> There was also a strong correlation between socioeconomic status and test scores. Students from higher income households and those who attended schools with more affluent students had higher scores.
The question is what was the delta within that group (and within other groups). Given we know that those of higher socioeconomic status do better than average, did they improve compared to their past selves, stay roughly the same, or degrade despite still maintaining above average results?
If, for example, they degraded, then it would indicate there is a problem happening that even the higher socioeconomic status doesn't protect from despite all its benefits (well it might protect relatively better that other SES, but not enough to prevent the downward trend).
If, instead, they improved relative to their past selves, it would indicate the problem causing the overall trend is found entirely within other SES groups (well not entirely, as it is possible the impact still hit this group but that other factors more than made up for it, but to keep it simple, we can ignore such a possibility unless we see even better data that can parse out these more complex relationships).
The Simpson’s paradox part is factual, and has been known for over a decade courtesy Steve Sailer, who is an immigration restrictionist. A fairer critique of the poster is that they’re unoriginal (rather than that they’re blaming immigrants, which I didn’t see in this post).
> While US has excellent education, and immigrant children in America do better than their counterparts in their countries of origin, they don’t do as well as the modal group of white Americans, so as the composition changes...
it doesn't say the immigrants are to blame, it just strongly implies that this could be a likely reason, furthermore for some reason to be an immigrant is to not be white which certainly was not the case when I immigrated to America.
A more plausible interpretation is that the education system is failing immigrant families currently. This has the benefit of both matching the evidence and not having racist implications.
> courtesy Steve Sailer, who is an immigration restrictionist
That doesn't make this argument credible. Is there any credible source?
> rather than that they’re blaming immigrants, which I didn’t see in this post
We know well that the talking points of racism are formed to create ambiguity and use dog whistles. That goes back half a century and probably much longer. These are the talking points.
I didn’t suggest this makes the argument credible. In fact, I fully expect that it should make one more skeptical of the argument, which is part of the reason I put that in there.
* Yours is that the bottom 10% are declining. That says nothing about who is in the bottom 10%.
* The GP says the composition of the population has changed, and blames immigrants.