Posted on 10/27/2015 3:39:38 PM PDT by Altura Ct.
Large and growing gaps in SAT scores, by race and ethnicity, are nothing new. The College Board and educators alike have acknowledged these gaps and offered a variety of explanations, with a focus on the gaps in family income (on average) and the resources at high schools that many minority students attend. And indeed there is also a consistent pattern year after year on SAT scores in that the higher the family income, on average, the higher the scores.
But a new, long-term analysis of SAT scores has found that, among applicants to the University of California's campuses, race and ethnicity have become stronger predictors of SAT scores than family income and parental education levels.
Further, the study has found that all three factors -- race/ethnicity, family income and parental education levels -- now predict one-third of the variance in SAT scores among otherwise similar students, up from a quarter in 1994. In other words, a larger share of SAT variance today than in 1994 may be predicted based on where and to whom a child is born.
The research was done by Saul Geiser and was released by the research center where he works, the Center for Studies in Higher Education at the University of California at Berkeley.
Geiser is quick in the paper to acknowledge that his study is only of the applicant pool for the University of California and that he has not done research on the extent to which these trends play out nationally. However, his study was based on a very large pool: the more than 1.1 million California residents who applied to UC campuses from 1994 through 2011. And his study is based on the current and previous SAT, not the new one about to be unveiled.
But his findings suggest that those who hope for a closing of racial gaps on standardized tests used for college admissions may be in for disappointment.
Much of the study is based on regression analysis of different factors associated with SAT scores. By controlling for some factors, he can find which characteristics have the most influence.
And for those who wish race to play less of a role, Geiser notes that there were some years of hope. The share of score variance attributable to socioeconomic factors fell from 25 percent in 1994 to 21 percent in 1998. But in the years that followed it went back up to 35 percent.
In contrast, socioeconomic factors could not be linked in a major way to variance in high school grade point averages. Socioeconomic factors, including race and ethnicity, accounted for 7 percent of the variance in GPAs in 1994 and 8 percent in 2011.
Geiser considers several possible explanations for the increasing impact of race and other socioeconomic factors in predicting SAT scores. One that he takes seriously is the possibility that links growing rates of "intense segregation" in high schools, with more minority students attending high schools that are overwhelmingly minority and poorly resourced. For instance, the percentage of what researchers call "apartheid" schools -- those where 99-100 percent of students are nonwhite -- has doubled in the last two decades, and now represents one in 14 high schools. So the impact of race and class are, in many cases, combined for the minority students attending those schools.
Unlike some other critics of the SAT, Geiser doesn't push for its elimination as an admissions criteria. He notes that other measures don't necessarily help minority applicants.
However, Geiser does write that the SAT appears to be a poor predictor (especially for black and Latino students) of whether they will graduate from UC. A key caveat here is that the College Board has always stressed that the SAT is a tool for predicting first-year performance, not graduation. Still, Geiser writes that the consideration of the SAT depresses the chances of minority students getting in, while doing little to help admissions officers predict applicant success.
The solution, for Geiser, is to go back to what the University of California did when it adopted the SAT, but which the state's voters have barred it from doing today: considering race in admissions. He writes that if public universities are going to consider SAT scores in a serious way, they should also consider race and ethnicity.
"The continuing dominance of standardized admissions tests in American higher education is one of the most powerful arguments for affirmative action. Much of the original impetus for race-conscious policies grew out of recognition of the severe adverse impact of SAT scores on admission of students of color. Since then, that impact has not only continued but worsened, if the California data are any indication," writes Geiser.
"These findings underscore the continuing relevance of the original, remedial rationale for affirmative action. Rather than a remedy for historical discrimination, however, they show that race-conscious policies are essential to remedy unwarranted disparities in the present day. The adverse racial impact of SAT scores is far out of proportion with their limited capacity to predict how applicants will perform in college," he concludes.
Geiser makes his argument as the U.S. Supreme Court is once again considering the constitutionality of considering race in admissions.
