Definitely agree that removing the SAT appears to be related to the upcoming supreme court case about affirmative action. COVID was a good reason to delay it for a couple years. But schools are pushing it out further. That makes no sense.
It seems the SAT is increasingly considered "racist" because it reveals racial disparities in learning. What's next? Get rid of the driver's license test because it turns that white kids pass it at a higher rate than black kids?
Sam mentions that schools could down-weight the SAT but should still consider it. Why don't schools want to do that? My guess: if they have mediocre scores on record for a kid, then admitting him means reporting those scores to USNews. They'd rather not know that the kid has a score that would bring down their average.
> the SAT is increasingly considered "racist" because it reveals racial disparities in learning
Could you provide an example of that claim? Usually the SAT is considered discriminatory because the way the testing is done favors wealthy, well-educated people, and gives negative results for equally talented people who lack those advantages. Colleges have found that the SAT is excluding a large part of the talent pool.
Also, SAT scores do not correlate well at all with college outcomes.
> Could you provide an example of that claim? Usually the SAT is considered discriminatory because the way the testing is done favors wealthy, well-educated people, and gives negative results for equally talented people who lack those advantages.
As to predicting outcomes, that’s largely due to score compression (the students at any given school are in a narrow score range). Folks across the score range aren’t being compared with each other in class performance. But look at the LSAT, where all students from different schools take the same bar exam. LSAT is highly predictive of bar exam performance. Students who score less than 150 (on a 120-180 scale) are virtually guaranteed to fail the bar.
> Colleges have found that the SAT is excluding a large part of the talent pool.
No, colleges have found that the SAT produces racial demographics they don’t like. Poor white kids have been excluded by the SAT for nearly a century and colleges never took action in response to that.
> No, colleges have found that the SAT produces racial demographics they don’t like.
Where does that come from, other than repetition?
> look at the LSAT
I'm not talking about the LSAT (and bar exam performance isn't a meaningful indicator of much - the great majority of aspiring lawyers pass their bar exams).
> Poor white kids have been excluded by the SAT for nearly a century and colleges never took action in response to that.
If that's true (and I don't know that it is, especially on the scale of what has happened to blacks), what does that does that have to do with racism against black kids?
It seems everyone's great effort is not to address racism, but to deny it, against incredible evidence. Look at this entire discussion. It's incredible the effort that goes into denying racism, rather than doing something about it. Reactionary politics has swept the US and HN.
> > No, colleges have found that the SAT produces racial demographics they don’t like.
> Where does that come from, other than repetition?
You started out talking about socioeconomic status, but by the end of your post you admitted getting rid of the SAT is an effort to “address racism.” People think getting rid of the SAT is about race and not class because proponents of the policies admit as much.
> I'm not talking about the LSAT
The SAT and LSAT are very similar both in content and distribution of outcomes.
> (and bar exam performance isn't a meaningful indicator of much - the great majority of aspiring lawyers pass their bar exams).
Half the people who take the LSAT are excluded from even attending law school based largely on LSAT score. Students with lower LSAT scores are at high risk of failing their classes or failing the bar: http://outsidethelawschoolscam.blogspot.com/2018/01/using-ls....
> If that's true (and I don't know that it is, especially on the scale of what has happened to blacks)
The SAT is highly correlated with socioeconomic status. And most poor people are white.
> what does that does that have to do with racism against black kids?
Is the SAT “racist” or is it biased against people with low socioeconomic status? Two quite different things.
As to what’s “reactionary” or not, you should try recalibrating your bubble. The majority of white, Asian, Hispanic, and Black people oppose the practice of using race as a consideration in school admissions: https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2019/02/25/most-americ.... They also say test scores and grades should be the main factors for admissions. The “race progressives” are a minority even among minority groups.
Medical sector has one responsibility: take care of the patients.
Doctors that share a racial and cultural with their patients are able to provide better care. It's been seen in multiple studies that elder African American women are more likely to follow the advice of the doctor if the doctor shared their background. There is little controversy around the fact that diversity leads to improved health outcomes ( https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/8675280/ / https://www.nber.org/system/files/working_papers/w24787/w247... )
Similar trends can be seen in other fields. So affirmative action is not just good because it is the morally right thing to do, but also because it is the more practical solution quite often.
I don't mean to suggest that (also as it turns out there's just a frightful scarcity of doctor candidates willing to work in rural America to begin with so that's a moot point to argue any which way).
I sought to note the particular and unique plight of African Americans. I came upon this picture of Ruby Bridges a month ago: https://i.imgur.com/SSRsywY.png and I got to reading what became of her, and I found this recent picture of her: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/7/7c/Ruby_Bri... that's that little girl who put up with a lot of shit just to attend the same school as white girls -- and she doesn't even look that old in this recent pic! The idea that we don't have to do anything to make up for denying the black man and woman the right to drink from the same fountain as the white man and woman, to attend the same school only a few decades ago is deeply unsettling, as the auspices of privilege reverberate down the generations, so do the weighted anchors of un-privilege.
In that vein, I think the argument you seem to be converging toward is not very strong because we have a special select of Asians and Hispanics, they are a special bunch to have taken the initiative to leave everything behind and immigrate elsewhere for a better life, likely they were moneyed enough to make the move, likely they had a strong social support networks as indeed Hispanic&Asian households do, better eating habits, probably more active, etc.
