U. of Texas at Austin Will Return To Standardized Test Requirement (nytimes.com) 93
The University of Texas at Austin said Monday that it would again require standardized tests for admissions (non-paywalled source), becoming the latest selective university to reinstate requirements for SAT or ACT scores that were abandoned during the pandemic. From a report: A few years ago, about 2,000 colleges across the country began to move away from requiring test scores, at least temporarily, amid concerns they helped fuel inequality. But a growing number of those schools have reversed those policies, including Brown, Yale, Dartmouth, M.I.T., Georgetown and Purdue, with several announcing the changes in recent months.
U.T. Austin, which admits a cross-section of high-achieving Texas students under a plan designed to increase opportunity in the state, cited a slightly different reason than the other schools in returning to test requirements. Without requiring test scores, officials said, they were hampered in placing the admitted students in programs they would be most suited for and in determining which ones needed extra help. After making test scores optional the past few years, the university will now require applicants to submit either SAT or ACT scores beginning Aug. 1, with applications for fall 2025 admissions.
In an interview, Jay Hartzell, the U.T. president, said that the decision followed an analysis of students who did not submit scores. "We looked at our students and found that, in many ways, they weren't faring as well," Dr. Hartzell said. Those against testing requirements have long said that standardized tests are unfair because many students from affluent families use tutors and coaches to bolster their scores. But recent data has raised questions about the contention. In reinstating test requirements, some universities have said that making scores optional had the unintended effect of harming prospective students from low-income families.
U.T. Austin, which admits a cross-section of high-achieving Texas students under a plan designed to increase opportunity in the state, cited a slightly different reason than the other schools in returning to test requirements. Without requiring test scores, officials said, they were hampered in placing the admitted students in programs they would be most suited for and in determining which ones needed extra help. After making test scores optional the past few years, the university will now require applicants to submit either SAT or ACT scores beginning Aug. 1, with applications for fall 2025 admissions.
In an interview, Jay Hartzell, the U.T. president, said that the decision followed an analysis of students who did not submit scores. "We looked at our students and found that, in many ways, they weren't faring as well," Dr. Hartzell said. Those against testing requirements have long said that standardized tests are unfair because many students from affluent families use tutors and coaches to bolster their scores. But recent data has raised questions about the contention. In reinstating test requirements, some universities have said that making scores optional had the unintended effect of harming prospective students from low-income families.
What? Fuel inequality? (Score:5, Insightful)
How do standardised tests fuel inequality? Am I missing something? In fact, the only way to ensure that the process is fair is to measure candidates with the same criteria. Can you do X, Y and Z to the required standard? Yes or no? Rich or poor. White or of colour. Minority or majority. Standardised tests don't care about those characteristics. All that matters is your ability.
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Soon we will start discussing admission grading requirements for quadroons, octoroons, and quintroons. The word bi-roon might even become a thing.
I've seen this movie before.
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Standardized tests can include unintended biases. Anytime there is a cultural difference, there will be vocabulary differences including subtle meaning differences that can skew responses in standardized testing. I haven't looked into the details, but it makes sense.
I know there are studies that show what the correlation levels are between college performance and standardized test scores, but I don't know if that data is broken down by different groups; I wouldn't be surprised if the correlation is the st
Ahh, the stench of thinly veiled racism (Score:2)
there will be vocabulary differences including subtle meaning differences that can skew responses in standardized testing.
That's a pretty roundabout way of saying "the black population has poor reading skills".
The way to address that is by improving education before college, not letting in students doomed to fail because they have such poor reading comprehension.
Guess what, kids of any race can learn to read and write well. Saying anything else is as racist as it gets, basically proclaiming you must have
Re: Ahh, the stench of thinly veiled racism (Score:1)
The party of the KKK has simply gotten more eloquent in stating their racist ideas.
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What about foreign students? What about the student who's never seen a tree? What about the rural student being asked a question about the shortest route to get to midtown.
