Why does CMU admit more mediocre candidates if they eliminate demonstrated interest? Visiting campus doesn't really say anything about how talented/hard working a candidate is -- all it does is signal that they have enough money and time to visit.
I agree. I did a single college tour and that was a school that doesn't take demonstrated interest into account (that I also had no chance to get into). I had only briefly visited the others because they were basically in my backyard.
You are right that visiting the campus is a weak signal.
However, the decision came with a plethora of other decisions, some probably fair, some more reminiscent of the Asians-have-bad-personalities trick à la Harvard.
We're eliminating demonstrated interest as a consideration in our admission paradigm. We'll no longer encourage supplementary submission of materials, including resumes, research abstracts, writing samples, multimedia demonstrations of talents, and maker portfolios.
It was wrong decades ago when the Ivy League had a soft cap on the number of Jewish students admitted, and it's wrong now when schools effectively do the same for Asians. They can nudge-nudge-wink-wink "Holistic approach" all they like, but when the data show an Asian student needs 120 more SAT points to get in, it's hard to see anything other than racial bias or de facto quotas.
I don't say this out of self-interest, I'm not Asian. If anything, these quotas help people from my background. I don't care. They are deeply unfair and antithetical to the American values of equal opportunity, fair competition, and not judging people on their race, gender, or creed.
And the students being pushed out by these rules are not rich or privileged. The rich and privileged kids in New York are in private schools that cost more than a luxury car for a year's tuition. Many are children of first generation immigrants.
I wonder how de Blasio's proposal would lead to different patterns of where people live in the city - it seems that to play this game (and it sounds like many parents are very motivated to), it makes sense to send your kids to an underperforming school.
Yes. I expect the author's mother would seek out school districts with the lowest test scores (perhaps the lowest population of Asian-Americans) and send her daughter there instead. So if what the policy makers really want is to equally distribute Asian immigrants among the city's middle schools, perhaps they've hit on the policy that will do that.
>Yes. I expect the author's mother would seek out school districts with the lowest test scores (perhaps the lowest population of Asian-Americans) and send her daughter there instead.
In that situation, the parents of a child who might be considered academically bright will need to contend with the additional burden of trying to motivate their child to be different (i.e. higher test scores) than the rest of their peers who, for various reasons, don't test as well.
Peer pressure is a thing, and is sometimes seen by parents as a blessing if it gives their child an incentive to study.
This is some bullshit. Trying to exert such rigid control over educational outcomes by favoring people based on their race? Talk about unfair discrimination. It’s 2018 (aka $CURRENT_YEAR), haven’t we grown beyond this fruitless social engineering wheel-spinning?
In a sane world, this kind of legislation would be shot down with cogent arguments from smart and knowledgeable lawmakers. The only reason such ill-conceived ideas become law is because our republic is essentially a popularity contest, and people will apparently vote for a politician who, without thinking things through (or indeed thinking at all), will gladly push legislation rife with feel-good buzzwords and catchphrases of the moment. All that matters is getting (re-)elected, fairness and justice be damned.
It’s no wonder these folks are marching. This is naked social control from ideologues. Fight against it!
The suggestion is that educational outcomes are already favoring people by race, just with a veneer laid over it, and we're revisiting the question as to whether or not that's working.
I may be reading too much into your use of the word "favoring", but I think it's not safe to assume that any disparate outcome is the effect of favoring certain races. Certainly, educational outcomes differ by race but there are non-discriminatory factors that can play a large role, such as time dedicated towards academics [1]. In other words, I think it's worth asking whether it's the education system that's favoring certain groups, or if it's certain groups that are favoring academic achievement. I don't think it's right to use discriminatory policies to ensure equity of outcome if it's the latter.
I agree - all I'm saying is that claiming the old system doesn't favor people by race (in the way you're meaning, where it tilts the scales in particular direction) isn't trivially demonstrable.
Higher Ed has been struggling with this for awhile. It's not clear that a major emphasis on test scores isn't just putting a quantitative spackle on a biased system, and then declaring the job done.
Especially in a system with such a complicated background as public schooling.
This is an very good example of why 'people of color' is red herring no one believes. Asians, both yellow and brown, are out performing whites. Blacks are under performing everyone and 'latinos' are doing either ok or pretty badly, depending on if you split them according to skin color.
The issue in America has been and still is why are blacks doing so poorly?
Dressing it up as anything else does no one any favors.
"Brown" is not the only variable that might have influenced on success. "Asian" or "Hispanic" or "Black" are actually a basket of variables that exist at different levels that influence everything from health to educational attainment.
The top 20:
Ethnic Group Income in US Home country GDP PPP Ratio
Indian American $110026 $7,174.00 15.3367716754948
Taiwanese American $90221 $49,827.00 1.81068496999619
Filipino American $88745 $8,229.00 10.7844209502977
Australian American $81452 $49,882.00 1.63289362896436
Israeli American $79736 $36,250.00 2.19961379310345
Russian American $77349 $27,890.00 2.77335962710649
Greek American $77342 $27,776.00 2.78449020737327
Lebanese American $74757 $19,486.00 3.83644667966745
Sri Lankan American $73856 $13,001.00 5.68079378509346
Croatian American $73196 $24,095.00 3.03780867399875
Latvian American $72690 $27,291.00 2.66351544465208
Lithuanian American $72605 $31,935.00 2.27352434632848
Austrian American $72478 $49,247.00 1.47172416593904
Iranian American $72345 $20,030.00 3.61183225162257
Slovene American $72272 $34,063.00 2.121715644541
Swiss American $71418 $61,360.00 1.16391786179922
Bulgarian American $71331 $21,578.00 3.30572805635369
Romanian American $71230 $23,991.00 2.96903005293652
Scandinavian American $71190 $70,590.00 1.00849978750531
Italian American $70726 $37,970.00 1.86268106399789
How do you explain the differences in income when you have some groups earning 15 and 10 times (!!!) what they did before emigrating and others between 2 to 5? These people were poor, not just "I can't afford an iphone poor", "I can't afford antibiotics for my children" poor, yet are now the richest ethnic groups in the US, out earning local Americans by 40-100%.