Also, people of similar backgrounds are more likely to understand the environmental health problems. For example, doctors from middle-class backgrounds don't understand as well the stress and trauma of poverty, and associated malnutrition. White doctors generally don't understand as well the stress and trauma of living with racism daily.
> LSAT is highly predictive of bar exam performance. Students who score less than 150 (on a 120-180 scale) are virtually guaranteed to fail the bar.
Source? Or do you mean "taking LSAT at the same time as taking the bar for fun"? Because LSAT is typically done before you enter law school, while you take the bar after you get out.
SAT is one of the strongest correlations of academic success and future income. Where did you hear that it isn't?
I worked in edtech analytics for a while where SAT among other factors were correlated with student success. SAT scores correlate with graduation rates, college GPA, job placement. Most elite universities also tend to receive applicants with higher SAT scores (A no brainer)
As the other comment points out, the obsession with the flaws of the SAT completely ignores the fact that every single other method of evaluation is even worse, both at identifying promising students and at equity.
If you take it away, colleges will happily admit loads of "well-rounded" students with tons of expensive extracurriculars. They will be racially as balanced as possible, but their family incomes will all be very high. The kid from a poor broken home who somehow managed to score 1400 on the SAT will lose their best shot at standing out.
Exactly. It is still the least evil, one of the reasons Chinese are still keeping their infamous GaoKao. Removing it will create a huge political hitback.
AFAIK, the SAT is biased against poorer students, including in its structure, in its content (maybe they've fixed that), and because wealthy test-takers can afford test prep courses.
What makes you say that the SAT is the best option for poor applicants?
> AFAIK, the SAT is biased against poorer students, including in its structure, in its content (maybe they've fixed that), and because wealthy test-takers can afford test prep courses.
The idea that the SAT is inherently biased against poorer students is controversial. AFAIK, the evidence for this requires advanced statistical analysis and expert interpretation and isn't widely accepted as definitive. Even among those experts who accept this evidence, there doesn't seem to be any clear sense of what is causing this bias or what can be done about it. It simply isn't the case that the SAT has some glaring bias that can easily be rectified, like questions assuming knowledge of water polo and horseback riding. Student skills in things like reading and math do not exist in a vacuum, but depend on prior exposure and knowledge, which robustly correlates with family/neighborhood/school environment and thus socioeconomic status. Efforts to create tests that are completely independent of those things have not produced useful results.
Quality studies show that the benefit of test prep is modest to moderate, on the order of 30-100 points, and almost all of the benefit is achieved within 8 hours of preparation. Even that benefit is not widely accepted as simply retaking the test can increase scores by 60 points. [1] There is no evidence that expensive private tutoring leads to better outcomes than self-study with free alternatives such as Khan Academy. [2]
> What makes you say that the SAT is the best option for poor applicants?
It's helpful to look at it more as the "least bad" than the "best" -- we need to stop focusing exclusively on the issues with the SAT and think about the actual alternatives. For example, essays, extracurriculars, and prestigious brand-name private school affiliations are all valued by prestigious colleges, and can be bought legally and very easily by rich families. It is much harder to buy a high SAT score. To buy a high SAT score, a family could pay someone to impersonate their child, but this is very risky as the recent Varsity Blues scandal showed.
Suppose we put ourselves in the shoes of a bright-but-poor high school student. We need a way to make ourselves stand out. We can sign up with Khan Academy or download some SAT prep materials at the public library and prepare for a few hours... or we can try to get into an expensive private school, get a private college essay consultant, join a rich-kid sport, take a trip to Africa, and other things that rich kids do to burnish their applications. Which of these seems more practical to you?
If you look at the criticism of the SAT from universities, I think you'll find that they are mostly interested in attacking the SAT in isolation, not comparing with the alternatives. Comparing with the alternatives would require shedding light on their opaque and subjective admissions processes and the way in which those processes favor the rich. On the contrary, research suggests that leveraging standardized tests, and increasing participation in them, tends to open doors for poor students relative to status quo [4][5].
It's interesting that they are so favorable to a change which will make their processes even more subjective and opaque, especially given their history of using subjective and opaque processes to exclude undesirable minorities (yesterday Jews [3], today Asians). Although they have proven themselves untrustworthy, they are not interested in increasing transparency and objectivity of admissions processes. I think we should be hesitant to accept their reports and recommendations as being in completely good faith, given their strong interest in (and consistently observed behavior of) recruiting as wealthy a class as possible each year.
SAT math scores combined with GPA are 5 times more predictive than gpa alone at Berkeley. They also found the test was more predictive for low income students
SAT correlates well with college performance and moreover must be used to obtain the best college performance predictors we have (or something highly correlated with SAT).
Some elite law schools did a study where they admitted underprivileged students with bad LSAT scores and guess what, those students did great and got great jobs.
For the SAT the difference between winning and losing in college admission is if you can prepare for it. It's not a test you take cold. That is the biggest issue with it so it advantages those with more resources.