Yes, the tests may help determine who's not up on American culture and need more help in that area. However it is not so good at determining who is most likely to succeed in college (the rich kid with great scores who had tutors but is fundamentally stupid, or the highly motivated but poor kid who got middling grades but is a voracious
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What about foreign students?
What about them? They often have better English skills than 99% of American high school graduates.
What about the rural student being asked a question about the shortest route to get to midtown.
That is the most retarded "what about" example I think I've ever seen.
Good day to you sir, I hope you can cure your chronic retardation at some point. Right now you are being dumber than a bag of hammers.
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Meanwhile, the lineup at the starting blocks of the 100-meter dash is not very diverse. But no-one wants to fix that for some curious reason.
Re:What? Fuel inequality? (Score:5, Interesting)
"There's a good argument that minorities are disadvantaged by generations of discrimination, so efforts to reverse that are still needed"
There's evidence that letting folks in to college who haven't shown a scholastic history and test scores fail to complete college at significantly higher levels (and they are already at 30%-40%.
Only 46% of blacks make it to the finish line (and that's after decades of affirmative action). Compared to 72% of Asians, 67% of whites and 55% Hispanic.
The answer isn't to abandon college readiness evaluation tests... the answer is to figure out why they are so ill-prepared.
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Our high IQ resources are scattered across demographics. We are not helping ourselves in the long run by under-educating and under-utilizing these resources in our poorer demographics.
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Our high IQ resources are scattered across demographics. We are not helping ourselves in the long run by under-educating and under-utilizing these resources in our poorer demographics.
Indeed. Any nation that does not utilize its smartest members (who are always a very restricted resource) has no good long-term perspective, especially with global competition. Just remember that on any tech, anybody that has enough smart and educated people is only a decade or two behind.
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Only 46% of blacks make it to the finish line (and that's after decades of affirmative action).
Affirmative action cannot overcome single parent households.
Compared to 72% of Asians, 67% of whites
Single parent households again, just less than blacks.
and 55% Hispanic.
This is mostly due to english as a second language.
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[Citation needed] that the ~45% of Hispanic college attendees do not complete because English isn't their first language.
Why does the same result not occur for Asians whose first language is also not English? Just single parenthood?
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I used to create accounts in our course management system (a community college) for students at a local state university to take remedial Reading and Writing courses. As a general rule, football players and basket ball players were about half the accounts, with foreign students from various parts of Asia (India, China mostly) making up the rest. About 120 accounts per fall term, university student body was about 45k ...
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"Affirmative action cannot overcome single parent households."
I believe that is certainly part of it. I recall reading a study regarding prison populations (comparing Compton to Hawthorne as places where felons were raised) It turns out Compton at the time had a higher 2-parent household but otherwise both ethnically and economically similar. The prison population was significantly lower for those raised in Compton (like ~35% to ~55% hawthorn and Compton). This wasn't the point of the study -- it was
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Affirmative action cannot overcome single parent households.
Nitpick: The problem is not single parents but single mothers.
Children raised by single fathers perform as well as children from two-parent households.
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You clearly are a troll, but I'll respond.
https://upcea.edu/new-research... [upcea.edu]
"Across all populations, 42% of respondents cited financial reasons for stopping out of higher education. However, examining reasons by generation and gender, those priorities began to shift. Thirty-two percent of students say they left college for family or personal commitments and this was more prevalent among mid-millennials."
But wait, there's more!
“Not surprisingly, family commitments were very important to mid-millennials.
Re: What? Fuel inequality? (Score:2)
I'd think you could also tell how vapid your line of thought is now that you're replacing "not academically ready" with "has a family."
Re: What? Fuel inequality? (Score:2)
No, I guess not. Because you can't.
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Unbelievable. You are looking at a symptom of the problem as the CAUSE.
Hint: Low-earning is far more common in single parent households. Solve that and the other bits will improve. There's a lot of problems that follow poverty -- but poverty isn't the cause -- it is itself a symptom! BTW, that also increases the likelihood of ending up on the wrong end of the justice system! You don't solve the damage caused by single parent households by tossing money at it!
https://ojjdp.ojp.gov/statisti... [ojp.gov]
In 2021,
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One word. Money. Public schools are not all equal, some are more equal than others. Even in the same small town there will be the rich school versus the poor school. Attempts to balance this out often end up with richer parents removing students from public schools lest they end up being in the same class as gang member or (gasp) a minority. Ie, white flight that was common during desegregation.
