Did anyone attend the Choice survey community meeting yesterday?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:SAT, GRE, etc. don't measure aptitude, don't claim to measure aptitude, and don't predict academic performance.

They don't claim to measure aptitude (although they correlate very strongly to IQ tests) but they most definitely predict academic performance. University of Minnesota researchers used SAT and course data for over a million students and found strong correlation between SAT and academic performance. How well would a kid with a 750/1600 SAT score do at MIT?

Nope. Test-optional college admissions work just as well as test-required college admissions:

https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2014/02/19/study-finds-little-difference-academic-success-students-who-do-and-dont-submit-sat

And students with good grades and lower test scores do better in college than students with worse grades and higher test scores.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Please. Life is unfair. I tell my kids that all the time. I am a PP who grew up poor with uneducated parents who don't speak English. I know better than most of you how unfair life is to kids. It doesn't mean that we should expect less from them. They have more hurdles to over come, no doubt. But, it doesn't help them later in life if we keep expecting less and less of them.

I have no issues with the district spending more per student in lower income areas, smaller class sizes, more support. But, at the end of the day, they should still be held to the same standards as everyone else in terms of educational standards. It won't help them later in life if we keep lowering the bar for them. Provide them with more support, but don't dumb things down for them. That won't help.

Who is proposing to dumb things down?

One thing that was talked about was changing the admissions criteria to admit more urm. The indirect result is that less qualified students would be admitted compared to now. That, in effect, is dumbing down, or lowering the standards. Also, if some kids are admitted who under today's criteria wouldn't be, it is entirely possible such kids would not be able to keep up with the higher achieving kids in the magnet. I have no doubt that if they admit lesser qualified kids, the district will lower the standards within the magnets to prevent such kids from struggling too much in the magnets.

No, that's your assumption. Your assumption is:

1. The current admissions criteria select the best-qualified students.
2. Therefore, any changes to the admissions criteria will result in the selection of less-qualified students.

(Actually, your underlying assumption is -- it's not possible to admit more poor kids, black kids, or brown kids without lowering the admissions standards.)

The assumption of MCPS is that poor kids, black kids and brown kids cannot compete on academic merit. Their assumption is that even early intervention will not increase their intelligence enough to compete, so lower the admissions standards. MCPS is either racist or they have data that proves that blacks have lower intelligence. Which one is it?

Every test of intelligence and aptitude out there (all IQ tests, SAT, GRE, GMAT, ASVAB etc.) show that blacks have lower IQ/academic performance by about one standard deviation. That's simply a fact that most people refuse to acknowledge. Either all of these tests aren't accurate or are biased in some way (although they all do a good job of predicting outcomes) or the fact is that for whatever reason blacks (and to a slightly lesser extent Hispanics) in the US aren't as academically gifted. It sucks but it's reality. MCPS isn't going to magically fix something that is occurring everywhere, no matter how much they want to.

Hispanics are not a race and historically lumped in with whites just ad Arabs are. No reason genetically to explain lower IQs. US blacks typically aren't even trying as a whole so I wouldn't put too much weight into these so called studies. It's all cultural/ societal.

While technically true, Hispanics in the US are almost all mestizo.

Glad you brought that up. If you believe that IQ is genetic look up Native American and Spain IQ and explain why the average would be lower than the two inputs.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

While technically true, Hispanics in the US are almost all mestizo.

Citation please. Actually, first your definition of "mestizo", please, and then a citation.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mestizo

Two thirds of Hispanics in the US are from Mexico. A large number are from central and South America. All mestizo.

http://www.pewhispanic.org/2013/06/19/diverse-origins-the-nations-14-largest-hispanic-origin-groups/

No, that's begging the question. You're saying that Hispanics in the US are mestizo because Hispanics in the US come from Mexico, Central America, and South America, and people in Mexico, Central America, and South America are mestizo. (Plus, good grief -- Mexico + Central America + South America = all of Latin America except Cuba, Puerto Rico, and the Dominican Republic.)

Now, for actual data. In 2010, according to the US Census, 53% of people who identified as Hispanic/Latino (ethnicity) identified as white (race); 2.5% as black/African-American; 1.4% as American Indian/Alaska native; 0.4% as Asian; 0.1% as native Hawaiian or other Pacific Islander; 36.7% as some other race; and 6.0% as two or more races. See Table 2.

http://www.census.gov/prod/cen2010/briefs/c2010br-02.pdf

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:SAT, GRE, etc. don't measure aptitude, don't claim to measure aptitude, and don't predict academic performance.

They don't claim to measure aptitude (although they correlate very strongly to IQ tests) but they most definitely predict academic performance. University of Minnesota researchers used SAT and course data for over a million students and found strong correlation between SAT and academic performance. How well would a kid with a 750/1600 SAT score do at MIT?

Nope. Test-optional college admissions work just as well as test-required college admissions:

https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2014/02/19/study-finds-little-difference-academic-success-students-who-do-and-dont-submit-sat

And students with good grades and lower test scores do better in college than students with worse grades and higher test scores.

You should really watch this: http://www.isironline.org/isir-2015-invited-address-paul-sackett-nathan-kuncel/

They analyzed data collected from over a MILLION students. There's really nothing out there even remotely of the same scale. It's very illuminating.