4 ms·

> in a party where the folks who think the SATs are racist SATs are racist (to tptacek's point I'm on the progressive side, but I do think Biden agrees with me

> in a party where the folks who think the SATs are racist SATs are racist (to tptacek's point I'm on the progressive side, but I do think Biden agrees with me here [Biden education]). I don't know how you look at the data [SAT stats] and come to any other conclusion. We can discuss how much is solely the SAT vs. institutional racism, but the facts are pretty clear. --- Since no one else is defending race-aware admissions policies, I'll do it here. Fundamentally this is a clash of values. The left and academia (definitely not all Democrats) want racially representative cohorts. This is because they lead to better outcomes, and education is "the great leveler" and we want to level people from all walks of life as much as we can, given scarce resources. It's better for society. The right characterizes these racially representative cohorts as unfair, because they believe they should be instead constructed from test scores. They'll say merit, but their only measure is test scores which aren't good indicators of merit because of systemic racism. If we went with this system, we would retrench and amplify existing biases and inequalities. The current regime is doing pretty good at representation (2019) [Wiki US race] [Undergraduate race]: AAPI in college/US: 6.89%/6.1% Blacks in college/US: 12.65%/12.4% Whites in college/US: 55.12%/60.1% Hispanics in college/US: 21.08%/18.3% While not perfect, college undergraduate racial makeup mostly tracks US racial makeup. The main difference is Whites are underrepresented. This is a success story. Race-aware admissions policies have lifted countless millions of racial minorities in the US out of poverty and had a profoundly good effect on our society. We're seeing increasing diversity in almost every good place: board rooms, operating rooms, the Supreme Court, millionaires, etc. etc. etc. And to be clear, what these policies certainly are not is a long con to bar AAPI from undergraduate programs. If that were true, they wouldn't be overrepresented. > When I say, "Democrats think that standardized tests are racist," I'm not complaining about some Sunrise tweet. It actually happened at my high school This is a great example. The judge in this case said exactly this: "The discussion of TJ admissions was infected with talk of racial balancing from its inception" and "The Board’s policy was designed to increase Black and Hispanic enrollment, which would, by necessity, decrease the representation of Asian-Americans". Clearly, like you, he's on the side of test scores, rather than racial representation. But another way of describing what administrators tried to do at your school is they changed the admissions process in pursuit of a more racially representative student body, and relying on standardized testing would have run counter to their purpose, as it disadvantages the races of students they wanted to increase the numbers of. This isn't a Democratic idea, this is a well-known admissions problem. When MIT announced they were reinstating their SAT/ACT requirements, they wrote a thoroughly cited explanation about why, noting that "research... shows correlations [with socioeconomic status] for just about every... factor admissions officers can consider... we always have to adjust for context". [MIT] It's a really interesting read; I recommend it. --- I get this is frustrating for folks when they're denied admission, and I definitely understand to some degree the feeling of unfairness that comes with it being because of who you are (race, gender). But this is a complex issue with society-wide implications, and we're debating it down in the muck with cheap rhetorical tricks, name-calling, and hand-wavey conspiracy theories. There's a high-level debate to be had about how we allocate educational resources in the US, and probably even about who ought to decide that. But racially representative cohorts have been outstandingly good for the US; we shouldn't be so quick to dismiss them as racist and unfair. Fairness has lots of layers and if we ourselves are to have any hope of being fair, we have to appreciate its complexity. [Biden education]: https://joebiden.com/education/ https://joebiden.com/education/ [SAT stats]: https://nces.ed.gov/programs/digest/d13/tables/dt13_226.10.asp https://nces.ed.gov/programs/digest/d13/tables/dt13_226.10.a... [Wiki US race]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Race_and_ethnicity_in_the_United_States#Racial_makeup_of_the_U.S._population https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Race_and_ethnicity_in_the_Unit... [Undergraduate race]: https://nces.ed.gov/fastFacts/display.asp?id=98 https://nces.ed.gov/fastFacts/display.asp?id=98 [MIT]: https://mitadmissions.org/blogs/entry/we-are-reinstating-our-sat-act-requirement-for-future-admissions-cycles/#annotation-10 https://mitadmissions.org/blogs/entry/we-are-reinstating-our...

