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Common sense should tell us that standardized tests like this are not fair assessments of actual student academic potential. To the extent these tests predict s

Common sense should tell us that standardized tests like this are not fair assessments of actual student academic potential. To the extent these tests predict success in college, it's only because they are biased in the same ways that most college support structures are biased. And once the "predictive" tests are in place and accepted, they form a reinforcement loop with college results, each proving the other "right". But as our society has come to realize how deeply ingrained many systemic biases are in our institutions, in order to break the cycle, you can't just change the support structures at the college, but you have to change the external barriers that have grown up over the years in support of that old system as well. And these standardized tests are a huge part of that. So I'm glad to see this is changing.

thepete2 7y ago
Do you know Goodhart's law? It explains so much ... "When a measure becomes a target, it ceases to be a good measure"
mhuffman 7y ago
> Common sense should tell us that standardized tests like this are not fair assessments of actual student academic potential. Common sense should tell you no such thing! Why wouldn't a test that measures a list of aptitudes (writing, comprehension, logic, math, etc.) not correlate to some extent to academic success in a liberal arts degree? Literally the classes you have to take are related to writing, comprehension, logic, math, etc! > most college support structures are biased I am not even sure what this is getting at! If you are arguing that most of our colleges should not be centered on liberal arts, then the alternative is centered on professional or technical degrees ... which, in most cases, lean even more heavily on math, logic, writing, and comprehension! Many universities have decided that they value diversity (ever how they define that) higher than or equal to pure academic results. And that is fine for them to make that choice, but it is silly to say that, "... common sense should tell you that there is no correlation between people that are good at lots of things and those same people being good at lots of things in college."
- geofft 7y ago
  > Many universities have decided that they value diversity (ever how they define that) higher than or equal to pure academic results. This is a rational thing to do, because "pure academic results" are hard to get a useful measure from. Here's an analogy. Suppose you are looking for the most secure encryption algorithm. One thing you could measure is the number of unbroken messages generated from the algorithm. This seems to make sense, because good algorithms will be broken less easily than bad ones. But a bit of thinking will demonstrate this is a bad idea. There are a ton of DES messages in the world, most of which nobody has bothered to break. So by sheer numbers we would conclude DES is more secure than AES, and both are much more secure than any brand née algorithm. Since this is untrue, our heuristic must be wrong. Meanwhile, another heuristic of giving intentional and honest consideration to new, unproven algorithms seems likely to work better. In the same way, if you want to select for academic potential or * aptitude, measuring prior academic results* may not be the highest-value signal.
  - zaroth 7y ago
    The point is to select for diversity for the purpose of diversity, not for the purpose of academic potential. Selecting for prior academic success is a good way to predict future academic success — your analogy about encryption makes no sense at all. Academic success doesn’t fail in any of the same ways that encryption does. But the problem is that selecting for prior academic success does not select for diversity, because the environments which support early adolescent academic success are not as diverse as colleges want their own student populations to be. So colleges are left trying to increase the diversity of incoming freshman by passing over more academically successful candidates which don’t meet their diversity quotas. There is tremendous value in having a diverse campus population, but the best way to get there is to have diverse academically successful applicants. Colleges aren’t willing to wait. One problem is that these applicants are also generally paying a lot of money to attend these colleges, and if they ultimately aren’t going to be successful those colleges are causing significant harm by admitting them. Note that one of the primary purposes of the SAT is to predict success in the first two years of college. The not very good alternative is to lower academic standards in the classes themselves, and certainly there is anecdotal evidence of this but I’m not sure about rigorous studies.
ransom1538 7y ago
"But as our society has come to realize how deeply ingrained many systemic biases" Look. If you want to go to an Ivy school just pay off the administrators, proctors and teachers like everyone else.
deleted 7y ago
[deleted]

thepete2 7y ago

Do you know Goodhart's law? It explains so much ... "When a measure becomes a target, it ceases to be a good measure"

mhuffman 7y ago

> Common sense should tell us that standardized tests like this are not fair assessments of actual student academic potential. Common sense should tell you no such thing! Why wouldn't a test that measures a list of aptitudes (writing, comprehension, logic, math, etc.) not correlate to some extent to academic success in a liberal arts degree? Literally the classes you have to take are related to writing, comprehension, logic, math, etc! > most college support structures are biased I am not even sure what this is getting at! If you are arguing that most of our colleges should not be centered on liberal arts, then the alternative is centered on professional or technical degrees ... which, in most cases, lean even more heavily on math, logic, writing, and comprehension! Many universities have decided that they value diversity (ever how they define that) higher than or equal to pure academic results. And that is fine for them to make that choice, but it is silly to say that, "... common sense should tell you that there is no correlation between people that are good at lots of things and those same people being good at lots of things in college."

geofft 7y ago
> Many universities have decided that they value diversity (ever how they define that) higher than or equal to pure academic results. This is a rational thing to do, because "pure academic results" are hard to get a useful measure from. Here's an analogy. Suppose you are looking for the most secure encryption algorithm. One thing you could measure is the number of unbroken messages generated from the algorithm. This seems to make sense, because good algorithms will be broken less easily than bad ones. But a bit of thinking will demonstrate this is a bad idea. There are a ton of DES messages in the world, most of which nobody has bothered to break. So by sheer numbers we would conclude DES is more secure than AES, and both are much more secure than any brand née algorithm. Since this is untrue, our heuristic must be wrong. Meanwhile, another heuristic of giving intentional and honest consideration to new, unproven algorithms seems likely to work better. In the same way, if you want to select for academic potential or * aptitude, measuring prior academic results* may not be the highest-value signal.
- zaroth 7y ago
  The point is to select for diversity for the purpose of diversity, not for the purpose of academic potential. Selecting for prior academic success is a good way to predict future academic success — your analogy about encryption makes no sense at all. Academic success doesn’t fail in any of the same ways that encryption does. But the problem is that selecting for prior academic success does not select for diversity, because the environments which support early adolescent academic success are not as diverse as colleges want their own student populations to be. So colleges are left trying to increase the diversity of incoming freshman by passing over more academically successful candidates which don’t meet their diversity quotas. There is tremendous value in having a diverse campus population, but the best way to get there is to have diverse academically successful applicants. Colleges aren’t willing to wait. One problem is that these applicants are also generally paying a lot of money to attend these colleges, and if they ultimately aren’t going to be successful those colleges are causing significant harm by admitting them. Note that one of the primary purposes of the SAT is to predict success in the first two years of college. The not very good alternative is to lower academic standards in the classes themselves, and certainly there is anecdotal evidence of this but I’m not sure about rigorous studies.

ransom1538 7y ago

"But as our society has come to realize how deeply ingrained many systemic biases" Look. If you want to go to an Ivy school just pay off the administrators, proctors and teachers like everyone else.

deleted 7y ago

[deleted]