Black alumni join students in concern over Duke study

Durham Herald SUn ^ | January 16, 2012

[Eldon Tyrell]

Well -
It’s funny - I read you as younger than me - not older! Sorry if I was rude. I just get sick of PC - which seems to affect younger more - in something that is really 90% just straight numbers discussion.

The feeling of “discomfort” for an SAT 650 type in a 750 pool - is kind of intense - kind of like drowning. I’m a smart guy - but not a “student” or school person. So - I am familiar with the feeling. I think - especially in this “Duke type” demographic - it is confusing to a young person - they are told “you are super smart, super achiever” etc - then - how come they feel like they can’t breathe? (The same folks who call waterboarding torture - put thousands of Black kids/year into educational pools in which they are 100-200 SAT points lower than average). (I’d rather be waterboarded for a few days than feel on the edge of drowning for 3 years.)

If a kid is at NC State - he knows - there are kids smarter than me, and dumber. But when at the top - much more of their self esteem is tied up in this “I am at the top” attribute. etc.

I guess - what I’m saying is - this is a very odd problem. The data points - are people - with very high emotional involvement in these decisions, and not very much rational vision of what is really going on with themselves. They are 18/19 years old.

Then - the media - and black “leaders” tell them - their underperformance is due to white man, and racism, etc. When - reality - they just don’t have the horsepower. (Look at this knee jerk response in the article - from supposedly educated adults.) If I made these statements to you - you would correct me. If you made them to me - I would correct you. But - where is the feedback mechanism for these “Duke graduates”? The behaviour they are exhibiting - is REWARDED in this society.

For some reason, I am drawn to this problem, and have spent way too much time studying it.

I think - because I am not racist - I sort of thought - well - everybody is about the same, and if there is an affirmative action “thumb on the scale” how much damage could it do? Give some folks a break. But that is not the case - AT ALL. The “thumb on the scale” equates to about 200 SAT points (just Math and Verbal) - in a 1200 point competition?. It is not a “tip in” - it is a total distortion of the whole equation. It is - “a leg on the scale”.

And this “leg on the scale” is done with very little attention paid to unintended consequences. And now - it has affected GENERATIONS of Blacks.

Anyway - don’t study this problem - unless you want to get sad!

[Eldon Tyrell]

I agree -
Just be careful -
I looked into the “legacy” numbers before - obviously was ready for my response. If you want to see the effect disappear, look at a great State school - like Michigan. Because they need more students - it waters down the effect quite a lot. Yet - almost the same demographic.

I’m not sure how much help Obama needed. For my grad school at USC - we had plenty of the Obama type (we had smart black people too). Harvard would have been “one rung higher” - so some connections, plus a few points for dad, and bingo.

Remember - you start with only about 1,000 Blacks with SAT >1350 combined. 20 per state. So - a few points for connections, a few points for dad, and bingo - 1250 pt Obama is in.

I mean - shoot - from those 1,000 - you need to get all your Drs, all the scientists, most of the military officer types, etc.

People don’t have a feel for just how thin those numbers are. It is as if - the entire USA top level of Blacks - was equal to the graduating class of Princeton. How many guys from Princeton have you met in your life? It is that thin.

[ladyjane]

You are assuming it helped Obama to get into Harvard because his father went there. Actually, it probably hurt him.

Harvard has a very long memory. There are people who have worked there for decades and Obama’s ‘father’ was most likely remembered and not fondly. He was an embarrassment to the school and had been asked to leave.

Harvard is very liberal. There is much pressure on them to admit minority applicants. The race card will trump an alum’s calling card every time.

I am sure rejected applicants would like to think they were rejected because of legacy issues, and that may happen at other schools, but it does not happen at Harvard - exception being if the library or the boat house is named after your g.g.g.grandfather - although in the latter case Bill Weld was valdictorian of his class and admitted on the bases of his academic record.

[Verginius Rufus]

They are saying that the intentions of this research were hurtful--in other words, that the researchers only did the study because they are racists who wanted to come up with some results that would offend black people.

[rmh47]

There wasn’t much outrage when the 88 professors were proven wrong in the Duke Lacrosse case and they never apologized.

Actually, one of them did. Only one.

[Eldon Tyrell]

Back to work for me -
I am not going to study this one.
If you get to a summary - please include me.

One thing - watch the %ages. Duke only has about 170 Black kids/year. When you start splitting down to undecided at 20% or whatever = 34 kids.

Numbers may be too small for statistical accuracy.

Plus - ballpark - +/-50% of Black kids really do belong there - have the numbers and grades, etc. So - are trying to measure - the decisions of +/-85 kids. Let’s say half in “tough majors” gets us down to 42 kids, etc.