It's called hard work, persistence, and grit. It's called postponing video game or stick ball time to focus on studies, not hanging out at the mall or Friday night football games. You don't have to be wealthy to wait for marshmellows.
Call me crazy, but what if you just funded all public schools sufficiently that the advantage of going to the "good" school was lessened? Is that too socialist?
Good schools are mostly good because of their student bodies.
At a basic level you need teachers who care, books and decent accommodations. If those basics aren't being met, then spending will help. And if those needs are met, it certainly helps to have really great, special teachers who push students a little further.
But I believe if you took the kids from a selective school and swapped them with kids from a school with frequent violence and truancy, the kids from the selective school would still have far better life outcomes, and find ways to succeed despite run down classrooms, less inspiring teachers, and dated books. They would succeed if you put them in an 1800s one-room schoolhouse, or didn't even send them to school at all. They had to pass a high bar for intellectual ability and their parents care about education.
100% agree. 100 years ago, if you didn't have access to a textbook or a teacher, you were largely shit outta luck. Today, with adequately motivated parents / students (and a moderate amount of resources, i.e. access to the internet and/or public library and the knowledge to seek things there), one can bypass these issues. One can even gain knowledge and skill that is far beyond the high-school level.
I actually wonder if the internet will magnify cultural differences over time. So the children who are motivated (whether intrinsic, parents, or culture) will get even further ahead by taking online courses, while the children who are not will fall even further behind.
I went to a private school that had less funding than the local public school but the students were more motivated so my school performed better. Funding helps but having a school with motivated students will always create a significant gap regardless of funding levels
Instead of debating the criteria for entrance into these elite schools, why not look at what makes them such great schools and replicate that elsewhere? Sure, in so far as being surrounded by top students who study all the time improves the environment, the current elite is likely to remain the elite and the admissions criteria should still be discussed. But if the gap between the quality of those schools and the others wasn't so vast, it would no longer feel like the difference between being guaranteed success in life vs. being doomed to failure.
The value of a good education lies in its signalling power too.
There are plenty of good professors in non-elite schools, many undergrad classes are approachable enough that a self-motivated student could absorb a lot of content with little supervision, and a lot of schools make their material available through online platforms. All these are great for learning but replicating the signaling part is more difficult.
Nyc is full of amazing public high schools, as I mentioned in another comment. Moreover you can apply to virtually any public high school in NYC and be admitted based on whatever criteria they set up, meaning you aren’t forced in that case to go to your zoned (regional) school.
These articles misrepresent the situation. There are only three schools that use this test, and they often get the “I studied really hard but I was bad at homework and class participation” student. Luckily there is a mechanism (for now) to catch some of the potential of these students.
I think it's terrible. It's robbing poor kids of a rare opportunity to get a first-rate education, to make elites feel better about themselves.
If you insist that the racial demographics of the schools match those of the city, a much better way to do it is to keep the admissions test, but simply take the top N% w/in each racial bucket, rather than globally.
Otherwise, if you get rid of the test completely and pulling evenly from every school, you are guaranteed (1) you will not create an environment w/ the truly elite (2) you are replacing standardized tests, which are fair, with the whole teacher-grading-system, which is wildly inconsistent and generally a better measure of who behaves and who sucks up than who is academically worthy.
Yes, instead we have holistic approaches which schools refuse to document for proprietary competitive reasons, and that holistic process has the same outcome as a racial quota. Very odd case.
which is really quite unfortunate, since everyone still wants to essentially set quotas, but now you can't do it in a transparent and fair (or less unfair) way.
> simply take the top N% w/in each racial bucket, rather than globally
This would benefit wealthy Black/Latino kids, whose parents can afford test prep. If the goal is to have a more racially diverse student body, it accomplishes that goal. But if the goal is to help disadvantaged kids get ahead, then it's not useful.
This is already what happens with the current policies. Affirmative Action hasn't had any benefit to Black kids except those from affluent two-parent families.
Tracking and ability grouping have documented negative impacts on weak students. Placing a student in a remedial class becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy, increasing the likelihood that his academic performance will fall further behind, and lowering the odds that he will complete high school. These students learn better in classrooms shared with higher-performing students.
However, those higher-performing students get nothing from being in classes with low performers, and get substantial benefits from being tracked into faster-moving classes with other top students. These students languish in mixed-ability classrooms as teachers focus on the slower students, or they’re conscripted to help teach their classmates the skills they’ve already mastered. And these students run in place while students in honors and gifted tracks press relentlessly forward.
The key phrase in the excerpt above is: "These students learn better in classrooms shared with higher-performing students." de Blasio latched onto those same study results and clearly believes that the trade off is worth it. While there may be some merit to your claim that de Blasio just wants to make himself feel better, I'm pretty sure that most "elites" in the city trying to send their children to top high schools are not happy with this outcome.
Note that middle school admissions are also being changed, starting in one district this year, such that top middle schools will be forced to set aside 25% of their seats for incoming students who scored below-average or at the bottom[1] of the middle-school state tests taken in Grade 4. The purpose of the plan is to "increase diversity in selective, high-performing middle schools [...]". A lot of parents in the affected district are upset.
The results of policies like these is that people with money will take their kids out of public schools. Smart kids w/o money will get screwed.
Not everyone is going to have equal interests and abilities. Bright kids deserve an educational environment where they can be challenged and develop their full potential.
> Bright kids deserve an educational environment where they can be challenged and develop their full potential.
All kids in public schools deserve that.
It just takes more resources than we as a society are willing to spend, especially when it comes to schools serving mostly poor brown kids in poor neighborhoods.
Teachers and students find it easier to teach and learn in an environment where most of the children score higher on standardized tests and are also generally more compliant. All kids in public schools deserve an environment where they can develop their full potential, but "the system" seems to have a harder time fulfilling that purpose for students who don't score well on tests or who aren't as compliant.
>It just takes more resources than we as a society are willing to spend, especially when it comes to schools serving mostly poor brown kids in poor neighborhoods.
Evidently, NYC spends the most per student than any other city or state in the country[1]. Also, schools that serve mostly poor students in poor neighborhoods are more likely to be eligible to receive additional funds via Title I, although to your point some people believe that the extra $500-$600 per student for Title I schools (i.e. schools where free or reduced-lunch criteria exceeds 40%) is still insufficient to counteract the effects of poverty on student achievement[2].
