I definitely have a horse in this race, and I will say only, that it really grates on my nerves to use race-quota to amend past race-quota errors. It lays bare the unresolved and perhaps unresolveable double-talk of bureaucrats serving a charter that found its place by promising "real equality of opportunity" to everyone, only to cave in, paid off, pass the buck, save face, convenient solution your way into re-appointment; not-solved and IMO more than half of everyone involved has no time for the high ideals that were the founding premise here.
> to use race-quota to amend past race-quota errors
Legally, this isn’t what’s going on. Affirmative action has only been found constitutional when it’s minimally implemented to further classroom diversity [1]. The benefits of a diverse student body, not curing past harms, are key to the test. (Also, minimising side effects.)
I’m not sure racial diversity is particularly beneficial any more. I’m aware of studies from the 20th century that looked at diverse and homogeneous institutions and found the diverse institutions outperformed the homogeneous ones, but this was all predicated on “racial diversity as a proxy for diversity of thought”. Unfortunately, our most diversity-obsessed institutions are exceedingly effective at selecting for racial diversity and ideological purity, so they’re not getting the benefits of diversity of thought which racial diversity was meant to provide.
That might be the sole legal priciple, but it's not the sole reason such laws are passed. Plus I don't think it invalidates the GPs concern. Any law that gives people an advantage or disadvantage because of their race is racist. Some feel the benefits are worth it, but explicitly racist laws are anathema to many.
> The benefits of a diverse student body, not curing past harms, are key to the test.
That reasoning is just cover for doing what the judges want. They'd never allow racial covenants to return if it were shown whites benefit from living in mostly-white neighborhoods.
Yes because test scores are a good indication. My older son didn’t make the minimum score to get into the college he wanted. $1200 and 12 one on one test prep classes with a teacher (not his teacher), did he magically get smarter or more qualified or was it that we had the means to pay for the test prep?
I had the highest SAT score in my school and the second highest of all graduating seniors in my city - not bragging the entire graduating class in the city was around 1000 and none of the schools were especially highly ranked.
Do you think having a mother that was not only a math teacher who had me doing algebra in the 6th grade (not forced it on me, I just enjoyed it) and did SAT training after school had anything to do with ig
You mean “practicing” by having parents who can afford to hire tutors for $100 an hour? As opposed to poorer students who might only be able to get tutoring before school with a class of 30 other people? Of course those courses are offered before the school bus arrives to school so even the one who were able to do that were the ones who had their own cars or parents who could bring them to school.
And school entrance is very much based on genes in the most prestigious schools.
Practice with a tutor is still practice. I'm not sure what you're trying to say - tests where the score can be affected at all with means purchasable by money are less valid than lottery?
It's telling that they're asking for quotas, instead of, as you pointed out, an earlier bus to catch college prep classes.
Given my own personal anecdote that I wrote about earlier in the thread, how much easier do you think it was for me “to practice” when I had a parent who not only was high school math teacher, but also volunteered to do SAT tutorials and administered the test than someone who had parents who didn’t even go to college? Yes, she made sure that I didn’t take the test in the room she was monitoring.
Let’s also look at the other end and get rid of legacy admissions.
I don't think that's true. The SAT has, among others, math questions. And it tests reading comprehension. Reading and math both take practice to learn and improve. This is so well known and obvious, I find it hard to believe such questions would be included if the goal was that practice would not help.
But let's suppose that, like for the IQ test, that was the goal. What do we do if we can't perfectly reach that goal? Weaken the test further?
> Reading and math both take practice to learn and improve.
But that's the thing, the test wants to look at your baseline level. If it was flawless then you wouldn't be able to do any practice that's SAT-specific.
> This is so well known and obvious, I find it hard to believe such questions would be included if the goal was that practice would not help.
Do you have a better alternative?
I don't find it hard to believe that they didn't say "Oh, being perfect on this axis would require magic? Better quit entirely."
> What do we do if we can't perfectly reach that goal? Weaken the test further?
No...? Nobody suggested weakening the test...
Oh, maybe the misunderstanding is when you said "the goal" is that practice would not help. No, that's not "the goal". It's a secondary goal. They wouldn't ruin the test just to dunk on practice. Measuring ability in an exploitable way is the closest they can get to their goals right now.
You're not wrong but the parents are still being part of the problem. Not necessarily just the few party to this lawsuit but anyone who views exclusive admissions as the way to get a leg up on all the other kids. The solution is to make high quality education less scarce and that will come from parents and policy makers improving the schools where they live instead. Going in to the debate as a zero sum competition just makes everyone worse off.
> The solution is to make high quality education less scarce and that will come from parents and policy makers improving the schools where they live instead. Going in to the debate as a zero sum competition just makes everyone worse off.
Whenever there are scarce resources (and even in cases when they aren't), competition will exist. Even in countries where the average person is better educated than those in the United States, the competition only grows exponentially. Just take a look at the local acceptance rates for top-tier Korean universities.