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"One word. Money."
One Acronym: WPFS (Weighted Pupil Finance Strategies).
California has tried that (and is still trying it). Literally taking significant amounts of money from better performing schools (usually less minorities) and giving it to schools with more kids in urban areas with what they call "disadvantaged" students. All to address the RAG "Racial Achievement Gap". Results? The better schools who used to have more money did not do worse. They continued to produce good and well prepared stud
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You can't regulate out the single parent household, you cannot require two parents. This is not a racial gap really, it's an income gap, but income has correlation to race. However, we should not punish children for the faults of their parents. Getting admitted to college is a good way to break the cycle.
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"However, we should not punish children for the faults of their parents"
We should punish everybody for the faults of parents? Is that really the solution? Penalize kids who have the skillset so those who dont have a chance to move up a notch? That's not really been working, has it?
"You can't regulate out the single parent household"
You kind of can. Tax incentives. You'll never eliminate it, but if can at least get it above 50% in any given community you'll get way more bang for your buck in terms of st
More data not needed (Score:5, Interesting)
Standardized tests can include unintended biases. Anytime there is a cultural difference, there will be vocabulary differences including subtle meaning differences that can skew responses in standardized testing. I haven't looked into the details, but it makes sense.
I've looked into the details.
If standardized tests are biased against blacks, they would underpredict the success of socially boosted blacks in college, and they don't.
There were some concerns about racial bias in the 70s, with examples and counterexamples (examples of questions that blacks would easily get, but that whites would have difficulty with). I remember one specific question, "given this sentence, which choice (a,b,c,d) would be an appropriate next sentence?" and the question read: "Elton just got a new LD." and the correct answer was "He showed it to his fox." (Note that this was late 70's culture references.)
The racial biases are a concern for the SATs, they have guidelines that work to remove them, and have succeeded.
This was addressed, and modern tests are engineered to avoid this type of bias.
I'm not sure what the right answers are. Having several years of not using standardized test scores should help give more data on what does and doesn't work in admissions.
We have *tons* of data on this, dropping standardized tests for several years is not necessary. DEI guidelines have been applied by numerous institutions over the past several decades. We absolutely know the answer here.
Should an admissions office use all the available data to generate the best possible calculation on a potential student's probability of success? That might include standardized scores, grades, data on the school they come from, their economic conditions, and their race and ethnicity.
And then there's the question of whether they want to be completely fair. There's a good argument that minorities are disadvantaged by generations of discrimination, so efforts to reverse that are still needed. Whether college admissions is an appropriate place to work towards that goal or not is a matter of debate.
The problem is that you are not trying to solve inequality, you are trying to solve inequity.
Blacks are under-represented in successful societal positions such as doctors, lawyers, legislators, business owners, and so on, and this has been touted as evidence for discrimination - strong discrimination at all levels and at an intensity that is difficult to relate to observed reality.
You're assuming that discrimination at the college level is something that should be fixed, when in fact there is no discrimination evident in the tests and in fact you should be looking further back.
Inequity is a multivariate problem based on several factors, one of which might be predjudice. Other variables might be a) preponderance of single-parent families, b) black-on-black violence, c) poor nutrition (probably related to poverty) leading to lower IQ, d) legacy discrimination such as red-line neighborhoods, e) cultural disadvantages ("acting white" is disparaged, smoking is encouraged, being tough and violent is encouraged, f) teenage pregnancy, and so on.
A multifactoral analysis can tease out the various reasons for inequity and can place a value on the relative "strength of effect" of each factor. Then we can look at how each factor works, address the factors in major order, and ask for success measurements.
I have a list of potential solutions that we can try; for example, it might be useful to have a public relations campaign (in a like manner of the "don't do drugs" campaigns) against being a single parent.