100% agree. I just don't think the way to do that is by lowering standards, or by assuming that all kids are going to have the same abilities and interests.
The entire doctrine of Disparate Impact, and Affirmative Action which is borne from it, is one of the most illiberal policies in America. I really hope a constitutionalist Supreme Court can reverse this madness.
On Affirmative Action in specific, here's a great interview from Sowell about the unintended consequences that arise from the awful policy:
I really hope so, as there is so much wrong with it. To begin with, the 80% rule creates an impossible standard of "diversity" that doesn't match the reality of how different groups of people have different tendencies and preferences.
The impossible standard mixed with the conflicting doctrines of Disparate Treatment and Disparate Impact mean that every major company has to settle diversity lawsuits for hundreds of millions or into the billions of dollars, no matter what their policy is.
de Blasio already thought about this. The criteria has nothing to do with race, and is clearly about academic performance. The intended outcome and policy itself is driven internally by diversity, but the actual criteria doesn't (and probably cannot) mention race in any way, shape or form.
Test scores are race-blind and fair. Test instructors do not give more scores to a test because they see it was completed by an Asian test-taker.
It's great that schools are looking for a better "mix" of ethnicities in the incoming class, but they should encourage the underrepresented ethnicities to do better, in tests or other race-blind admission standards.
They should not put an admission "cap" based on the color of your skin
But where is the right place to change pipeline demographics? The problem is that certain groups are intergenerationally poor. One mechanism that is available to us to fix that is education. So this isn't the end of the pipeline, it's just the start of the next pipe. Where do you propose we intervene? Should we give a cushy job to the parents of every disadvantaged minority person as soon as they're born? Maybe we should give an education to the parents of every disadvantaged minority person before they're even the apple in the eye of said parents?
You intervene when the student is still learning the material, before the test.
You do not intervene after the test. At that point the learning process for that material is already over. The student has already "missed out" on the learning opportunity. You would just be giving a good grade to someone who doesn't know the material.
Yes we need to help folks who are intergenerationally poor. But, you do that by helping their kids learn better and meet the testing bar.
You are not helping them by lowering the bar for them. Giving the kids better grades even if they don't know the material, would actually hurt them.
> You are not helping them by lowering the bar for them.
But you are helping underperforming students by placing them into top schools, comingled with better students - lots of research shows that. So lowering the bar for admission really does help.
I think the open question is how that balances against the cost of having fewer slots available at those top schools for the very best students.
But I am pretty sure that if, say, a student can't pass a multiplication test, but you give that student an A+ anyways, and then let that student into a "top calculus class", that's going to hurt the student more than it helps.
Ya sure the student gets to mingle with better students. But what you would usually get is, the student would end up being someone who mentions a lot of buzz words like "fractal integrals" just to fit in, but have zero idea what is going on, or what is being taught in class.
Kind of. There is a fair criticism to be made about tests being unintentionally culturally slanted towards the people that make them, often white Americans.
Of course, in this case, your point is correct, since the people that are overindexing on the tests are Asian-Americans.
While the individual questions may be (for the most part) purged of any cultural bias, family income remains the primary demographic correlated with test performance.
Of course, a correlation with income is likely a spurious correlation from more basic causes. E.g., suppose a poor family whose kids are doing poorly in school won the lottery and suddenly has high income; do we expect that suddenly then their kids will do well in school?
Is that surprising though? There's a strong correlation between pay and intellectual ability/education. There aren't many dull, uneducated engineers, doctors, lawyers, or executives.
If intelligence is at all heritable, you'd expect to see this. If educated parents tend to push their own children to become more educated, you'd expect to see this.
I wonder what the chart looks like broken down by where parents went to school or some non-financial metric. I would bet the children of well-educated college professors or journalists also score well, despite growing up with a more middle class household income.
If you look at the Quillet article someone linked to above, most of the high-performing Asians who ace the SHSAT are low-income, so your generalization makes no sense whatsoever in the context of de Blasio's plan.
If a test contains questions that favor a particular race, then that is an outright problem, and schools should stop that.
In this case, it's actually the opposite. When a test is in English, often Asians have to learn English, which is often not their primary language at home. So by default, an English-speaking race taking a test, has a HUGE advantage over an Asian test taker.
Which is why the stereotype is that "asians are good at math". Asians are NOT particularly good in math. It's just that in math tests, it's mostly numbers. The language barrier becomes less of an issue, the playing field levels out, so you suddenly notice Asians tend to get higher scores.
I suspect it would be the same for, say, geography tests, if the same test was translated to an Asian language. Suddenly "Asians are good at geography". Not really.
If anything, tests in English are culturally slanted away from Asians where English is often not their primary language.
"Asians not particularly good at math"? How does that square with what is well known in published surveys as for instance:
"Singapore is routinely ranked at or near the top in global comparisons of mathematical ability and boasts one of the most admired education systems in the world. In a league table based on test scores from 76 countries published by the OECD in May last year, Singapore came first, followed by Hong Kong, South Korea, Japan and Taiwan. The rankings, based on testing 15-year-olds’ abilities in maths and science, reinforced a sense that western children were slipping behind their Asian peers. The UK was in 20th place and the US 28th in the table. "
I agree totally. Tests can be slightly flawed, and rich kids can prep their way to another 50 points, but nothing else in life comes close in terms of fairness. Maybe sports and that's it. There's something noble about that.
Tell me where else a poor farmer's kid from Alabama, a child of refugees who spoke no English at home, someone from an unpopular religion, a kid who grew up in the ghetto without a father, someone from the working class who speaks with a regional accent, etc. etc. can compete on a pretty level playing field with wealthy elites?
I was under the impression that the test-makers have scrupulously avoided culturally-biased questions for decades, and yet left-leaning people casually continue tossing it around as part of their war on merit.
I avoid eating too many potato chips and I still overconsume them. Just because you know you have the bias doesn't mean you defeat it 100% of the time.
I agree that the effect is small if anything in today's society, however.
There are a number of just-so stories you can make about them being either unfair or fair - but the education field doesn't consider this a settled question, and unless you're looking at the data in a systematic fashion with a clearly defined outcome and access to lots of control variables, you can't actually be sure the test yields the "best" students.