Further - you have a football and basketball team to field. Not to be rude - but those aren’t average Duke students. 5 basketball/year and 20 football/year - = 25 Black kids at lets say the “athletic admissions” - plus a few scattered for other sports.

The Ivys and small schools - like Duke - make this analysis almost impossible - due to these small number effects. Schools the size of Michigan and Wisconsin - where you can subtract the football team without affecting totals - are where to do real numbers.

For Duke - all the %ages will be tricky - within the qty of the Defensive secondary. For instance - if all the football players were “decided” at “communications” - your decided vs undecided ratio flips.

etc.

[reg45]

I would be willing to bet that the Native-African students do far better academically than do the African-American ones. Especially in the “difficult” majors.

[Eldon Tyrell]

Africans - account for about 1% of US Phds in STEM topics.
“African” Americans - account for about 1.5%.

You are correct - it is very obvious at the top end.

I forget the study - but it is somewhere about Phds grantd to minorities. Africans are counted as minorities - although they are foreign. So - you have to cross reference a few tables - to subtract out the Africans from the Afri-Americans.

[Scoutmaster]

1100 Black students/year in the US score over 700 on the math SAT.

I've done some quick research to flesh out my understanding of SAT score among ethnic groups and haven't been able to find a breakdown by number of students/year. Can you recommend a reference source?

[muawiyah]

What I was referring to were THE VERY FOUNDERS THEMSELVES and their progeny down to modern times. You get a few of those in your genepool you get considered.

Obama's grandmother's genealogical data fits that pattern.

It's a really old school.

[Kenny Bunk]

A wee explanatory point from Olde New England.

One is not a "Harvard Man" by virtue of a graduate degree from the place. One is a "Harvard Man," or "Yale Man," etc. if one were properly prepped and received an UNDERGRADUATE degree from the College. The Law School, The Medical School, God forbid the Business School, some graduate department or other, simply don't count.

The faux POTUS is not a Harvard Man. Neither was the drunken Kenyan Communist bigamist whom he claims was his father, and whom Harvard actually recommended for deportation.

[Eldon Tyrell]

I looked that other one up quickly today - probably googled “Sat score Black 1350” or something. I just ping google till I get a good run of data. This link I just got for “SAT score blacks greater than 700”. The 1132 qty for 2010 Blacks >700 is down near the bottom of the page.

The point is not the pure accuracy of the numbers - they can go up or down a bit - the point is - they are repeatable, and the trends are consistent. Said differently - 9X as many whites score >700 than blacks. it tracks all through the numbers.

http://www.jbhe.com/features/49_college_admissions-test.html

I’ve been looking at this problem for about ten years - because it is really quite shocking, and heavily PC blanketed. It always comes out about the same - about 200 points on math and Verbal. I never count writing.

Just did a little google - foud this archive 1 below - looks like a treasure trove of fun stuff.

Second link to college board home.

Third link is from the college board site - directly to race and gender breakdown. This seems to say 1% of about 200K Blacks scored more than 700 - but I think the 50 point filter is set too wide.

Fourth link = best - I had to dig a bit on college board site - looks like the last few years they took some of the data out of the reports - so I just looked at archived reports, and it was right there.

Anyway - dig around - sometimes you have to cross reference one table to another.
http://www.census.gov/compendia/statab/cats/education.html

http://professionals.collegeboard.com/data-reports-research/sat/data-tables

http://media.collegeboard.com/digitalServices/pdf/SAT-Percentile-Ranks-by-Gender-Ethnicity-2011.pdf

http://professionals.collegeboard.com/profdownload/cbs-2009-national-TOTAL-GROUP.pdf

[wac3rd]

87 to go.

[Eldon Tyrell]

In my note I said 9X as many white -

It should read the % of whites who score >700 is 9X as great.

Something like 50X as many whites score >700 than Blacks.

[Eldon Tyrell]

Here is the killer quote:

If we raise the top-scoring threshold to students scoring 750 or above on both the math and verbal SAT — a level equal to the mean score of students entering the nation’s most selective colleges such as Harvard, Princeton, and CalTech — we find that in the entire country 244 blacks scored 750 or above on the math SAT and 363 black students scored 750 or above on the verbal portion of the test. Nationwide, 33,841 students scored at least 750 on the math test and 30,479 scored at least 750 on the verbal SAT. Therefore, black students made up 0.7 percent of the test takers who scored 750 or above on the math test and 1.2 percent of all test takers who scored 750 or above on the verbal section.