I never, ever, post my suggestions or even talk about it to people, because it goes against the narrative. Stating certain pure facts is considered racist, and no one wants to hear about the potential for solutions.
Not enough blacks (proportionally) have college educations. The solution is to lower the standards.
Re: More data not needed (Score:1)
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Or to ask "who should be allowed in the college"? Is the criteria "test scores"? I knew absolute idiots in college who got great scores. Should the criteria be, given that this is taxpayer money, that it cover a wide range of students that reflect the actual state's demographics? Should it be legacy students with rich parents who are more likely to give endowments to the school if their kids are let in? Should it be mostly engineering students because they'll be richer and pay more taxes than the Engli
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Standardized tests can include unintended biases.
And the math scores? There is no "cultural bias" in math. 2 + 2 = 4, whether it's in Cambridge Massachusetts or Nairobi Kenya.
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Basically the tests suck. There's a lot of stuff on the SATs that isn't particularly useful, but you can study for so kids that get tutors or enroll in programs specifically to get good scores on the test can get better scores.
Re:What? Fuel inequality? (Score:5, Informative)
That is by design. As the Chinese Imperial Exam (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Imperial_examination) teaches us, you can keep the uneducated masses out of positions of power simply by having test that cannot be passed without expensive tutoring.
The evil beauty of this approach is that its proponents can simply lie by misdirection and claim they are "fair" and "everybody has the same chance of passing", when nothing like that is the case. Personally, I started doing exams for students about 25 years ago. One thing I learned that it is pretty easy to filter out whatever group you want. You can even make exams that specifically the dumber students pass but the smart ones fail. Obviously, I never tested that with a full exam (I am not scum), but I did put in smaller parts to test out some theories and then put in other parts to compensate. Now, when it comes to designing tests, I am just an amateur. I only do it because it is a requirement when teaching. But I have a pretty good idea what professional test designers can do and it is a _lot_. It is also something that probably only smarter people that regularly do exams ever notice first-hand.
Re: What? Fuel inequality? (Score:1)
I don't understand why anyone doesn't get a perfect score on the ACT test. I took it as a kid, and it was long, but very easy. SAT on the other hand has questions that you wouldn't know in real life. For the SAT they might as well be asking you what's 1,000 digits of pie, that is something you wouldn't know unless you studied for it.
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"Long" alone is already a pretty serious skill-gate. Having a tutor that teaches candidates to pace themselves may make a massive difference for many.
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Indeed. Some of the darker "secrets" of testing. Probably also something you do not get funding for if you want to do testing research. But anybody smart with some experience and the opportunity can verify this possibility rather easily.
Re: What? Fuel inequality? (Score:1)
Re:What? Fuel inequality? (Score:5, Interesting)
How do standardised tests fuel inequality? Am I missing something? In fact, the only way to ensure that the process is fair is to measure candidates with the same criteria. Can you do X, Y and Z to the required standard? Yes or no? Rich or poor. White or of colour. Minority or majority. Standardised tests don't care about those characteristics. All that matters is your ability.
The concept that standardized tests are racist is just racists pretending other people are racist. It falls under the category of Every Accusation is a Confession.
People of all different "colors" and ethnic backgrounds cover the whole spectrum of different intelligence and abilities. And for other than opinion degrees, you have to know shit. So if you are going to not require testing to get into say, engineering, you absolutely will get people who cannot pass the required courses.
And putting a person in a major that they aren't really qualified for is cruel, and does not help the person at all.
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How do standardised tests fuel inequality? Am I missing something? In fact, the only way to ensure that the process is fair is to measure candidates with the same criteria. Can you do X, Y and Z to the required standard? Yes or no? Rich or poor. White or of colour. Minority or majority. Standardised tests don't care about those characteristics. All that matters is your ability.
The concept that standardized tests are racist is just racists pretending other people are racist. It falls under the category of Every Accusation is a Confession.
Racist is just your framing. This is about accepting that there's a systemic bias, even if you don't have a great way to fix that bias.