And indeed, the definition of "best" in this context is circular.
I'm not saying you're wrong, just that you can't be certain you're right.
Sure but you're fighting a strawman here. Nobody believes standardized tests are perfect or 100% accurate at determining ex post performance. We all know people who score well but lack discipline. People who support quotas don't merely believe tests are flawed, but believe they are flawed in extremely biased ways that need outside correction.
On most of these tests, you have to solve math or logic problems, or read passages and synthesize information. It's hard to imagine someone could do exceptionally well answering those questions quickly & accurately and not perform in a classroom, or be unable to do those tasks yet excel academically.
My statement doesn't argue against "this test is perfect" but rather a much laxer statement that they're "Race blind and fair" being axiomatically true.
It's entirely possible to have the latter be true without the former.
As for your "It's hard to imagine..." in my career teaching I've met both phenotypes.
>>[...] but they should encourage the underrepresented ethnicities to do better, [...]
This policy change is exactly that - an attempt to encourage poorly performing students to do better, where a large majority of poorly performing students also happen to be underrepresented ethnicities. The NYC Department of Education has and continues to try many actions to increase educational outcomes for their students overall -- de Blasio is trying to accelerate the process before he's out of office.
1. I believe black and hispanic students could do just as well as asian students if their cultures were similar to that of the asian students.
Let's not kid ourselves. The asian students doing well on these tests are born into cultures that value academic achievement more than the average black or hispanic family. There's nothing inherently different about the different groups aside from their cultures.
Keep the tests, and encourage a culture of academic excellent to take root in different communities where it may not currently exist.
2. Let's stop being so obsessed with race. Racial quotas make people think more about race when our goal should be to make people think less about race and more about individuals apart from the color of their skin.
This is pretty standard and has been going on for decades. Asian-Americans are the last race you can openly commit racist policies against without dogwhistling. I don't know what it is, maybe it's because they are politically underreprsented or it's because they are underrepresented in popular culture in general, or their general attitude to be anti-political in nature, but it's just totally fine to withhold educational resources and outcomes for an entire race of people. It is particularly bad against Chinese-Americans, I've found.
I remember dealing with it as a young child growing up in the Midwest as a Japanese-American whose grandparents were interned in California. I didn't come to "appreciate" the level of systemic, acceptable racism baked into society against Asian-Americans until much later in life.
My feelings on it now are kind of whatever. It is what it is and I don't see it changing much. I sure don't see white activists taking up the Asian banner, though.
> This is pretty standard... I don't know what it is...
Mostly the numbers. The "Asian" population in America is relatively small, and thus (perceived to be) easily managed. If one looks at demographic shifts, immigration policy, etc., over the course of the European expansion in to what is now America, the game should be pretty clear. Actually, Brazil is also a good example, if you look at their post-slavery immigration plan/policy.[2]
Anyway, I'm linking to an old post of mine from the Harvard discussion.[1] I highly recommend checking out Prof. Frank Wu's comments in the referenced video.
Also, it's worth noting that generally speaking, public schools are not considered to be elite. Elite schools are generally the exclusive ones where politicians, captains of industry, and the like send their kids to help them socialize with 'the right kind of people,' and maybe a smattering of common folk. I've been to those (as one of the common folk) and to elite public schools; the difference really is night and day.
This whole thing is just more divide and conquer. It pains me to see people continue to fall for it.
> I sure don't see white activists taking up the Asian banner, though.
I suspect this will change in the very near future. The center-right has realized, very belatedly, that they have an opportunity with stories like this. White writers from places like The National Review have been pushing stories about Asian discrimination whenever possible over the last few months. It is a way for them to rail against "Liberal PC" culture under the guise of supporting a non-white race and achieving social justice, both of which are effective attributes when arguing with liberals.
It will be be interesting to see if the Republican party overall will move towards courting Asian-Americans, especially those of East Asian descent. In addition to stories like the OP, Asians tend on average to have more traditional views which more closely align culturally with conservatives.
Of course, the Republican party continues to hurt their future by taking every opportunity to alienate non-white voters. In places like Canada, which is culturally similar but in which the conservatives are less concerned with race and more concerned with ideology, the conservative party has built a strong coalition with Asian immigrants. This is largely unthinkable in modern day US, but it is something we could see in the near future.
If a student is not doing well in school, it makes no sense to just "give" that student a higher grade, for "equality" with the rest of the class.
You need to help that student get better, so he/she can achieve the higher grade on his/her own.
If a student can't do multiplication in a test, you don't just "give more points" to that student, for "equality" in the classroom. You need to teach that student to learn multiplication.
You need to bring that student "up" and not everyone else "down".
Yup. It's especially disheartening that most of the discussion centers around "privilege" and the supposed ease of coasting into one of these schools if parents pay for test prep. Anyone can get test prep books from the New York Public library and practice, practice, practice. The fact that so few members from some groups attend the school says far more about the importance of education in their homes than it does about lack of "endowment."
There is a class if people who do not work, whose parents did not work, who themselves have parents who do not work. The type seen in the documentary "Born Rich". They get into the best universities as legacies.
You never hear talk of this idle class ensconced in inherited privilege and luxury. However, a few decades after Americans were lynching those of African descent, blowing up their little girls while they're going to church, executing them for voter registration drives etc. - a few decades after that if an attempt is made to push blacks at Stuyvesant above the 1 in 45 mark, in a city where 1 in 4 are black - then, only then do we hear about the need for meritocracy and so on. From the mouth of a man who got a "small loan of a million dollars" from his father, with his son-in-law who, according to Daniel Golden, bought his way into Harvard.
When am I going to see the articles about legacy admissions to the top colleges? I won't hold my breath.
Luxury for the idle class at the top, the rat race (with some national oppression of Africans, Lakota etc. thrown in) for everyone else. No thanks, I'll keep my sickle sharpened for a higher target.
Some rich heir being a shoe in at Harvard where he skips half his classes and takes a spot from someone with academic interests bothers me too. It's not fair.
But I'm a bit less skeeved out by a school administrator judging someone as an individual, even if it's for a crappy reason like dad being a donor, than having them admit or deny someone just based on the color of their skin.