“black/white comparison on the SAT verbal test, some evidence of bias exists, but the bias is against white students on some questions against black students in other cases. Furthermore, our analysis of the results suggest that for this one, the effects are far too small to explain much of the SAT gap in test scores between black and white students.“ nonetheless the SAT math lets them find students who’s GPAs aren’t super high for personal reasons and also distinguish between students with the same GPA
Rather than saying "the SAT is discriminatory," maybe ask which questions on the SAT's are discriminatory, and why? And how could you fix them? This will be more revealing of what the problem might be.
I believe a lot of problems that the SAT's used to have were fixed over the years? It's somewhat of a moving target.
And if you can't make any standardized test that's fair, why is that?
A prominent researcher noted that the following question was tested by the ETS but never made it onto the SAT:
The actor's bearing on stage seemed ______; her movements were natural and her technique _____
A. unremitting...blasé
B. fluid...tentative
C. unstudied...contrived
D. eclectic...uniform
E. grandiose...controlled
Apparently 8% more black students answered this question correctly than white students, and it was never moved from a potential question into the real test. The allegation is that the racial outcome of the question is the cause of its never making it onto the SAT.
I think it never made it because the question is bad. None of the answers makes much sense (the correct answer is apparently C).
That made no sense so I followed your link and found that C is uncontrived not contrived, which then makes perfect sense.
Every option has either 2 words that make no sense, or one word that makes no sense with "her movements were natural" and one that does. Only option C has two words which make sense with both. This question is just basic English comprehension and should be on every exam.
Sorry, I had seen this elsewhere and it was incorrectly transcribed. You are correct that the linked page shows "uncontrived" for C. That makes the question less bad though still a bit stilted.
As a non-American, this thesis simply doesn't pass the smell test unless you guys are living in literal KKK land, which - from be outside - doesn't seem to be the case.
Why not read the research? A 'smell test', especially by someone with no experience or expertise, doesn't indicate much.
Any claim of racism - even raised by an expert who has done detailed research, in a society with overwhelming evidence of it historically and now, and in higher education admissions in particular - is always dismissed.
It seems SAT merely reflects current academic skills. If they developed to that point due to privilege, the test isn't responsible for highlighting it. If college goal is to give limited space to most skilled students then it's an effective method to do that.. isn't it?
> It seems SAT merely reflects current academic skills.
What is that based on, and how do you define academic skills? It may reflect how much time and money you can spend on test prep courses (time is also a problem for poor students who tend to have jobs, take care of siblings for parents with multiple jobs and no day care, etc.). It may reflect test-taking skills in general, which aren't skills of value.
That's a possibility, that there is a difference between test taking skills and true academic skills, in that case maybe have students take one class and admission would based on percentile... ie. 1000 student in top percentile will be accepted full time other passing students will get a credit but not admission.
Polymatter recently had a great video on the way the college ranking system is a hustle for foreign student money, and just how heavily it distorts colleges incentives: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cQWlnTyOSig
IMHO the onus to establish an assertion (as a general term) is on the person making it:
1. Imagine I post an assertion, 'the moon is made of blue cheese', and it's read by 20 people. Should all 20 do the research themselves? That's much less efficient than my doing it - I already know where I got it, it's my claim, and it's 1/20th the labor.
2. Think of all the assertions you read: Do you have time to research them all?
3. The Internet is filled with information, mostly BS. I don't have time for even a fraction of the accurate info. If we had 1% of the info, but it was backed by credible research, it would be no loss in info (nobody can process even 1%) and great gain.
Finally, people can't judge content it unless they have expertise in the domain. There is plenty of research showing that to be true - that fact is fundamental to misinformation and disinformation, even something as simple as paid Amazon reviews - and it's easy to observe. Think of something in which you have expertise, like your profession: Could you persuade a non-expert? I could persuade one of almost anything, it seems; they just have no idea what are the questions, the facts (beyond a very limited range), or the answers.
I was on track to go to a prestigious university in high school when my fundamentalist christian parents kicked me out of the house at the age of 16. I ended up jumping around to live with different friends then eventually my grandparents. I had no money and thought I had no future. The stress was killing me, my grades and SAT score suffered. I ended up at a small state school in rural Georgia because of this. Today I work at one of the FANG companies but it was a long and challenging struggle to get here. A single test in high school shouldn’t define your long term success. It didn’t in my case but there are many folks who are living through difficulty at that age.
Although I'm glad it worked out for you, this sounds like a very niche case that would fail every single measure of exampination. Neither is working at a FANG company a signal of intelligence.
> Neither is working at a FANG company a signal of intelligence
You really believe that? I find it extremely hard to believe that the distribution of intelligence for engineering roles at a FAANG company is the same as that of the general population.
It seems far more likely that the distribution is shifted 10-15 points to the right.
I know anecdotes are not the singular of data, but I knew plenty of people whose young lives mirrored the OPs. My family had two couch-surfing classmates (at different times).
Neglectful parents don’t have to also kick one out of the house in order to be neglectful.
There are levels to this. I’m same as OP in terms of “looked like they could’ve gone to MIT” but was born in the wrong family. Ended up going to University of Washington after doing some community college - so it’s not like I went to the worst school in the world. But it was a long journey to get there and I do work at a target company now. Again, a very long journey… That could’ve been changed by just an interview or something else entirely.
