What Happens if SAT Scores Consider Adversity?
wsj.com
wsj.com
I also didn’t know UC was considering dropping the SAT all together. You know who will be the loudest cheerleaders for that? The same anxious elites that would move to a crappy neighborhood to boost their kid’s SAT score. Dropping the closest proxy we have for future academic performance (and a darn good one at that) would make everyone run for the side-door entrances to these institutions - and the back door will get a lot more lucrative. What a shame.
I'm actually super not educated in this- do you have proof that good SAT score is a strong predictor of good academic performance, and vice versa? (The vice versa is the most important part to me.)
IMO, the best way to avoid issues like this would be to ban private schools, and make sure all schools have the same amount of funding per student. In other words, target the poverty problem directly, don't try to adjust SAT scores based on some guestimate of how oppressed you think a person might have been.
Disclaimer: I'm Scottish/European; we have different cultural thoughts on these issues
This doesn't mean that people should have an equal finish though, as if you work harder and smarter, not many would you shouldn't reap the rewards.
Communism pretends to seek equality at all times for all, but this is only proposing a more equal start for all, and still allows some to do better than others. Are you sure authoritarianism isn't the word you were looking for?
Since when is capitalism _about_ rewarding work and risk?
They feel communism is unfair as it rewards people for doing nothing, while capitalism allows rags-to-riches based on work and risk AIUI
I guess it's just hard for me to imagine someone who loves their child so much but doesn't care enough about how much someone less fortunate would care about their child. Perhaps it's because I'm not a parent
Equality of opportunity is equally as bad as equality of results. It denies people the ability to reach as high as they can and forcibly brings them down.
Why should it be illegal to give my child a better education than what the state provides?
Maybe this makes us all poorer, but maybe it makes us all richer?
I believe Finland is generally consider to have the best education system in Europe, without any real private schools. So is your opinion based on evidence, or just feeling?
It’s mostly bullshit, IMO. Cultural norms between rich and poor transfer extremely slowly, and without a heavy handed approach it’s anyone’s guess which direction they flow. I grew up upper middle class, and went to a high school that did this and it was terrible. Poorer students brought with them drugs and violence and a “fuck it” approach to academics. The more wealthy students just stayed away. By the time we were juniors everyone had self selected into AP and Honors classes, so there was virtually no interaction.
I didn’t learn a single thing from that experience other than that I actually need to keep my gym locker locked so that may stuff didn’t get stolen.
Truth is, I'm playing devils advocate. I've worked in tech for 15 years and have bought a house in a good free school area, so it's a bit hypocritical, but I don't overly believe the US or the UK has the best education systems.
You could argue they're the best at the high end. Indeed, Ivy League and Oxbridge has some of the best reputations in the world, but interestingly, most of the Red Brick pulls in rich kids (especially Oxbridge), which recently have been exposed for having easier exams (in the UK), which complicates the issue.
Are they the best because they're the best, or because they have all the money?
Blah blah blah, different colours of grey.
It's one of those greater good and where do you draw the line arguments. On one side, there's anarchy, every man for themselves, but you'll have to give up property rights here, because why should the rest of us shouldn't have to pay for police and courts for you, on the other hand there's communism, but with no reward for work, why would we bother?
Once you accept everyone is on the spectrum, it's harder to argue against a good education and medical system, paid from by tax, if it has the wider benefit to society.
Paying for police/courts matters because they protect our rights directly. Public-only schooling doesn't really give anyone anything, it just pulls everyone down. Similarly, public-only fully tax payer funded healthcare only encourages abuse.
For both, a tax payer subsidized system is far more preferable. We can't possibly make things equal for everyone without making everyone equally miserable but we can make it easier by having public schools and hospitals that are partially tax payer funded so people can atleast get the benefit of their existence, while those with better resources can enjoy their private education and healthcare.
I'm actually not sure, I believe the issue is too complex for someone like myself to understand without serious study into the area, and I'm not really in that line of work and cannot individually affect British policy, so I do my job which is tech.
You however do make an assumption when you state "public school pulls everyone done". Why? Do you actually believe the US private school system produces the smartest kids in the world?
Also, private schools can do better for children with learning difficulties - smaller class size etc.
I say this as a parent with one child in private, and one in public. I'm very happy with both, but each school caters to the individual childs strenghts.
If the students of wealthy families are in those public schools, the quality of education there going to go way up. Wealthy parents have much more time to take an active role in their child's school, volunteering for events, organizing fundraisers (and donating to them), scrutinizing the curriculum, and holding teachers to account. Parents living in poverty tend to be too busy to pay much attention (let alone to run for the school board), or may not realize what opportunities for improvement exist.
