Should the admissions process be colorblind?

[Anonymous]

I've heard that when symphonies started auditioning musicians behind a screen, the number of female players and the number of women in leadership positions went up. Should school admissions be handled similarly? One group could manage the playdates; another could make the final decisions.

Or do you think the process already is colorblind?

[Anonymous]

Why start now?

Seriously, in a society where the distribution of wealth and privilege has been a function of racial oppression (historical and ongoing), "colorblindness" is just a way of perpetuating inequality while disclaiming responsibility for it.

[Anonymous]

See, I think the process should be VIP and big $$$$$ blind.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Seriously, in a society where the distribution of wealth and privilege has been a function of racial oppression (historical and ongoing), "colorblindness" is just a way of perpetuating inequality while disclaiming responsibility for it.

Not necessarily. Some Asian-American advocates argue that there would be more Asian students at schools like Harvard and Berkeley if the process were colorblind, and I have seen the similar argument made here that given the large number of highly successful African American families in this area, their representation at schools may be limited by a tendency to think in terms of numerical targets.

[Anonymous]

Sincere question - how could it possibly be colorblind in practice?

Because the kids don't do their playdate behind a curtain, as with the symphony tryouts. No matter what you say or think you think, personal bias re: race will inform your decision, even if you think it does not. Zillions of studies have been done on this, enough to convince me.

It's an interesting question though.

[Anonymous]

No. I want my child to go to a diverse school so I want there to be all kinds of people there.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Seriously, in a society where the distribution of wealth and privilege has been a function of racial oppression (historical and ongoing), "colorblindness" is just a way of perpetuating inequality while disclaiming responsibility for it.

Not necessarily. Some Asian-American advocates argue that there would be more Asian students at schools like Harvard and Berkeley if the process were colorblind, and I have seen the similar argument made here that given the large number of highly successful African American families in this area, their representation at schools may be limited by a tendency to think in terms of numerical targets.

Depends on whether the "targets" are minimums or maximums. In the context of local private school admissions, I think they're minimums. Do you have the sense the African-American applicants are currently being turned away because some quota has been met? If so, where? (For that matter, do you have a sense that Asian-American applicants are being turned away from local private schools on this basis? Again, if so, where?)

[Anonymous]

PS I'm not discounting or denying the use of maximums to limit the number of Asian-American (and Jewish) students in college admissions. That's well-documented.

[Anonymous]

I don't think we are going to resolve the affirmative action/quotas debate in one thread. Sidwell, to fulfill its mission as an institution that educates global citizens, accepts what seems like a disproportionate number of students with at least one foreign-born parent.

If color blind, what about nationality blind? It would never end.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:No. I want my child to go to a diverse school so I want there to be all kinds of people there.

And you assume that would not happen in a colorblind process?

[Anonymous]

Yes, it should be colorblind. No, it definitely isn't. If it were, there wouldn't be African-American/Minority Fairs/recruitment events for private schools, etc. Or a need for them.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:No. I want my child to go to a diverse school so I want there to be all kinds of people there.

To me this post is indicative of how much people do not realize how biased they really are.

Is this poster making the assumption that other groups will not be capable of getting in if the process was color blind? What category of people does the poster think the school will be made up of if a color blind process were in place? Really curious

[Anonymous]

Can we stop this please?

In law school -- grading is done blindly. That means no one even puts their name on the paper -- just their ID #. If admissions were truly blind and everyone went by a number -- you'd have to do away with play groups or interviews because there is no way to be unbiased with that. Then, if admissions only went by scores -- you'd have no big donors in some years; no athletes; you might have all girls or all boys...you might have all shy kids or nerds or you might have all aggressive kids. You might have all AA kids some years; or fewer other years.

Schools aren't about picking blind scores -- they like a blend of kids. Your question is ridiculous...hasn't this question been beaten to death on the Sidwell thread already?

If your real question is -- do we really have to have students of color? The answer is yes. If you don't want that --- homeschool!

[Anonymous]

I think this whole discussion (the one here and on other threads) is made harder because people tend to view admissions like a pure contest between individual students. They seem to expect each individual applicant to be given an absolute ranking, and that schools generally should take applicants in order of ranking. So people get upset when they think anyone with a "lower rank" is getting a jump ahead in admissions.

But I don't think schools view admissions the same way. They are constructing a multi-student class that needs to function as a group. Changing the admission decision for one student affects the dynamics of the rest of the class.

For example, if a school chooses to give strong preference to younger siblings of current students, and discovers that for 2010 the younger siblings are all disproportionately white males, then the school will want to balance the class somehow. It might reject some of those white male siblings in favor of other siblings that are not white males, or else make sure that many of the non-sibling admits are not white males. There are lots of different factors a school might want to consider/balance: sex, race, siblings, general student attitude (leader/follower), general parent attitude, long-term legacy links to school, newcomers to the school community, athletic skills, artistic skills, etc etc etc.

For most of these schools, there are many more applicants than spots, so I strongly suspect that all the kids ultimately chosen for each class are very highly qualified. I'm sure they all have the test scores and positive playdate feedback that each school requires. Once those basic hurdles are cleared, each school gets to the difficult task of balancing all the other factors to create a class.

If you view admissions from a pure ranking construct, of course you're going to be upset when you think a lower-scoring child gets admission over your child. And you're going to be tempted to assume that other child "jumped rank" based on something like race, sex, legacy, etc. But I don't think that's a healthy (or accurate) way to view the process.

[Anonymous]

And it's really insane when you're talking about the WPPSI, 3-4 year olds, and classes of no more than a couple of dozen kids. The WPPSI is not a test that is geared to making this kind of distinctions, especially at the high end. That's before we get into whether testing reflects environment more than intelligence and whether it holds up over time.

As PP has laid out, admissions at every level works at both an institution-building and a class-constructing level, but meritocracy isn't even a realistic ideal at the PreK-K stage.