Once again, if we eliminate Asians and other minorities from the calculations and compare only blacks and whites, we find that 0.2 percent of all black test takers scored 750 or above on the verbal SAT compared to 2.2 percent of all white test takers. Thus, whites were 11 times as likely as blacks to score 750 or above on the verbal portion of the test. Overall, there were 49 times as many whites as blacks who scored at or above the 750 level.

---

So - 244 Blacks scored >750 math. >750 Math is average for Duke Eng.
Duke matriculates 170 Blacks/yr. Effectively - Duke needs 70% of ALL Blacks nationwide who scored >750 math.

etc.

[Scoutmaster]

Thank you for the sources.

If we move past college admissions, and issues of whether black students at Duke shift majors from the hard sciences to humanities and social sciences, we reach careers.

Blacks are underrepresented in careers such as engineering, science, and medicine. Those who would say this is due to racism must go back to why black students are not pursuing the requisite degrees for these careers, and the requisite majors for those degrees.

Then we're back to the question of what social factors cause black students to steer away from math and science in high school, middle school, elementary school, and so on.

I found there's a book on teaching math to black students:

I do not understand how it's necessary to teach 2+2=4, or 4x = 5 = 21 differently based on the color of a person's skin or their cultural background.

More confusing are the responses to criticism. One reviewer was critical of the author's fluffy statements, such as "teachers must . . . extinguish all negative verbal communications and interactions with the students" (to teach math?), and a suggestion to college professors of math to "have students develop songs, poems, stories, cartoons or rhymes on some math concept, principal [sic], or skill" as a teaching method."

The response? "Your opinion is based on a cultural bias that prefers the Eurocentric approach to teaching African-American children."

My wife teaches second grade. I know that the students in her class come from at least eight cultural backgrounds simply based on the ESOL problems she faces. I wonder if this school of thought suggests that math should be taught differently to each child based on his or her ethnicity, rather than Eurocentrically?

I've never met a number that was black, white, yellow, or brown. Personally.

[ladyjane]

Muawiyah - I usually agree with you on issues but on this one I have to tell you, no way. Do you have any idea how many applicants at Harvard are direct descendants of a Forbes, Lawrence, Cabot, Adams, Lowell, Quincy, et al? Plus, Obama was applying to the Law School - a nouveau professional school founded in the nineteenth century - horrors. His pedigree doesn’t count - at least not in a positive way.

[MrB]

Sounds like those folks just have an

“anti-Eurocentric bias”.

Which, really, is simply an opposition to the predominance of the scripture-based Judaeo-Christian culture.

[muawiyah]

Do you recall exactly how many descendants of Dudley, Phipps, Stoughton, and that crowd, there've ever been? It's kind of a thin herd but it counts for a lot.

I hope you didn't imagine I was referring to just the Founding Fathers of the United States.

Then there are the Presidents of Harvard ~ http://www.news.harvard.edu/gazette/2001/03.15/harvard_presidents01.html

I don't see any of those people you named on those lists. I'd be hard pressed to let a kid into any school on their account.

[Scoutmaster]

I Googled 'racist math.' I found the www.k12academics.com website, and its Anti-Racist Mathematics page. From the Context and Purpose:

"Anti-racist mathematics is a branch of education reform theory in countries such as the U.S. and the UK, which attempts to form an anti-bias curriculum in mathematics. It emphasizes the sociocultural context of mathematics education and suggests that the study of mathematics (as it is traditionally known in western societies) may exhibit racial or cultural bias. While 'anti-racist mathematics' and 'ethnomathematics' scholars share the assumption that any given mathematical understanding or practice is a product of a particular culture, the forms of their scholarship differ."

"Anti-racist mathematics is part of a larger social constructivist movement in which traditional Western or scientific world views were developed within the context of a Judeo–Christian Western culture or set of cultures. Anti-racist educators suggest that these assumptions are dominant because of the abuse of political power. Anti-racist mathematics is a general approach to mathematics education, trying to shift a field created by "dead white men" into what proponents see as a more multicultural context."

"Proponents find evidence in the findings of 20th century anthropology, philosophy and various social science disciplines. From this, they believe that the mental paradigms of individuals have a determinative effect on the way they interpret the origin and meaning of events and objects in the world around them.

I work with many black youth in Scouting, and youth of various other cultural backgrounds. Math doesn't figure into it frequently, but I don't need a multicultural context to teach. I show respect and an interest in the individual. Teaching is often done by older Scouts, but Assistant Scoutmaster and I often teach as well. After teaching is done in groups we deal with issues of Scouts on an individual basis, not a cultural basis. I know that would be hard to do in the classroom, but when I teach on an individual basis I rarely need to bring culture into it. Individuals are individuals.