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Standardized tests remain the only criteria totally in the control of the student. You can study for them and objectively do better, become a better applicant.

• 1letterunixname 4y ago
  Make it 100% achievement. Any differences in background must be supplemented with aggressive college prep programs so the bar isn't weakened for some. It's the only way to remain globally competitive. And abolish legacy. (Don't get a JD unless set on a particular practice because the field is overflowing. Consider MD or DDS first.)
  • mrangle 4y ago
    Magnet programs operating from kindergarten on are one possible solution. The problem is that these programs are being effectively phased out because less-astute normals are insulted that everyone doesn't qualify. Which is the inverse precise equivalent of eliminating special ed programs.
    • earlyam 4y ago
      Most criticism I've heard of them is that they suck up a disproportionate amount of funding.
      • 1letterunixname 4y ago
        "Suck up"? I went to magnet elementary school. There were more art and music teachers. The average additional expenditure per pupil for magnet schools is $200/year out of $12.5k.
• goosedragons 4y ago
  Who grades the standardized tests? Besides multiple choice there's subjectivity in grading. Even with multiple choice there's some subjectivity for questions like "What's the best word choice". Why were teachers biased against you?
  • pjscott 4y ago
    I remember taking the SAT and ACT, and didn't notice any multiple-choice question which didn't have exactly one right answer and three unambiguously wrong answers. They put actual effort into making sure this is the case.
• nicoburns 4y ago
  Where you go to school still greatly affects how well you are likely to do on standardised tests. Better schools can easily bump students up 2 or 3 grades compared to poorer schools. To some extent this will also improve students’ ability to complete degree courses, but there’s also a great extent to which this is just teaching students how to pass standardised tests well. It’s true that truly excellent students will do well regardless of school, but you’ll end up with mostly average students from good schools. Universities in the UK use A-level results (which are mostly based on standardised tests), but will sometimes compensate (lower) the required grade based on a students school and background. Which IMO works out fairer in practice.
  • civilized 4y ago
    You seem to be saying that "better schools" (mostly) don't actually select or train better students, but (mostly) merely train them to pass standardized tests better. Is there any evidence or reason to believe this?
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  • rendall 4y ago
    > Where you go to school still greatly affects how well you are likely to do on standardised tests. Better schools can easily bump students up 2 or 3 grades compared to poorer schools... Neither SAT nor ACT are measured in "grades", so it's not clear what you mean to say here.
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    • nicoburns 4y ago
      Grades in the UK are based 10 percentage point increments if that helps.
  • mrangle 4y ago
• PaulHoule 4y ago
  It’s the other way around. It helps to have some familiarity with the test, so test prep has some value, but some rich kids can’t test their way out of a paper bag. The one thing they could do is hire a ringer to take the test for them, otherwise it is a valuable form of downward mobility which presents a “barrier” to them hoarding opportunity from someone more able.
  • nemo44x 4y ago
    Correct. It’s a way to “cycle the elites”. A healthy society will always include an elite minority. But to remain healthy there needs to be a way to circulate the elites so that those that should rise have methods to and those that should fall get their spot taken. Trying to engineer this around arbitrary things like sex or race can’t work because those people don’t have what it takes in the end.
    • ClumsyPilot 4y ago
      > a way to circulate the elites Thr proper terminology is Sovial Mobility > arbitrary things like sex or race can’t work They work as a litmus test-> if you are massively excluding someome, probably something in the process is fucked.
      • nemo44x 4y ago
        Sure, I’m just using terms that Gaetano Mosca uses when describing elite theory. As for litmus test, again sure. But accounting for cultural and biological differences matters. There’s a reason Asians are over represented in certain things due to a culture that values education. Or men tending to distribute differently than women. And many other things. It would be naive to believe any difference in outcomes is purely discriminatory. Although of course that can be a factor.
        • ClumsyPilot 4y ago
          > But accounting for cultural and biological differences matters This could mean different things to different people Lets imagine we have a perfectly objective, merit based hiring/admissions process. We could still have proffeshions with 1% women, or 1% blacks, etc. This could be caused by culture, say no women want to be bricklayers or software developers. Or men spent insane amount of effort, like more than is logical. There is still a valid debate, what do we do about this. Maybe you should not just 'let it play out'. Like we should hypothetically reward people that work hard. But recently we had some poor intern at Goldman literally die from overwork. He worked himself to death, died for like £30K salary, what a waste. Should we really reward that? Should the company face some consequences if this keeps happening? Obviouslt we kniw 'Back in the day' culture for women was such, that they would not be prepared, in skills and in attitude, to compete with men in education or employment. If we never went for cultural change, it would still be that way. It think it's really important that at early stages in life more people are given a chance to change course. That's what educational institutions are for.