Unfortunately, I think that there really is a fundamental conflict at the bottom here. One of the key things these kind of exam schools promise - I'd argue the key thing - is an environment where all of your kids' peers will respect and value education. We can and should ensure that everyone's schools get the equipment, teachers, etc. that they need, but any non-selective school is going to have to include a lot of kids who don't care much about academics.
Quality education isn’t scarce. You think Harvard educates better than most midwestern schools? No. You think MIT does? No. I have so many data points to validate that. So many people who went to both who can testify that for example UIUC was harder than MIT. The same with several other schools.
People go to the top brand name schools because of status, or because they think others care about the status. I’m not talking about trying to get a professorship. I’m talking about people who want a decent good job when they graduate.
On top of that, the number of high quality high schools, or decent quality that you can supplement with courses at your local college or online is massively high.
People are obsessed with metrics, often the wrong metrics, making them even more self-fulling prophesies.
In France for example they might have more funding for better high schools, but they also ban all kinds of things, like most rankings. Get people to stop obsessing and people will relax a bit and come out better. Again, this is for the majority, not the few who push society forward. Those people just obsess all the time.
I’m a programmer in Silicon Valley. I went to a “top” public school for computer science. I went to a no-name local high school in my home town. I see very little benefit to the school I went to. I have had bosses who didn’t even go to college. Others who studies English or something else entirely unrelated to CS from a school that wasn’t too in their field. What I’ve learned is those who keep learning rise to the top. Every year after college, less and less people care about where you went, what you majored in, etc. I haven’t had a single interviewer ask about my publications or research projects after my third year in industry.
Most parent just obsess way too much. I get it, I’m a parent too, but parents need to look at actual behavior that influences long term outcomes and whether those outcomes are even good.
You are partly correct, but bad schools definitely exist. My neighborhood elementary was definitively bad. Underfunded, no PTA engagement, truancy, low scores on everything. It was largely due demographics as the neighborhood aged, fewer kids were around, they tried to attract out of district kids and became a dumping ground. Eventually when the neighborhood demographics changed back to families, instead of fleeing to private schools the parents actually just put in some work, rebuilt the community and within a few years it was turned around. The downside being that now parents are rushing in to get into what is now a good district and home prices skyrocketed.
I agree that the difference between an ok school and a "top" school really isn't that much. Rankings are based on test scores, graduation rates and such which almost certainly select for good students more than good schools. When parents push their kids to certain schools, topping the rankings becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy. I can't find the study, but I had read a while back that getting accepted to top colleges was a better indicator of future success than actually attending.
Almost all “CS” / software programming jobs don’t require advanced CS skills and degrees, which is largely why people from other backgrounds easily transition into software programming.
In fact, one might argue that true mathematical CS degrees provide less preparation for many software jobs than a student with lab skills from a science degree like physics or biology, accounting and communication skills from business degrees, organizational and project skilss from an architectural degree, etc.
Education as a prestige/status signaler is zero sum.
If everybody had a Harvard degree, then it would lose its value.
Which is why they’re so adamant about not counting online degrees earned through EDX as “real degrees” because it would devalue their status signaling education.
I would argue we already have high quality education access. Go on YouTube, coursera or any other platform and you can find incredible resources.
What we don’t have a lot of is high paying/high status jobs, and as a result we’re put through a brutal tournament model, where one of the games consists of getting into a high-status college.
The HS I graduated from (also a selective public high school) is also undergoing a law-suit over a similar policy that requires a minimum percentage of students from each area junior high. This lowered the Asian population by 19 points, raised Black population by 6 points, Hispanic population by 8 points, and White population by 5 points.
This roughly makes the demographic population at the school reflect the demographic population of the applicant pool; the applicant pool is still significantly more Asian than the area, with about half of the applicants being Asian, but only a fifth of the general population.
The lawsuit is roughly "This policy will move some slots from Asian students to White students, and the school board knew it" which is, as far as I can tell 100% accurate. The defense seems to be that the admissions are technically race-blind. I don't know if legally it matters that most of the slots that likely would have been filled by Asian students under the old policy go to other minorities under the new policy; it certainly does help it feel a bit less like the "Harvard has too many Jewish people" admissions change from the early 20th century.
Why not have a reasonable, minimum threshold that selects a significant group of students that are at least capable of a decent level of success in school and randomly select from that pool (eg lottery)? Stop all the nonsense of trying to write a perfect essay and have a perfect score on the admissions test. Just do good enough and enjoy being a kid and let a fair system randomly select from a qualified pool.
It's no mystery what's going on here, but isn't there an argument to be made that the race of the litigants is incidental and shouldn't be in the headline since the lawsuit is about zip codes?
>isn't there an argument to be made that the race of the litigants is incidental and shouldn't be in the headline since the lawsuit is about zip codes?
If you believe that, you are free to make the argument.
