https://www.chartr.co/stories/2023-12-08-2-grade-inflation-a...
Apparently teachers' standards have declined for themselves too. Some of that would be a result of being trained at Harvard, a vicious circle.
My buddy said he had to take a botany class as a filler for some academic requirement for graduation. He said the entire class was to pick a tree out on campus and then describe how it changed over the course of the semester.
He maintained he had more rigorous classes in HS then he had at Harvard and said the progressive politics were so pervasive, that as long as you towed the ideological line, then you got favorable grades.
It would appear not much as changed since he was there in the early aughts.
I'm not a big fan of standardized tests, but they can identify serious issues to address especially as it pertains to geographical, ethnic, etc. groups and allocate funding accordingly. If we keep lowering bars instead of addressing the issues, this is going to get very bad.
https://www.oregonlive.com/education/2023/10/oregon-again-sa...
https://www.opb.org/article/2021/09/20/examining-oregon-deci...
It’s ironic that this stance is actually racist, since it implies certain races perform worse.
Lots of blame levied at a strawman white culture. If only there’d be a concomitant critique of the problematic groups at hand. Alas, that’s verboten under the current regime.
Lowering expectations for those under their patronage only makes advantage easier for me and mine. Good luck to them and their token positions.
It is useful to define terms. Merriam-Webster has what I believe is a quite useful definition of racism: "a belief that race is a fundamental determinant of human traits and capacities and that racial differences produce an inherent superiority of a particular race".
That is a useful definition because it helps to separate a racist interpretation of test scores from a non-racist interpretation. The racist interpretation is to jump to a conclusion of fundamental inferiority in academics. The non-racist interpretation is to acknowledge and emphasize the environmental factors that can lead an historically oppressed/displaced/enslaved minority to underperform academically, to acknowledge that African-born immigrants do quite well on standardized testing, and also to understand that standardized tests are normed on academic success, which creates a causality issue when measuring groups that have historically not been allowed in academic institutions. Perhaps all of those arguments don't hold water: or at least the pitcher holding them has holes of its own. But it is quite erroneous to jump to a conclusion of racial biological determinism, and that is what the racist conclusion would be.
There is a particular kind of fallacy where a person can, seemingly unconsciously, take what are perfectly valid observations, like the test-taking disparities, and spin them into non-evidential overarching beliefs. This happens all too commonly when it comes to scientific (or at least metrical) observations and racism. People were all too eager to embrace phrenology, IQ testing, evolutionary biology, etc. when it confirmed their cultural preconception that their race was superior. All of those areas, even phrenology, had some scientific merit to them (and still do in the case of IQ testing and evolutionary biology), but that merit is lost when the conclusions get spun into non-evidential belief systems like racist ideology. Seemingly (I can't peer into their heads, really) skepticism is lost in a chase for the personal gratification of a belief of fundamental superiority.
Discussions around academic standards are a case in point. Academic standards change quite frequently. The Oregon requirement we're discussing was only instituted in the early 2010's. When race is not part of the discussion, it is entirely normal for educators to say that a new standardized test doesn't really have evidence it serves the population and to remove it. There is a very lively debate amongst educators about how excessive measurement, i.e. standardized test taking, can interfere with the normal give-and-take of teaching. But, if the evidence is that non-native-English speakers are underserved, or that African-Americans are underserved, suddenly it is 'racist' to remove a requirement or hurdle. What I saw in the two articles is that those in favor of removing the requirement saw a lack of evidence it was beneficial, and saw evidence that it was not beneficial; while those opposed had no evidence other than it would graduate 'dumber' students; ignoring the fact that presumably dumber students were being graduated before the 2010's when the program was instituted.
In short, it is often a smokescreen to say that observations about race are racist, because that makes it impossible to act against inequality, or sometimes even to act at all. Once again, racism is the belief of one race's inherent superiority over another.
There are many reasons for this to be the case [1] not just the classic "this race is inferior at test taking".
[1] Pre WWI, WWII Germany famously tested students for acedemic performance. During WWII and times of food scarcity from Allied blockades test performance dropped by greater than 10%. Same students, same race, different conditions.
Typically well fed, well exercised, unstressed, groups with sound economic security, home ownership, etc perform very well on tests.
Let's just point out that testing in question took place across all areas of Germany, not just those famously occupied by the elite intelligensia that were moved on, also the rural areas occupied by the beer swilling fraus and blue eyed leden hosen knee slappers, and that test results improved with food quality.