• medler 4y ago
  > You can study for them and objectively do better, become a better applicant The thing is, attempts to measure the effect of test prep show they have little effect. According to these studies, SAT test prep courses might add ~30 points to your score: https://slate.com/technology/2019/04/sat-prep-courses-do-they-work-bias.html https://slate.com/technology/2019/04/sat-prep-courses-do-the...
  • ghaff 4y ago
    That is SAT test prep courses specifically though. Not going in completely cold versus having prepped for the test. I mean, if I took the SAT today many years on, I'm sure I wouldn't do very well--at least on the math section. There's too much that isn't muscle memory any longer because I haven't done a lot of the high school math stuff in years.
    • Dylan16807 4y ago
      Nobody needs to go in cold when you can do a practice test at home or at the library. If someone's high school math skills aren't ready at all then that's a much bigger issue than any kind of bonus prep.
      • ghaff 4y ago
        Certainly. My point was more though that, while I could hopefully reasonably puzzle my way through a SAT test without doing any prep, I doubt I'd do a very good job within a time limit because I'd be puzzling a lot of things out that I learned decades ago and haven't really used since without checking a book out of the library and spending at least a few days with it..
  • mrangle 4y ago
    That's right. Now add the fact that people can have a thirty point swing in score between attempts and without a difference in studying. Total education and intelligence are largely what determines one's score. Beyond basic studying that literally everyone can and should do, no one is going to cram-course their way to a 250 point difference. Which when I took the test, was often the difference between say a successful Ivy applicant and a successful Duke applicant. Lesser private and public school applicants dropping from there.
• deleted 4y ago
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• lapcat 4y ago
  > Standardized tests remain the only criteria totally in the control of the student. You can study for them and objectively do better, become a better applicant. This view ironically makes schools and education irrelevant. Why even send students to school, if test scores are "totally" in the control of the student?
  • onos 4y ago
    Agree, when school is there just to mark elite status. For those pursuing expertise though, schools can provide a lot of value through offering access to others with talent and to some degree infrastructure. That these schools serve both sets of demand is a problem: Sure hand out the elite status tokens to favored groups, they dont matter much anyways. But if society actually believes that there are pressing problems that need to be solved (global warming perhaps etc) training resources should be aimed at those who can best go on to make use of them.
    • lapcat 4y ago
      > For those pursuing expertise though, schools can provide a lot of value through offering access to others with talent and to some degree infrastructure. I think you misunderstood what I meant. When I was referring to schools, I meant high school and earlier. In other words, the schools that should presumably give you an education relevant to the standardized tests.
      • ngc248 4y ago
        OP is not saying Only standardized tests are relevant, what he is saying is after your education, SATs are the level playing field which you can prepare for, the preparation is within the student's control. Otherwise its all fuzzy and vague extra-curriculars etc which will decide who gets in. The Elites will still get in and the people at the other extreme will also get in, but its the ones in the middle who will suffer.
        • lapcat 4y ago
• bnralt 4y ago
  I've seen this recently with the elementary school near me. Grading is extremely opaque, and seems to be largely based on teacher intuition. Some very advanced students have gotten grades below where they are (I've heard many teachers just won't give the highest grade until the end of the year because of the weird system). Thankfully they also have standardized test scores, which both have a much more transparent scoring method and seem a much better match for the children's competency. It's not that standardized tests are perfect, but removing them makes things extremely capricious, and often very unfair.
  • hedora 4y ago
    I’ve noticed this too. I assume it is because the teachers don’t want parents to realize the school is failing their child until it is too late to have the teacher (or school) address the situation.
  • sandworm101 4y ago
    It is true that many teachers react very badly to the best students, particularly where the students are very evidently smarter than the teachers. In this age of ready access to information, any student with a drive to learn can quickly be head-and-shoulders above the average highschool teacher in a given subject. Good teachers help such students. Bad ones get jealous and seek to harm them.
    • bnralt 4y ago
      What you say is true, but I've seen this happening even with good teachers. I think there's a few reasons for this - first, if you have a large class and a student is already meeting all the standards, you're going to spend the time you have on the students falling behind. Teachers are going to want all the students to know what they're supposed to for that grade, rather than to have some advanced far off the grade while others fail. Even if they had the time, there seems to be very little interest in advanced students across the board, and few if any programs put in place to meet their needs. Secondly, there aren't many opportunities for students to demonstrate that they exceed the standards. Getting a class test entirely correct demonstrates that they know what is being taught, but nothing more. One thing I like about the standardized tests they're given now is that the computer will adjust and ask more advanced problems if the students get answers correct.