Just as I would rather work for a boss who hired his buddy from the country club, but harbored no prejudice, than one who refused to hire blacks, Jews, Asians, etc. who met the job requirements.
More than 50% of the global population lives in Asia and less than 5% live in North America.
It makes complete sense that wealthy-to-middle class Asians would displace white students to a lesser degree and other communities of color to a higher degree in closely located Western countries with strong schools and favorable immigration policies.
By 2050, would it be so strange that the majority of applicants and students of elite western schools would be Asian?
Other communities will be forced to attend less prestigious institutions until Asian schools hold stronger apppeal with the wealthier citizens in their countries.
San Francisco went through a similar thing. The best public high schools in SF (namely Lowell) per predominantly Chinese-American. The NAACP sued the school district (NAACP v. San Francisco Unified School District), resulting in race-based admissions in 1983 to reduce the number of Chinese-Americans at the best schools
Then in 1994 Ho v. San Francisco Unified School District happened, and race-based admissions got thrown out.
If you look at the racial demographics of public high schools in San Francisco it is pretty interesting. Of the 10 major schools only two of them have over 10% white students. Those are the only two that only admit students that meet special requirements. One is Lowell (academically the best) with 15.2% white, the other is SOTA (an arts school that requires auditions) with 41.3% white. Lowell is 56.7% Asian, while SOTA is 19.0% Asian.
Around the country, there's a concerted effort to eliminate magnet schools for much the same rationale. Wealthy NY folks send their kids to private schools like Dalton, Trinity, Packer, etc... Why not make a system that seeks economic parity rather racial parity, and eliminate the moats around private schools?
It's interesting to see the HN responses in the GPA thread -https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17441601 when compared to this one, although both boil down to the measure of scholastic tests as a ingress criteria.
So lets say you have a really big balancing scale[1]....
And there's a chute that's been feeding twice as much sand to one side, for hundreds of years....
What do you do to balance it?
a) Distribute sand equally to each side
b) Distribute substantially more sand to one side
c) Make like the imbalance did not happen and ignore it.
If the answer is obvious to the above, then why is leveling the field for historically disenfranchised people an issue? I am referring to Black Americans and Native Americans.
Nigerian Americans are some of the most successful immigrants[2]. Asian Immigrants, Hispanic Immigrants, Indian Immigrants, Eastern European immigrants, all tend to do decent well. What do they all have in common? They are immigrants! Immigrants that don't have the baggage of hundreds of years of oppression in their new country. They used to be disadvantaged in their own country. But coming to a new country does something... a new start.
I should know, my parents where such immigrants.
But Native Americans[3], and Native Blacks (as in not recently immigrated) continue to do the worst in the achievement scale. Maybe, just maybe... we start realizing that they both share the same initial crutch.. the scale was tipped way against them, until quite recently.[4]
And yes, nitpick my points away, the underlying issue is still valid.. immigrants tend to do well in a new country, imbalances can't be corrected by neutrality going forward, and historically disenfranchised people tend to do bad in the country they are disenfranchised... see poor asians in asia or in india...
What is the "punishment" you refer to? Removing an unfair advantage that is so innate, it's almost invisible to those that benefit it?
PS: Not that I should be indulging your vague references... but actually, we do it quite often. Did Bernie Madoff's kids/wife get the spoils of his crime? Has not pretty much every war had a form of "reparations"?
Given the most-penalized people in this situation are Asian first or second-generation immigrants, I don't follow your point. Also, although I agree that part of the variation between recent immigrants and historically-forced immigrants is explained by societal disenfranchisement, another part of the explanation is that more recent immigrants (i.e. from Nigeria) are culturally more aligned with education, since that's how they got to be immigrants in the first place.
The elimination of standard testing as the only application criteria for New York schools such as Stuyvesant is a travesty.
Opinion pieces on this topic consistently misrepresent the situation. Many, many, elite High schools in Nyc are applied to on the basis of a wide variety of criteria. Grades, essays, you name it. These schools have a wonderful mix of admissions processes which allows each of them to capture a portion of promising students that others may miss.
There are exactly 3 High Schools that exclusively use one standardized test. Stuyvesant, Bronx Science, and Brooklyn Tech.
Even if these schools favor people who are “good at tests” that’s fine! The other amazing high schools can grab the students who are talented in other ways.
Removing those three disadvantages people who might be highly motivated and/or intelligent but have trouble meeting other vague criteria. That’s terrible and discriminatory. It favors conformity in the best case, and quota filling in the worst.
119 comments
[ 4.2 ms ] story [ 198 ms ] threadHowever, the decision came with a plethora of other decisions, some probably fair, some more reminiscent of the Asians-have-bad-personalities trick à la Harvard.
We're eliminating demonstrated interest as a consideration in our admission paradigm. We'll no longer encourage supplementary submission of materials, including resumes, research abstracts, writing samples, multimedia demonstrations of talents, and maker portfolios.
https://admission.enrollment.cmu.edu/pages/eliminating-demon...
I don't say this out of self-interest, I'm not Asian. If anything, these quotas help people from my background. I don't care. They are deeply unfair and antithetical to the American values of equal opportunity, fair competition, and not judging people on their race, gender, or creed.
And the students being pushed out by these rules are not rich or privileged. The rich and privileged kids in New York are in private schools that cost more than a luxury car for a year's tuition. Many are children of first generation immigrants.
In that situation, the parents of a child who might be considered academically bright will need to contend with the additional burden of trying to motivate their child to be different (i.e. higher test scores) than the rest of their peers who, for various reasons, don't test as well.
Peer pressure is a thing, and is sometimes seen by parents as a blessing if it gives their child an incentive to study.
In a sane world, this kind of legislation would be shot down with cogent arguments from smart and knowledgeable lawmakers. The only reason such ill-conceived ideas become law is because our republic is essentially a popularity contest, and people will apparently vote for a politician who, without thinking things through (or indeed thinking at all), will gladly push legislation rife with feel-good buzzwords and catchphrases of the moment. All that matters is getting (re-)elected, fairness and justice be damned.
It’s no wonder these folks are marching. This is naked social control from ideologues. Fight against it!
