
- pro·fi·cient·ly adverb

So if your score is below F for reading skillfully, I would say you are NOT a skillful reader.

Ok, what is the metric for measuring proficiency at an 8th grade level?

 

[Que]

Yes it does. Your argument has no merit.

I did ask specifically by what measure precisely was it a failure?

Joke country is a fairly accurate discription of what Russia was up till that point. Similar to China until recently when they proved again that these practices can produce at least some degree of success.

I'm not sure what your point is about the average peasant but whatever.

Considering they didn't get there solely on the backs of German Jews of course it does.

Wow, funny how you see the quality in the soviet system.

I don't think that plan is entirely without merit either it's more a matter of at what point should these tests be given, what steps should be taken prior to tossing them in the shit bin yadda yadda are important as well.

By any measure. How about starvation?

China did not recently "-prove again hat these practices can produce at least some degree of success." they have proved that introducing a profit motive can produce some degree of success.

Peasants stayed peasants. I'm sure that doesn't interest you because people that dream of a communist utopia never picture themselves toiling in the field they are all sure that there cerebral talents will be needed in something white collar, preferably in charge.

No, I said nothing about quality in the Soviet system..in fact I alluded to ALL sane (non-US) educational systems.

Only in the US do we throw more and more money at the students with the least aptitude and desire to learn.

Compulsory attendance at schools is all about federal dollars and produces nothing of value. If the child and more to the point the child's parent is not vested in learning, fuck 'em.

 

[unregistered]

 

[Que]

Ok, what is the metric for measuring proficiency at an 8th grade level?

"Metric." You basically just asked what it the measuring graduations in the device used for measuring. Not "How many cups of flour does the recipe call for."

Words like that in education are not there to clearly define goals so that standards can be set and achieved.

They are there to obscure the failures in the educational system.

'Oh, no...It isn't that Johnny can't read...It is just that the "metrics" need re-calibrating."

Here is how I would test for an 8th grade reading level. I would sit the child with a couple of teachers in a quiet room. I would hand the child a newspaper and have him read out loud. If he struggles at all in the eighth grade with a 6th grade level USA Today, I would wonder why he is IN the eight grade.

 

[Sean Renaud]

Well herbal boy jr., way to partition. I can actually figure out which part of anything I post you are referring to without the 'barracks lawyer' parsing.

Close but no cigar on the teachers thing. They get more money because they are senior in the union and get to bid on their teaching assignments based on that seniority. Except for the incompetent teachers, the parents that actually care about their child's education get together and run those teachers out of the school on a rail.

Oh, and getting back to your "nationalization" of the nations schools. Just how would you achieve that? I can tell you up front that it won't be by any act of congress of any constitutional amendment. And any president that tried to pull that off with an executive order would start a revolution. His/her days in office would be numbered. And would it involve banning the teachers unions? It'd pretty much have to if you were really serious about getting results.

Ishmael

I parse it out for ease of reading. I don't ask that you do it back. Especially because we are on a site with people who'll happilly post walls of text that nobody reads.

You misunderstand (I have to assume intentionally) my point on teachers. Our overall quality is a result of low pay and lack of prestige for the vocation as a whole. The details are as you point out that good teachers get to pick choice assignments. So lower their ability to do that. I didn't get to pick where I was stationed in the military. I could make requests but lower that kind of thing. Even out the funding as well so the schools in the ghetto are funded every bit as well as the ones in Beverley Hills. The parents in Beverley Hills will still come from better educated parents more able to help them and able to hire tutors and the poor kids will still have two parents working full time who can't do Trig in the first place much less help their children do it but it'll be a step in the right direction. As it stands the rich kids get all that plus a better school on top of it.

I don't really see any reason why you'd need to ban teacher's unions. Just because Stalin did doesn't necessitate us doing the same thing. I'm curious what precisely prevents Congress from nationalizing the schools. It's too big a move for an EO obviously but I'm unaware of anything specifically in the Constitution that says we can't. You may be right about the revolution but I doubt it. The people who would be getting fucked by this are few, the people who'd benefit are many. It hardly seems like the sort of things rational people would fight and die over.

But people aren't always rational.

Scoring in the 50th percentile on a reading proficiency test means exactly what to you?

Student Dictionary (6th grade level)

pro·fi·cient
Pronunciation: prschwa-primarystressfish-schwant
Function: adjective
: very good at doing something especially through practice
synonym see SKILLFUL
- pro·fi·cient·ly adverb

So if your score is below F for reading skillfully, I would say you are NOT a skillful reader.

Ok, what is the metric for measuring proficiency at an 8th grade level?

You do realize that these percentages are measured against all the students right? As in if one day everybody got everything right they'd just make the test harder and 50% doesn't make you a failure it makes you average right? In fact many subjects have different percentages based on your gender (and probably other things that they don't talk about.)