There's a few reasons why standardized tests would systemically underestimate the abilities of minorities.
1) Minorities come from cultural (and in some cases linguistic) backgrounds that differ from the test writers, this puts them at a disadvantage when comprehending the questions and giving the expected answers.
2) Minorities often go to worse schools (with massive internal
Re:What? Fuel inequality? (Score:5, Informative)
There's a few reasons why standardized tests would systemically underestimate the abilities of minorities.
Why aren't all minorities disadvantaged equally? Some do even better than the majority white population on these tests. Are these tests also biased against the white majority? Also if you did deeper you'd find this is just not true. If you look at several minority populations specifically you'd find that foreigner born members of that group do better than the native born members of that same group. That alone should tell you something about your hypothesis is fundamentally flawed.
1) Minorities come from cultural (and in some cases linguistic) backgrounds that differ from the test writers, this puts them at a disadvantage when comprehending the questions and giving the expected answers.
Perhaps for a written language test that relies on idiom or other quirks of the language, but who is designing tests like that anymore? You could grab a sample SAT or ACT question to demonstrate this, but I think you'll have a hard time. It also doesn't consider other portions of these tests that aren't really about language. Are there cultures in which 2 + 2 is not 4? Do the laws of physics behave differently in the presence of members of these cultures?
2) Minorities often go to worse schools (with massive internal variation), these schools are less equipped to prepare people for the test.
This is true, but many of those same schools are among the highest funded. Personally I think the best solution is allowing patents to choose charter or private schools. Where this has occurred, those schools (even when they have a largely minority student population) often perform significantly better, in some cases even better than the "white" schools in the state. Competition drives improvement, but teachers' unions scream bloody murder anytime it's tried.
3) Parents in the majority have a good understanding of what the SAT means, how important it is, how to study for it, when to get tutoring, etc, etc. And they pass on this knowledge to their kids. Kids from less privileged backgrounds don't have this advantage.
It's not even this. Minority populations (mainly black here) don't have parents. It's parent, singular, and in too many cases the parental figure is a grandmother or other relative. Forget SAT prep, that's a chimney on a building when we're dealing with a structure without a roof, never mind the shaky foundation, and the walls that are on fire. Until the upstream problems are fixed, talking about SAT scores are pointless. The focus on meaninglessness measures like that is just an inability to look at the ugly mess that's causing them and hoping to sweep it under the rug.
The unfortunate part is rather than trying to deal with those underlying causes the people who complain about systemic biases keep applying slapdash solutions that don't fix the underlying problems or even through unintended consequences make them worse. You're going to have to come to terms with the fact that some of the policies you may have championed did more harm than good and that doing more of the same or doubling down on them isn't going to work. But that's a tough pill to swallow and even if you do, you'll just wind up getting called a racist or if perpetuating systemic racism by your former friends.
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It can be inadvertent. Like
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1) Minorities come from cultural (and in some cases linguistic) backgrounds that differ from the test writers, this puts them at a disadvantage when comprehending the questions and giving the expected answers.
English is not my native language, but I got pretty high scores on mock SATs. I haven't bothered with ACTs for English. I haven't seen _any_ questions that required any kind of deep cultural knowledge inaccessible to other ethnicities.
For math and science SAT/ACT tests, it's not even a joke. These tests are as culturally bland as they can get. An alien from Alpha Centauri would be able to get perfect scores.
2) Minorities often go to worse schools (with massive internal variation), these schools are less equipped to prepare people for the test.
And what makes schools worse or better?
3) Parents in the majority have a good understanding of what the SAT means, how important it is, how to study for it, when to get tutoring, etc, etc. And they pass on this knowledge to their kids. Kids from less privileged backgrounds don't have this advantage.
So... perhaps fix _that_ problem?
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1) Minorities come from cultural (and in some cases linguistic) backgrounds that differ from the test writers, this puts them at a disadvantage when comprehending the questions and giving the expected answers.
English is not my native language, but I got pretty high scores on mock SATs. I haven't bothered with ACTs for English. I haven't seen _any_ questions that required any kind of deep cultural knowledge inaccessible to other ethnicities.
