8 ms·

Well for starters, kids with rich parents can afford tutors to teach specifically to the content on the SATs that may not have been covered by some schools. So

Well for starters, kids with rich parents can afford tutors to teach specifically to the content on the SATs that may not have been covered by some schools. So if you're a smart but poor kid whose school doesn't go into tremendous detail with trig for whatever reason, the rich kid whose tutor helped him do 1000 practice SAT trig questions is going to do better even though the smart but poor kid may be just as capable or more so at doing university course work than rich kid with tutor.

azangru 5y ago
So what bias-free and tutor-proof tools do universities have at their disposal to assess whether a kid is smart? If that is a selection criterion anymore, of course. Also, are untrained smarts more valuable than lesser but tutored smarts?
- HarryHirsch 5y ago
  It's too late when the kids pull up at university, the damage has been done. In Bullock County High School, that's the school serving Union Springs, AL, 20 % of students pass the state reading test and 15 % the state math test. How is this acceptable in a civilized country?
  - ryan93 5y ago
    I never got tutoring and passed state tests with ease. More likely lower class people have students less capable of learning in average
    - HarryHirsch 5y ago
      80 % of the black population of Union Springs (because the white people send their children to the segregation academy) are genetically incapable of reading? That's not really credible.
      - ryan93 5y ago
        No I bombed math in college. I’m not particularly capable. I’m saying on average children of professionals are smarter than children of very poor people
chris11 5y ago
I've read there's a high correlation between family income and standardized test scores. But I think the sat and act are better for finding outliers than gpa.
tfehring 5y ago
For what it’s worth, test prep has little effect on scores, wealthy families use it at (at most) only a slightly higher rate than poor families, and black students use it at a slightly higher rate than white students. https://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2014/03/the-sat-test-prep-income-and-race.html https://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2014/03/th...
- rahimnathwani 5y ago
  "test prep has little effect on scores" You can consider SAT performance reflects: A) SAT test prep B) Other things that only more wealthy/affluent parents can easily provide. C) Other stuff. It's possible that A (test prep) has little effect on its own, but that A+B has a massive impact. The linked article talks only about the impact of test prep. I can't access the cited sources, so don't know whether they've attempted to control for any correlation between those students who received test prep, and those students who received other special advantages that may also have increased their SAT scores.
  - tfehring 5y ago
    I completely agree! It's well established that the impact of (B) is substantial, I just wanted to make the (somewhat tangential) point that wealthier students' empirical advantage at standardized tests is mostly not due to test prep, contrary to popular belief and to the GP comment's example.
  - JamesBarney 5y ago
    What if B is being smart and well educated?
    - rahimnathwani 5y ago
      Then there is room for disagreement about what is fair. Some folks believe that fair is measuring everyone on the same objective criteria. Others believe that students shouldn't lose higher education opportunities just because they were poor or disadvantaged through no fault of their own. There are good arguments on both sides. But, as other commenters have pointed out, the conflict only exists because: 1. We rely on university degrees as a credential to filter people for jobs and other desirable opportunities. 2. To maintain the value (and price) of the credential, the best universities must restrict supply. 3. Outcomes from the USA's public grade/high school systems vary widely, and no one has figured out how to give everyone a good (if not equal) shot. So perhaps there's no perfect solution possible from tweaking one thing (university undergraduate admissions). The whole system needs work, from K onwards. But such an overhaul would need people to agree on what they're trying to optimize for.
parineum 5y ago
Rich kids who can afford all of that are actually more educated than those that can't. To suggest otherwise would be to suggest that education and tutoring has no effect, in which case, why go to college at all? If you're a smart and poor kid you're more likely to be undereducated and unprepared for college level academics.
rayiner 5y ago
How “rich” you have to be to afford SAT prep is vastly overstated: https://www.realclearinvestigations.com/articles/2018/06/21/asian_study_art.html https://www.realclearinvestigations.com/articles/2018/06/21/... > For the most part, wealthy families who can afford private tutoring for their kids at $150 or more an hour, generally don't send their kids to the Jiechu School for help on the SHSAT. It serves families of modest means, especially recent immigrants, many of them from Fujian province, who constitute the lowest socio-economic layer of the Chinese-American population. > For them, Jiechu's price – $650 for a seven-week summer course, four hours a day, Monday to Friday – is a doable stretch. That
- xyzzyz 5y ago
  $650 for seven weeks of half-day school? If they ran regular school, 35 weeks of full day school would cost $650 * 2 * 35/7 = $6500 per student per school year. That’s like half of what the government spends per student in regular public schools. If Jiechu is so amazing that its students get significant boost over public schools, maybe we should abolish normal public schools and instead send all kids to Jiechu, to both get better results and save money at the same time.
  - rayiner 5y ago
    It’s a prep course. The point is that it’s within the reach even of quite poor Chinese immigrants.
  - rahimnathwani 5y ago
    "That’s like half of what the government spends per student in regular public schools" I had never heard of Jiechu until just now, but you could achieve this 50% cost reduction simply by having class sizes closer to those of China's high schools (~48 per class) than those in the US (~24 per class). This is before you consider other potential cost savings, e.g. - contract teachers can be cheaper than unionized employees - no costly central bureaucracy
scarmig 5y ago
The issue is that whatever qualification process you have is gameable by rich people. Stats are less gameable than alternatives like grades, lacrosse trophies, and interviews/subjective chemistry evaluations.
ThrowawayR2 5y ago
As a poor Asian who got their education from a small, ill-funded school district, the above narrative doesn't stand up to examination. The whole point of the SAT and ACT, as an at least reasonably objective measure of educational achievement, was that people like me could compete with wealthier but less talented/motivated students by using our hard work and what intelligence we possessed to master enough educational material to excel on them. Even back in the pre-internet era and even in a poor school district, high school level educational material was plentiful and teachers more than willing to answer questions and provide extra instruction (it's their profession after all). The SAT levels the playing field for the poor but smart.
throwawaysea 5y ago
I don’t buy this narrative at all. It is frequently repeated but without evidence. Most high test scorers do not have tutoring. The majority of high scorers learn using cheap test prep books (which are cheap enough for everyone to afford), their talent, and plain old hard work. This lawsuit uses vague claims to try and make it seem like all high scorers don’t deserve their score but the reality is almost all of them do deserve it.
oogabooga123 5y ago
Isn’t this true for ANY measure of “intelligence” or “hard work” or anything else? This bias is going to appear everywhere, should universities not be allowed to filter students at all? What would you suggest, concretely?

