Group of white and Asian parents sue BPS over exam school admissions policy
bostonherald.com
bostonherald.com
If everybody had a Harvard degree, then it would lose its value.
Which is why they’re so adamant about not counting online degrees earned through EDX as “real degrees” because it would devalue their status signaling education.
I would argue we already have high quality education access. Go on YouTube, coursera or any other platform and you can find incredible resources.
What we don’t have a lot of is high paying/high status jobs, and as a result we’re put through a brutal tournament model, where one of the games consists of getting into a high-status college.
Whenever there are scarce resources (and even in cases when they aren't), competition will exist. Even in countries where the average person is better educated than those in the United States, the competition only grows exponentially. Just take a look at the local acceptance rates for top-tier Korean universities.
Quality education isn’t scarce. You think Harvard educates better than most midwestern schools? No. You think MIT does? No. I have so many data points to validate that. So many people who went to both who can testify that for example UIUC was harder than MIT. The same with several other schools.
People go to the top brand name schools because of status, or because they think others care about the status. I’m not talking about trying to get a professorship. I’m talking about people who want a decent good job when they graduate.
On top of that, the number of high quality high schools, or decent quality that you can supplement with courses at your local college or online is massively high.
People are obsessed with metrics, often the wrong metrics, making them even more self-fulling prophesies.
In France for example they might have more funding for better high schools, but they also ban all kinds of things, like most rankings. Get people to stop obsessing and people will relax a bit and come out better. Again, this is for the majority, not the few who push society forward. Those people just obsess all the time.
I’m a programmer in Silicon Valley. I went to a “top” public school for computer science. I went to a no-name local high school in my home town. I see very little benefit to the school I went to. I have had bosses who didn’t even go to college. Others who studies English or something else entirely unrelated to CS from a school that wasn’t too in their field. What I’ve learned is those who keep learning rise to the top. Every year after college, less and less people care about where you went, what you majored in, etc. I haven’t had a single interviewer ask about my publications or research projects after my third year in industry.
Most parent just obsess way too much. I get it, I’m a parent too, but parents need to look at actual behavior that influences long term outcomes and whether those outcomes are even good.
In fact, one might argue that true mathematical CS degrees provide less preparation for many software jobs than a student with lab skills from a science degree like physics or biology, accounting and communication skills from business degrees, organizational and project skilss from an architectural degree, etc.
I agree that the difference between an ok school and a "top" school really isn't that much. Rankings are based on test scores, graduation rates and such which almost certainly select for good students more than good schools. When parents push their kids to certain schools, topping the rankings becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy. I can't find the study, but I had read a while back that getting accepted to top colleges was a better indicator of future success than actually attending.
Legally, this isn’t what’s going on. Affirmative action has only been found constitutional when it’s minimally implemented to further classroom diversity [1]. The benefits of a diverse student body, not curing past harms, are key to the test. (Also, minimising side effects.)
That reasoning is just cover for doing what the judges want. They'd never allow racial covenants to return if it were shown whites benefit from living in mostly-white neighborhoods.
BPS is not overseen by any elected representative?
I had the highest SAT score in my school and the second highest of all graduating seniors in my city - not bragging the entire graduating class in the city was around 1000 and none of the schools were especially highly ranked.
Do you think having a mother that was not only a math teacher who had me doing algebra in the 6th grade (not forced it on me, I just enjoyed it) and did SAT training after school had anything to do with ig
And school entrance is very much based on genes in the most prestigious schools.
It’s called “legacy admissions”
It's telling that they're asking for quotas, instead of, as you pointed out, an earlier bus to catch college prep classes.
Let’s also look at the other end and get rid of legacy admissions.
But for the SAT specifically, the ideal is that practicing would do nothing.
But let's suppose that, like for the IQ test, that was the goal. What do we do if we can't perfectly reach that goal? Weaken the test further?
But that's the thing, the test wants to look at your baseline level. If it was flawless then you wouldn't be able to do any practice that's SAT-specific.
> This is so well known and obvious, I find it hard to believe such questions would be included if the goal was that practice would not help.
Do you have a better alternative?
I don't find it hard to believe that they didn't say "Oh, being perfect on this axis would require magic? Better quit entirely."
> What do we do if we can't perfectly reach that goal? Weaken the test further?
No...? Nobody suggested weakening the test...
Oh, maybe the misunderstanding is when you said "the goal" is that practice would not help. No, that's not "the goal". It's a secondary goal. They wouldn't ruin the test just to dunk on practice. Measuring ability in an exploitable way is the closest they can get to their goals right now.
This roughly makes the demographic population at the school reflect the demographic population of the applicant pool; the applicant pool is still significantly more Asian than the area, with about half of the applicants being Asian, but only a fifth of the general population.
The lawsuit is roughly "This policy will move some slots from Asian students to White students, and the school board knew it" which is, as far as I can tell 100% accurate. The defense seems to be that the admissions are technically race-blind. I don't know if legally it matters that most of the slots that likely would have been filled by Asian students under the old policy go to other minorities under the new policy; it certainly does help it feel a bit less like the "Harvard has too many Jewish people" admissions change from the early 20th century.
If you believe that, you are free to make the argument.