For math and science SAT/ACT tests, it's not even a joke. These tests are as culturally bland as they can get. An alien from Alpha Centauri would be able to get perfect scores.
Not necessarily a huge effect, but an effect.
Even just the style of question. Years ago I took a few online IQ tests, I did better on the subsequent ones, not because I got smarter, but because I was more familiar with the style of question.
2) Minorities often go to worse schools (with massive internal variation), these schools are less equipped to prepare people for the test.
And what makes schools worse or better?
- Wealthier communities who can afford better teachers and more program.
- Educated communities who have higher quality students.
- Nice safe schools that kids enjoy going to, etc.
Years back a teacher told me he spent a few years teaching on a reserve in the far north. Stu
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Even just the style of question. Years ago I took a few online IQ tests, I did better on the subsequent ones, not because I got smarter, but because I was more familiar with the style of question.
Newsflash: training for a test makes you better at the test. Alas, minorities are not physically able to take mock tests to prepare for the real ones. If a Person Of Color as much as touches a prep book, they immediately erupt in flames. It's a tragedy.
- Educated communities who have higher quality students.
- Nice safe schools that kids enjoy going to, etc.
Yes, exactly. It's not teachers that make great schools, but students. And when half of your minority students just ignore the classes and/or actively try to disrupt them with zero repercussions, you get what you get.
I'm not exaggerating, that's what happen
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Even just the style of question. Years ago I took a few online IQ tests, I did better on the subsequent ones, not because I got smarter, but because I was more familiar with the style of question.
Newsflash: training for a test makes you better at the test. Alas, minorities are not physically able to take mock tests to prepare for the real ones. If a Person Of Color as much as touches a prep book, they immediately erupt in flames. It's a tragedy.
You're missing the point. Those test prep resources are more available to non-minority privileged families. Both because they have the extra money to spend on test prep, but also because they have the personal (and community) knowledge of how to do it.
- Educated communities who have higher quality students.
- Nice safe schools that kids enjoy going to, etc.
Yes, exactly. It's not teachers that make great schools, but students. And when half of your minority students just ignore the classes and/or actively try to disrupt them with zero repercussions, you get what you get.
I'm not exaggerating, that's what happens i
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You're missing the point. Those test prep resources are more available to non-minority privileged families. Both because they have the extra money to spend on test prep, but also because they have the personal (and community) knowledge of how to do it.
Bullshit. Prep books are free and easily accessible in all public libraries. Most (all?) schools will also have at least _some_ test prep classes.
Should I go away while you finish arguing with that straw man you conjured up?
Where's the strawman? We have plenty of examples that it's not at all some kind of nebulous racism that holds minorities back. It's just the lack of the will to study.
And you start risking mass absenteeism.
Easy: truant courts and juvenile prison.
I'm not sure what the solution to improving those schools is (aside from more cash) but I'm sure most of the easy solutions have be tried and failed for a reason.
The aforementioned Baltimore schools spend $18k per year per student, that's 50% more than the US average.
My position is that the bias is there, but many of the systemic factors persist into post-secondary.
Unlike the secondary school, the post-secondary educa
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It sounds like the problem is not as much with black vs white people, but more with poor vs rich people.
I'm sure that poor white people have the same problems as poor black people (due to being poor - worse schools, parents without higher education etc).
Why the focus on race then? Make it possible for poor people to get into college (or whatever) no matter their race, right?
Or is there some reason that black people are worse than white people despite both having the same (very low) income?
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TFS basically spells it out. If you struggled in school, you'd need tutoring and that costs money. Of course, fancy colleges that are really persnickety about their admissions are typically not cheap either, so it's probably somewhat of a moot point.
I'm not sure how it is at other state colleges, but the one nearest to me here in Florida simply will have you take remedial classes if your standardized test scores are on the lousy side. Everyone gets in. So your scores really only matter if you're trying
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Re:What? Fuel inequality? (Score:4, Insightful)
OK, so how do you fix that, without simply letting incompetent people into the school and giving them a pass, thus removing the value of everyone else's effort?
