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Without more information about the specific case, it's impossible to determine which side was actually supporting meritocracy and which was simply promoting the

by tomp 5y ago

Without more information about the specific case, it's impossible to determine which side was actually supporting meritocracy and which was simply promoting their political cause disguised as meritocracy. What was the minimum GPA? Who can apply? Are admissions limited to a geographical area or not? Who determines the GPA? If the answer is "teachers", how easily can that be gamed? Why not a similar but much more objective and harder to game system, e.g. admissions exam followed by a random selection above a, say, 80% cutoff point (e.g. first narrow the pool with an exam, then halve it again randomly)? > but that thing is largely disconnected from actual work and instead just becomes an obstacle course. This assertion is AFAIK quite nebulous. SATs and similar tests are correlated with IQ and with probability someone finishes university and with later life outcomes. Some say that high school GPA are better predictors, which might be true, but the real question is, how easy are they to game? A metric is only really useful if it doesn't change substantially when it becomes a goal. You might disagree regarding SATs (there's quite some disagreement and proper research into this topic is both hard and very politicised) but whatever other solutions you're proposing, should first be assessed based on how subjective (easy to manipulate/game) they are. Same thing as Leetcode interviews, really. Everyone knows they suck, noone has come up with anything better yet.

UncleMeat 5y ago
3.5 GPA and enrollment in Algebra I in 8th grade. Admissions are geographical because the school is a public school in Fairfax County, though students from neighboring counties can apply and attend. Of course GPA isn’t flawless. You’ll find that activists also seek to solve pipeline problems at lower grades. But this is a rapid retreat from “an objective measure is obviously better” to “this specific measure is better than proposed alternatives.” Using exam score cutoffs was discussed. Generally, people prefer gpa to exams because there isn’t the same explicit cottage industry of exam prep (yes, private tutoring obviously exists) and it includes a wider range of material than what is included on the test. Exam score cutoffs was also deemed unacceptable and similarly called racist and destructive by the same opponents of the proposed policy.
- tomp 5y ago
  Having thought about this a while longer, I've changed my mind. I don't really see any purpose in randomization, except anti-meritocracy pro-diversity. It is potentially excusable at the edges to account for the inherent noise of measurement (i.e. is 3.4 GPA really that different from 3.6 GPA) but there's no real reason that someone with 4 GPA shouldn't have a greater shot at admission than someone with 3.5 GPA. Of course, if your distrust in GPA is so great that you oppose even that, then... what even the point of GPA in the first place? We should be working towards improving the metrics, not eliminating them. But otherwise, this whole randomisation business is like, "Would you like to be operated on by the surgeon, or by the nurse? Oh, wait, let's flip a coin."
  - UncleMeat 5y ago
    > But otherwise, this whole randomisation business is like, "Would you like to be operated on by the surgeon, or by the nurse? Oh, wait, let's flip a coin." We are discussing high school education admissions right now. The kids being evaluated are 13. What is schooling for? Do admissions exist to make sure that some unqualified kid never gets access to a strong education? That conservative approach can make sense for life-or-death interactions like surgery, but nobody dies if a "less qualified" kid is sent to TJ (actually, since suicide rates have increased as the school has gotten more competitive, it might actually save lives). GPA measures several things at the same time. It most explicitly measures what you have done. But in admissions we want some measure of future potential. This is not aligned perfectly with what somebody has done in the past. Were we to change grading to a continuous evaluation of future potential then I'd be much more accepting of a stricter hierarchy in admissions, but I am extremely skeptical that such a metric would be achievable without introducing tremendous biases. My GPA in middle school was about a 4.0. But when I review my life, the reason it was so high included many many things that were unrelated to my future potential as a student. We can also take a step back and consider why we even have limited-access accelerated education in the first place. GMU is just down the street. Even discussing the idea of opening up accelerated education to anybody who wants it is also considered being "an enemy of excellence" by opponents. Finally, your note about surgeons and nurses is interesting, given the history. Prior to understanding of germ theory, it would have been preferable to be operated on by a nurse. Obviously, this is an extreme example but it clearly demonstrates how widespread understanding of "merit" can actually be totally broken.

by tomp 5y ago

UncleMeat 5y ago

3.5 GPA and enrollment in Algebra I in 8th grade. Admissions are geographical because the school is a public school in Fairfax County, though students from neighboring counties can apply and attend. Of course GPA isn’t flawless. You’ll find that activists also seek to solve pipeline problems at lower grades. But this is a rapid retreat from “an objective measure is obviously better” to “this specific measure is better than proposed alternatives.” Using exam score cutoffs was discussed. Generally, people prefer gpa to exams because there isn’t the same explicit cottage industry of exam prep (yes, private tutoring obviously exists) and it includes a wider range of material than what is included on the test. Exam score cutoffs was also deemed unacceptable and similarly called racist and destructive by the same opponents of the proposed policy.

tomp 5y ago
Having thought about this a while longer, I've changed my mind. I don't really see any purpose in randomization, except anti-meritocracy pro-diversity. It is potentially excusable at the edges to account for the inherent noise of measurement (i.e. is 3.4 GPA really that different from 3.6 GPA) but there's no real reason that someone with 4 GPA shouldn't have a greater shot at admission than someone with 3.5 GPA. Of course, if your distrust in GPA is so great that you oppose even that, then... what even the point of GPA in the first place? We should be working towards improving the metrics, not eliminating them. But otherwise, this whole randomisation business is like, "Would you like to be operated on by the surgeon, or by the nurse? Oh, wait, let's flip a coin."
- UncleMeat 5y ago
  > But otherwise, this whole randomisation business is like, "Would you like to be operated on by the surgeon, or by the nurse? Oh, wait, let's flip a coin." We are discussing high school education admissions right now. The kids being evaluated are 13. What is schooling for? Do admissions exist to make sure that some unqualified kid never gets access to a strong education? That conservative approach can make sense for life-or-death interactions like surgery, but nobody dies if a "less qualified" kid is sent to TJ (actually, since suicide rates have increased as the school has gotten more competitive, it might actually save lives). GPA measures several things at the same time. It most explicitly measures what you have done. But in admissions we want some measure of future potential. This is not aligned perfectly with what somebody has done in the past. Were we to change grading to a continuous evaluation of future potential then I'd be much more accepting of a stricter hierarchy in admissions, but I am extremely skeptical that such a metric would be achievable without introducing tremendous biases. My GPA in middle school was about a 4.0. But when I review my life, the reason it was so high included many many things that were unrelated to my future potential as a student. We can also take a step back and consider why we even have limited-access accelerated education in the first place. GMU is just down the street. Even discussing the idea of opening up accelerated education to anybody who wants it is also considered being "an enemy of excellence" by opponents. Finally, your note about surgeons and nurses is interesting, given the history. Prior to understanding of germ theory, it would have been preferable to be operated on by a nurse. Obviously, this is an extreme example but it clearly demonstrates how widespread understanding of "merit" can actually be totally broken.