1. https://nces.ed.gov/pubs2012/2012026/tables/table_35.asp
Higher Ed has been struggling with this for awhile. It's not clear that a major emphasis on test scores isn't just putting a quantitative spackle on a biased system, and then declaring the job done.
Especially in a system with such a complicated background as public schooling.
The issue in America has been and still is why are blacks doing so poorly?
Dressing it up as anything else does no one any favors.
If nothing else, enormous income differences? See the top graph here:
https://www.financialsamurai.com/income-by-race-why-is-asian...
It's hard to educate yourself well if your family is poor, I hear.
Culture does.
Have a look at the incomes of immigrants to the US: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_ethnic_groups_in_the_U...
The top 20: Ethnic Group Income in US Home country GDP PPP Ratio
Indian American $110026 $7,174.00 15.3367716754948
Taiwanese American $90221 $49,827.00 1.81068496999619
Filipino American $88745 $8,229.00 10.7844209502977
Australian American $81452 $49,882.00 1.63289362896436
Israeli American $79736 $36,250.00 2.19961379310345
Russian American $77349 $27,890.00 2.77335962710649
Greek American $77342 $27,776.00 2.78449020737327
Lebanese American $74757 $19,486.00 3.83644667966745
Sri Lankan American $73856 $13,001.00 5.68079378509346
Croatian American $73196 $24,095.00 3.03780867399875
Latvian American $72690 $27,291.00 2.66351544465208
Lithuanian American $72605 $31,935.00 2.27352434632848
Austrian American $72478 $49,247.00 1.47172416593904
Iranian American $72345 $20,030.00 3.61183225162257
Slovene American $72272 $34,063.00 2.121715644541
Swiss American $71418 $61,360.00 1.16391786179922
Bulgarian American $71331 $21,578.00 3.30572805635369
Romanian American $71230 $23,991.00 2.96903005293652
Scandinavian American $71190 $70,590.00 1.00849978750531
Italian American $70726 $37,970.00 1.86268106399789
How do you explain the differences in income when you have some groups earning 15 and 10 times (!!!) what they did before emigrating and others between 2 to 5? These people were poor, not just "I can't afford an iphone poor", "I can't afford antibiotics for my children" poor, yet are now the richest ethnic groups in the US, out earning local Americans by 40-100%.
At a basic level you need teachers who care, books and decent accommodations. If those basics aren't being met, then spending will help. And if those needs are met, it certainly helps to have really great, special teachers who push students a little further.
But I believe if you took the kids from a selective school and swapped them with kids from a school with frequent violence and truancy, the kids from the selective school would still have far better life outcomes, and find ways to succeed despite run down classrooms, less inspiring teachers, and dated books. They would succeed if you put them in an 1800s one-room schoolhouse, or didn't even send them to school at all. They had to pass a high bar for intellectual ability and their parents care about education.
I actually wonder if the internet will magnify cultural differences over time. So the children who are motivated (whether intrinsic, parents, or culture) will get even further ahead by taking online courses, while the children who are not will fall even further behind.
There are plenty of good professors in non-elite schools, many undergrad classes are approachable enough that a self-motivated student could absorb a lot of content with little supervision, and a lot of schools make their material available through online platforms. All these are great for learning but replicating the signaling part is more difficult.
These articles misrepresent the situation. There are only three schools that use this test, and they often get the “I studied really hard but I was bad at homework and class participation” student. Luckily there is a mechanism (for now) to catch some of the potential of these students.
https://quillette.com/2018/06/27/bill-de-blasios-plan-to-pur...
I think it's terrible. It's robbing poor kids of a rare opportunity to get a first-rate education, to make elites feel better about themselves.
If you insist that the racial demographics of the schools match those of the city, a much better way to do it is to keep the admissions test, but simply take the top N% w/in each racial bucket, rather than globally.
Otherwise, if you get rid of the test completely and pulling evenly from every school, you are guaranteed (1) you will not create an environment w/ the truly elite (2) you are replacing standardized tests, which are fair, with the whole teacher-grading-system, which is wildly inconsistent and generally a better measure of who behaves and who sucks up than who is academically worthy.
This would benefit wealthy Black/Latino kids, whose parents can afford test prep. If the goal is to have a more racially diverse student body, it accomplishes that goal. But if the goal is to help disadvantaged kids get ahead, then it's not useful.
a better argument is it's unfair to kids in shit elementary schools. and it is, but you have to try to just make those schools better.
it's a true shame if you don't give the most talented/driven kids an opportunity to go to a first rate school.
standarized testing is imperfect, but it is the most fair system.
By 2050, would it be so strange if the majority of applicants and students of elite western schools would be Asian?
However, those higher-performing students get nothing from being in classes with low performers, and get substantial benefits from being tracked into faster-moving classes with other top students. These students languish in mixed-ability classrooms as teachers focus on the slower students, or they’re conscripted to help teach their classmates the skills they’ve already mastered. And these students run in place while students in honors and gifted tracks press relentlessly forward.
The key phrase in the excerpt above is: "These students learn better in classrooms shared with higher-performing students." de Blasio latched onto those same study results and clearly believes that the trade off is worth it. While there may be some merit to your claim that de Blasio just wants to make himself feel better, I'm pretty sure that most "elites" in the city trying to send their children to top high schools are not happy with this outcome.
Note that middle school admissions are also being changed, starting in one district this year, such that top middle schools will be forced to set aside 25% of their seats for incoming students who scored below-average or at the bottom[1] of the middle-school state tests taken in Grade 4. The purpose of the plan is to "increase diversity in selective, high-performing middle schools [...]". A lot of parents in the affected district are upset.
[1] https://www.nytimes.com/2018/06/20/nyregion/new-york-top-mid...
Not everyone is going to have equal interests and abilities. Bright kids deserve an educational environment where they can be challenged and develop their full potential.
All kids in public schools deserve that.
It just takes more resources than we as a society are willing to spend, especially when it comes to schools serving mostly poor brown kids in poor neighborhoods.
Teachers and students find it easier to teach and learn in an environment where most of the children score higher on standardized tests and are also generally more compliant. All kids in public schools deserve an environment where they can develop their full potential, but "the system" seems to have a harder time fulfilling that purpose for students who don't score well on tests or who aren't as compliant.