• toss1 4y ago
  Yup. My HS grades nearly completely depended on whether the teacher was assessing my knowledge or my effort. While most everyone complained about tests and especially the final being equal weight to each quarter year's grade, I thought it was great to effectively get 10 week credit for focusing on a 2-hour exam... So, yes, it is one thing that is far more in the student's control, and my SAT scores definitely helped me get into top colleges (although I did have to also take some extra classes to demonstrate that I could get good grades from doing work).
• itronitron 4y ago
  >> Standardized testing allowed me to overcome their base opinions. The only K-12 school in which my children have been enrolled that has never reported standardized test scores to student's parents also happened to be a private school. I suspect the school's motive is a combination of not wanting to give leverage to parents whose children do well, and not wanting to piss off the wealthy parents. We are in the first group and thankfully my children weren't at that school for very long due to COVID lockdowns.
• sgustard 4y ago
  Were you objectively more deserving to go to college than a kid with stellar teacher recommendations but lower scores? You might think so, but others would disagree. When I hire, I choose a trusted colleague's referral over the candidate who happened to cram best to do binary trees on a whiteboard.
  • weatherlite 4y ago
    > When I hire, I choose a trusted colleague's referral over the candidate who happened to cram best to do binary trees on a whiteboard I love it that you make your candidates go through binary trees questions on a whiteboard AND are totally dismissive of it at the same time. That's totally not a waste of everyone's time.
• moomoo11 4y ago
  In re to LSAT at least a decade ago your LSAT score meant shit. I’m S Asian, scored 99th percentile 17x, but my GPA was around 3.3 because I think college is a joke when it involves homework. I had never gotten less than a A on midterms and finals, but what I’m trying to say is that GPA and race matters much more. There was a law school acceptance calculator. With my scores and my Asian background, the T14 were either out of reach or I had somewhat of a chance at a lower rank of those schools. Law school is probably the most atrocious when it comes to race based acceptance. Changed my race on the calculator and my chances became green across the board basically. Being Asian is hard enough. We have to succeed because our parents and in some cases like me know what life is like without running water or electricity, genocide every few years, etc. It sucks that no school ever looks at that. I grew up without running water nor a toilet, and multiple people living in a home that was barely 400sq ft. Yet nobody cares about that because I’m Asian, the wrong minority. Yes I don’t give a shit about homework, I understand the material which is why I’m slaying each test. I hated that about college. We are adults. I’m paying to get an education, why the fuck is homework 20% of the grade? It’s practice, for people who don’t get the material. Education is a joke. when I see a fellow asian person from a top uni I know they had to be actually extraordinary to get in and come out.
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  • counters 4y ago
    > Yes I don’t give a shit about homework, I understand the material which is why I’m slaying each test. I hated that about college. We are adults. I’m paying to get an education, why the fuck is homework 20% of the grade? It’s practice, for people who don’t get the material. What discipline did you study in undergrad? In many majors - or even just in well-taught classes - work outside of lecture or recitation is designed to complement what you are learning. It _is_ the education you're paying for. It isn't high school where it's a bunch of repetition of the same concept (although I'd vigorously defend that, too) intended as practice. Problem sets ought to be the application of the material you're introduced to in lecture, done so in a way that forces you to grapple with and connect core concepts to other material in your major. For example, in grad school I TA'ed an upper-level undergraduate course that would typically have 15-20 students. The problem sets I created with the professor I worked for had problems split across two themes. The first was discover; we'd take something that seemed ho-hum or rote from class, and apply it to an oddball setting which yielded surprising results. Sure, that straightforward equation works - but why does it go so weird in this curated example we're providing? There's extraordinary opportunity for learning there. The second theme was connection across disciplines. Introduce a mathematics, computer science, or other concept and use it to extend something from lecture in an interesting way. These problems were intended t be challenging. We referred students to other textbooks and invited them to work together or come to office hours to fill in gaps in their background, because (a) this is a _vital_ skill to learn, and (b) it led to really cool and interesting problems and solutions. There simply is not time in lecture or recitation to cover the stuff we introduced in these homework assignments. That's why the course credit hours tallied up to 3x the amount of time spent in lecture. I'll also note that while challenging, we did not allow poor marks on or incomplete problem sets derail a student's grade. If in lecture/recitation participation and on exams they clearly knew the core content, we'd work with the students to ensure they got a high grade. But if someone shirked off the homework entirely but aced the exams? Well, the exams aren't testing everything we're teaching you in this course, so you better believe they'd get poor grades at the end of the term. So your perspective seems warped. If you weren't doing the homework, then you didn't get the education you paid for, and that's on you - not the university.
• deleted 4y ago
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