You pretend that effort isn't necessary. It absolutely is.
What you're identifying, by the way, is a correlation. Are they wealthy because they're better - from better gene stock - or are they doing better because they're wealthy? The latter can't easily be proven, but the former has been pretty resoundingly refuted: well-funded charter all-black schools do worse than special ed schools standardized testing, and worse than the "melting pot" public schools. You can not fix outcomes by throwing money at the problem, you have to identify and resolve the problem at its root.
As further evidence that 'educators' don't want to do that, consider Asian children, who repeatedly get lumped in with 'whites', despite being minorities and largely coming from much poorer upbringing and situation than most "white" or "black" Americans. On the whole, they do objectively better in almost every measurement. Sometimes you've got to reject your dogma and try to look at the actual problem. It is okay that people are born with different abilities and aptitudes. My kids aren't going to grow up to be extroverts, bulked out strongmen, or particularly immune to sun damage. That's OK. Diversity is our strength, right?
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That much?
Ok, lets try some numbers. Assume test preparation runs 1 year over a full student career. Assume you have 330M times 11/1000 students (= 3.6M) in each year. That is about $3000 per student. As that does not cut it, I would guess 10% or less actually get test preparation. Sounds mightily imbalanced and unfair.
Obviously, some especially dumb specimen get more (say, at New York Military Academy) because they are too dumb to even get a college admission otherwise.
There is one way to make fair standar
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Re: What? Fuel inequality? (Score:1)
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Standardized tests fuel inequality because they are only standardized on the side of the test, not regarding the amount and type of preparation the candidates have access to. Hence they are typically quite unfair and let the rich pass while filtering out the poor and do so-so for the middle class. Not absolutely so, but pretty close.
Hence these tests, when applied only to poor people are somewhat fair. But as soon as you out middle-class kids int the mix that strongly decreases and if you have rich people i
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Solving math isn't getting any easier if your daddy is rich.
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What you are describing is equality of opportunity. If you can do X, Y, and Z, you are qualified.
What these people are complaining about, is inequality of outcomes. By using an objective standard, some groups of people do more poorly than others, for various reasons. That's "unequal." So I suppose what they want is a weighted score for various "disadvantaged" groups.
If you want one kind of equality, you sacrifice another kind of equality. Sorry, can't have both.
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Because it's been shown that tests are biased, even if only slightly in some cases. First big problem is that test scores correlate to income; because richer people will have tutors, be taught to the tests, go to schools that teach to the tests, purchase SAT study guides, etc. Poorer kids may not even have used a textbook less than a decade old. Second problem are in questions that assume a knowledge of some specifics of American middle/upper class cultures; word problems where a non local test taker may
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They fuel inequality by discriminating against stupid people. Geeze, should be obvious.
Bleeding hearts, or inclusive racism? (Score:2, Interesting)
They are smart and adroit. Smart and intelligent as me. What is more they are degreed in other than opinion majors - they have to be good.
One of the problems with the concept that testing is some sort of inequality mechanism is that for some reason, it you are an underrepresented minority, you cannot do well on a standardized test, as if you aren't adroit enough to pass it, and there is no other reason than white privilege. Psst,
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The idea is that if you work it backwards, where statistically minorities receive lower average scores on the tests, you're then able to utilize those test results as a means of performing an indirect form of discrimination. It's the same deal with credit scores, too.
Whether these systems truly are racist depends on how they're being used.
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If someone has a low credit score, I'm going to not loan them money because of that score, not the color of their skin.
The assumption that their credit score is low because of their skin is when it becomes racist.
We haven't done things that way for decades, at this point - at least in the US, and most of the West - well, unless the person is white and/or male. In those cases, it's expected to be discriminatory against them in favor of favored "minorities" (who, as likely as not, are less minority than the w
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Couldn't agree more.
These "standardized tests are racist" types are overtly racist against those who do well, who just happen to be of those races.
It's white knighting, and it's disgusting.