It's extremely difficult for me to pinpoint when / where the tendency to flatten (as in no more disparity) started. It's super weird. Everything is flat. I sense some kind of rejection of it from fear of potential dominance. But it's still odd to me.
You’re not the only one who notices this. I think you would be interested in Harrison Bergeron by Kurt Vonnegut [1], a great short story related to this topic.
The SAT's past racial bias is still echoing through the nation. There were still test questions based on Very White Things like cotillions and yachting as recently as 40 years ago. The repercussions of those things could be that some person barely missed getting admitted to a university, took a lifetime earnings hit, lived in a poorer town with worse schools, and now their kids who may be very smart and talented also don't score well on tests. The whole point of affirmative action is to swing the pendulum to the other side for a while, to not just make it fair now, but to counteract past unfairness.
That sounds stretched. Smart kids failing because their parents didn't know yachting trivia 40 years ago... And in 4 decades their family couldn't crack open a math book?
The main reason for failing education is not money, it's family attitude towards education. Educational parents get better results than rich parents. Look at how the Asian group is faring. In fact having too rich parents is pulling down the kids.
The alternative, ""holistic"" admissions process was conceived for the sole reason that colleges were becoming "too Jewish". Today, that same system is being leveraged against Asian Americans, and is now even less transparent and straightforward. It is full of hateful biases and overt racism
I wish that those institutions and people on your side of the issue would be more honest about what they are doing. If Harvard would just come out and admit to the Supreme Court that they discriminate based on race, it would made the case much easier and much easier politically to shut it down.
Anyone actually in the position to make change won't, since change means work and directly puts them and their coworkers' jobs in jeopardy. The road to non-discriminatory behavior can only be implemented by the management and investors running the show, so it's done in their way and on their time table.
As an ancedote, I was told by my low income peer group that you get 600 points just for filling out your name on the SAT and that 800 points could get you into a great school like MIT. So I assumed it was a pass/fail exam in a sense and left early during the verbal part because I found it condescending and boring.
Before the exam, I couldn't understand why the higher income kids were paying for SAT training classes. What is the point of scoring 1600 if 800 could get you in the "best" school. It would have interfered with my after school job anyway.
To add further, I thought MIT was just DeVry for rich people but otherwise equivalent and that only black kids get scholarships (ironic since I am Latino). Are things different now ? Are most kids from lower socio-economic backgrounds still clueless about the college admissions process, the difference between colleges, and scholarships. It seems like that is the part that needs to be fixed and eliminating SATs is shortsighted.
I grew up a low income student as well but why kind of bullshit were they feeding you? My athlete friends were well aware you needed a 950 for any kind of NCAA consideration. It didn’t matter how good your grades or athleticism if you couldn’t pass that hurdle you were relegated to juco.
If anything most of the high school counselors in predominantly poor and black schools just don’t push very hard. They would tell you MIT was too far of a reach. They would tell you the best you could hope for was a private local, community college, or public state university. Who would ever consider Devry and MIT as equivalent?
He's responding to an anecdote - one that sounds absurd, by the way - so I would say that responding with an anecdote is fine, especially one that actually sounds realistic. Let's hear some anecdotes about being pushed hard in schools based in poor areas before dismissing it.
"sounds absurd, by the way".. that perhaps explains all the downvotes. One of the surprises about getting older is that stories from your youth sound more and more absurd with time. I didn't grow up with the Internet and the "MIT whiz kid" wasn't common in movies/shows until the mid 90's and ever after. What was a thing during my high school days were the relentless TV commercials for tech schools masquerading as advanced degree institutions. Who lies on HN about a personal story BTW ? What would be the point.
The downvotes are the aggressive reactionary tide through HN, that rises and falls. Your personal observation suggests that some 'progressive' action might be valuable, that there's a systemic problem, and therefore it is shut down.
Don't stop telling it please. We need more voices from the real world here.
Repeating what someone told you that shaped your behavior in the past is anecdote. The information given was incorrect but your conclusion that this anecdote is hearsay is in error.
I didn’t claim the anecdote was hearsay, I used the word “it” to refer to the hearsay, not the anecdote. The mistake is in the assumption of what it refers to, especially without asking me to clarify, or in not extending the principle of charity.
I was told by my low income peer group that you get 600 points just for filling out your name on the SAT and that 800 points could get you into a great school like MIT.
The minimum score for the SAT if you do nothing is 400, not 600.
It sounds absurd to you, but isn't that your own ignorance? You weren't there; they were. I've heard many tell similar stories. Again, look in the NY Times from a few years ago; elite colleges not only accept it, but have tried to mitigate it.
> one that actually sounds realistic
Isn't this just saying that it agrees with what you already believe?
> It sounds absurd to you, but isn't that your own ignorance?
Or my experience.
Of course, perhaps schools in poor areas really are pushing the children hard to go to extraordinary heights and it’s just the fault of poor people for being so damned useless that they ignore it or fail.
Or, perhaps, there’s a middle ground to be found, but I doubt it includes people who no one would describe as bright being unaware of the scores they need to enter the next stage of education, if that’s what they desire.
> perhaps schools in poor areas really are pushing the children hard to go to extraordinary heights and it’s just the fault of poor people for being so damned useless that they ignore it or fail.