AnimalMuppet 4y ago
> The left and academia (definitely not all Democrats) want racially representative cohorts. This is because they lead to better outcomes "Lead to better outcomes" is going to need a lot of defending here. Since we're talking about outcomes for various races, I presume that "better" has to be defined in terms of society as a whole. So: 1. What is your definition of "better"? (And maybe also for "outcomes".) 2. What is your metric for "better"? 3. What is your evidence that racially representative cohorts lead to better outcomes?
- camgunz 4y ago
  This is fair; I didn't really cite anything for this claim, but it's pretty well accepted. The University of Michigan (undergrad and law school) had a couple of cases go to the Supreme Court about affirmative action and consequently put together lots of research to defend its position [0]. Some specific research on the educational benefits of diversity [1] --- White students with the most experience with diversity during college demonstrated: - the greatest growth in active thinking processes as indicated by increased scores on the measures of complex thinking and social/historical thinking (confirmed in the MSS and IRGCC studies); - growth in motivation in terms of drive to achieve, intellectual self-confidence, goals for creating original works (confirmed in the CIRP study); - the highest post-graduate degree aspirations (confirmed in both CIRP & MSS studies); - and the greatest growth in students values placed on their intellectual and academic skills (confirmed in the CIRP study). ... Students who took part in the IRGCC as first-year students, compared to a matched sample who did not participate in this program, showed greater growth over four years in active thinking, stronger citizenship engagement as seniors, greater acceptance of difference as compatible with societal unity, greater growth in perspective taking, greater mutuality in orientations toward their own groups and toward other groups, and greater understanding of conflict as a normal, indeed healthy, aspect of social life. A bit about the legal system and the SAT [2] --- A 1987 report of the Michigan Supreme Court, reached the same conclusion, noting that "the presence of minorities in the profession increases public perception of fairness." And a 1998 report re-affirmed that position, stating that by "reflect[ing] the diversity of the constituency it serves," the justice system avoids "[t]he appearance of bias, as well as the reality of bias." ... For example, the SAT measures only about 18 percent of the factors that determine freshman grades. Even that small predictive value decreases over time. SAT scores are thus less predictive of sophomore grades, even less predictive of graduation rates, and even less predictive of professional success. A warning and a reality check [3] --- The impact of race-neutral admissions would be especially drastic in admission to professional schools. The proportion of black students in the Top Ten law, business and medical schools would probably decline to less than 1 percent. These are the main professional schools from which most leading hospitals, law firms and corporations recruit. The result of race-neutral admissions, therefore, would be to damage severely the prospects for developing a larger minority presence in the corporate and professional leadership of America. ... By the year 2030, approximately 40 percent of all Americans are projected to be members of minority groups. More than $600 billion in purchasing power is generated by minorities and more than one-third of all new entrants to the workforce are persons of color. In this environment, a diverse corporate leadership can be valuable both to understand the markets in which many companies sell and to recruit, manage, and motivate the workforce on which corporate performance ultimately depends. --- The idea here is that postsecondary education is really the gateway to power and prosperity in the US (sure there are other roads, but at a high level this is true). If we only use test scores--like the SAT--we'll shut out racial minorities from the process. The consequences of this is that education will suffer, our businesses and markets will fail to serve racial minorities, and faith in institutions will weaken as racial minorities are barred from the educations that will give them access to economic prosperity and impactful roles in our society. Furthermore, diversity is great for education for every student, not just the direct beneficiaries of affirmative action. [0]: https://diversity.umich.edu/admissions/research/ https://diversity.umich.edu/admissions/research/ [1]: https://diversity.umich.edu/admissions/research/expert/gurintoc.html https://diversity.umich.edu/admissions/research/expert/gurin... [2]: https://diversity.umich.edu/admissions/research/expert/intro.html https://diversity.umich.edu/admissions/research/expert/intro... [3]: https://diversity.umich.edu/admissions/research/expert/bowen.html https://diversity.umich.edu/admissions/research/expert/bowen...