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These tests are not racist. Racial bias is too easy to identify and then litigation comes into play. They discriminate by time and money the kids have available for education instead. Smart kids will understand that and just game it. I know I did (on somewhat less standardized tests) and it was easy, all the while I saw others fail left and right. The problem is that dumb rich kids will just be made artificially successful by extensive tutoring or even sending them to things like the New York Military Acade
The best coaches (Score:3)
Those against testing requirements have long said that standardized tests are unfair because many students from affluent families use tutors and coaches to bolster their scores.
It's true. The best coaching usually produces the best outcome. That coaching doesn't fall by the wayside. It's precisely what the universities are doing. Coaching. You don't learn anything in a university that hasn't already been done. You're being coached into thinking, rationally. It's no surprise those being coached turn out better than those who are not. If you want to make a difference in the inequality, spend your money on coaching availability. Don't diminish the education of the well coached. It doesn't work like that in sports and it certainly shouldn't work like that in education.
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Well, the unfortunate thing is that that coaching is, by definition, standardized. You're taking standard classes, just like everyone else.
So standardized tests as a basis for entry make a lot more sense.
Regardless, they've got to teach towards an objective, and have an objective basis for qualification. That's the way it works. The alternative is just to let anyone attend and give them a passing remark for showing up - except, of course, those with anxiety which makes it hard for them to attend, or those w
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I finished HS in the 90's. I never had any coaching, and I did just fine on the SAT. Same for most of my classmates. My HS was very demanding, and I don't know anyone who had time for prep classes. I know a few people who took a weekend prep class, but that was the exception. Not sure if it helped them or not.
If you survived my HS, you'd be just fine on the SAT.
Other than a few pointers such as knowing if you are punished for guessing and how to pace yourself, the SAT doesn't seem to be a test you can p
DEI - A complete failure (Score:3)
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Skills and abilities are measurable. They're required for success.
Success in a higher education institution, yes. Financial success, however, in rare circumstances can be far less discriminating. There are certainly a few examples of unskilled people who became successful through having the right connections and/or luck.
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The exceptions to a rule, don't make the rule.
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It becomes elitist and exclusionary if the opportunities to acquire these skills and abilities before the testing are exclusionary. Quite obvious, well documented and a very old approach to keep the unwashed masses out of positions of power: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
The beauty of these "standardized" tests is that to people that are not so smart or have no experience with test design, they _look_ fair, even when they are anything but.
The entry tests and the schooling evolved together (Score:5, Interesting)
I suppose if you're talking about arts degrees or social sciences, all bets are off. But if you are talking STEM, the way that the actual work is graded comes from the same school of thought as the standardized entrance testing. So if you change the way that the entrance qualifications are evaluated, but you don't change how you grade within the program, people coming in the side door stand a great chance of failing out.
And if you change how you grade within the program in order to accommodate those differences, are you then damaging the quality of your graduates? A bridge doesn't give a damn what the demographic background of the architect was. If the math is wrong, the bridge may fall down.
I guess what I'm saying is that I understand that standardized testing is actually a useful tool, and I didn't particularly like the idea of it being pushed aside. I recognize the fundamental inequality, but I want the engineer designing the things I use to be qualified to do so. I don't want to hear, "The engineer was pretty good considering where they came from."
Required, but score irrelevant (Score:3)
Meh, it isn't like they say much (Score:2)
Really didn't help with scholarships at all.
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Admissions and bias (Score:1)
This comment section is abhorrent.
Your environment is a huge part of your development and cumulative education.
You might be very smart but if you are in a poorly funded, "bad" school district, then you won't flourish. You're not being challenged or used well - academic underachievement. This is very well accepted and long documented.
As kids get older, they have the ability to "leap ahead". Remember, they're intelligent. Colleges found this out. Thus the prep courses in your first year or in the summer leap
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As kids get older, they have the ability to "leap ahead". Remember, they're intelligent. Colleges found this out.
And what if they don't? Why are you taking scarce college placements from people who actually worked hard to get them? It's simply abhorrent.