That's not how I understood it - are we talking about the same comment. I understood the commenter to be saying that their school didn't give students the resources to understand and apply to top colleges, including basic understanding of colleges (e.g., who MIT is) and the admissions process. Are we talking about the same comment?
The comment that you paraphrase is, I agree, absurd!
800 points on one section will get you into MIT, as that's a perfect score. 1000 on combined seems very unlikely to get you into SAT; the 25th percentile is 1500.
I was replying to a comment indicating that URMs can get in with extremely low scores. My point is that they can get in with somewhat lower scores. But they still have to clear a much higher threshold than 800 combined.
I believe it doesn't disincentivize blind guessing. It just counteracts it. If you can eliminate one answer you should guess. Even if you can't eliminate an answer you break even.
I grew up in lower socioeconomic status and can confirm that the university admissions process was never really taught to us in any meaningful way. Teachers never talked about it, my parents never talked about it, counselors didn't talk about it, etc. Our education was built around testing because if our school got bad testing, then the school would lose funding. Our education was damaged as a result, every teacher talked about it as an awful system, and the kids who did well in testing had enough money to pay for tutors, ie they were already advantaged
Getting rid of SATs from my perspective sounds like a fantastic idea.
> Our education was built around testing because if our school got bad testing, then the school would lose funding.
> Getting rid of SATs from my perspective sounds like a fantastic idea.
There are two types of standardized tests. The first kind you reference measures the school. They are not used for college admissions. They can affect school funding.
The second type of test measures the student. Sometimes a school will report those numbers. But they do not affect the funding a school gets.
Getting rid of the SAT would have zero effect on contingent funding for schools.
Consider this: if the schools weren't dependent on the test scores, then they could use that same energy-for-testing to teach their students methods for improving their SAT scores. I genuinely doubt they'll switch energy, but the fact remains that the requirement to game a test-well-or-lose-funding system by necessity removes education opportunity for students in order to focus on the tests over education, especially for schools in lower income areas because they stand to suffer the most. We're relying on a system that ensures that people stay where they are. Now, if there isn't a correlation between lost education opportunity and SAT scores, then you might be right, but...
I don't understand what you are trying to argue. Your first GGP comment talks about school testing and then ends with a conclusion about the SAT. That is not a school test. It is a student test.
Your immediate parent comment indicates that if school testing were eliminated then students would improve their SAT scores. I agree with that. But it is beside the point. This thread is about whether the SAT should be eliminated, not whether school testing should be eliminated.
At the end, you start to make a point about correlation between "lost education opportunity" and SAT scores. But my reading is that you're saying there's a correlation between LEO and SAT scores. Are you saying it's a positive correlation? Or are you saying students are spending time prepping for SATs, and what they are learning there is negatively correlated with actual learning?
I am trying to understand what you mean. Are you advocating elimination of the SAT? If so, why?
My point was about this: "Are most kids from lower socio-economic backgrounds still clueless about the college admissions process, the difference between colleges, and scholarships." My original post was saying that kids from lower socio-economic backgrounds aren't as aware of these processes, largely because of the broken incentive systems around testing.
So, I'm opposed to standardized tests, in general, as a strong measure for capability because of their tendency to force the focus of schools on testing over education and in doing so, deep and localized problems are reinforced. I gave the example of my own school, because the school barely touched on the SAT since the focus was, by necessity, focused on the ACT. The SAT was an afterthought. For the teachers, it was a legitimate existential crisis if the ACT wasn't taught well, while the SAT was effectively irrelevant to them.
A large body of students don't know how important the SAT is, nor whether or how they should push themselves to test well -- we weren't taught that because of a shift in priorities. In some ways, both tests were expressed as on the same level of importance, despite the ACT not mattering in the slightest to the future of the individual student, leading to confusion by students about what is actually important.
For schools that the SAT isn't an afterthought, the SAT might make sense, but in doing so, we are culturally prioritizing the reinforcement of already-strong communities while simultaneously continuing to weaken already weak communities.
In other words, a proxy besides the SAT should be sought after, at least while we have so many broken systems and wildly different implementations of incentive systems in-place. I don't know what that proxy is.
> the school barely touched on the SAT since the focus was, by necessity, focused on the ACT. The SAT was an afterthought. For the teachers, it was a legitimate existential crisis if the ACT wasn't taught well, while the SAT was effectively irrelevant to them.
The ACT and SAT are two tests used for college admissions. If you take one, you don't need to take the other.
> despite the ACT not mattering in the slightest to the future of the individual student
The ACT is used for college admissions. Are you thinking of a different test?
It sounds like you have an issue with the teach-to-the-test mentality and the fact that "the test" isn't the SAT. I understand the concern that students are pulled in too many directions. But according to what you've written "the test" is the ACT. That is a substitute for the SAT. They are only being pulled in one direction. It is the direction that will help get them into college.
I think this is a real fundamental problem and something that seems to easy to fix. People just don't know how the other half live. There's a persistent belief that rich people and poor people are like two different species. I got a CS degree from a pretty good school but it was almost pure luck. My high school had programming classes and I enjoyed them. I didn't realize what I was setting myself up for.