It doesn't take an Einstein to ANOVA.
From a quick google, the acceptance rate to Harvard was 20% higher in the 70's. In 1940 it had an absolute acceptance rate of 85%.
I dont actually know the answer, but from that graph only, the rising rate could be as much from a higher standard of student as lowering standards of marking.
[1] - https://graphics8.nytimes.com/packages/pdf/education/harvard...
That’s an odd way to put “wealthy and privileged”
For instance Harvard's first black graduate graduated in 1870 [1] (meaning he would have passed a test near to exactly like the one shared), and he was a remarkable man. He was left supporting his family as a teenager after his father ran away for the Gold Rush, and was unable to attend public school due to his skin color. Yet, he persevered and lived one amazing life far above and beyond becoming Harvard's first black grad. But people like him are far and few between - and those were the sort of people applying.
[1] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Theodore_Greener
Those were a tiny minority of the people applying.
Nothing in that entrance exam requires an academic outlier. All it requires is a classical liberal arts education (Latin, Greek, classic literature, history, geography, geometry)
Most people who attended higher education could do so because wealthy children received such an education above and beyond what the poor received (and because the could also afford college thanks to that wealth).
And on that note of excellence, that test is going to completely destroy most of anybody, let alone high school grads. The breadth of knowledge demanded paired with the extensive depth of such is something very few are practically capable of obtaining without an absolutely obscene amount of effort. Keep in mind this wasn't some sort of a take home exam or whatever, these exams were done on the spot - in an 8 hour window.
The math section has some hard wanky arithmetic and by-hand computations using logarithms. Modern students would struggle because that hasn't been a focus of math education since the invention of the calculator. Your average physics professor would struggle with that because no one needs to do that stuff by hand any more. A modern Harvard applicant would ace that algebra section. The geometry section is 50/50 - there's still plenty of geometry in modern education but it no longer involves memorising Euclid.
On the other hand there's no calculus/analysis which is probably the biggest focus of higher-level high school math - something an applicant of that era would be flummoxed because it wasn't part of classical math education. There's also a complete dearth of any of the natural sciences which was again neglected in a classical education.
I'm telling you that that's not an intrinsically difficult exam, it just covers areas that were the focus of an upper class classical education of the time. You're confusing a different educational focus with intrinsic difficulty. If your math education up to the age of 18 was 90% long-form manual computations and memorising Euclid's Elements you'd ace that section too.
I tried to find a list of Harvard graduates of the era to demonstrate this, but the best I could come up with is this [1] list of Harvard presidents who all tended to be distinguished graduates themselves. It's quite unfortunate, because these are ostensibly the cream of the crop - which kind of plays into your class stuff, but I think even this sample also works to largely reject it. In any case it's quite interesting to read their bios!
For instance check out guys like Thomas Hill [2]. He had very minimal formal education, yet was a sponge for knowledge, and learned what was necessary to achieve - and achieve he did. Another is Jared Sparks [3]. Educated in common schools (which most certainly were not teaching Latin/Greek and other advanced topics) before he went to work at a variety of trades and then (presumably after saving up some money) attended a private school at the age 20+, before finally making his way to Harvard.
Basically it's not like you just went to school, graduated, and then applied with the knowledge you'd gained - at least not in general. In a world where education was optional, those who pursued it tended to do so out of passion and from that passion exceptional competence also tended to emerge.
[1] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/President_of_Harvard_Universit...
Fully support the observation that university meant something different in those days though, the standards were much higher. Although I'm not sure if that would apply at Harvard since their class sizes probably haven't changed by all that much.
We don't routinely teach Classics in high school, so it's not surprising that those sections would be beyond most students today.
The sections on that exam dealing with Mathematics seem appropriate or possibly slightly on the easy side; I would expect an equivalent exam today to include at least a bit of calculus, but over the past 150 years there has been a shift in pedagogy towards calculus and away from geometry so it's probably just a sign of the times.
Initially I thought it was all a rich kids game, but the later maths and geometry questions require you to know what you are doing. Of course thats easier with expensive tutors, but it’s entirely possible you’ll never grasp it.
There are apparently advanced classes like Math 55 that had huge dropout rates that had to be cleaned up though. So those courses have been completely changed instead of just awarding higher marks I'd imagine.
It could be caused by lowered standards or more competition or better student performance.