azangru 5y ago

So what bias-free and tutor-proof tools do universities have at their disposal to assess whether a kid is smart? If that is a selection criterion anymore, of course. Also, are untrained smarts more valuable than lesser but tutored smarts?

HarryHirsch 5y ago
It's too late when the kids pull up at university, the damage has been done. In Bullock County High School, that's the school serving Union Springs, AL, 20 % of students pass the state reading test and 15 % the state math test. How is this acceptable in a civilized country?
- ryan93 5y ago
  I never got tutoring and passed state tests with ease. More likely lower class people have students less capable of learning in average
  - HarryHirsch 5y ago
    80 % of the black population of Union Springs (because the white people send their children to the segregation academy) are genetically incapable of reading? That's not really credible.
    - ryan93 5y ago
      No I bombed math in college. I’m not particularly capable. I’m saying on average children of professionals are smarter than children of very poor people

chris11 5y ago

I've read there's a high correlation between family income and standardized test scores. But I think the sat and act are better for finding outliers than gpa.

tfehring 5y ago

For what it’s worth, test prep has little effect on scores, wealthy families use it at (at most) only a slightly higher rate than poor families, and black students use it at a slightly higher rate than white students. https://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2014/03/the-sat-test-prep-income-and-race.html https://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2014/03/th...