> There's a persistent belief that rich people and poor people are like two different species. I got a CS degree from a pretty good school but it was almost pure luck. My high school had programming classes and I enjoyed them.
When Covid hit, schools in poor communities tried to implement distance learning and discovered that only half (for example, in one city which I don't remember) of families had a desktop or laptop for the student to use - probably those kids aren't going to become programmers. Programming classes are non-existent, at least based on limited knowledge - seriously, look up the programming classes in a nearby poor school district.
Out of curiosity, where did the “leave early” belief come from in your opinion? In my community, leaving early would have been considered embarrassing and equivalent to conceding inability, and I fail to be but a representative member - but for you it was actually embarrassing to continue (the opposite).
> Are most kids from lower socio-economic backgrounds still clueless about the college admissions process, the difference between colleges, and scholarships. It seems like that is the part that needs to be fixed
There's been a lot of research and work on that, though I don't know what progress has been made. You can find NY Times articles from a few years ago.
> eliminating SATs is shortsighted
Why does the above make SATs any better? They don't predict college outcomes, and they are structured and written in ways that favor wealth, thus providing bad data on students (other than their wealth). Why use them?
Since you have a history of breaking the site guidelines and have been continuing to post flamebait to HN, I've banned the account. Please don't create accounts to break HN's rules with.
> ...are just more academically inclined than others...
It's not "races", it's culture. We should just remove this whole idea of "race" from our understanding of social phenomena, all it can do is mislead. There are African, Black subcultures like the Igbo and Ashanti that achieve to the highest levels academically (including in the West!) and Asian subcultures that don't place any focus on education, and struggle as a result. Culture is what matters. Forget race.
I have lived in a USA urban metropolitan area most of my entire life.. Asian and Black are not nearly descriptive enough terms.. there are massive variations in the populations.. as the post above said.. its not sufficient, and directly misleading, to distinguish people in education.. secondly, "White Males" repeatedly get left out of special offers and incentives, and there are tons of those special incentives, for decades.. the educational spectrum of "White Males" is also huge .. its a real mess and people get angry about the topics right away when discussing them..
This is not much better, and is often used (without implicating the parent commenter) by racists as codeword cover. Again, I'm not implicating you, but consider for what reasons they use it.
Think about it: What do you know about these 'cultures'? Have you lived in one? How do you even define the word - is there a definition outside pop politics? Is it a static thing? Over time or space? Do you have any data correlating this thing with educational outcomes? Notice we have lots of people talking about black 'culture', etc., but WTF do they know? Where are the black people who actually know something? Would you ask someone from Mumbai about the culture of Rio?
One thing that does correlate with educational outcomes, more than anything iirc, is parental wealth. We are discriminating openly against poor kids. And you only have to see the condition of schools in poor communities to make that immediately clear.
Our society provides few educational opportunities or career opportunities, is often openly discimrinatory toward them, uses a legal system that abuses them, and mocks and attacks anyone who tries to do anything about it. I've been around these 'cultures' - I know hard-working people, like you and me, but struggling to get by every day, struggling to help their kids, and absolutely despairing against the impossible odds and the growing mountain of hate and disregard. You can't imagine it until you see it day after day after day.
One thing I've been told, when I've made an effort, is that it's useless, it's pointless, the white wealthy majority will never, ever allow it. And I've come to see that they are right, to a degree - that is how it plays out every time. One way or another, there is always a reason to shoot down anything that will give black people a way up, and it's been true for generations. 'Culture' is just another one. Forget what you believe, just watch and see if that hypothesis is matched by the data. I used to think like many on HN; the data showed my theory was wrong, and the data always wins out (or it's not scientific reasoning).
And then I come to HN and see people doing the exact same thing, repeating the same arguments that inevitably lead to the same place. And my God, imagine being black and reading this stuff about yourself, your family, your kids, on HN.
> One thing that does correlate with educational outcomes, more than anything iirc, is parental wealth.
Really? I'd love to see a study on how kids of lottery winners fare wrt. educational outcomes. That would be the real way to isolate that "wealth" factor from differences in cultural norms (and yes, generational effects of previous achievement, such as your grandparents being literate and passing on a basic awareness of education to their descendants) that merely happen to correlate in the long run with wealth. Want to take bets?
> ... One way or another, there is always a reason to shoot down anything that will give black people a way up, and it's been true for generations. ...
I really, really don't understand this claim. "Culture" is actually a very malleable thing even in the short-to-medium term, so if it happens to be a big causal factor on bad outcomes this means that efforts to help Black people achieve are more, not less likely to succeed! Compare "racism and discrimination" which basically nobody knows how to tackle in anything like an effective way. If anything it may well be that once broad outcomes improve, this will help obviate much of the previously existing motive for harmful prejudice and discrimination against Blacks.
> Compare "racism and discrimination" which basically nobody knows how to tackle in anything like an effective way.
We certainly do know how, and we've done it. The message of hopelessness is the message, perhaps unwittingly, of the white supremacists, who want nothing to be done, who want racial division to appear hopeless and unavoidable.
