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."
Every time I read one of your posts I respect you more.
Mark Zuckerberg of Facebook fame just did the same think with, I believe, Newark. One of the New Jersey systems in any case.
Same result. 9-figures disappeared into the maw of the Government Education Complex, with no discernible outcome other than the money was gone.
You didn’t hear much about it.
Thing, obviously. Never post before coffee.
How many generations will be needed? Keep in mind that we have East Asians coming in and being fully assimilated into the middle class within one or two generations.
Logical knowledgeable people take all the fun out of these types of discussions... That said, thanks for sharing...
I’ve been in the middle of moving, but I’ll get back to you on this soon.
Take your time, I’ll be here. 8-)
Okay, it took me longer to get through with the work associated with moving, and I’m still not entirely finished, but I have some time now to reply, though not completely.
I wonder, first, if you also read my earlier post #54 in this thread.
- There are a lot of fallacies used when people believe or maintain that they are just “neutrally observing” that white people are superior to black people.
- And another factor in those fallacies is that people who believe they are “just making observations” often want to believe that white people are superior to black people. They’re invested in that belief, and if so, their hearts are not right within them, and the “logic” they are using is the fallacy of confirmation bias. They’re not disinterested, but want to see “science” confirm their prejudices. In a Christian sense, that should be the very last possible conclusion, and even then, it should be rejected on the basis of faith. What is the basis for a black person to have a choice over accepting Jesus as his or her Savior, and even to need a Savior, if somehow they are less capable of making choices? And are black people any less valuable to God?
- There is a current of racism that is still not only justifying discrimination against black people, but even defending their enslavement. Those justifications have simply never died, but have survived since the time of slavery. By saying that black people are inferior, or that they didn’t really suffer anything permanent (because no action has ever been taken to truly compensate them for slavery and discrimination), then that is saying that slavery really never did them any harm, and the claim behind that is because they are inferior. To put it another way, there has been racism against them that has been maintained, in an unbroken chain, since slavery. It always blames them, and never acknowledges the harms done to them, including through that unbroken chain of racism.
Blacks are not “inferior” as human beings. But repeated testing, both in the US and in Africa, shows that the median IQ scores of blacks is below the median IQ of whites. This does not mean that there are plenty of blacks (Thomas Sowell, Walter Williams, and others come to mind) who are smarter than me or you.
Meant to say “This does not mean that there AREN’T plenty of blacks (Thomas Sowell, Walter Williams, and others come to mind) who are smarter than me or you.”
On IQ testing, then, if the Lord doesn’t return sometime in the next 500 years, what would you project about them, with respect to race?
Currently, they are being told that the reason for a black person's lack of success is because of a grand racist conspiracy to keep blacks down. This is an unproductive viewpoint. It's better to focus on studying hard, working hard, and being diligent about making the best use of the opportunities you see, rather than going into a depressed funk, taking drugs, and dropping out of trying.
Additionally, the current affirmative-action insanity must end. To get "good numbers", top colleges are taking in people who are not prepared to succeed in that environment, and who will then fail and drop out -- people who WOULD have been successful in a lower-tier college which better matched their actual aptitudes. And the lower-tier colleges, to make THEIR numbers, are taking in people who are unqualified for THEM.
I didn’t forget our discussion. I’ve been working on a reply to you but haven’t had the time to finish it yet.
Take your time.
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