rahimnathwani 5y ago
"test prep has little effect on scores" You can consider SAT performance reflects: A) SAT test prep B) Other things that only more wealthy/affluent parents can easily provide. C) Other stuff. It's possible that A (test prep) has little effect on its own, but that A+B has a massive impact. The linked article talks only about the impact of test prep. I can't access the cited sources, so don't know whether they've attempted to control for any correlation between those students who received test prep, and those students who received other special advantages that may also have increased their SAT scores.
- tfehring 5y ago
  I completely agree! It's well established that the impact of (B) is substantial, I just wanted to make the (somewhat tangential) point that wealthier students' empirical advantage at standardized tests is mostly not due to test prep, contrary to popular belief and to the GP comment's example.
- JamesBarney 5y ago
  What if B is being smart and well educated?
  - rahimnathwani 5y ago
    Then there is room for disagreement about what is fair. Some folks believe that fair is measuring everyone on the same objective criteria. Others believe that students shouldn't lose higher education opportunities just because they were poor or disadvantaged through no fault of their own. There are good arguments on both sides. But, as other commenters have pointed out, the conflict only exists because: 1. We rely on university degrees as a credential to filter people for jobs and other desirable opportunities. 2. To maintain the value (and price) of the credential, the best universities must restrict supply. 3. Outcomes from the USA's public grade/high school systems vary widely, and no one has figured out how to give everyone a good (if not equal) shot. So perhaps there's no perfect solution possible from tweaking one thing (university undergraduate admissions). The whole system needs work, from K onwards. But such an overhaul would need people to agree on what they're trying to optimize for.

parineum 5y ago

Rich kids who can afford all of that are actually more educated than those that can't. To suggest otherwise would be to suggest that education and tutoring has no effect, in which case, why go to college at all? If you're a smart and poor kid you're more likely to be undereducated and unprepared for college level academics.

rayiner 5y ago

How “rich” you have to be to afford SAT prep is vastly overstated: https://www.realclearinvestigations.com/articles/2018/06/21/asian_study_art.html https://www.realclearinvestigations.com/articles/2018/06/21/... > For the most part, wealthy families who can afford private tutoring for their kids at $150 or more an hour, generally don't send their kids to the Jiechu School for help on the SHSAT. It serves families of modest means, especially recent immigrants, many of them from Fujian province, who constitute the lowest socio-economic layer of the Chinese-American population. > For them, Jiechu's price – $650 for a seven-week summer course, four hours a day, Monday to Friday – is a doable stretch. That

xyzzyz 5y ago
$650 for seven weeks of half-day school? If they ran regular school, 35 weeks of full day school would cost $650 * 2 * 35/7 = $6500 per student per school year. That’s like half of what the government spends per student in regular public schools. If Jiechu is so amazing that its students get significant boost over public schools, maybe we should abolish normal public schools and instead send all kids to Jiechu, to both get better results and save money at the same time.
- rayiner 5y ago
  It’s a prep course. The point is that it’s within the reach even of quite poor Chinese immigrants.
- rahimnathwani 5y ago
  "That’s like half of what the government spends per student in regular public schools" I had never heard of Jiechu until just now, but you could achieve this 50% cost reduction simply by having class sizes closer to those of China's high schools (~48 per class) than those in the US (~24 per class). This is before you consider other potential cost savings, e.g. - contract teachers can be cheaper than unionized employees - no costly central bureaucracy

scarmig 5y ago

The issue is that whatever qualification process you have is gameable by rich people. Stats are less gameable than alternatives like grades, lacrosse trophies, and interviews/subjective chemistry evaluations.

ThrowawayR2 5y ago

As a poor Asian who got their education from a small, ill-funded school district, the above narrative doesn't stand up to examination. The whole point of the SAT and ACT, as an at least reasonably objective measure of educational achievement, was that people like me could compete with wealthier but less talented/motivated students by using our hard work and what intelligence we possessed to master enough educational material to excel on them. Even back in the pre-internet era and even in a poor school district, high school level educational material was plentiful and teachers more than willing to answer questions and provide extra instruction (it's their profession after all). The SAT levels the playing field for the poor but smart.

throwawaysea 5y ago

I don’t buy this narrative at all. It is frequently repeated but without evidence. Most high test scorers do not have tutoring. The majority of high scorers learn using cheap test prep books (which are cheap enough for everyone to afford), their talent, and plain old hard work. This lawsuit uses vague claims to try and make it seem like all high scorers don’t deserve their score but the reality is almost all of them do deserve it.

oogabooga123 5y ago

Isn’t this true for ANY measure of “intelligence” or “hard work” or anything else? This bias is going to appear everywhere, should universities not be allowed to filter students at all? What would you suggest, concretely?