From segregation and lynchings in the 1950s, we now have civil rights, almost universal acceptance of interracial marriage (I think the surveys ~1960 showed ~3% acceptance), African-American education and welfare has skyrocketed - but from such a low point that it still has far to go. We elected a black President. Racism in other circumstances has died - against Germans (esp. in Revolutionary times), Italians, Irish, Catholics, Jews, Mormans, etc. etc.
But now they have made it fashionable to argue against even the presence of racism, against all fact and observation - even in this very thread, where someone openly claimed race determined educational outcomes. I periodically here openly racist comments from white people I know - as a simple example, when the plan to pay for community college fell through in Congress, one white person I know said, with a laugh, 'thank god; now we won't have to pay for blacks to go to college'. And people take it up. We live in the post-truth world, where people align with whatever can be insisted upon, and many are and will pay the cost.
>> One thing that does correlate with educational outcomes, more than anything iirc, is parental wealth.
> Really?
Yes, you can find the research easily.
> If anything it may well be that once broad outcomes improve, this will help obviate much of the previously existing motive for harmful prejudice and discrimination against Blacks.
We have 400 years history of racism; attributing it to educational outcomes has no basis.
Nobody is making any assumptions or predeterminations about cultures, the point is that we need to recognize that it's not the color of your skin or your heritage that determines your placement, it's the environment you grow up in. Coincidentally, this does match up with your 'parental wealth' claim, since any pair of upper-middle-class parents is more likely able to afford to live in an area with schools rated at least 6 by GreatSchools, thus giving their child(ren) a better opportunity at education.
> We are discriminating openly against poor kids. And you only have to see the condition of schools in poor communities to make that immediately clear.
The way I see it, the only thing directly hindering any integration of lower-class and higher-class kids in schools is what I said above - housing prices and general zoning laws that make it nearly impossible to build low-cost housing in existing high-class areas. Any time there is a housing project (read: reasonably priced apartments), "NIMBY" happens and nobody wants the new complex to be built since it'll directly lower the home values of the existing houses in the area; in general, the administration running the local city/county government has to follow their constituents' wishes, so this likely isn't going to change until some higher government passes a law softening the power of zoning laws. This combined with how schools are heavily funded by their county's property taxes creates a barrier where the poorer schools don't get the funding they need to level the playing field and poorer parents can't move to put their kid in better education, thus keeping it hard for the child and their future generations to climb out of poverty.
> it's not the color of your skin or your heritage that determines your placement
Where could that come from? There is an enormous history of racism in the US, and plenty of it overtly, less overtly, etc. right now. You could see it in this thread, where someone literally said that race was the determining factor. You have to blind yourself not to see it over and over in our society.
And yet it somehow doesn't affect people or their educations? Instead of fighting a political battle, what can we do to end it?
> this does match up with your 'parental wealth' claim, since any pair of upper-middle-class parents is more likely able to afford to live in an area with schools rated at least 6 by GreatSchools, thus giving their child(ren) a better opportunity at education.
I wonder if the research controls for that; it would tell us a lot.
> the only thing directly hindering any integration of lower-class and higher-class kids in schools is what I said above
There is plenty of data to observe; we don't have to guess. What is your guess based on? In my non-systematic and few observations, attempts at integration are resisted aggressively by white parents, especially now. Also, remember school busing.
Over time, observe if the hypothesis that I was told - that I doubted and argued against, and that I had to admit I found true to be - see whether it is true: There is always another story, another explanation, year after year, generation after generation, but the result always consistent with racial discrimination.
I’m saying that, right now, those aren’t direct factors, although they are generally the factors that have put the current generation of African Americans in this situation of living in poverty/being apart of the lower class. My point is that no school is worse because 99% of the students are black, they’re worse because they don’t have any expensive houses paying dividends in the form of property taxes to match the luxuries afforded by richer communities.
> In my non-systematic and few observations, attempts at integration are resisted aggressively by white parents, especially now.
This is not contradictory to my point, I’m simply detailing the ‘how’ in their efforts to oppose integration. Nobody is going into school board meetings asking them to put up barriers to prevent black people from integrating, they’re making sure affordable housing projects are never approved.
I agree that funding through real estate taxes is a mechanism of what is called structural racism ("the factors that have put the current generation of African Americans in this situation of living in poverty/being apart of the lower class"), but there are other mechanisms, and there are directly racist beliefs. I don't know how you can claim there are not plenty of racist beliefs, or that they magically have no impact. Off the top of my head, from the last six months, said to me personally by white people:
- 'Everyone knows that black people are biologically inferior.'
- With a smile, and disdain: 'Did you see that Biden's college funding failed? We won't have to pay for the blacks to go to college.'
Look at what happens if racism is brought up on HN: It is shut down vigorously, endless responses saying that it doesn't exist, challenging every aspect, major or minute or imaginary and mostly just argumentative. It must be proven beyond any shadow of a doubt, better than the Laws of Motion, despite overwhelming evidence - why are the standards impossibly high? Imagine all that energy going into addressing racism.
Why are you so determined to deny its existance, even beyond the limited thing about housing? You can see it everywhere, see stories of it everywhere. Talk to any black person, who actually lives it and sees it - don't argue, just be curious. I've never talked to one black person who shares the prevelent view on HN.