>It just takes more resources than we as a society are willing to spend, especially when it comes to schools serving mostly poor brown kids in poor neighborhoods.
Evidently, NYC spends the most per student than any other city or state in the country[1]. Also, schools that serve mostly poor students in poor neighborhoods are more likely to be eligible to receive additional funds via Title I, although to your point some people believe that the extra $500-$600 per student for Title I schools (i.e. schools where free or reduced-lunch criteria exceeds 40%) is still insufficient to counteract the effects of poverty on student achievement[2].
[1] https://nypost.com/2017/06/14/ny-spends-more-money-per-stude...
[2] https://www.brookings.edu/research/why-federal-spending-on-d...
On Affirmative Action in specific, here's a great interview from Sowell about the unintended consequences that arise from the awful policy:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VVvnTByzTmA
The impossible standard mixed with the conflicting doctrines of Disparate Treatment and Disparate Impact mean that every major company has to settle diversity lawsuits for hundreds of millions or into the billions of dollars, no matter what their policy is.
It's great that schools are looking for a better "mix" of ethnicities in the incoming class, but they should encourage the underrepresented ethnicities to do better, in tests or other race-blind admission standards.
They should not put an admission "cap" based on the color of your skin
You do not intervene after the test. At that point the learning process for that material is already over. The student has already "missed out" on the learning opportunity. You would just be giving a good grade to someone who doesn't know the material.
Yes we need to help folks who are intergenerationally poor. But, you do that by helping their kids learn better and meet the testing bar.
You are not helping them by lowering the bar for them. Giving the kids better grades even if they don't know the material, would actually hurt them.
But you are helping underperforming students by placing them into top schools, comingled with better students - lots of research shows that. So lowering the bar for admission really does help.
I think the open question is how that balances against the cost of having fewer slots available at those top schools for the very best students.
But I am pretty sure that if, say, a student can't pass a multiplication test, but you give that student an A+ anyways, and then let that student into a "top calculus class", that's going to hurt the student more than it helps.
Ya sure the student gets to mingle with better students. But what you would usually get is, the student would end up being someone who mentions a lot of buzz words like "fractal integrals" just to fit in, but have zero idea what is going on, or what is being taught in class.
Kind of. There is a fair criticism to be made about tests being unintentionally culturally slanted towards the people that make them, often white Americans.
Of course, in this case, your point is correct, since the people that are overindexing on the tests are Asian-Americans.
I thought that was always a bullshit excuse, especially considering that these test scores closely track IQ scores.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2014/03/05/these...
https://pdfs.semanticscholar.org/e7a0/dfdee8ad5b91e1d179e9e2...
If intelligence is at all heritable, you'd expect to see this. If educated parents tend to push their own children to become more educated, you'd expect to see this.
I wonder what the chart looks like broken down by where parents went to school or some non-financial metric. I would bet the children of well-educated college professors or journalists also score well, despite growing up with a more middle class household income.
If a test contains questions that favor a particular race, then that is an outright problem, and schools should stop that.
In this case, it's actually the opposite. When a test is in English, often Asians have to learn English, which is often not their primary language at home. So by default, an English-speaking race taking a test, has a HUGE advantage over an Asian test taker.
Which is why the stereotype is that "asians are good at math". Asians are NOT particularly good in math. It's just that in math tests, it's mostly numbers. The language barrier becomes less of an issue, the playing field levels out, so you suddenly notice Asians tend to get higher scores.
I suspect it would be the same for, say, geography tests, if the same test was translated to an Asian language. Suddenly "Asians are good at geography". Not really.
If anything, tests in English are culturally slanted away from Asians where English is often not their primary language.
"Singapore is routinely ranked at or near the top in global comparisons of mathematical ability and boasts one of the most admired education systems in the world. In a league table based on test scores from 76 countries published by the OECD in May last year, Singapore came first, followed by Hong Kong, South Korea, Japan and Taiwan. The rankings, based on testing 15-year-olds’ abilities in maths and science, reinforced a sense that western children were slipping behind their Asian peers. The UK was in 20th place and the US 28th in the table. "
Tell me where else a poor farmer's kid from Alabama, a child of refugees who spoke no English at home, someone from an unpopular religion, a kid who grew up in the ghetto without a father, someone from the working class who speaks with a regional accent, etc. etc. can compete on a pretty level playing field with wealthy elites?
And why is this bias mostly helping Asians, a minority group, who more likely to be learning English as a second language?
I agree that the effect is small if anything in today's society, however.
And indeed, the definition of "best" in this context is circular.
I'm not saying you're wrong, just that you can't be certain you're right.
On most of these tests, you have to solve math or logic problems, or read passages and synthesize information. It's hard to imagine someone could do exceptionally well answering those questions quickly & accurately and not perform in a classroom, or be unable to do those tasks yet excel academically.
It's entirely possible to have the latter be true without the former.
As for your "It's hard to imagine..." in my career teaching I've met both phenotypes.
This policy change is exactly that - an attempt to encourage poorly performing students to do better, where a large majority of poorly performing students also happen to be underrepresented ethnicities. The NYC Department of Education has and continues to try many actions to increase educational outcomes for their students overall -- de Blasio is trying to accelerate the process before he's out of office.
Let's not kid ourselves. The asian students doing well on these tests are born into cultures that value academic achievement more than the average black or hispanic family. There's nothing inherently different about the different groups aside from their cultures.
Keep the tests, and encourage a culture of academic excellent to take root in different communities where it may not currently exist.
2. Let's stop being so obsessed with race. Racial quotas make people think more about race when our goal should be to make people think less about race and more about individuals apart from the color of their skin.
I remember dealing with it as a young child growing up in the Midwest as a Japanese-American whose grandparents were interned in California. I didn't come to "appreciate" the level of systemic, acceptable racism baked into society against Asian-Americans until much later in life.
My feelings on it now are kind of whatever. It is what it is and I don't see it changing much. I sure don't see white activists taking up the Asian banner, though.