Asked if he thought his findings could influence the justices or colleges, he said via email: "I have no idea whether my results might influence the court, but if other states were to observe the same trends, I think it might make a difference. I’m hoping that other institutional researchers will pick this up. As for the message to colleges, I think the important point is the linkage of affirmative action with standardized testing, not the emphasis on one or the other."
Roger Clegg, president and general counsel of the Center for Equal Opportunity, which opposes affirmative action, had a different take on the study.
"If a test is unreliable for certain races -- and this has long been alleged and long been refuted for the SAT, by the way -- then a school is perfectly justified in not using it, but it should try to find other measures that are reliable," Clegg said via email. "What it should not do is admit students who are less well qualified under any measure in order to reach a particular racial result."
Somebody needs to read the Bell Curve again.
So, 35% of variance in SAT is race/ethnicity/socioeconomic. “In contrast, socioeconomic factors could not be linked in a major way to variance in high school grade point averages. Socioeconomic factors, including race and ethnicity, accounted for 7 percent of the variance in GPAs in 1994 and 8 percent in 2011.”
One very obvious conclusion would be that schools aren’t teaching anything of value for the students’ futures, while giving them full credit for participating.
At the University where my brother teaches chemistry, in the early 2000’s there was essentially a perfect correlation between SAT score and ability to complete a chemistry major. With all the jicky-jacking going on, I don’t know if this remains true.
Effort! Is anyone allowed to look at that any more? Somehow students who have poor attendance, pay little attention when present, do little work in class and almost no homework are expected to achieve similarly to students who do the opposite. That seldom happens.
The fact that high school GPA's have a much smaller gap between groups than SAT scores probably means that students in schools with relatively high GPA but low SAT grade much easier or teach much easier courses than schools where GPA and SAT are similar. The SAT is a test that is the same for all who take it. GPA can mean anything.
Quite well, I believe.
The key is something called "g-factor" which is the component of intelligence that measures reasoning ability and abstraction. If there's a racial correlation in IQ, there should be one in the SAT, although I'd be surprised if it was exact.
We can send a man to the moon but we cant create an academic test where blacks and hispanics score as well as whites.
Pushing the stupid into college so now we will have stupid with a college degree
RACIST Culture's impact on SAT Results.
More precisely, it is the Black Culture's negative and dismissive attitude toward education as being "too White" -- that is dragging the would-be black achievers back into the hellhole of their own RACIST hellhole of a "Cultcha".
~~~~~~~~~~
How blighted must be a culture be to have as its distinguishing icons:
1) "Ebonics" -- deliberate bastardization of English to sound ignorant.
2) "cRAP" -- mindless, tuneless "music" ...pre-school, gutter-rhyming filth, spewed to the monotonous thump of tribal drums.
3) Abortion -- a world-class infant mortality epidemic -- fueled by irresponsibility
4) Murder -- Intra-racial slaughter -- for "dissing" one another...
5) Institutionalized Ignorance -- driven by hatred of the one thing that could lift them as a race -- acting "white" and using their God-given brains.
~~~~~~~~~
There IS such a thing as "White Privilege" -- the privilege of NOT being a part of an in-group that is committing racial suicide
~~~~~~~~~
How can such overwhelming negativity not show up on comparative test results?.
Re. cRAP. Just use the acronym RAP. Per my daughters it stands for “Retards Attempting Poetry. “
What a biased POS. same old excuses
Hey, Geiser. Give up your own damn job to some “victim” of “apartheid schools
Hypocritical b******
Here's a big "I Told You So" shoutout to Murray and Hernstein.
High parental IQ correlates with high parental income. To the degree that IQ is heritable, high IQ/income parents will produce high SAT children.
stronger predictors of SAT scores than family income and parental education levels.
Well, surprise, surprise. Did it ever occur to the researchers that maybe rich people are rich because they're smarter than average? Or that smart parents tend to have smart kids?
SAT scores correlate very highly with grades earned in college. In short, they do predict who will do well in college. What's wrong with that?
stronger predictors of SAT scores than family income and parental education levels.
Well, surprise, surprise. Did it ever occur to the researchers that maybe rich people are rich because they're smarter than average? Or that smart parents tend to have smart kids?