> the only seemingly rational explanation for inequity is discrimination
Wait, this is not what I said and is not how serious social science is done. In many ways, public K-12 education is equally abysmal for everyone. It may not overtly discriminate, but it lets people fall through the cracks in a way that amplifies the causal influence of pure luck (i.e. randomness, noise in outcomes) and external factors such as different cultural attitudes and generational history (such as whether your grandparents and great-grandparents happened to be educated or at least literate), that account for much of the observed correlation with race.
15 day old account, comments so far: races are just have different academic aptitudes, the US needs fewer immigrants, crypto is cool, the US needs fewer immigrants again, and the main agenda: the US needs to stop sending weapons to Ukraine.
that is entirely a guess, though. there's actual documented evidence of colleges admitting less Asian-Americans and Jews than the test scores of either group would suggest, and Altman refers to this phenomenon in the thread.
> It seems the SAT is increasingly considered "racist" because it reveals racial disparities in learning. What's next? Get rid of the driver's license test because it turns that white kids pass it at a higher rate than black kids?
the SAT's a way of laundering discrepancies in generational wealth, which is indeed due to racist public policy as well as racist private actions. it may be intended not that way, but that's how it functions.
so what's next would be removing other methods of laundering racist public policy and racist private action. probably drivers' licenses would not show up on that list, and your assertion that it might is so ridiculous that it's hard to believe you're examining this topic with good faith.
> the SAT's a way of laundering discrepancies in generational wealth, which is indeed due to racist public policy as well as racist private actions. it may be intended not that way, but that's how it functions.
Wealthy students do score better than poor students on the SAT. Do you know who also scores well? Students who study very hard, including poor students. If you get rid of the SAT then the poor students will find it harder to stand out. The rich kids will have ghost-written essays and extracurriculars. They won't be hurt at all.
> so what's next would be removing other methods of laundering racist public policy and racist private action. probably drivers' licenses would not show up on that list, and your assertion that it might is so ridiculous that it's hard to believe you're examining this topic with good faith.
I have never heard someone say that disparate impacts only matter if there is a laundering of wealth or public policies or private actions. Where have you seen this distinction drawn?
>the SAT's a way of laundering discrepancies in generational wealth, which is indeed due to racist public policy as well as racist private actions. it may be intended not that way, but that's how it functions.
But what are SATs being replaced with? "holistic admissions"? A poor kid can prepare for the SAT by studying his ass off, with mostly free/cheap materials from the internet. How can you do the same with "extracurriculars" (eg. going to africa to dig a well) and "hobbies" (going the country club every week)?
From my viewpoint in Europe I never understood the whole extracurricular, hobby or even the essay or recommendation letter part of admission process. All of those felt like nothing to do with actual capability to study. If SAT is a bad idea, replace it with field specific national entrance exam.
Other fun alternatives, just outright auction off certain number of admission slots. Or just award slots randomly to all applicants.
> From my viewpoint in Europe I never understood the whole extracurricular, hobby or even the essay or recommendation letter part of admission process.
First, a meta-point about questions like “why doesn’t the US have policy X Y or Z”: The US is essentially set up to be ungovernable by design (any meaningful reform requires the cooperation of both major political parties, a situation that doesn’t exist anywhere else in the developed world), you can’t really find rational reasons for most policies.
I notice this a lot, actually: the fundamental thing Europeans miss about the US is they think “a rule exists, thus it must be there on purpose”, because in your countries, unlike in the US, you have functioning parliaments and governments that can change laws as necessary.
Anyway, the US arrived at its education system, as with most things, through a long and largely random process. The catalyst for the weird non-academic admissions standards in particular is well-documented to have been pure anti-Semitism: college administrators felt that with purely academic admissions standards, too many Jews were being admitted.
The United States does not use the European system of forcing kids to choose an area of study when they apply. Kids can, and do, study whatever they want, and change their majors at will.
So a field specific exam doesn’t really work.
And, besides that, would be opposed by the exact same people opposing the SAT.
Yep, the New York marathon has way more applicants than slots, so they in fact use a mix of some of the mechanisms you mention. I think Nepal should do the same for Everest climbers - auction off half the slots and randomly award the other half.
>the SAT's a way of laundering discrepancies in generational wealth, which is indeed due to racist public policy as well as racist private actions. it may be intended not that way, but that's how it functions.
I'm not aware of data on SAT scores and family net worth, but there is plenty of data on SAT scores and family income. Controlling for income doesn't come close to accounting for racial gaps; the richest black kids barely do better than the poorest white kids.
> the SAT's a way of laundering discrepancies in generational wealth
this is a ludicrous modern reinterpretation of SAT testing.. sure, testing has lots of downsides.. linking it to "wealth laundering" is your own obsessions showing IMO
I teach at a top 40 university in the South and I promise you, the coaching for the math SAT shows, especially with COVID, there is a huge amount of overfitting going on.
It seems the SAT is increasingly considered "racist" because it reveals racial disparities in learning. What's next? Get rid of the driver's license test because it turns that white kids pass it at a higher rate than black kids?
Sam mentions that schools could down-weight the SAT but should still consider it. Why don't schools want to do that? My guess: if they have mediocre scores on record for a kid, then admitting him means reporting those scores to USNews. They'd rather not know that the kid has a score that would bring down their average.