Mostly the numbers. The "Asian" population in America is relatively small, and thus (perceived to be) easily managed. If one looks at demographic shifts, immigration policy, etc., over the course of the European expansion in to what is now America, the game should be pretty clear. Actually, Brazil is also a good example, if you look at their post-slavery immigration plan/policy.[2]
Anyway, I'm linking to an old post of mine from the Harvard discussion.[1] I highly recommend checking out Prof. Frank Wu's comments in the referenced video.
Also, it's worth noting that generally speaking, public schools are not considered to be elite. Elite schools are generally the exclusive ones where politicians, captains of industry, and the like send their kids to help them socialize with 'the right kind of people,' and maybe a smattering of common folk. I've been to those (as one of the common folk) and to elite public schools; the difference really is night and day.
This whole thing is just more divide and conquer. It pains me to see people continue to fall for it.
[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17335887 [2] https://www.nytimes.com/2018/06/30/opinion/is-neymar-black-b...
That's typically true but not of the NY high schools. These schools are truly elite high schools.
I suspect this will change in the very near future. The center-right has realized, very belatedly, that they have an opportunity with stories like this. White writers from places like The National Review have been pushing stories about Asian discrimination whenever possible over the last few months. It is a way for them to rail against "Liberal PC" culture under the guise of supporting a non-white race and achieving social justice, both of which are effective attributes when arguing with liberals.
It will be be interesting to see if the Republican party overall will move towards courting Asian-Americans, especially those of East Asian descent. In addition to stories like the OP, Asians tend on average to have more traditional views which more closely align culturally with conservatives.
Of course, the Republican party continues to hurt their future by taking every opportunity to alienate non-white voters. In places like Canada, which is culturally similar but in which the conservatives are less concerned with race and more concerned with ideology, the conservative party has built a strong coalition with Asian immigrants. This is largely unthinkable in modern day US, but it is something we could see in the near future.
You need to help that student get better, so he/she can achieve the higher grade on his/her own.
If a student can't do multiplication in a test, you don't just "give more points" to that student, for "equality" in the classroom. You need to teach that student to learn multiplication.
You need to bring that student "up" and not everyone else "down".
The idea that this one school can make or break one's future is either absurd or terrifying, and I'm not sure which is actually true.
You never hear talk of this idle class ensconced in inherited privilege and luxury. However, a few decades after Americans were lynching those of African descent, blowing up their little girls while they're going to church, executing them for voter registration drives etc. - a few decades after that if an attempt is made to push blacks at Stuyvesant above the 1 in 45 mark, in a city where 1 in 4 are black - then, only then do we hear about the need for meritocracy and so on. From the mouth of a man who got a "small loan of a million dollars" from his father, with his son-in-law who, according to Daniel Golden, bought his way into Harvard.
When am I going to see the articles about legacy admissions to the top colleges? I won't hold my breath.
Luxury for the idle class at the top, the rat race (with some national oppression of Africans, Lakota etc. thrown in) for everyone else. No thanks, I'll keep my sickle sharpened for a higher target.
But I'm a bit less skeeved out by a school administrator judging someone as an individual, even if it's for a crappy reason like dad being a donor, than having them admit or deny someone just based on the color of their skin.
Just as I would rather work for a boss who hired his buddy from the country club, but harbored no prejudice, than one who refused to hire blacks, Jews, Asians, etc. who met the job requirements.
It makes complete sense that wealthy-to-middle class Asians would displace white students to a lesser degree and other communities of color to a higher degree in closely located Western countries with strong schools and favorable immigration policies.
By 2050, would it be so strange that the majority of applicants and students of elite western schools would be Asian?
Other communities will be forced to attend less prestigious institutions until Asian schools hold stronger apppeal with the wealthier citizens in their countries.
Then in 1994 Ho v. San Francisco Unified School District happened, and race-based admissions got thrown out.
If you look at the racial demographics of public high schools in San Francisco it is pretty interesting. Of the 10 major schools only two of them have over 10% white students. Those are the only two that only admit students that meet special requirements. One is Lowell (academically the best) with 15.2% white, the other is SOTA (an arts school that requires auditions) with 41.3% white. Lowell is 56.7% Asian, while SOTA is 19.0% Asian.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lowell_High_School_(San_Franci...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ruth_Asawa_San_Francisco_Schoo...
Better schools and maybe fewer school shootings...maybe. America has never much cared for its children so yeah. shrugs
And there's a chute that's been feeding twice as much sand to one side, for hundreds of years....
What do you do to balance it?
If the answer is obvious to the above, then why is leveling the field for historically disenfranchised people an issue? I am referring to Black Americans and Native Americans.Nigerian Americans are some of the most successful immigrants[2]. Asian Immigrants, Hispanic Immigrants, Indian Immigrants, Eastern European immigrants, all tend to do decent well. What do they all have in common? They are immigrants! Immigrants that don't have the baggage of hundreds of years of oppression in their new country. They used to be disadvantaged in their own country. But coming to a new country does something... a new start.
But Native Americans[3], and Native Blacks (as in not recently immigrated) continue to do the worst in the achievement scale. Maybe, just maybe... we start realizing that they both share the same initial crutch.. the scale was tipped way against them, until quite recently.[4]And yes, nitpick my points away, the underlying issue is still valid.. immigrants tend to do well in a new country, imbalances can't be corrected by neutrality going forward, and historically disenfranchised people tend to do bad in the country they are disenfranchised... see poor asians in asia or in india...
Especially the immigrants, who had nothing to do with any of it.
PS: Not that I should be indulging your vague references... but actually, we do it quite often. Did Bernie Madoff's kids/wife get the spoils of his crime? Has not pretty much every war had a form of "reparations"?
Opinion pieces on this topic consistently misrepresent the situation. Many, many, elite High schools in Nyc are applied to on the basis of a wide variety of criteria. Grades, essays, you name it. These schools have a wonderful mix of admissions processes which allows each of them to capture a portion of promising students that others may miss.
There are exactly 3 High Schools that exclusively use one standardized test. Stuyvesant, Bronx Science, and Brooklyn Tech.
Even if these schools favor people who are “good at tests” that’s fine! The other amazing high schools can grab the students who are talented in other ways.
Removing those three disadvantages people who might be highly motivated and/or intelligent but have trouble meeting other vague criteria. That’s terrible and discriminatory. It favors conformity in the best case, and quota filling in the worst.