 

[KingOrfeo]

From The Nation:

How a ‘New Secessionist’ Movement Is Threatening to Worsen School Segregation and Widen Inequalities

Sixty years after Brown, whiter, wealthier communities are breaking away from racially and economically diverse school districts.

Susan Eaton May 15, 2014

A new secessionist movement, anchored in the South, provides yet another reminder that “separate” still means “unequal” when it comes to the racial dynamics of the nation’s public schools.

The small middle-class town of Gardendale, Alabama, outside Birmingham, voted on November 12 to secede from the Jefferson County school district and then to raise taxes on themselves to finance the solo venture. Then, in March, Gardendale’s 14,000 residents finally got their own Board of Education. Soon after his appointment, one new board member, Clayton “Dick” Lee III, a banker and father of two, said he aspires to build a “best in class” school system “which exceeds the capabilities of the system which we are exiting.”

As Gardendale officials try to construct that “best in class” system in their prosperous community, they’ve relied on advice from their neighbors to the east in Trussville, a wealthy white suburb that broke away from the county schools in 2005. Gardendale, where about 86 percent of residents are white, is the fourth district since the late 1980s to secede from Jefferson County’s schools. About half the students in Jefferson County’s schools are either African-American or Latino, and 57 percent of students receive free or reduced lunch, the standard marker for poverty in public education.

With 36,000 students, Jefferson County’s shrinking catchment area is emblematic of a new secessionism in which cities, towns, even unincorporated areas renounce membership in a larger school district to strike out on their own. A trend befitting our individualistic times, secessionism, in many cases, cracks apart well-established, broadly defined educational communities into ever more narrow and ever more racially homogeneous ones. Sixty years after Brown v. Board of Education, new break away districts threaten to exacerbate resource disparities between wealthy and poor communities and sweep away any remnants of desegregation.

In Baton Rouge, Louisiana, an organized group of residents from an unincorporated, predominantly white, relatively affluent area with a strong tax base are trying to form an entirely new eighty-five-square-mile city for the express purpose of separating from the East Baton Rouge Parish Schools, which, by the way, enroll a majority of black and economically disadvantaged students. At the same time, a bill that would create four semi-autonomous school districts in this same southern section of Baton Rouge is being considered by the Louisiana legislature. The proposed new city, St. George, would not be the first secession from East Baton Rouge Parish schools. In recent years, three municipalities have created their own school districts, though not all were particularly affluent or predominantly white.

Next fall, the rapidly growing, predominantly white Alabama community Pike Road, with only 6,500 residents, will open its first K-8 school post-divorce from Montgomery County Public Schools, where 83 percent of its some 32,000 students are either African-American or Latino and 76 percent qualify for free and reduced lunch. Since the mid-2000s, six suburban, predominantly white unincorporated areas outside Atlanta incorporated and became cities. A bill being debated in Georgia’s legislature would amend the state constitution to give the new municipalities authority to secede from county school districts to create their own systems.

Secession efforts are not limited to the South, with efforts cropping up recently in Malibu, California, and in northeast Pennsylvania. But the movement is centered in the South because the region’s districts tend to be larger, often enrolling students who live in cities and towns throughout an entire county as opposed to a small municipality.

Several years ago, Memphis, Tennessee, briefly appeared to be going against the secession trend. In 2010, the cash-strapped city school board voted to dissolve its mostly African-American urban district and merge with Shelby County’s racially and economically diverse public school system. After the vote, the Shelby County School Superintendent John Aitken welcomed new students from the city, telling reporters, “My family just got bigger.”

“A lot of people did see this merger as a foundation on which to build something better,” said Daniel Kiel, a law professor at the University of Memphis who grew up in the city and attended racially diverse magnet schools there. “We looked at as a first step for bridging racial divides and economic divides. We thought maybe we had a place from which to begin creating something more cohesive.”

But not long after Memphis entered the county system, six predominantly white, relatively affluent suburbs promptly voted to leave it. Then, in 2013, Tennessee lawmakers passed a bill that lifted a prohibition on creating new school districts. In turn, each suburb created its own school district last summer. The new school board in one of those suburban districts, Collierville, hired Aitken, the Shelby County superintendent who had spoken such welcoming words, to be its superintendent.

“Within these movements, you hear a lot about a desire for local control and academic excellence. No one is going to say, ‘We don’t want to share our schools with poor black people.’ But the effect matters, no matter the intent,” said Dennis Parker, director of the Racial Justice Program at the American Civil Liberties Union. “And the effect will not be positive for the families in the larger system. The damage to school communities of color is very real.”