SAT scores correlate very highly with grades earned in college. In short, they do predict who will do well in college. What's wrong with that?
I don’t believe there are any intelligence differences between any of the races.
My Christian faith tells me that.
And what backs it up is evidence.
I see plenty of reasons for differences in test scores between black people and other races, for starters.
I don’t have a lot of time tonight to discuss it, but one big difference is the experience of being in authority, one of the very things that black people were historically targeted for, to prevent them from having.
My father was in factory management, for example, and being in some authority gives you different perspectives, and brings you into contact with people of different perspectives. Middle class and upper middle class people, including their children, then influence each other. The upper middle class neighborhood I was raised in was one in which there were high standards, even standards that were too high, and not in keeping with Christian values. Some kids weren’t allowed to set foot on their lawns, and some people had rooms in their homes no one was allowed to set foot in.
So, just to conclude on this one point I have time for, integration has happened on the basis of race, but mostly between black people and lower-income whites. That is integration compared to fifty years ago, but it’s not parity, and after such a short time on the historical scale, it’s not very surprising that that’s all that’s happened. But the norm for lower-income whites is not to find it unusual, for example, not to finish high school, to use drugs, and to have brushes with the law, sometimes serious ones.
I work with many black people, though, and see that although they work in a restaurant, there are many with middle-class values, especially those who become managers at any level, values including wanting their kids to do well in school. I see these young black people being just as responsible with their children, including doing things like when school was about to start back up, one woman mentioning that her kids would start going to bed at their school bed times a week in advance to get them used to the routine again.
true enough
but a few years back (80’s?)when many states installed their educational reform programs they began to take away from the college bound, assigning poor students to same classes, removed competition, etc. For instance in the local middle school they stopped the Math Count competitive teams and other similar events. One state canceled the yearly spelling bee, but there was such a hue and cry they backed off. According to this new philosophy they would remove all sports, if they could.
One other quick thing I’ll mention.
It was too soon to expect that black children in general could catch up to children of other races, in so short a time, especially because they still faced many extra challenges.
Black people were making inroads, just as many immigrant groups have, through manufacturing jobs, but just as they did, manufacturing started being shipped overseas, as we know.
At the same time, too, secular humanists, including the secular humanist corporations, started undermining Christian beliefs, with greater and greater success.
Something that is coming to my notice more and more is how people do not have basic respect for rules anymore, as they used to, in which even if they broke a rule, they’d feel some guilt about it, or at least know they should.
But today, people use the “situation ethics” and moral relativism of not respecting rules, but just asking “will my actions hurt anyone,” and if they can’t imagine it will, then they feel they can morally break rules. That really makes for a narcissistic, amoral society.
Sad, but true.
I wish I could remember where I read it, but slaves would have to learn to read in secrecy.
They would take the daily plantation's trash, wrapped in a newspaper, and teach themselves how to do it. Then they'd teach other slaves the "secret".
In 2015, black American students, no longer slaves by centuries, avoid learning like it's the plague.
So pathetic and sad.
Imagine if Black-American parents instilled a love of learning like Asian parents do.
Gee, I can’t imagine why the children of parents who value education would be better educated than those who subscribe to the wonders of rap “music” and gang culture.
Anyone else read “Harrison Bergeron?” Vonnegut’s fiction might become reality if the leftists have their way. And the Rush lyric, “And the trees were all kept equal, by hatchet, ax, and saw.”
Mark
A few years ago something similar happened in Berkeley, Ca, if you can believe it. They dropped their advanced placement math courses to increase their remedial courses. Parents were upset, obviously.
The single most important factor in success is the raw will to continue trying until you get it right.
All other factors may be at their best, but without the desire to excel, nothing great will come of it.
At times, even that will not be enough, but those who continue trying, who learn from mistakes and continue to develop their skills will usually get by or succeed.
Apparently random and unavoidable events beyond the control of an individual or their conceivable ability to predict can shape and propel a person, or stop a career in its tracks.
Those same 'wild card' factors can affect education as well.
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