AnimalMuppet 4y ago

> The left and academia (definitely not all Democrats) want racially representative cohorts. This is because they lead to better outcomes "Lead to better outcomes" is going to need a lot of defending here. Since we're talking about outcomes for various races, I presume that "better" has to be defined in terms of society as a whole. So: 1. What is your definition of "better"? (And maybe also for "outcomes".) 2. What is your metric for "better"? 3. What is your evidence that racially representative cohorts lead to better outcomes?

camgunz 4y ago
This is fair; I didn't really cite anything for this claim, but it's pretty well accepted. The University of Michigan (undergrad and law school) had a couple of cases go to the Supreme Court about affirmative action and consequently put together lots of research to defend its position [0]. Some specific research on the educational benefits of diversity [1] --- White students with the most experience with diversity during college demonstrated: - the greatest growth in active thinking processes as indicated by increased scores on the measures of complex thinking and social/historical thinking (confirmed in the MSS and IRGCC studies); - growth in motivation in terms of drive to achieve, intellectual self-confidence, goals for creating original works (confirmed in the CIRP study); - the highest post-graduate degree aspirations (confirmed in both CIRP & MSS studies); - and the greatest growth in students values placed on their intellectual and academic skills (confirmed in the CIRP study). ... Students who took part in the IRGCC as first-year students, compared to a matched sample who did not participate in this program, showed greater growth over four years in active thinking, stronger citizenship engagement as seniors, greater acceptance of difference as compatible with societal unity, greater growth in perspective taking, greater mutuality in orientations toward their own groups and toward other groups, and greater understanding of conflict as a normal, indeed healthy, aspect of social life. A bit about the legal system and the SAT [2] --- A 1987 report of the Michigan Supreme Court, reached the same conclusion, noting that "the presence of minorities in the profession increases public perception of fairness." And a 1998 report re-affirmed that position, stating that by "reflect[ing] the diversity of the constituency it serves," the justice system avoids "[t]he appearance of bias, as well as the reality of bias." ... For example, the SAT measures only about 18 percent of the factors that determine freshman grades. Even that small predictive value decreases over time. SAT scores are thus less predictive of sophomore grades, even less predictive of graduation rates, and even less predictive of professional success. A warning and a reality check [3] --- The impact of race-neutral admissions would be especially drastic in admission to professional schools. The proportion of black students in the Top Ten law, business and medical schools would probably decline to less than 1 percent. These are the main professional schools from which most leading hospitals, law firms and corporations recruit. The result of race-neutral admissions, therefore, would be to damage severely the prospects for developing a larger minority presence in the corporate and professional leadership of America. ... By the year 2030, approximately 40 percent of all Americans are projected to be members of minority groups. More than $600 billion in purchasing power is generated by minorities and more than one-third of all new entrants to the workforce are persons of color. In this environment, a diverse corporate leadership can be valuable both to understand the markets in which many companies sell and to recruit, manage, and motivate the workforce on which corporate performance ultimately depends. --- The idea here is that postsecondary education is really the gateway to power and prosperity in the US (sure there are other roads, but at a high level this is true). If we only use test scores--like the SAT--we'll shut out racial minorities from the process. The consequences of this is that education will suffer, our businesses and markets will fail to serve racial minorities, and faith in institutions will weaken as racial minorities are barred from the educations that will give them access to economic prosperity and impactful roles in our society. Furthermore, diversity is great for education for every student, not just the direct beneficiaries of affirmative action. [0]: https://diversity.umich.edu/admissions/research/ https://diversity.umich.edu/admissions/research/ [1]: https://diversity.umich.edu/admissions/research/expert/gurintoc.html https://diversity.umich.edu/admissions/research/expert/gurin... [2]: https://diversity.umich.edu/admissions/research/expert/intro.html https://diversity.umich.edu/admissions/research/expert/intro... [3]: https://diversity.umich.edu/admissions/research/expert/bowen.html https://diversity.umich.edu/admissions/research/expert/bowen...