New municipalities and neighborhoods take a variety of resources with them when they leave bigger systems. Most obviously, they take students on which tax dollar distributions to schools are based. In most cases, newly created districts capture all taxable property within tighter boundary lines, cutting off the larger district from revenue that had been shared. Rapidly developing or well-developed suburbs, thus, have a huge advantage over older communities that typically suffer from declines in population and shrinking tax revenue. The creation of St. George, one study estimates, would result in a $53 million shortfall for East Baton Rouge Parish. According to a report from the Baton Rouge Area Chamber of Commerce, the incorporation would impede economic development by “the interjection of sales tax competition between two cities currently considered one community.”

Other losses are more difficult to measure. Student test scores are closely correlated with students’ socioeconomic class. If a new district enrolls a large share of affluent students, that district’s aggregate test scores, now the default measure of “quality,” will likely be high. Immediately, the new district will appear far more “successful” than the nearby larger district. For example, Louisiana publicly awards A to F letter grades to its school districts. In 2011, East Baton Rouge earned a D, but by 2013 had brought that grade up to a C, though secession advocates still routinely refer to it as a “failing” district. Meanwhile, the more affluent districts nearby, Zachary and Central, which not long ago were part of the East Baton Rouge district but now enroll relatively small shares of students from low income families, earned As from the state in 2013.

“It’s a form of branding,” said Jefferson County Public Schools Superintendent Stephen Nowlin, who publicly opposed Gardendale’s efforts to secede from his district. “The idea is that more affluent school district can attract businesses, increase property value, bring in a certain type of resident who can lend economic stability and enhance a particular image. I can respect the interest in that and their right to do this. I just worry that we’ve gotten away from thinking about the larger community.”

The desire for “good schools” drives people’s decisions about where to live. And as research by Professor Jennifer Holme of the University of Texas–Austin has shown, white people’s presumptions about “good schools” are driven by “status ideologies” formed by race and class biases. Secessionism makes it even easier to act on such prejudices because it creates school districts that are starkly identified by the race and social class of students. Home values, tied to a school district’s reputation, will likely go up or go down accordingly, further aiding a community’s ascension or decline.

Parents and educators fighting against secessionism in their communities caution that the phenomenon shouldn’t be seen only as a manifestation of white people’s desire to avoid sharing classrooms with African-Americans. In many places—Memphis, Baton Rouge, much of Alabama—housing segregation is so extreme that post-desegregation, individual schools tend to be racially segregated even if a school district as a whole enrolls a racial mix of students. Beginning in the 1990s, a series of Supreme Court decisions made it easier for school districts that had been under desegregation orders to be freed from judicial oversight. Post-desegregation, many school boards in the South went on to redraw school attendance boundaries coterminous with racially segregated neighborhood configurations. The proposed new city of St. George in Louisiana would be nearly a quarter African-American, according to some estimates.The city of Baton Rouge is about 55 percent African-American.

Nowadays, it may be tax dollars, benefits of economic growth, or power on school boards that secessionists would prefer not to share. Perhaps secessionists don’t want to be associated with a lower-status school district that posts lackluster test scores. Even if we assume non-racial motivations, secessionism could still undermine the hard-won racial diversity lingering in some schools.

East Baton Rouge provides a case in point. Like a lot of other big districts in the South, it operates several well-regarded racially diverse magnet schools. Originally created under desegregation, the popular programs were retained even after they were released from court supervision. East Baton Rouge Parish’s school superintendent Bernard Taylor has said that magnet schools may not survive under St. George’s incorporation. The new district would siphon a large share of the district’s white students and a chunk of the tax dollars that pay for the specialized programs.

“I very strongly prefer that my children attend racially diverse schools,” said Tania Nyman, a white mother of two, who is trying to prevent creation of new districts in Baton Rouge. “I believe that a public school system that is truly public and welcomes all children in the entire community is a really, really important foundation for democracy. But I suppose that sounds very old-fashioned. Doesn’t it?”

 

[Sean Renaud]

Here is how I would test for an 8th grade reading level. I would sit the child with a couple of teachers in a quiet room. I would hand the child a newspaper and have him read out loud. If he struggles at all in the eighth grade with a 6th grade level USA Today, I would wonder why he is IN the eight grade.

That would be a terribly stupid test for a number of reasons. There really is no such thing as an 8th grade reading level for starters.

 

[Que]

Again, you are wrong. You don't know what "proficient" means regarding the test. You are again demonstrating your own inability to think at a high level.

"Think at a high level."

Do you mean to reason? To engage in thought processes that have been established as leading to valid solutions to problems? To use logic and deductive processes to form and articulate persuasively a cogent argument? To study and analyze to be able to synthesize a coherent syllogism?

That sorta thing?

When your whole credential is your assessment of another's argument without actually countering the argument, you kinda lose.

PS: "You are wrong." In neither an argument nor evidence of "thinking at a high level."