There's no reason the state can't provide an excellent education, and in many countries it does. But if public education is de-facto only for the poor, then it s not going to be much of a priority for the state either.
No, the majority electorate has input regarding what the state provides. If I'm lucky, I'm part of that majority.
Government systems do not cater to minorities unless the majority electorate decides to be charitable.
Private systems sometimes provide the minority extra choices because they chase profits instead of votes. Of course, that's only if there is profit to be made off the minority.
Neither system does a good job of catering to poor minorities. But getting rid of one wont make the other better.
You really have to have witnessed what these parents can do to understand their transformative impact. I've seen it for myself.
If not, what is different about a ban on emigrating such that your argument applies to a ban on private schools, but does not apply to ban on emigrating?
Would not the quality of the US government stay higher if those American citizens with the largest capacity to influence it were forced to remain American citizens rather than become, e.g., German citizens when things in the US become worse than they are in Germany?
By the way, moving countries is surprisingly rare and quite difficult to do, even when times are tough in your home country.
Private schools increase the funding available per-student in public schools.
> make sure all [public] schools have the same amount of funding per student. In other words, target the poverty problem directly
That only addresses one aspect of the problem. None of the other issues measured, or others like the subjective ones you listed would benefit from that.
When what you pay into public schools becomes your tax contribution to private schools they will on average have more per student if more students from higher tax brackets join.
1. Those in private school do not have to be funded by the state, and so, given a finite budget, the average funding per child in public school goes up.
2. (Your point, if I understood correctly, and which I hadn't considered...) The tax take from private school fees indirectly helps fund the public schools. Without that tax income, the education budget (or some other public spending) would necessarily go down.
Funny you forgot students still get different education resources from home.
When schools are equal, other factors become more significant. I think the next steps are:
- ban private tutoring
- ban zoning, not sure how this is going to work
- ban educational books from the market, so all educational books are equally distributed through public libraries
- wait, parents can still teach their kids. This is not fair. We also need to ban parents from teaching their kids. For an equal society, programmers should not be allowed to teach their kids programming.
- etc.
- remove children from their families and put them in state-run facilities[0]
People who promote "equality by handicap" will be happy to go down the path you outline, if/when they don't see the results they expect from the previous step. I have yet to see a line they aren't willing to cross for "no, that infringes on individual freedom too much."
0. https://destroycapitalismnow.wordpress.com/2017/03/26/abolis... "The guarantee of protection of children will be taken away from the backwards bourgeois family and assigned to new, progressive social institutions."
It tends to be the wealthier, better connected, more influential people who send their kids to private schools. So, we have a situation where the influential people don't have a lot to lose if public schools happen to be under-funded (their kids get private education). So it is more politically tolerable than it should be to under-fund public schools.
Of course, the above already happens.
Their objective is to maximize their reputation - if they find students with lower SAT scores from poorer neighborhoods become more successful in their careers and donate more money/become notable figures/contribute more to academic research, that's who they will admit (given the profitability with financial aid and federal incentives).
Colleges aren't going to change anything based on this study, however it does enrage the wealthy white families and rally the poor black ones with the topic of racial/financial adversity, so it's bound to get a lot of attention.
I really hate coded language like this. Call it what it is: race-based social engineering. Yeah, it doesn't sound as "nice", right? Something to ponder deeply.
Race-based social engineering, aka racism, has been a thing for as long as society has existed. Not exactly a new concept. This is a small attempt to right thousands of years of injustice.
Regardless, when we stop looking at merit to judge people's work, we get into a very dangerous territory.
Identity politics is cancer.
There are a lot of capable people that will never have the same opportunities just by lottery of birth. It’s true they could try to be exceptional, but everyone can’t be and that’s a ridiculous way to attack poverty.
Technical positions requiring trade schools (or often just practical knowledge and a will to learn) pay better than many positions that require a university education.
Maybe the poor kid goes to a trade school moving up from poor to upper middle class.
The kid of said person would have a better start...repeat the cycle and after just 2-3 generations you have a Harvard/Stanford graduate
This is how many Jews and Asians moved up from being broke poor
Isn't mobility actually decreasing?
I also went to college in New Orleans, and my classmates got $700/mo. from the government if they stayed in school (no idea how, though).
I'm afraid it will just be one more way for unscrupulous people to game the system.
That graphic lets you compare and contrast between various gender/race and their income mobility.